Dev Log — May 2024

Hi everyone!

I've mostly recovered and yesterday I managed to work in some new backer rewards that I'm excited about sharing in this month's dev log!

New Backer Rewards

Backers with colored usernames can now decorate their profiles and roleplay details with the username colors available to them using the new [color] formatting syntax! Username colors have already been curated to appear nice and readable on profiles and inside the game, with a wide variety of colors to pick from. This allows you to theme your profiles after your username color instead of necessarily the nature color of the character.

These colors even overrule other colors like the color for out-of-character segments, emotes, and links, giving you much more control over all colors in your character bios.

It took a bit of fiddling on the database, but I also managed to give backers a larger character limit for bios in increments of 2,000 starting with the Student tier, so backers who've already used up all their characters can play around with colors without having to dig into their existing bio(s).

I've already seen many impressive profiles and I'm happy to be able to give backers even more characters and colors to work with!

Dynamic Avatars

Progress continues on the dynamic avatars and we're finally moving on from the sketching phase and into the prototyping phase! Dynamic avatars are immensely expensive due to the vast amount of clothing and character changes they need to support, and since everything will be relying on the base contours of the character sprite, we've been spending a lot of time getting it just right before we dared to move on.

The latest artist to help out with the avatars is DekoTF, who is also helping out with the game in more and less subtle ways. The animation was made by Deko to illustrate the breast size range for the new avatars.

In addition, the gargantuan and colossal breast sizes will be limited when the new avatars are introduced. Many extreme or fantastical character traits will be gated behind fortune cards to ensure that things like enormous breasts and exceptionally tall characters stay a novelty, by offering players a limited choice of what is exceptional about each of their characters.

You can read more about this from the Fortune Card design document at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Dhr1QSObWznpyoS5SJWJmxIHrTvUk8lwLNwiK8BLlxw

Deko has also drawn illustrations for a staggering amount of fortune cards already, which I'll share with you once we're closer to having the cards in the game. But I can promise you they are amazing!

Deko also recently started a Subscribe Star, so if you love their art please consider checking out their website, which also has a link to their Subscribe Star https://dekonsfw.com/

Missions for Passive Skill Points

In the previous dev log, I talked about an idea for introducing missions that reward a character with passive skill points, instead of using a more traditional leveling system. There were a few reasons for this; one is that it's more interesting and engaging and actually rewards the player for learning about the game instead of simply spending time grinding up a number.

I've been uncertain about whether progress should be account-wide or character-specific. On one hand, account-wide means it's easier to play multiple characters and re-rolling new ones, on the other, character-specific gives players something to strive for on new characters, which can be quite enjoyable, and not allowing them to complete missions again on a new character could rob players of some of the joy of "leveling" a new character.

I ended up settling on a system where missions are character-specific but generally easy to complete with minimal grind, and players who are already adept at the game can more easily complete most missions a second time.

You can see the missions and a progress grid mockup from the design document at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RChLXNRhz_YqLq117UwtgI5PbA5rLSIscLG3r3qClwA/edit

The progress grid isn't strict, and it is possible to complete some missions out of order, but in many cases, a previous mission in the grid is a prerequisite to the next, and players only need to concern themselves with the missions immediately available to them. There are plans for a total of 24 passive skill points through missions, which can be invested into the passive skill tree.

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That's all for this month's dev log! Thank you so much for your support and I hope you'll enjoy the many new possibilities text formatting provides! ❤️

I meant to do it after the update but that was ruined by sickness, and I'm only just now starting to feel reinvigorated, but I plan on streaming again today or possibly tomorrow. Maybe I'll see you there!

Cheers,

Tinon