aura-dev

Star Knightess Aura Release 1.0.0-beta-1

Added 2025-01-24 17:43:11 +0000 UTC

Victory Ending B is now in the game as well! With that, all main planned main content for 1.0 is done! Probably we will still see some minor content additions in the form of art integrations, depending on what our artist finishes. Just earlier he completed the maid costume variation for the Hermann Sex scene which I had originally scheduled for post 1.0 content, but since it's here already I will probably integrate it next week.

But, let's not talk about next week right now! Let's talk about this week! Today, we release the major update for the first 1.0.0 build! Although still in beta because there is still a good stream of incoming bugs to fix, we have finished the epilogue work this month.

For those confused about the regular schedule: The major update got moved one week ahead in order to start the beta phase, and the proper 1.0.0 release is currently schedule for 7th Feb. As of today, this date is also locked in! I can no longer change it in Steam and unless World War III breaks out and I need to defend Greenland against a US invasion, I don't think there is really any reason to move it anymore.

If you checkout the changelog, you will see that we are still fixing up a lot of bugs and applying a bunch of polish, but we are making good headway. I expect some more bugs to crop up since we had to do some deeper changes as well to fix some outstanding issues, but I think they should be small in number compared to all the fixes we have done this month.

So, as usual, since this is a major update, it's a summary post of what has happened over the course of this month. I will briefly summarize the developments of the past weeks in here, in case you are intrested in more details, you can check out the devlog posts. For the changes this week, I will be going a bit more into detail.

For the summary in numbers we have: 1 new H-CG, 14 new Epilogue scenes, a bunch of steam achievements for the upcoming steam release, 5 new items, and lot of technical improvements and polish work.

Starting out with the main item: This update sees the endings of the game complete! In the Corruption Ending, the remaining H-CG has been added and the Victory Ending has received its epilogue scenes. Besides various minor variations in the epilogue scenes, there are two core sub endings in the Victory Ending: Victory Ending A and Victory Ending B.

Victory Ending B is what I worked on this week. You can trigger it either by triggering the Roland Cheating Partner Epilogue event which will hard-lock you into Victory Ending B or through a convuloted check that involves various variables. The most important ones here are George Relationship, Cheating and Vice. While a corrupted Aura may have secret cheating sex in Victory Ending A, the framing is more vague there - something for the couple to deal with in the future, but necessarily an obstacle they can't overcome.

Victory Ending B on the other hand is more of an NTR style ending where Aura will end up dumping George. In the case that the ending was not triggered by Roland, there is an extra scene where George and Aura meet again and you can see which changes have endured the ending. Generally speaking, if you want Aura to completey revert into bitch mode even in the Victory Ending, the Roland trigger accomplishes that. Otherwise, she will only partially revert in Victory Ending B. Spoilery but I hope this gives a general idea on what ending you might want to trigger.

Then, the second big item is the upcoming Steam release. Our assistant developer Trihan has implemented a bunch of achievements for it, I have setup an automated process to create an .exe installer patch to install the NSFW content. The patch will be available on itch under: https://aura-dev.itch.io/star-knightess-aura-patch

Furthermore, I also spent a bunch of time this week going over the adult content skipping logic. This is obviously not going to be relevant for a lot of people here, but for those buying the game on steam and not knowing that there is an adult patch, the story will now make a lot more sense. I made it so that the scenes themselves still get skipped, but a lot more "around" is captured. Also in case plot relevant information is droppe during a scene, the game will do a fade out and show the necessary text blocks. Overall I hope that this will help with keeping people around until they maybe do decide to checkout if there is an adult content patch.

Also mostly for steam, but I guess potentially relevant for non-Steam players as well, Trihan has iterated the controller support. While previously you could in theory use any controller, it would only show the XBox symbols. In theory PS, Xbox and Switch controllers should now display correctly. We also performed a variety of fixes where the game was showing keyboard UI elements instead of controller ones, so I hope the necessary work for controller support is now all done.

And then, finally, the third main item is just polish & bugfixing & balancing work. Too many items here to make a really coherent summary. :'D Just check out the long changelog for details. I do have two balancing changes that I would like to highlight as they are a bit more experimental. It's possible that for the 1.0.0 release in 2 weeks I will decide to revert them:

The Special Study 1 event no longer increases Lewdness (but still Corruption and everything else) so its possible to perform it on a purity oriented run and get into the Magic Academy at the cost of dealing with the added passive. I figured this would be an interesting decision, but maybe it turns out too good?!
Slime has gotten a last minute power up today: I didn't like that the last improvmement for the slime was a book that would allow it to grow faster but didn't have a "finisher" to work towards to. As of this version, on level 20, Medium Slimes will learn the Rank 3 version of their damage spell variant. Furthermore, Earth Slime can cast Tremor instead of Rock Armor. We will see what this brings or if it makes it too strong.

Oh yeah, and this one is probably also important: No more weird chase pathfinding!! You maybe noticed that sometimes NPCs trying to chase you would move really weirdly allowing players to access places that shouldn't be accessible without Shadowcloak. This glitch will no longer work!

Otherwise, yeah, I would just be retyping the changelog if I gave more information here. Have fun with the update, if you don't mind the possibility of bugs, but wanted to wait for the game to be content complete, have fun with the game itself! In the case you would like to wait for the last round of bugfixing & polishing to finish up, I recommend waiting until Feb 7th. :)

Changelog 1.0.0-beta-1 (24.01.2025)

Added Final Corruption Scene H-CGs
Added Veronica Georgica slapping in Final H-CG
Added epilogue scene Victory Ending 1
Added epilogue variation Victory Ending 1: Remaining mental change effects
Added epilogue variation Victory Ending 1: George family corruption
Added epilogue scene Victory Ending Epilogue Start 2
Added epilogue scene Victory Ending Epilogue Start 3
Added epilogue scene variation Victory Ending 3: Corrupted Laura
Added epilogue scene Victory Ending Epilogue Start 4
Added epilogue scene variation Victory Ending 4: Lewd Aura
Added epilogue scene Victory Ending Epilogue Start 5
Added epilogue scene variation Victory Ending 5: Corrupt Rose
Added epilogue scene Remnants
Added epilogue scene variation Remnants: Corrupt Rose
Added epilogue scene Guard Captain John
Added epilogue trigger and variation for Paulina Incomplete Training
Added epilogue scene The Greater Union
Added epilogue scene False Hero King Roland
Added epilogue scene Victory End Cheating Partner Hermann
Added epilogue scene Victory End Cheating Partner Lord Trademond
Added epilogue scene Victory End Cheating Partner Roland
Added epilogue scene Victory Ending A
Added epilogue scene variation for the Greater Union: Corrupted Rose
Added epilogue scene Victory Ending B
Added workshop artifact level 7: Orb of Air+
Added workshop artifact level 8: Rage Guard
Added workshop artifact level 9: Improved Alchemist Bomb Tools
Added workshop artifact level 10: Coating Enhancer+
Turned wasp enemy in Clockwork Forest Hidden Cave into proper miniboss
Added artifact Slay the Demon: +CP
Updated Title Twitter link to Bluesky
Turned on stepping flag for relationship characters which have mental changes
Added Tactical Advantage to Common States
Added new system changes for achievements
Implemented event to track number of allies at start of Final Battle and at end
Implemented Steam Achievements
Improved UI for Teaching Club
Replaced Mana Stone in Clockwork Tower F3 with Formula: Delta
Added construct tag and poison/arouse immunity to Rock Golems
Implemented pausing when controller disconnected
Changed controller disconnect window implementation to be more extensible for future scenes and plugins
Added controller disconnect icon to iconset and disconnect window
Added additional controller icons to iconset and show them with the appropriate gamepad connected
Added controller-specific mapping to battle HUD
Iterated Poisoned Elixirs and check for polish
Iterated Something is Fishy and check for polish
Iterated Clockwork Tower
Added signalling system for windows to update contents when controller events fire
Removed Moral Character Page and integrate Infamy in main character page
Improve scope of Adult Content skipping in Hermann scenes
Added rotated fashion magazine asset
Iterated adult content skipping for h-scenes to include more story while still skipping adult content
Added variation for Underground City doors after entering Jame's chambers
Improved move towards behavior of RPGMaker by only including random movements when an event is outside the pathfinding range
Implemented fall back function to return false when trying to read adult content in steam mode
Increase max killed bosses to 127

Balancing

Added Level 2 Pyromantium to Mount Firestorm Caves 4 and 2 Level 1 Pyromantium to Richard Domain 2
Added Rank III skills to Level 20 Slime and replace Rock Armor with Tremor for Earth Slime
Increased penalty for not taking part in Special Study by 100 Gold per day past the deadline
Increased penalty of Lord Trademond Work Contract by 50 Gold per day past the deadline
Removed Lewdness gain from Special Study 1
Increased required number of Pyromantium for Elixir of Power by 1 but decrease Emerald Leaf needed for Elixir of Speed by 1, adjust prices accordingly
Decreased prices of Artifact Workshop by 10-20%
Reduced stat top-end of some powerful Final Battle allies since they already get boosts from extra levels
Reduced value of Power Core to 3000 Gold

Bugfixes

Fixed typos
Fixed queued action being lost when a battler receives a target restricting state
Fixed Bomb Enhancer+ consuming 10 Pyromantium instead of 5
Fixed Programmable Forcefield no longer being available in workshop on the prerelease
Fixed compendium crash in steam version
Fixed teleporting enemies teleporting ontop of player using new waitUntil command in Move Route
Fixed freeze in Victory Ending 4 George Variation
Fixed crashes if controller buttons plugin is disabled
Fixed Luciela multiplication mechanic not working as intended
Fixed off-by-one Hunting a Demon King check resulting in music not playing
Fixed High Score achievement being unlockable with 126 bosses
Fixed incorrect file location for Compendium images in patch
Fixed layering bug in Northern Mountain Ranges Tree Stump
Fixed missing party clear at end of Final Battle
Fixed steam mode being off in patch
Fixed actor version of Rene having skills of Renegade Magic Fighter
Fixed intertwining of steam and demo flags in clear room
Fixed Q and E prompts still showing on VN options window when using a controller
Fixed glitches when watching scenes with a changed costume
Fixed incorrect removal checks for some enemies at Draknor Fotress Outer Area
Fixed Shadow being invisible during Epilogue Scene Remnants
Fixed illumination correction after Poisoncloud Gnome battle in Nephlune Vault not taking braziers into account
Fixed possibility of current HP sometimes exceeding maximum
Fixed multiple instances of death state being applied if battler had an onEraseState tag that added another state when they died
Fixed Nothing But The Truth vice softlock
Fixed Liberation:Timestop not being applied to reserve party
Fixed Maid Academy version of Seductive Dance II not unlearning rank I
Fixed incorrect name and pronoun for Barry in Judgement Domain
Fixed Thunder Golem still using Electric Charge if it was queued on the same turn Security Chip is used
Fixed Hallway Bullying 7 not resetting Womb of Lust
Fixed Mansion of Lust being marked as complete when killing Asmodeus in Richard Domain if quest was already failed
Fixed some quest-based achievements unlocking when the quest was failed
Fixed Special skills counting towards the Skill Mastery achievement
Fixed unearthing Persephone anchor in Rotten Love not removing its HP cost
Fixed Jacob still appearing in Final Battle after easy completion of Rotten Love
Fixed graphical and passability errors in Clockwork Forest maps
Fixed Clemence version of Throw Bomb+ x 2 not getting the damage buff applied to Bomb Proficiency I
Fixed being able to compendium teleport when in clear room
Fixed Build Bot not appearing in Compendium
Fixed underwater swarms over world blocking by adding always update
Fixed Finalal Battle Beelzebub Lightning Sword II glitches
Fixed missing adult content check on sick workers branch in Maid Job 1
Fixed slotTriggered switch not being reset for morning slot causing potential scene skipping such as corruption ending not triggering
Fixed broken statue tile in Verdeaux
Fixed Sleeping Formula Tampering Vice choice appearing before Vice unlock
Fixed Mountainreach workers not facing original position after talking
Fixed dialogue tree glitches when ending patronage after killing asmodeus in Richard's Domain
Fixed Artificer skills Bomb Missile x3 and Guided Missile x3 only hitting once