Dev Log — June 2024

Hi everyone!

I've got some exciting news for you this month! We have made some good progress on the dynamic avatar and I will soon begin rigging it in Live2D and implementing it on the test server! Once we have some sort of base to work from, I will release the dynamic avatar in a beta version, where backers can choose whether to use the old/current system or the beta version of the dynamic avatar, and I will continue to update the avatar with more support for clothes and appearances and improve it with your feedback until it's finished enough to be rolled out for everyone!

Upcoming NPCs

We've also made progress on NPCs that will appear in the new PvE system. The mistress and master bosses have been finished, and we're also close to finishing an AI NPC that will be themed around escape and trapped rooms. There are so many fun fantasies that can be explored with the AI, from rooms filling with gas to players getting dropped onto a conveyor belt!

The AI is a character who is bent on making a perfect simulation of the world and the chaotic magic within it to create the perfect algorithm for predicting the unpredictable and understanding the unfathomable. For that, they will need data; vast amounts of data from students being put through perilous challenges that will leave them changed in various ways and degrees depending on their success!

Hypnotic Suggestions

A popular suggestion by players has been custom spells and curses. I understand why custom spells are appealing, but I cannot allow for custom spells because it's fundamentally difficult to implement in a user-friendly and balanced way while also undermining any hopes of having rare spells. However, last month I realized that I had neglected the hypnosis fantasy and how this one could be perfect for introducing triggers into the game that players could use for many popular custom curses!

Similar to the Conjure Item spell, I plan on introducing a Hypnosis spell with multiple options that allows you to craft your hypnotic suggestion, from the trigger, condition, and effect! The crafted hypnotic effect will then be condensed into a custom status effect for your character that is acknowledged by the game!

You can see the full design document for Hypnotic Suggestions here, which was worked out with assistance from DekoTF: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g7iPVEJRPMLwdtoL04Oy2PDa-K0UxHgNOEsHRgTrBd8

Some of the details can be quite technical because it also has information about data handling.

Mental Effects

Mental effects were originally designed to belong to the Thoughts category, where intrusive thoughts, false memories, evolving kinks, and other mental changes would be tracked. But to better differentiate between hypnosis and other mental effects, they have been separated into two groups with similar distinct motives.

Hidden & Forced Hypnotic Suggestions

Players will be able to set two optional flags for their hypnotic triggers besides setting the trigger, conditions, and effect. The first flag is whether the suggestion should be hidden. It's a very popular hypnosis fantasy to end the session by telling the person they will remember nothing of what happened, and that's what this trigger does, leaving them clueless about the effect besides knowing they have a hidden suggestion.

Hidden suggestions will not be revealed just by being triggered, and the player must try to figure out what is causing the effect and then make a guess to reveal it. For those who have followed my streams, this is inspired by anomalies in Pacific Drive, where you'll have to diagnose what's causing it before you can fix it. Though an unlikely source of inspiration, I think it works perfectly for this fantasy, and I like the idea of players jumping through hoops to try and figure out what their suggestion is!

The optional forced flag will allow players to control whether the effect should force an action from the affected character, or coerce them by giving them a negative effect until they follow through on the compulsion. There's a delicious difference in whether an action is performed spontaneously, or semi-voluntarily, and I want players to be able to decide on which one they want to impose!

Emotes

Emotes will be integral to hypnotic suggestions and can be both impulsive actions and triggers. The design document has a list of emotes, some of which also have additional effects when triggered, like being forced to walk on all fours if the "kneel" emote is triggered. You will also recognize some of these emotes from fortune cards, such as the pout emote, which is also linked to a card that causes a character to pout whenever they are silenced.

Eventually, the dynamic avatars will also support as many feasible emotes as possible with animations and poses!

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That's all for this month's dev log! I've been swamped with work in the last month, but I should start to get more time to work on the game again and will start by fixing some of the outstanding errors, and then I'll get working on the PvE overhaul, so we can hopefully get something playable on the test server soon!

Thank you so much for your support and I hope you're excited about my ideas for the hypnotic suggestions and how these can be used for many popular curses players like to share on their profiles! If you have any suggestions for curses you'd like to see supported by the system that aren't yet possible from what's listed in the design document, please feel free to share them in the backer channel on Discord! ❤️

Cheers,

Tinon