It's the "It's looking rather nice" update...

Hello!

A quick(ish) update today. Whilst things chug along in the background on the animation files I've been carrying on refreshing elements of the GUI.

Now, part of this is to make it look prettier and more pleasing to the eye, part of this is to make it look a lot more professional but part of it (and the most important part) is to make your life a bit easier. You've already seen the revised look for the achievements and the character and information cards but there's still a couple of tweaks going on.

First and foremost is the VR character cards. (note I can't show any of Babe's stuff as even bikinis on an open post can upset the patreon rules so...Bobe it is.)

A bit nicer than what we had before. But not only nicer, a lot more useful. One of the things I was struggling with on the bonus pack was how to deal with lewds that some players wouldn't necessarily want to see. (You know how important this bit is to me by now) and I'm referring mainly to the VR content here of course. 

You'll notice that on Bobe's character sheet there is a win/loss summary, well that's where I'm going to hive off the VR lewds gallery. If you have Vampy activated and you win as Bobe or lose as Babe clicking on these icons will now replay the post combat scene for you.  In this way I can keep the barrier to the content down and not have any unwanted scenes for players.

But the refresh also helps with the feel of the module a bit more too. It should be (and indeed is) a perfectly viable path to play VR with Sarah as an actual game without any vamperic shenanigans and the introduction of the new cards, complete with additional combat mechanics and levelling up awards for combat performance and wins, helps with that feel. I want VR to be an actual competitive game that the player and Sarah can play together for fun - as well as the smutz.

Speaking of VR, the animations for that are looking pretty snazzy. I've dropped a small non lewd clip behind the paywall (bikinis again...sorry) as well as Babe's character card. You'll note I've got even more ambitious.

Channel Seven

What else? Oh, yep. I spoke earlier about how on reflection some of the Channel Seven content was just massively off tone. I've gone back and changed those scenes so instead of MatL and Jenny's content we now have something more in keeping with the rest of the game. I've kept Jenny herself but now she's interviewing in the earlier days of Ophion and on Phoebe. It works a lot better. I don't obviously expect you to replay to get that content and so with the release will do a standalone pack with that content in so you can see what you've missed (either that or have a trigger check that allows you to see the scene in game at the start. One of those. Anyway you won't have to replay which is the important bit.)

I also have some good news on the tactical combat which was turning out to be a major bore. No longer it seems. I had to pull it apart a bit (a lot actually...) but the new mechanics seem to be given me what I want which and it's shaping up to be a pretty exciting and challenging module (and satisfying when you win). I've also tweaked it a bit so that the player, even if they fall into the combat by accident still has a logical option to go straight for a draw and duck out of it if combat isn't their sort of thing. With a fair wind I should have this wrapped up by the end of the next week and will tap a few of you on the shoulder to try it out. For something like this I want it not only tested (and spare a thought for my poor testers) but also some wider views on whether I've achieved what I set out to.

And more tweaks...

On the player mechanics generally, and in my ongoing quest to see if I can produce a chapter with no sleep whatsover, I'm trying to tackle the last remaining weakness in the game mechanics. The plant repairs. 

From the player perspective it's very clunky - and worse, if you have multiple saves you've no real idea of what you've done on any given path until you chat with Mike. Not exactly player friendly. It's also pretty restrictive in that it's difficult to bounce around between the two major path lines. I'm working on this and am looking to have something on the database that shows you the choices you've made and the choices open to you and for you to be able to move more freely between the two. 

Stuff to play!

Finally, I've put the playable testers version of Challenge of the Gods behind the paywall for those that are curious. It's not massive, some 200 images and nine animations but it is an optional event on an optional path after all. On the other hand it is very silly - and on the more bizarre naughty side. The rationale for picking Challenge was that it has no story or event spoilers and so can be enjoyed yet still keep you in the dark over what you'll be facing in the actual chapter.

And I think that's about it for now. Oh, other than the chapter is big. More lines of code for Five than in Four and Three together (although graphically it's about the same as Four) so there's certainly been no lack of effort on this one :)

Stay, or be, lucky.

Notty