aura-dev

Liora's Price of Dignity 0.1.0-prerelease-8

Added 2025-08-01 16:03:39 +0000 UTC

WARNING: Old saves are definitely outdated with this update! I reworked quite a few systems on the data level in order to enable the mechanical gameplay connections I will be talking about below! The good news is that this is from my side the last major background technical rework before the 0.1.0 release. Though, Trihan will be doing a round of code review so there might be some more architecture changes coming up in order to prevent some technical debt.

So, that out of the way: What's new this week? I focused most of my dev efforts on expanding the costume system and improving its integration with the other gameplay elements. First and foremost, by default RPGMaker ships with an equipment system but in the SKA system that's not really being used (technically it's used for passives - every passive effect is actually a Shield attached to Aura and every Coating an extra weapon :p) but it's not really used for slot-based equpment.

The slot-based equipment system from RPGMaker turned out pretty handy to manage the contract-based appearance changes. The clothing is an equipment part, and so are hair style and hair dye.

Which also brings me to new content (sadly not illustrated yet) added this week: New clauses for changing Liora's hair style and hair color. Also, I generally added support for an extra Options field for these kind of clauses. When negotiating with Edgar, you can customize the clothing / hair style / color in the offer which in return also affects the negotiation value. I also used this Option field for other clauses where having some level of customization during the simple negotiation segment is useful.

When you accept a clause for wearing a certain clothing for the first time, said clothing will be added to your inventory. Once you reach the Max Lewdness for a clothing and it brings Liora "a benefit" she will be comfortable enough to put it on without needing a clause.

The benefit currently is limited to the new clothing enchantment system. Edgar now has the spell "Enchant: Clothing" which he can cast on a clothing to give it an elemental resistance. By default, he uses THUNDER resistance for himself - but that is negotiable!

You can have Edgar enchant Liora's / Rean's / his own clothing with a different resistance, which however is quite expensive in terms of negotiation value. EXCEPT if you are choosing a lewd clothing, in which case Edgar will be more willing to enchant it.

For hair changes I added Twin Tails and Wavy Hair as options for now. In contrast to costume changes, I decided that they are clauses that just continuously apply. I found managing all of them changing all the time to both be a bit much in terms of gameplay and on a technical level. This way, different costumes can be used for different occasions / triggers, but changes such as hair changes apply permanently representing a general corruption progression.

I also added an alternate tier 1 corruption costume to verify that the systems are all working as intendend, but as mentioned before, it's all not illustrated (except on the pixel level). Currently our art production is lacking a bit behind while I'm ahead of schedule, which is definitely a bit of a mismatch. But luckily I still have tons to do, so I'm not blocked. It just means I need to be careful not to throw too much stuff into the expanding art queue.

Expanding the costume mechanic revealed quite a few technical implementation weaknesses in the contract system (mostly how clauses with multiple parameters interacted with the detection system for existing clauses / more progressed clauses), so I used the opportunity to iterate on the general infrastructure. I expect quite a few bugs from this however as I touched a lot of systems.

On the other hand, the increase in flexibility finally made it possible to add clauses like "When Liora goes on a date with Edgar, Liora shall wear Clothing X" which was a bit problematic before as the costume system was harded coded to only work with the "on the next day" effect and also you could so silly things like restrict this clause to only trigger on days when the date event couldn't trigger. But in the iterated version these systems can now properly communicate, so preventing that kind of silly interaction has become easy.

Besides the expansion on the costume system, I otherwise mostly worked on small quality of life features in order to prep for the 0.1.0 MVP release. Clauses now have icons so you can easier recognize what type of proposal Edgar is making without needing to look inside. Looks is now its own category, to free of the Erotic category. And I made a bunch of small gameplay balancing changes resulting from playtests. I'm not sure if I listed all of them, probably the most important one is the number of bombs for obstacle removal being reduced.

Next week, I will be doing concept work to expand on my plans for the side quests and probably implement one of the easy ones.

Changelog 0.1.0-prerelease-8 (01.08.2025)

Created category Looks
Implemented costume choice in costume clause negotiation
Implemented support for choice based proposal options and refactored mining proposals to use them
Implemented working option dialogue auto-trigger on day 2
Refactored costume system to be equipment based
Expanded Costume Clause to support Hair Style changes
Expanded costume system to support Hair Dye
Implemented Edgar clothing enchantments
Implemented clothing enchantment clause
Implemented Edgar enchant clothing proposals
Implemented option to switch to lewd costume if costume's max lewdness is reached and it is enchaned
Implemented Always clause subject
Implemented clause trigger for Liora being on date with edgar and add proposal for wearing costume on date
Added Icons for clause proposals
Disabled Contract category during Intro