Devlog #22 Technical Improvements, Story Expansions

This post has been postponed so many times. First I was sick (no biggy), then Austin, Texas (where I happen to live) was hit with an ice storm (the power company has since renamed it an 'ice hurricane' to make themselves look less inept). Just for some context, my house has 22 trees, of which all but 3 were damaged, and probably half are entirely destroyed. One was uprooted, three are nothing but trunks with no branches left, two split in half, one split down the middle in about a dozen directions... Anyway, our native trees did not evolve to survive the weight of ice on their branches, and it turns out that trees falling on power lines is... hold on, let me check my notes... 'bad'. So my neighborhood was without power for between 3 and 9 days, depending on how lucky or unlucky you were. Which is actually incorrect, because my unluckiest neighbor is STILL without power. A falling tree pulled out her power meter and she has to wait in line to get it put back together at her own expense. Anyway, that also delayed my work schedule a bit. BUT! I'm back. I'm taking time to go chainsaw trees in my yard every once in a while, but it's better than sitting in the dark eating cold poptarts and listening to my kids whine about not playing Nintendo.

So, I have a ton of stuff that needs to be mentioned, and this post is going to have a few sections.

Relationship Scenes:
Lani's relationship progress is the main focus of this next planned update, and there are a LOT of variations and progression scenes, so that means a lot of work. I've actually gotten some that I think are really good (*chef kiss face*), and a few that are... good enough. I'm about 60% of the way finished with Lani's planned relationship scenes. Let's see... we have a long list of camp scene continuations (the previous update stopped at scene 5, while this update moves through scene 13). Everything through 11 is animated and rendered already, so that's the bulk finished. I have additional sneak content for Lani on my planning board for this update, but I may end up cutting it for time... I really hope I can find the time to push at least some of it into this coming release, though.

I've included one screenshot from a dream as well. The Sausage King is a euphemism, and he appears in a few happy dreams.

Story Progress:
Since the player's relationship with Lani can progress in this next version, that adds further story requirements, right? Now we need serious talks, unserious talks, group talks... holding hands? Damn... what do people do when they're just starting to date... like... oh, dates. There need to be dates. This update only includes one, but it's also an important story location, so there's been a lot of work put into it. Threadbare Clothing and Sundries is a mysterious new clothing brand that has gained monstrous popularity in the Capital but has previously only done mail-order deliveries for customers out in the middle of nowhere, like you. Their first branch store is opening on *undisclosed date* and the girls are excited. If you're dating Lani on *undisclosed date*, then you'll be going on a solo trip with your new girlfriend, and if you're not, then you'll be escorting both ladies as they make fun of you for being single.

So we have story hints for Threadbare, which is going to be a recurring location for a few main storylines (mostly Marla, though, which is relatively obvious when you take her shopping). We also have storyline continuations for Lani to go along with an expanded relationship scope (how will Miri react to learning that you and Lani are already a couple before she could talk to you about Lani's backstory? Well... you can find out if you plan the timeline accordingly).

And how far along is all this? Well, the various action triggers are decided and created and probably about half of the dialogue is written. So... not that bad. I have to pace myself with these because if I try to write too many variations on a single conversation I start to lose my line of thought and I need to rewrite it anyway. Either way, I write during computation downtime (cloth simulations, rendering, etc), so this doesn't have a huge impact on the actual timeline of production.

There is no continuation of the Succubus Dungeon in this coming version. That will be tackled after this one.

Technical Improvements:
Combat is getting an overall code rewrite (which is mostly finished). Lots of redundant code has been cleaned up, bugs squashed, visual improvements added, skills implemented, and I think that's all. I still need to make skill visuals for quite a lot of player skills, and there are some complicated skill actions that require one-off skill code to function correctly, which are not implemented in my working build but will hopefully all be finished in time for release. There is also intended to be an auto-battle feature added, but that is still waiting in line for my attention.

Also, I've added ear movements to Lani's character rig. This is a minor update that makes me happy.

Overall, I still don't have a solid idea of when this will be ready for public consumption, but I'm thinking it'll probably be mid to late March.