Update 2nd Feb '25

It was another fairly solid week to round out January. I split my time pretty much equally between revamping the NPC code for HoHH and typing up the short story for Literotica's Valentine's Day competition.

The NPC Shop code and layout is pretty much done (for regular computer displays - I still need to do the mobile version). I need to create proper icons for the 'Buy' and 'Close' buttons and maybe something fancier than plain text for 'Sold', but I'm pretty happy with the layout overall. It nudges HoHH closer to looking like a indie game, which is very far from where I thought I'd get when I first started working with Twine.

I also updated Nurse Honey's NPC section. I decided against using the NPC shop layout for her. My aim is to have nice icons to represent the ailments on the character sheet (and icons for the charms as well), but Nurse Honey doesn't really have enough options to justify jumping to a shop window layout. In a normal playthrough a player will probably only be carrying a couple of ailments at once at any particular time, so the regular text display is probably fine.

Currently I'm working on The Doctoress's layout. Her potions could definitely use the NPC shop layout, so I'm fiddling around trying to find the best way to display them.

I'm also running into the limitations of generative AI art here and with ailment icons. These need a slightly more consistent look and it's quite difficult to get that and specific designs with AI art. The placeholders here will probably be very placeholder-y until I can replace them with proper, consistent art.

The other half of the week was spent typing up the Valentine's Day short story. I was a little concerned with this one as the first draft was pretty rough. Fortunately, it came together quite well while I was typing it up. I finished that yesterday and it's 6,500 words. It wasn't ready to release for January, but it should go up in time for the competition deadline. My plan is to leave it on the side for a couple of days and then give it a final edit before submitting it on the 5th. If all goes to plan, you should be able to read it around the end of next week.

It's very much an Anti-Valentine's Day story with quite a dour theme and weird monster girl. I suspect Literotica readers looking for the usual saccharine sweetness and romanticism on Valentine's Day are going to hate this one! :)

I do like my horror.

Anyway, onto next week, where I'm hoping to finally get a good chunk of writing of the slime smother nun done.

Thanks for the support.
- manyeyedhydra