RegulusNSFW

Face POV for Nika, New Brothel3 mechanics, new UI, and Rooster's upgraded ability.

Heyo everyone! This week covered a few things, with a lot of it focused on animation, and some code. Before getting into the post, I would like to announce that the v0.13 level poll has concluded.

Here are the results:
(P) = Patreon
(SS) = SubscribeStar
(T) = Total

-Titas2/Tanya: (P)14 (SS)0 (T) 14
-Neos2/Nika: (P)8 (SS)1 (T) 9
-Finale1/Nova: (P)10 (SS)0 (T) 10

This means Titas2 has won the poll. In v0.13 we will be returning to the desert and seeing more of Tanya!

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Now with that, let's jump into the progress report!

To start everything off, I just did some quick additions to some of the UI:

There is a new boss gauge.

I added additional sections to the pause menu for the options.

The pause/option menus are still incomplete, but progress was made.

After that, I jumped into the brothel3 mechanics.

Do note that the UI, and layout of this will almost definitely change. These are base visuals while I was setting up the functions.

Currently the set up is as follows: You will get requests for drinks containing different ratios between Rooster and Aether. They offer different amounts of credits as well. You simply need to fill your mug with the ratio you want to do.

Once a meter is full, your mug will begin to fill until the character's meter empties out. (There isn't great visual representation right now, but there will be.)

When you sell your mug, you will receive an amount of credits based on how accurate you were.

This may sound a bit confusing due to the basic visuals, but I am hoping to make everything read much better in an intuitive way before this build's launch.

Despite the visuals, the code is all in place, and everything functions properly.

With the functions in place, I jumped over to Nika's Extra scene from last build. As mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to add a POV to this Hscene (among a few others).

Idle:

Base Loop:

Fast:

Grind:

Finally, I did a quick change for Rooster's Upgraded ability. The upgrade is quite simple. Their summons are now much more tanky. Their health is increased from 50 to 130. This means they can survive almost any hit at least once.

This means you can maintain your summoned army much easier.

That pretty much sums up this week. Next week is going to be focusing on Zol'gan2's boss. The boss is going to be a zombie who resides within the city. From the prior civilization he has managed to commandeer some amazing technology.

With that first look, I will catch you all next week for a bit more of a dive on the boss! Thank you all so much for the support, and I'll see you then!

-Regulus

Happy Holidays! Rooster's 4th Hscene.

Heyo everyone! It's been a busy week, but Rooster's Hscene is done up, and given some motion. The climax animations aren't done yet, due to the time constraints this week, but I'll get around to it.

Before carrying on, I'd just like to set a reminder that there are only 6 days left on the poll for v0.13's character/level! If you are VIP($10+), be sure to get your votes in before it's over!

Now with that:

This one won't be too wordy, but lets just get right into Rooster's new Hscene.

First off, as always was breaking up the image, rigging, and setting up the parameters.

There is no background in the inspector, but this scene will take place on the beach.

Idle:

Base Loop:

Fast Loop:

A bit of a frot/thigh work.
(This one still needs a bit of work, and foreskin for aether...)

another loop:

I may add Aether to the other side, and maybe set up a little bukkake variant animation depending on the time I have.

With that, this week is concluded, and we are moving forward! Next week is prooobably going to be focusing on some new features and UI implementation.

Thanks again everyone! I'll catch you all next week with a breakdown on it!

-Regulus

Zol'gan 2 breakdown. A few more UI elements

Hey everyone! As mentioned, this week was almost entirely focusing on Zol'gan2's layout, and level design. With a bit of extra time after finishing it up, I decided to take the initiative to add in a few more of the new UI assets.

With that, lets just start from the top:

In general, the enemies you come across are going to be the same as from the first Zol'gan level.

To start off, you will find some of the large worms cutting in front of you. (In comparison to Zol'gan 1, the enemies are likely going to be in much closer proximity to you. )

Shortly after, you will find many rotating rocks that are covered in familiar mites.

After passing through the gauntlet, you face another one.

After a small breather, you will begin ducking between some buildings. Enemies are generally revealed in very close proximity here, so you may need to be quick on your feet... or.. wings?

Next you are faced with 2 of the red claw enemies at the same time.

You are now going up a rather long hill. With gravity being quite turbulent here, things go a little haywire.

Things don't only just fall, but also rise. Be ready for surprises.

For the final ascent you are faced with a final tumble before the last section of the level.

The final stretch is not too complicated, but there are a few more threats.

After fighting a couple more red claws, you will be faced with the boss. I will go more into the boss on a later week. For now, that sums up the layout of Zol'gan 2.

As mentioned, there were a few UI components that were updated as well.

The "Zol'gan" Title is yet to be adjusted, but the "Engage", health, and thrust bars have been updated, along with a new pause menu.

On top of these in-game components, a few menus have been revamped too.

There are still plenty more UI assets that need to be implemented, but I will be sure to show them in posts as they get put in!

That should pretty much sum up the week everyone! Thanks again for all the support! Next week is going to be focusing on Rooster's 4th Hscene, however this is pending. The next week's schedule may change depending on the state of a few things. If things are changed, then next week will likely be focusing on new features, like Rooster's upgraded ability, adding proper function to the new brothel scene, and adding more UI components.

Catch you all next week!

-Regulus

A shift in the report. Rooster's 3rd Hscene and UI.

Heyo everyone! Due to some small snags, I have decided to make a side-step in the schedule, and shift this week to animating Rooster's 3rd Hscene instead. Zol'gan 2's level design will likely come in the following week here. I would also like to say that implementation of the new UI overhaul has begun!

Let's get into it, aye?

To start off, as you can see... the position in this Hscene is... unique.

 The scene has some kinda awkward rigging, and a few fun control parameters.

Rooster will always hang on to the pillow... and sometimes chew on it.

The phone angle would still need to move, but rigging on it's own wouldn't really do the trick, so i did that through control parameters as well.

With that... I combine it all into the base animations:

Idle:

Base Loop:

And a faster variation, of course:

There is an extra control parameter in here as well to give a bit of an X-ray as well if the player wants.

This part may be improved upon, however.

With that, I don't totally want to leave you in the dark for Zol'gan 2, so I will post a couple in-game screen shots to give the sense of the aesthetic at least.

These screenshots are a version that is being reworked a bit, mind you.

Finally:

I'm happy to show off some of the planned UI changes.

I had to write up some scripts and add a bit of animation, but the main menu is pretty much complete here. Do note that the background in the "Select Loadout" screen will be swapped out, as it is currently just a placeholder for reference.

Expect to see more on these UI components in the coming weeks. There is a lot to implement, so I might not be able to get it all in this build, but I should be able to get a good chunk of it.

With that, next week is going to be focused on Zol'gan2 level design (hopefully for real this time, ahaha).

Thanks again everyone! I'll catch you all then.

-Regulus

v0.13 Level/Character Poll!

Here we go again guys! What level/character would you like to see in v0.13?

Extra Hscene animated, and some additional changes!

Hey again everyone! As mentioned, this week was focused on the Extra Hscene for v0.12. There were some other things that were being worked on as well, but before we dive in, let me just say that the new poll will be posted alongside this!

The poll will be for what the next level will be:

>Neos2 - Nika
>Titas2 - Tanya
>Finale1 - Nova

VIP's ($10+) can vote here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/v0-13-level-poll-117478563

Now let's get into the report!

To start off, lets see what the Hscene as to offer.

Once this scene is fully set up, it will have a similar purpose as the brothel scenes. It will allow you to gain credits based on the same Stamina bar. This scene however, is to give an alternative to female Aether. (There will likely be 1 more "brothel" type scene at some point after this for male Aether as well, but we will see.)

Of course first step was breaking things up into the Atlas.

Mesh, then rigging.

After control parameters were set, I moved into the base animations.

NOTE: There is no background in the editor (And she will be holding a mug in her yellow hand.)

Her base milking of Aether.

Same with Rooster.

And there is a faster version for both.

I'm feeling like the mini-game this time around will be quite a bit different. I have a general outline for how it will work mechanically, but I still need to concept the specifics. I will likely cover this in the latter half of this build's development, so expect to hear more on it in a month or so.

Something else that was done, is an updated transmission art for Pom.

Finally, the majority of the assets for the UI revision have been delivered, and I have done some organizing/formatting for them. Essentially they are mostly good to go for implementation. There is likely to be much of it, if not all within the next build launch. I will be showing some of this very soon!

This pretty much sums up the week's work! Thank for all the support! Next week is going to be focusing on the new level: Zol'gan 2.

The level has been set up, and is just about ready for enemy placements. I'll catch you all next week for a first look at it in-engine!

-Regulus

Lana's Locked and Loaded! v0.11 Out Now!

Here we are everyone! v0.11 is raring to go! As always be sure to post any bugs/issues to come across, and I'll get to them as soon as possible if need be. Let's go!

v0.11 Changelog:

MAJOR: 

-New level: Raptura2
-2 new Hscenes for Lana
-New "Extra" scene for Nika
-New song has been added to Catiya2
-New song has been added to Nova's boss fight
-Full keybinds for Keyboard/Mouse and Gamepad have been added.
-Added a "!" marker to characters at all allies at affinity thresholds(0,25,50,75). They will now have a brief dialogue leading into their Hscenes for the first time. (This means if you are loading old data, you will need to catch up to these flags.)

Minor: 
-Lana's EX ability has been added (upgraded after Raptura2)
-Added alternate hair for Lana
-Bosses will now always show health bars
-Revised Pix's passive. Instead of seeing boss health, she will now see enemies through walls. -Tanya 's 1st and 2nd Hscene have swapped order.
-Lana's 1st and 2nd Hscene have swapped order.
-Added voice moans to Lana/Siren/Pix's 3rd and 4th Hscenes.
-Nova now has a new Transmission art
-Made it so Nova explodes buildings more often in her fight
-Made some balance changes to Nova's boss fight.
-Dimmed some lights in Neos.

Bug Fixes: 
-Fixed a bug in Nova's boss fight where the buildings wouldn't loop properly after a while.
-Fixed a bug where Male Aether would have a rogue voice line in Catiya2
-Fixed a bug where Event Hscenes would show in Pom's hub before actually unlocking them.

Initial Release:

v0.11 - December 1st

Download Links:

PC: https://mega.nz/file/1TMF2arB#FPPEn3JNXvgeuuSPTJX3Q0kqh8jYSaKjp5Iaq-mH7UE

Linux: https://mega.nz/file/RLtHxTzQ#TGwwMMGlFhwbQO1IEaeF538IzrCSS1Iqf2A-snrfs1s

v0.11 Nova's Theme, Last Minute Final Touches and Additions!

Heyo everyone! This was actually a pretty busy week. There were a lot of last minute things I decided to do on top of the final touches. This means I didn't really get to in-depth bug testing.... oops.. let's hope everything is still okay lolol. I'm going to break this down in a fairly brief manner.

Basically the first half of the week was entirely dedicated to finishing the escape sequence, and polishing transitions between phases, level mechanics, and final flare. Some aspects were a bit of a headache, but we got through them

Upon defeating Weeble2, Lana takes control of his rail.

After that was simply connecting all the scenes and Hscenes together so they can all be properly accessed. Right now Nika's "Extra" Hscene is accessed through an Event like TanyaxRooster. This will likely change in the future, but it is currently how you access it.

From here, Wishful Simping had finished Nova's boss theme. I implemented her theme (As you can hear above). After this I actually decided to do some balance adjustments to her fight, and a couple additions here too.

>Fixed a bug where if you fought Nova for a while, the buildings would stop looping properly.
>Made it so when Nova is in phase 2 and uses her missiles, she also explodes all nearby buildings
>Made volume adjustments to some SFX in the fight.
>Buffed her red ball damage.

>Reduced some lighting in Neos.

Finally, last night I decided to see if I could finish up keybind implementation.

So, I'm happy to say that both Keyboard/Mouse, and Gamepad keybinds have been added. I fixed things up, so that binds in party select, and in-game read if you are on gamepad or not, and show the corresponding binds.

With all that said, that doesn't necessarily mean gamepad support is where I want it to be. When the UI overhaul happens, it should help a lot with gamepad functionality in menus.

With that, v0.11 is completed. There were some other things I wanted to get in, but they might have to wait until the next update unfortunately. There were some mouth variants for Lana's Hscenes, and a pop-out POV window for Nika's extra scene.

Unfortunately I still need to break this up, rig, and animate it before implementing. For now the animation will just be the 2nd part of this.

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Alright everyone! Thanks a ton for the support! v0.11 launch is just in a couple days, and next week is going to be focusing a new "Extra" Hscene for v0.12. This next Hscene is going to contain Tanya, and Male Aether. It is going to give function similar to the brothel, except with Male Aether. This way if the player does not want to go the route of Female Aether, they can still get the perks of credits in an Hscene.

Catch you all in a couple days with the launch of v0.11, and next week with some motion on this Tanya animation!

-Regulus

v0.11 Build Wrap Up, Catiya2 theme, and more!

Heyo everyone! This one is mainly about build wrap up, but there are some cool things to show off in terms of changes. After looking over a few things I have decided to inquire about a couple revisions and additions to existing assets. This will add a bit onto the workload for next week, but I think it should be worth it.

These things include adding mouth variants to Lana's new scenes, reworking a couple of the transmission arts, and adding an extra component to Nika's Extra Hscene (There will be a POV window of sorts).

an example: Here's a quick look at Nova's new Transmission art.

With that, let's get into the week's progress!

Starting off were some bug fixes. Pix's passive caused some bugs that I needed to fix up. It didn't take too much time on it's own.

After that I needed to finish up some unfinished aspects of the level:

>Added checkpoints
>Made it so closing the shutters/doors through the level will give affinity to Lana

>Added function to a mechanic in the final room. Shooting slime cores will cause the slime to dissipate. This will clog a fan at the bottom of the room.

Each slime dissipated will slow the fan. (All slimes will completely stop the fan.)

Failing to slow the fan is not detrimental, getting hit by the fan will simply cause you to take damage.

>Added a segment where the goo will "expand" and you will need to maneuver around it.

>As you can glimpse above, I also added the "Help" sequences to the stage.

>And of course I also added the Transmission Dialogue throughout the level.

>Next was dealing with boss transitions/dialogue. This one is a bit loaded.

There's also the addition of Weeble2's portrait.

There is quite a bit of dialogue in this fight overall.

>After finishing this section of the boss, I moved onto finishing up Hscenes. I added climax animations and states to the remaining Hscenes.

Of course this included setting up the appropriate button functions for the scene.

>I actually went back through all the Hscenes in recent builds and added voice moans to: Pix3/4, Lana3/4, and Siren3/4. They use the same voice lines as their first 2 Hscenes, but it should at least give a little more life to the scenes.

>Finally, Wishful has done up the theme for Catiya2, so I have gone back and slotted that in. That is what the preview above is!

That's pretty much the jist of it.

The last day of work had set me back a little bit. I was planning on finishing up the boss escape sequence too, but several things came up and I was unable to get it done. Unfortunately this means I'll need to dig into the upcoming week to finish it up, which was supposed to be focusing on final testing and fixing. There's actually several things I might be getting into next week... we'll see how it goes though.

Thanks again everyone! I'll catch you all next week with the final points of the build! It will likely be a busy week.

-Regulus

v0.11's New Features and Abilities!

Heyo everyone! Quite a handful of changes this time around. Some of them may be fairly important to know before diving into the next build. I was able to get to most of the things I was hoping to, but with 1 snag.

Before I get into things, I'd just like to announce that the winner of the poll was Rooster! Zol'gan2 will be the next level with the final totals being:
(P= Patreon votes, SS = SubscribeStar votes)

Zol'gan2 - 14 (P: 14 + SS: 0)
Titas2 - 12 (P: 11 + SS: 1)
Finale1 - 6 (P: 6 + SS: 0)
Neos2 - 4 (P: 4 + SS: 0)

With that, let's get into this week's breakdown!

Day 1:

On the Sunday, the most front and center things was to implement Lana's EX ability. This upgrade is simple. Instead of firing regular power blast shots, she will instead fire flame waves at the same rate. This means she will decimate clusters, as well as do quite a bit more damage.

With that, I moved on to the other essential. Lana's next 2 dialogue trees. With it completed, she officially has all 4 dialogue trees finished.

Day 2:

With the essentials in place, this now opened up the ability to tackle some extras.

First up is something you might have kinda of noticed in the previous gif with Lana. I'll start with a quick explanation:

Because the Raptura2 boss only really gets hurt in a certain phase, I felt their health bar showing at all times was pretty important for the player to understand what is happening. Now, as we know, boss health bars only show when Pix is in the party. I've decided to make a decision based on this. Pix has been given a new passive, and Boss Health Bars will always show, regardless of who's in the party across the game.

So what is Pix's new Passive? It is still called "Scouting", but the effect is now that you essentially have wall hacks. You can see enemies through walls and obstructions.

This paired with Flame wave could be a good way to take out those obstructed enemies.

With the new changes in place, there was enough time for 1 more thing.

 We gave Lana her extra hairstyle.

Day 3:

Progress was going quite smoothly, so I thought it might be cool to take another step in some "jank". I'm sure many of you probably notice how sometimes there is a "selected" button, and it just chills there while you are going through menus with a mouse. I've made some adjustments to the scripts so that when you are using a mouse, any other buttons will deselect.

This isn't massive, but it should make navigating menus feel less weird. The game now internally tracks what your last used device was between gamepad and mouse to help with the flow of both.

This leads us to something else that's pretty overdue.

Custom Keybinds! Yippppeeee. There are still a couple other things I need to do to make this fully come together, like the bound keys displaying in-game and in party select. It also won't really work with gamepad yet, but I'd like to see if I can cover these things before this build's launch.

That being said, in it's current state it is fully functional with keyboard and mouse controls.

With a little bit of time left in the day, I decided to squeeze in the description for Lana's EX.

Day 4:

Now this day... was a tough one. I wanted to take a look at custom colors for Aether. In previous posts I talked about how I got the code all lined up and functional for it, all that was needed was to address the atlases (.pngs used in animations). Basically I would need to go through alllll the Images used in previous Hscenes, and change Aether's color to white, with an appropriate multiplicative tint for the shading. I found a workflow/process to get this to work previously, so I decided to put this into practice on this day.

Something I knew was going to be a bit of a hurdle was how the images were broken up. Some Atlases are simply not broken up with this function in mind. Unfortunately this proved to be an even bigger hurdle than I originally thought. In what I thought might be achievable within a day turned into a realization that it would likely be more along the lines of a week's worth of work, as not only would I need to address the atlases, but I would also need to completely rework components within the rigs. Some Hscenes are easy enough, but not others.

While I was able to make some headway on this end, and got some Hscenes up and functioning with it, I ultimately had to leave this one behind for now. I will come back to it another time.

Day 5:

Here I decided to drop back to an old idea I had. I had originally scrapped it, but I decided to bring it back now. I feel it gives a more solid sense of "progression". You likely noticed in a gif above that the characters have a blue "!" above their buttons.

This signifies a "character event". This will appear when you hit a new threshold with a character:

Event 1: Upon unlocking
Event 2: 25 Affinity
Event 3: 50 Affinity (Upon beating their 2nd level)
Event 4: 75 Affinity

When you interact with them, you will enter some brief, 1 directional dialogue that leads directly into the newly unlocked Hscene.

You do have the option to skip the Hscene, in case you wanted to talk to them for a different reason.

These events are only viewable once, and simply serve as a segway into Hscenes, and a means of alerting the player of when they've made progress in regards to the character.

This took a bit of time, as I wrote 4 events for all 6 characters

These dialogues are kept brief to not feel too obstructive, but can give a little more context to how the characters are feeling through the adventure.

Unfortunately the flags to initiate these events were just implemented. That means if you are resuming a current save from an old build, you will need to get through all of these events to catch up with your progress.

Alongside this I made a couple small changes to the ordering of Hscenes. I have decided to make it so Lana's BJ scene is now her 1st Hscene, and the Cockpit is her 2nd. Likewise I swapped Tanya's 1st and 2nd Hscene around. Up until now, the Hscene orders have been simply in the order they were made. Once development is done, or as things get closer, the order of Hscenes may be rearranged like this.

------------------------------------------------

Which leads us to today! That pretty much sums up this week.

In the coming week I will be doing Build Wrap up. This will include finishing up some of the mechanics with Raptura 2 that need topping off, attaching the new scenes to the game, etc.

Thanks again everyone! I'll catch you all next week! Thanks again for the amazing support!

-Regulus

Lana's 4th Hscene.

Heyo everyone! Here again with the next report!

Before I showcase the Hscene, I'll quickly say: As of the time of this post, there is only 6 hours left of the poll for the next level. The poll is actually extremely close, so if you are a VIP patron ($10+) be sure to get your votes in. Combining SubscribeStar and Patreon's votes the current standings are:

Zol'gan2 (Rooster) - 13
Titas2 (Tanya) - 12
Finale1 (Nova) - 6
Neos2 (Nika) - 4

With that, let's take a look at Lana's 4th Hscene!

As always, I started up with breaking up, meshing, and rigging her image, and made sure she could twerk.

As seen above, there is her Idle animation.

Then she has a "rub"

And her base loop:

From here you have a the option of either picking up the pace, or grinding.

and of course her climax animation.

That pretty much sums up this one! The next week is going to be focusing on new features of sorts. This essentially means things like Lana's upgraded ability, adding her alternate hairstyle, her new dialogue, and I am hoping to jump into perhaps a couple other things on the list of intended features if I get the time. More on that on the next week's report, though!

Alright everyone! Thanks again for the support! I'll catch you all next week!

-Regulus

Raptura2 Boss. First look and breakdown.

Heyo everyone! Bit of a late post here. My sleep schedule got a bit messed up last minute so I had to do a bit of a scramble ahaha. This boss still has some polish due, but the core of the fight is all completed! Some other things that are on the board this week is UI. Though the new UI may not be in the upcoming build, work on it is officially under way! I'll give you guys updates one that when things are further along.

Just as a quick reminder for VIP ($10+), there is 1 week left on the poll for the next level/character. Adding up the totals on SubscribeStar and Patreon, Rooster/Zol'gan is currently in the lead.

I will also be posting some Hi Res art for the highest tiers soon here.

With that, let's get into the boss fight!

Raptura2 has the return of "Weeble". Once you reach the boss floor you will be faced with him, suspended from the ceiling. The objective is to shoot the glowing blue crystals while avoiding his various attacks.

Do note: While the boss is complete, the environment is still being worked on by our modeller. (This means the boss is suspended by nothing at the moment ahah...

He has some basic swipes to avoid.

He can also grab the screen, and lick you. Icky.

If he hits you with the lick, he will apply contamination to you (Same effect as venom, and purple claws)

Finally, he can withdraw and unleash contaminated bugs at you. These will act similarly to the ones you encountered earlier in the level. If you kill them, it will spawn the ooze by itself that will fly at you.

If there is any time in this game that has made me reconsider Pix's passive it is this fight, as I feel seeing the boss' health bar is actually important in this fight. Something that is important to notice is that destroying the blue spots do not do damage.

Instead, destroying all 3 will stun the boss.

Due to the regenerative features of the boss, Lana (on the sidelines), manages to bring in some of the security system, and uses it to your advantage. Triggering these lasers will cause damage to the boss.

After a certain amount of time, the boss will return to it's previous state, regenerated.

You will need to repeat the process until the boss is defeated.

With the boss destroyed, Lana initiates the self-destruct sequence on the facility to destroy the contamination in it's tracks...

An issue comes along... it seems the contamination has reached Aether's thrusters... being unable to fly, Lana will tether herself to you and make her escape.

Upon exiting the first tunnel, your perspective will return to Aether... something is amiss...

It's not dead.

Being pulled by Lana, it will be your duty to keep the boss at bay.

Shooting the boss' eye will cause it to recoil. While the boss is recoiled, you will have the opportunity to close the blast doors. These doors will lock the boss in, and cause damage.

In total there are about 5 blast doors to close. If you successfully close all of the doors, Weeble will be destroyed by the final one.

If you didn't manage to close him behind enough doors, he will escape during the last blast. The consequences of this are still undetermined.

As a whole, this boss has a lot to him, but hopefully it turns out to be a cool experience once all the polish is implemented :P.

For now, we will be moving on from the fight, and revisiting Hscenes! In the next week, I will be animating Lana's 4th Hscene.

I don't have a great preview ready, but this should suffice for now.

Thank you all for the continued support! I will catch you all next week with some motion on this scene!

-Regulus

Lana's 3rd Hscene. Low grav seggs.

Heyo everyone! Another update! This week was entirely focusing on Lana's 3rd Hscene! It has been wrapped up, and ready to showcase. This post probably won't be too wordy, but let's dive in!

As always, we started off with breaking up, and meshing the image.

First up we have her Idle animation, of course!

And as seen above, her base loop.

We have a harder version.

And with the reasoning of "why not?"... this. lol

and some love on the other side.

I actually might to 1 or 2 other loops to see how they look, but these will be the base 4 for now.

All of the climax states have been implemented as well.

Some other things have been on the burner: Some of you may have noticed, but there is a Russian, and Portuguese translation available on SpunkStock. They are live on Steam and Itch.io, but are also being reviewed, so if anyone has feedback on those, please feel free to share it with me!

With that, I'll close out here. Thank you everyone for the continued support! In the upcoming week I will likely be jumping back into some gameplay. By that, I mean the boss. Raptura 2 will feature a returning Weeble. Despite killing him, he seems to be "alive"... but not well.

Alright everyone! I'll catch you next week with the boss breakdown!

-Regulus

Raptura2 Enemies, and threats! Lana's 3rd Hscene Sneak Peek!

Heyo everyone! Today we are going to be going over the threats that lie behind Raptura2. Alien life forms, robots, and security systems. There has also been quite a bit going on behind the scenes, but I'll leave that for another time. Let's get into the progress report!

Do note that I can't show off everything in it's intended state, as many of the actual new functions as enemies are yet to be implemented. This week is mostly placement, and level design.

To start the level off, you will see some familiar bodies.

It seems they left a lot of stuff unattended...

Upon getting close to the entrance, you will see many fleeing Rapturan ships.

The facility is fairly normal, but the security systems see you as a threat.

This showcases our first new mechanic of sorts. The security beams themselves cannot be destroyed, but when they trigger, a panel will spawn somewhere nearby. Destroying the panel will deactivate it's corresponding laser.

After making it past the lasers, you will come across a door.

This door will spawn enemies. Shooting the corresponding panel will close the door. If you close the door, all remaining enemies to be spawned will be killed (You will be awarded points accordingly).

Running into another line of defense, drones will spawn alongside security lasers.

After this is where we run into our first form on contamination.

From the first sights of this mysterious goo, "contaminated" enemies will spawn from them. If you kill the contaminated enemy, the contamination will take a last ditch effort to spread. It will launch at your ship. Getting hit by contamination will have the same effect as Purple Claws, and Spider Vemon (to be barrel-rolled).

After turning in you will find a few worms coming in through the walls.

After passing another security set-up, you will find a door flooding with contamination.

In this case, shutting the door will squish the contamination, awarding you bonus points.

From here on, there is some final level events to add where the goo/contamination will expand, and you must avoid it. (To be added in a later week)

Which leads us to the final room. The final room will circle around the room I previously showed off. You will need to destroy as many instances of contamination as possible. The more contamination you destroy the more clogged the fan below will get.

This means the more you destroy the slower it will go when it comes time to pass through it.

If all are destroyed the fan will be stationary, and you can simply move through it.

The tunnel beyond will lead use to the boss of Raptura2, which will be covered on a later date!

That pretty much sums up this level. There are a lot of new things to encounter! I hope you are all looking forward to it!

So what does that leave for next week? Well, I think I will be jumping on Lana's 3rd Hscene!  Onlookers beware!

This means I'll be breaking up the image, meshing, and animating, as per usual.

With that... I'll catch you all next week with some motion! Thank you all a ton!

-Regulus

Extra Hscene animated and sneak peek at Raptura2!

Heyo, everyone! A bit of a late post here. It has been a bit of a long week for me, but here's what we got! Let's jump right in to it!

As mentioned before, this Hscene was done a bit differently. We used multiple frames and interpolated them together. I did up a few variants, and did some experimentation.

I ultimately decided to split each segment's frames into their own parameters. This would allow me to mix and match them a bit for different loops.

There's a full plunge loop.

A basic loop

and a faster/more grind-like one.

Taking some still frames I rigged some components into an Idle animation as well.

A few of these loops could still use some polish, but this is the brunt of it. Doing this method actually proved to be... quite cumbersome. Instead of breaking up a single image I needed to break up every frame, which made atlases quite messy.

The climax animations still need to be done, but for now we will be moving on.

We have the an early layout of the level done up. Here's a look!

 You will start outside, like in Raptura, though you may find things in a bit more disarray, and abandoned.

Upon entering the complex, things seem to be fairly normal

 and slowly get more broken down

In the upcoming week, I will likely be doing the enemy placements, and finishing setting up the level.

Thank you all for the tremendous support! I will catch you all with a proper break down of the new level!

-Regulus.

v0.12 Level/Character Poll!

Heyo everyone! Here is the new poll for what level we will be taking on after Raptura2(v0.11)

The winning level will feature 2 Hscenes with the corresponding character.

The poll will be on until November 8th!

Raptura2. v0.11 First Look, Breakdown, and "Extra" Scene Sneak Peek!

Heyo everyone! I hope you all have enjoyed v0.10! I will be looking to do a little hotfix for it soon here. There was surprisingly few bugs reported, so it will likely only be 1 or 2 things.

Before I get into the breakdown, I will just give a quick heads up that the next poll will be starting alongside this post for VIP ($10+) patrons. This poll is a vote for what character/level we will tackle after Lana/Raptura2.

The options are:

>Titas2 - Tanya
>Neos2 - Nika
>Zol'gan2 - Rooster
>Finale1 - Nova

The poll be on for a month or so, so get your votes in!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/113391849

Now let's get into what to expect from v0.11.

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Upon returning to Raptura, you will find it's fallen under. The base has been contaminated by an unknown form.

This time, the majority of this level will be based within the constructs itself. Your team will investigate what's become of Raptura's mining facilities while fighting off the immanent threats.

As implied, this build is also going to bring 2 new Hscenes with Lana, along with 1 "extra" scene. The base art for these Hscenes have been completed, but still need their time for animation.

In the upcoming week, I am actually going to be working on the "extra" Hscene. The reason is that this Hscene is going to be a big of an experiment. For the first time, we are going to be trying to mix frame-by-frame animation and rigging. I would like to state that this is not going to be the "new" standard for animating for Starbreed, and we would like to keep with the current style for consistency's stake, but we do want to try this out.

https://regulusnsfw.itch.io/interpolation-test?secret=s1EfY3d5ZrbCrpjXXwYyW4nGb0M

This is an example of a quick frame loop, and the difference between it, and when I do an interpolation method with the meshes.

This was a quick example, and does not actually include a rig at all. I will likely be trying to make the Hscene in Starbreed a bit more intricate, and versatile.

The subject of this test is going to be our good friend Nika

In the coming week I will be trying out some rigging methods to see what I can do with these frames.

As for the Lana Hscenes, I will show those when it comes time to work on them.

-------------------------------------

Anyways! That should wrap up what we've got to show right out the gate. I'll catch you all next week with what I've managed to whip up with this Nika scene.

Thank you all for your continued support, and I hope you all had fun with Catiya2, and the brothel scenes. ^^

-Regulus

Aether Takes Center Stage! v0.10 Out Now!

Alright everyone! v0.10 is here! I hope you all have fun, and be sure to post any bugs/issues if you run into any, so I can fix em up! Thanks everyone for the support! <3

v0.10 Changelog:

MAJOR:

-New level: Catiya2
-2 new Hscenes for Female Aether
-New "Brothel" feature.
-new Hscene with Aether/Nova (Game Over screen for female Aether)
-Added an extra segment to the end of Catiya1's intro/Hscene. Nova now has a conversation portrait/animation.
-New song has been added to Pearlus2

Minor:

-Large optimizations on Titas
-Added party member dialogue to Pearlus2
-Added Health pickups in Pearlus2
-Fixed some major tracking issues with Siren's Bioelectricity, and MITE Drones.
-Made a minor adjustment to Nika's eyes in her conversation animations.
-When a party member's affinity reaches 49, a prompt to complete their next level will appear as well.
-Made changes to the colorspace of all animations. Colors may be slightly different than they used to be.
-Pix now gains 4 affinity if you kill pigman in Molbon2 before he gets executed by the golem.
-Fixed a bug where charge shot would delete Molbon2 boss' vulnerable points.
-Molbon2 Boss' vulnerable points now jiggle when hit.
-Custom music in the sex pod should now play properly when loading into it.
-Final charging golem in Molbon2 has had some collision changes, so it is easier to get around.
-Reworked the falling rubble in Molbon2's boss. Their audio should now be more readable.
-Fixed a bug where if you loaded a file, then started a new game while in the same session, you actually would not start a new game.
-Fixed a bug where achieved medals would sometimes not show up on level select.
-Aether in Hscene room will now need 50 resolve to choose female states.
-Aether in Hscene room can now "Idle" as female Aether as well.
-Fixed a bug where Rooster's Affinity pop-up would act weird and double up in Zol'gan

Initial Release:

v0.10.1 - October 1st.

Hotfix:

v0.10.2 - October 6th.

>Fixed a bug where selecting "Alternate" weapon type when starting a new game would start you with Classic loadout anyways.
>Fixed a visual bug with Catiyan walker's death.

Download Links:

PC: https://mega.nz/file/0LVAhIoa#J8R1GyLEshaAWbbtNOpWafCvHIdj3B7tfcwZzrKwj4A

Linux: https://mega.nz/file/EWsgwRwC#cU_imRmGRTMGIYgYjxxlto5k5ipftzDuf1UFnwEpx90

Build Wrap up! New Pearlus2 music, and some nice fluff.

Heyo everyone! This one might be a bit of a bigger one, but I managed to get everything on the immediate list done! A lot was covered, so let's get into it!

---------------------------------------------

DAY 1 (Sunday):

This day, I actually decided to experiment with something I had been wanted to for a while. You might notice in the upcoming build, some highlights on Aether are gone, or dull. This is a bit of a price to pay for what I'm hoping to add in the future.

Essentially I have a system that can allow the player to change Aether's color.

This should allow players to choose more human skin tones as well, for those who want a bit more of a "self-insert" feel in Hscenes.

Please do note that this feature will not be available in the upcoming v0.10. I mostly just wanted to get the frame work in place for it.

Ideally I would like this color to reflect in ALL Hscenes. To get through them all, it could take some time, hence why it is not actually implemented yet.

With that in place, and functioning, I decided to move on.

I added different state's to Aether's x-ray in her 1st Hscene.

There are 9 levels to it in total.

Next was a bit of a predicament. The "color matching" tool in AnyPortrait doesn't really work like it would in art programs due to variances in the engine's colorspace vs. the raw image. This means If I wanted to match a color exactly, I would need to eye-ball it. The problem was mostly that Coyote in Aether1's Hscene, he has an already colored head.

I took some time to learn about colorspaces, and realize the issue runs a bit deeper than I was hoping. I ultimately decided that just eye-balling the colors would be the most time-efficient manner of dealing with this.

Aside from that, I fixed some visual bugs in Aether1, like clipping, and movement jitters.

Lastly I added a "timer" bar to the character's word prompts.

I also scaled Aether's missionary position up quite a bit to match her other positions.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

DAY 2 (Monday):

First thing I did on this day was to make it so Aether's "X-ray" pop out did not play while in BJ state, as it previously just played with any animation.

Next was adding all the spunk to Aether's control parameters, along with the rig so that it properly moved along with her. This can often take a bit of time, especially with so much of it in these scenes.

The next thing I did was added a bit of context to character's gated Affinity.

When a character reaches 49 affinity, it will now also prompt you to complete their level.

Next was finishing up AetherxNova's scene.

There is some more face variance now,

---------------------------------------------------

DAY 3 (Tuesday):

This day I started off by animating the climax animation, and states for AetherxNova.

After that, I set up the appropriate buttons, and progression for it.

Next was doing a bit of recoloring:

I added some color to the heads so multiplying the color could universally make things look a bit better.

(previously the head and shaft was all just the same flat color.)

Next was adding the "fluff" to these scenes... this basically means adding the sound effects, and the "splat/goo" effects where necessary (across all 3 new scenes)

Next, was a very similar thing to the previous day which was adding the spunk to the control parameters. (once again... takes a bit)

To end this day off, I essentially finished all the code to increment the spunk states, and merge to the next client.

-----------------------------------------------------------

DAY 4 (Wednesday)

This day was another big one. I focused almost entirely on Nova's intros, and interactions.

Nova flies in from right field after this, and you begin the first phase.

Upon beating the first phase, Nova will now be a bit more flashy with her transformation.

To accomplish these instances actually took the better part of the day. I need to ensure all the buildings had these triggers for explosions, and continue to, for the whole fight, as people will likely be in very different positions on the track when reaching this stage.

After this I simply finished off her outro, and the camera pan dialogue.

Next was something you might have noticed. In the previous update you may have seen in Nova's transmission portrait she was very small.... I basically just made her much larger.

Next was actually adding Pearlus2's new theme, as you will have previewed above. This one took a llllitttle longer then normal, as there is actually 2 slight variations of this song. What you hear above is the default song, but once the player is submerged under water, there is more of a "corrupted" aesthetic to the song. Basically I had to add the appropriate triggers and transition for that to happen.

----------------------------------------

DAY 5 (Thursday):

-Unfortunately on this day I ran into another hiccup with color spaces. (The issues I had on Sunday). I won't go into this too much, as it's pretty much a similar outcome as the first day) It took me a bit, but I got it all figured out. At least for the time being.

-Next, I actually went back to Molbon2. I think I forgot to add an "affinity gainer" in this level. (Most levels have some function to allow the played to get extra affinity within a map). In this case, killing Pigman before he gets executed by the golem will grant you extra affinity for Pix.

-I did some more touches on Catiya2, like adding Pom's support crate, and balancing a bit of the score thresholds for Gold/Silver/Bronze, along with setting up the intro camera pans.

-Next was putting the new Hscenes into the Hscene Room, so you can review these scenes with the others.

-I was finishing some MORE animation components in the 2 scenes... Yeah, I know it feels like I've said this 90 times now... Basically, I realized I forgot to do some animation on Pigman in some loops.

-In Aether2, I had previously said that the IK was working well, but that wasn't entirely the case. It was much better, but I definitely had some polishing to do. I'll just cut to the end result, but this took the biggest chunk of the day for sure.

(Obviously the sizes won't change on the fly, I was just changing them to show how everything holds together dynamically, while animations are playing.

-Next was another thing you see above, basically adding the proper curtain folds so the back guy will actually duck out behind the curtain. The layering was actually kind of annoying to manage in this case.

---------------------------------------------------------------

DAY 6 (Friday.... today):

I started off by adding Catiya's checkpoints, and fixing up some of the issues with some enemies, and adding all the environmental colliders.

Next was tying all the new scenes into the game. I decided to make it so Aether's brothel scenes are accessed via the shop, as you can make credits from doing it.

After whipping up the UI quickly the biggest question was what to do with AetherxNova. Initially I wanted this to just be an "event", but I ultimately decided it would fit better as a "Game Over" screen.

Note you do not HAVE to lose in order to view this. It is always viewable via the Hscene Room, as long as you have female Aether unlocked.

If you are currently Female Aether the "Quit" button from the Game Over will now bring you to the Aether x Nova Hscene.

But what about Male Aether? I will likely look to adding one in the future as well.

The rest of this day was basically fixing up some last minute bugs.

-Molbon2 Boss was bugged in a way that made charge shot literally 1-shot his vulnerable points. It also made it so his vulnerable points did not jiggle upon being his. This has been fixed.
-Custom music now starts properly in the Hscene room.
-Fixed an issue with Pearlus 2's boss transition
-Molbon2, the final charging golem should now have a smaller hitbox, and more consistently kill the walkers in front of him
-SFX on Molbon2 boss have been adjusted so you hear the rocks falling better.
-fixed a bug where if you Loaded a game, then went back and started a new game within the same session, the New Game would not actually start a new game.

-----------------------------------------------------

Alright.... there were a few other odds and ends in there, but I think this covered the most of it. I hope you guys are all looking forward to the launch on the 1st!

Thank you all for the support again!

I'll catch you all then!

-Regulus

New Brothel Mechanics!

Heyo everyone! This week was focusing on new features. Unfortunately the brothel mechanics actually took quite a bit more time than I was hoping. I actually kinda went a little bit.. "extra" on some of the nuances of it, but whatever ahah. I was kind of hoping to get started on a couple other features, but I suppose those will have to wait for a later build.

Before I get into it, I'm not sure if I ended up announcing that Lana is the official winner of the last poll, so the next build will be centered around her and Raptura2! I hope you are all looking forward to it!

Also, a random thing was kinda bothering me, so I did a quick change on Nika. I found her eyes were a bit far apart when looking around, so I just pulled them in a bit.. ahah

Not sure how noticeable it will be... but it's something lol.

Now onto the Brothel stuff. As a whole, Aether is given a "Stamina" system. Aether has 100 stamina, and depleting stamina will deplete it in all instances of brothel scenes. Aether's stamina is replenished after completing any mission (replenished upon seeing the Scorescreen).

While Aether has stamina, they are able to gain credits in their brothel scenes.

 Once you run out of Stamina, you may resume the scene, and increase the "Used" stat, but you will no longer get credits or receive Reputation. Under "Rate" it will be changed to "Free Use"

I believe these are things I teased before, but now let's get the function of it.

You can choose between 3 positions for Aether. The positions themselves hold no bearing on the mechanic, however, and is purely preference (but do know that Aether will only get spunk on her head if in the BJ pose.)

Your stamina will drain while clients are in-progress. Upon finishing with a client you will be rewarded depending on how you "pleased" him.

Good Job: +2 Reputation, 120% credit rate.

Okay Job: +1 Reputation, 100% credit rate.

Bad Job: +0 Reputation, 80% credit rate.

Other variables come via Pigman, and Coyote.

>Pigman will pay you 150% of your rate (This stacks with good jobs)

>Coyote will always pay you 0 credits, and will always get +1 reputation regardless of how you do.

You do a good job by adhering to the client's requests.

There is one more aspect, which is not essential for getting a good scoring, but helps. Half way through they will make a demand to call them something depending on their demeanour.

You have a rather brief time to get this, but picking the right answer will raise their completion bar by quite a bit, helping you get a strong score.

(Oh ya, we added an animated X-ray to this scene)

This is where the system I did was a little bit... extra ahaha. It wasn't really necessary looking at it now, but each client rolls a different "demeanour". Some are masochistic, some are more dominant.

More dominant will ask you to call them something like "master" or "daddy", and they will also be more frequent to request fast speeds.

the timid/masochistic ones will generally ask you to stop more, and call them "pathetic, loser, or yawn"

Coyote always rolls the highest dominance, and Pigman will always roll 1 under the highest.

Fishmen are typically more timid, and Lizardmen are typically more dominant.

Humans can roll anything.

As you level up your reputation and client count, Aether's profile will slowly start to change.

And if your numbers start to get really high, the stats start to get a little wild.

Different things reflect various stats like: Client #s, Reputation, Aether's Resolve Stat.

All of these are tied with the 2nd scene, and reflect as such. Let's show what that one's all about. While similar, there are some immediate differences.

(There are still some visuals that need to be adjusted, like the colors, and such.

Basically it's the same as the first scene except x2. Because there are multiple instances, there is no "word" or "demeanour" system in this scene.

If you come into this scene with enough Reputation, a new option will be unlocked, and make it basically x3

With 3 prompts going, it can be a bit tricky to keep them all at the right pace, but if done well, this will likely reap the best rewards on the 2 scenes.

That pretty much sums up the brothel mechanics. Next week will be my last week for build wrap-up, and there is quite a bit to cover, so I hope it's a good week ahaha.

Next week I need to actually finish quite a bit with these scenes. Polishing up some control parameters, and finishing up a few animations. (With these 2, and the NovaxAether scene)

I also need to finish up a few of the sequences with Nova's boss fight, like her intro, and outro.

Hopefully this takes less time than I am thinking so I can squeeze in a couple other things, but only time will tell!

Thank you all for the amazing support! I'll catch you all next week with the breakdown on the build wrap-up!

-Regulus

Level dialogue, and Nova conversation art.

Heyo everyone! Little bit of a late update here, but this week was centred around dialogue. Because this is the first build with Nova's conversation portrait, I had to commit a decent amount of time towards breaking up, meshing and rigging her art.

I added a dialogue sequence with Nova. This will play after her intro Hscene (After beating Catiya1 for the first time.) This short sequence should give a little bit more context on the start of your journey.

The short of it is Nova implies she needs Catiyans so she can breed. She chooses to take royalty as a priority. After her encounter with you, Nova has already chosen her prime picks, and is at max capacity on her ship. Aether commits to going after her to free his people.

The dialogue exchange is relatively short, but has some fun animation.

Some of Nova's animation involves going from front to back, and vice versa.

Nova's conversation art will likely appear again in the future as well.

On top of this, I have added the transmission dialogue involved in Catiya2. This means Nova's Transmission art will be making an appearance. Overall there actually isn't too much native dialogue in this level, but allies often have a little more interaction this time around.

As for nova's portrait, I may do some resizing, as compared to the others, her size is quite small.

Something else I needed to go back to was actually Pearlus2. I realized I had no character specific dialogue in there, so I went back and added some.

Finally another small thing I did up was adding proper looping to the Nova Boss fight.

The buildings should loop for as long as the boss fight exists.

That should pretty much sum up the week! Thanks again everyone! Next week is going to be focused on "New Features". This will likely include mechanics involving the brothel scenes. I may add a few other QoL changes as well. There is a small list I may go down of things I would like to get to, but I won't really know how much I can knock off. I'll be sure to report it all in the next report!

Catch you all next week everyone!

-Regulus

Nova's Boss Fight, Nova conversation art sneak peek, and some optimization..

Heyo everyone! As you know, this week was focusing on the Catiya2's boss fight with Nova. This fight had me in for some animation, and we can consider it an introduction to how Nova will fight you. I find her to be quite a bit more challenging than previous bosses, but she is always subject to some balancing. I want to also give a big thanks to a member from the discord, Lunatic Overlord for helping me narrow down the cause of Titas' performance issues on some systems. Due to this I also got around to greatly optimizing Titas this week.

Well! Let's get into the progress report!

Nova will fight you as herself... no tricks, no machines... just her and her power. Nova will have 2 phases on Catiya. Her first phase will have 4 different attacks.

1. Beam

This is an attack most of you are familiar with from Zol'gan. The main difference here is that it is much faster to shoot.

2. Missile Barrage

This barrage will fire 10 missiles that will hone in on the red indicators shown. You will need to position yourself accordingly to avoid these.

3. Flurry

Ora Ora!. Nova will unleash a flurry of energy balls in your direction. This attack starts off fairly slow, but ramps up as it goes on. Do note that these balls can be barrel-rolled.

4. a)Vortex:

Nova will slowly pull you to the center. Being in the core of the vortex will hurt you, so pull away as much as possible.

4.b)Blast

At the end of the vortex, Nova will let out a signalled blast. You will need to ensure you position yourself in between these despite being sucked in.

Once Nova's barrier is destroyed, she gets rather annoyed.

Uh Oh....

Phase 2 is fought in the same way as 1, but all of her attacks will be significantly enhanced.

1. Beam

The ring that Nova has created will mimic a couple of Nova's moves.

2. Missile Barrage

Missile Barrage will now shoot twice as many missiles. (I actually really like how this move looks hehe.)

3. Flurry

This one becomes quite troublesome, as like with the Beam, Nova's rings will duplicate this.

4.b) Vortex Explosion.

Vortex will now blast during, and throughout the Vortex. (The angle will be randomized between the 3.)

Nova may have access to 1 other attack in this fight, but I will need to set some other things up. This may come at a later week though. For now, the fundamentals of the fight are here.

That pretty much sums up the boss fight for Catiya, though I'm sure she will have much more to offer next time we meet her ;).

Other than that:

As mentioned before, there was also some experimentation, and an effective solution to performance issues on Titas. This is definitely nice to get out of the way.

Previously I had mentioned a Russian translation was in the works for SpunkStock. It has just finished up, and with some reworking of files it is now implemented. The release for that should be soon.

Oh! Also.... the craziest coincidence happened. Last week I showed off Aether's 2nd Hscene, and talking about the IK. I ended the post off with saying the IK breaks in the actual game, and I would need to find a solution to what is going wrong....well... literally like.. 2 days after this, AnyPortrait(The animation software) released an update making big improvements to IK... I installed it an... boom... it all works.... what timing... saved me a lot of time of troubleshooting. Thanks a ton to the AnyPortrait team for the good timing >.<. Actual anime timing.

That should pretty much sum up this week! Thanks again everyone for your support! Next week is going to be focusing on aspects of dialogue. I'm going to be writing the transmission dialogue in the level, along with doing a couple sequences with Nova. This means doing up a new conversation rig for Nova.

Alright! Catch you all next week!

-Regulus

Aether's 2nd Hscene. New SFX.

Heyo everyone! It was a bit of a busy week. This Hscene is a bit unique again. I decided not to run things off static animation loops. I'll get into it a bit more once we dive in.

To start I'll just mention alongside this there will be the Hi-Res art for applicable tiers (Groupie, $20+), and as a quick reminder, the current poll(For which character/level to do after this build) only has 7 days left to it. Currently Lana is in the lead.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/v0-11-level-poll-109362134 (For VIP, $10+)

With that all cleared up, let's get into this progress report!

To start off, there has been some working going on behind the scenes. First is a new batch of SFX. I would LOVE to post these SFX, but still... Patreon does not support video yet (at least not for NSFW creators), so there isn't a convenient way for me to post these in action. I will summarize it instead though:

Zol'gan SFX: 
-Red Lasers (Charge+Shooting).
-Boss Fight "Lunge" Attack.
-Spiders shooting purple goo.

Molbon2 SFX:
-Golem Throwing
-Golem's Splash
-Flying object sound
-Golem's Jumping
-Boss' "Rock crumbling"

Pearlus2 SFX:
-Tiderunners swimming
-"Caught in the current" segment
-Giant clam rattling + closing
-Boss Scuttle/shuffle SFX.
-Ships divebombing near the start.

General:
-New Enemy death
-Alert sound, and loop when at critical HP
-New alert for if you are losing life via purple claw or goo.

I might be missing a couple things, but these are in the pipeline, and being implemented. They should all be live when this build releases.

There's also work being done on an RU translation for SpunkStock. It may take time to get this all in, but to avoid it from cutting into Starbreed time, I will likely be dealing with this on time off. I will likely take this time to fix up some known bugs, and UI errors.

Finally... let's get into the animation this week. As mentioned this one is a bit unique. I wanted to design this in a way that the animation will compensate for different sizes, and variations of males. I decided to tackle this by using a few instances of IK.

Basically I would need to be able to scale them up and down, without changing the size of the hand.

I would need to make the top fingers track on their own, and the thumb as well. When scaled down, their target would follow their desired location without following the scaling.

Upon setting this, I can freely change the size, and the hands will adjust accordingly.

That on it's own would be too tough, but the hand also needs to move back and forth at a scaled distance. (if it's smaller, it needs to move less, bigger means move more.

The slider adjusts to the scale of the size, but without actively changing the size of the hands.

The effect turned out quite well, actually.

The effect had to be done on both sides, obviously.

Though the dick would never actually change on the fly like this, this next gif is just to display it all does work quite well together, and leaves for a great variation.

It took some some thinking to really get it all to work out, but I was quite happy with the result. This way I can really make things customizable by the player. Varying speed, varying size, etc.

So the last thing to do was put it all to the test in-game.

aaaaaannnnnnndddddd...

It fucking breaks... sick... it's completely busted in-game. Love to see it.....

After brainstorming a lot of potential fixes, I came up... fairly empty-handed. After spending considerable time trying to solve the issue, I decided it was best to let this rest, and move forward. I will return to this at a later day, but I wasn't going to let it actively set me behind. It's a bit unfortunate, but I'll find a solution before the build is done... unfortunately it just means I can't really showcase the animations properly until then.

From there, I moved onto adding the climax states.

there are about... 22 levels to it, so it took a bit to mesh all these, and put them into the rig lol.

With that, this week is pretty much summed up. The next week is going to be focusing on Nova, the boss of Catiya2. I will need to rig her up, and put together her fight.

Thank you all for the support! I'll catch you all next week with some previews of the boss fight!

-Regulus

Catiya2 Breakdown, and some new fixes/changes. A bit of a tech talk too.

Heyo everyone! This week we got Catiya2 sorted out. There are still going to be some more events going on once it is complete, but for now we are just focusing on the enemies. After going into Catiya2 I will cover some of the fixes and changes I made this week to MITE Drones, Charge shot, and Nika.

Alright! Right out the gate we are introduced to a new object. These sand geysers will spew water up at you as obstacles.

Considering Catiya2 is played after Nova has some of her conquest under her belt, she brings some of her forces from other areas.

Her naval forces seen on Pearlus make an appearance here.

And as you see, she has recruited some of Raptura's technology.

She has also made some upgrade to their walkers. They now drop in. You will notice their missiles are especially vicious in this level. (The will likely move much faster, and track better)

A tango with familiar faces. It's almost like Nova is taking you a bit more seriously this time...

After the tango you are going to be in the alley waterways. These areas have been rigged with turrets, and even the pipe systems aren't safe.

Coming out of the alleys, you will come into a rather open area.

Passing through the waterfall will put you into the final segment of the level.

This place will likely be a bit more chaotic in the finished product. (I would like to add some events of Nova causing damage in the background).

The speeders in this level are generally more dangerous than before. Coming in groups, and shooting with more precision.

That should sum up the gist of the level. Now lets check in on some of the changes:

I have given MITE Drones a buff. They are as follows:

-MITE capacity increased from 20 to 30
-Firing MITEs now fires 3 at a time instead of 2.
-Damage lowered from 15 to 12
-Movement Speed increased from 50 to 200 (they now move 4 times as fast)

The movement speed was to make up for it's dead-time while chasing fast enemies, and for very distant enemies (like Molbon2 Golem)

Overall the consistent "damage" of MITEs per shot has increased from 30(15x2) to 36(12x3).

I still want it to be a management tool with "burst" damage, but previously the consistent damage, and speed made it almost unusable in certain circumstances. I'll continue to test with MITEs and balance things accordingly, but as it stands, MITEs still have a pretty fatal flaw that I hope to address before this build launches. The big flaw is that if an enemy, or it's collider spawns within the confines of our enemy scanner, it never properly registers, and will not be a target for the MITES. I already have some ideas on a fix, it will just be a matter of getting around to it.

Next, I made a similar change to the Charge Shot. For similar reasons as the MITEs, the charge shot's movement speed is increased from 50 to 150 (3 times as fast)

No further changes have been made to it, though, as I believe it is quite strong in terms of damage.

Upon testing the charge shot within Zol'gan, I found there was a bug involving the boss. The way Charge shot did damage was not the same as most other weapon types, and caused issues with some scripts. (This has been fixed)

Finally in the fixes, I fixed something that bothered me big time... Nika's Yarn is now retrievable in stationary, and side-rail boss fights(like Pom)

----------TECH TALK!-------------

If you are interested in some of the process for making yarn work well in Pom's fight continue on, but if it's a lot just know that the Yarn works on Pom now... haha.

The main reason I want to dive into this, is that it's a great example of how something seeming so small (and often not even thought about when playing), can sometimes be the more complicated things in game development.

Making this work on Pom was actually a bit more of an undertaking than I would have thought. The issue was that in the Pom fight, you actually move insanely fast right and left. So fast, in fact, that it was extremely difficult to position yourself to grab the yarn as you slipped all over the place like a wacky inflatable tube man.

I made some adjustment to some scripts to make Nika's Yarn act differently when on siderails.

Nika's Yarn will stay parented with the player's rail/play-space (meaning it always moves "with" your rail position. This seemed like a simple fix at first, but what would often happen is: because the player is constantly moving on the X axis, the yarn would fly at hard right and left angles (meaning it would always fall outside your "play-space".

Basically in Pom's fight, because the yarn was directly attached to the player-space, it would always stay out of reach if shot out of the play area like this, and with the player always moving towards the edge of the screen, this would naturally happen a lot.

I had to make some changes to Nika's core scripts to account for this. These changes simply will only apply when on side-rails. Instead of shooting where you are aiming, it will shoot straight forward.. this guarantees it will be within play-space. From there, instead of moving backwards, it will instead move Directly towards the camera's position. This should ensure it does not move from the player's perspective, making it visually more readable of it's location.

Surprisingly coming up with these solutions took a decent amount of trial and error with how Nika's Yarn currently exists as an object.

---------End of Tech Talk!--------'

Alright! That was a bit wordy, but that should do it for this week! Next week is going to be based around the Hscene I showed previously.

 I am going to be breaking it up, rigging/animating it, so stay tuned for that!

I'll catch you all next week! Thanks a ton for the support everyone!

-Regulus.

Small change in plans! Molbon2 Theme, Aether's brothel scene, mini-game concept, and sneak peeks!

Hey everyone! I believe in the last post I said I would be working on the enemy placement for the new level, but due to some last minute things, we decided to sidestep, and tackle Aether's 1st Hscene this week. Sorry if you were looking forward to the level, but I will showcase some of it here either way!

To start off I have made the decision to bring Wishful Simping on for alternate tracks. He will be doing alternate tracks for the 2nd level of each planet. Shown above is a first look at Molbon2's theme. Pearlus2 is on deck as well.

Next I am going to dive into some of the specifics of this week: Aether's Brothel scene. We decided to do something a little different for this one.

Aether will lie in wait. A randomly generated male character will come along when you engage the next customer.

This customer can be one of several races.

They mostly use the same body type except for a surprise guest. The skin, and hair color will be randomly generated as well. The size of the male can change as well.

In general the rolled colors depend on the race rolled.

On top of a randomized male, Aether has 3 different positions.

 (This was actually a bit of a nightmare... because well... look at the bones I was working with.)

What does all this mean?... I couldn't tell you even if I tried... anyways!

Depending on where the customer climaxes, it will increase your messy level in that area.

 Each position has it's own state to reflect that.

Every position has 3 settings. Stopped, Slow, and Fast.

Something that will make this scene especially unique is that I am thinking about incorporating into a bit of a mini-game, and a potential way to make bonus credits. At the moment, this is merely a plan, and is subject to change, and may even be scrapped depending on how things go.

Upon starting this scene, your brothel profile will be shown.

As your experience in the brothel progresses, your name will be revealed, job (potentially changing as the game progresses). You will gain more credits per customer. The stamina will mostly just be how many times you can make money. I'm thinking stamina will reset after completing a level. You can still watch the Hscene after Aether's stamina is depleted, you will simply be labeled as "free use" until your stamina is replenished. (There may be some variables in play, like Pigman paying double, but Coyote paying you nothing.)

There may be a mini-game involved for "satisfaction" like doing the position, and speed they want, maybe even saying the things they want. These will likely be approached in a later week, however.

Aether's 2nd Hscene may or may not play on these values as well.

With the Hscene out of the way, there's another pin up coming along showing Aether's nice beach getaway in the Catiya2 area.

 maybe not-so-nice....

So what does Catiya2 look like? Here are some more screen shots!

    There are still some missing assets, like waterfalls that will be put in, but those will come later.

With some of the level showcased, let's move on to the next thing.

This is a bit pre-emptive, but I will also tease Aether's 2nd Hscene as well.

That should pretty much sum up what we have on the table at the moment.

Next week we will be getting onto Catiya2's level... for real this time ahhaa. I'll catch you all next week with the enemy placement, and a proper break down of how Catiya2 will play!

Thank you all so much for the support, and I hope you are all looking forward to Catiya2, and Aether's scenes!

-Regulus

NovaXAether. v0.10's Extra Hscene Sneak Peeks.

Heyo everyone! As mentioned, this post is a little early, and as a result the progress will be a little less than normal, but most of the work on this Hscene is done up.

For anyone who missed it, I also did a quick hotfix, v0.9.2, and updated the pinned post's links accordingly. This hotfix simply deals some a couple missed things and bug fixes.

I'll generally keep this brief, so let's just showcase the animation! There are no animation in the faces yet, but they will come later.

Idle:

Rub:

Main Loop:

Just the 3 for now. They still need a bit of work, but this will be the idea. I will be finishing this up on a later week, as the next week is going to be focused on enemy placement for the new level. Unfortunately previews for the level itself will need to wait for next week, but that just means there will be more to show off then! ^^.

Here is a very early look at some of the base objects/placements, though. There will likely be a bit more flare and livelihood added in the coming week.

Alright everyone! Thanks a ton for the support, I'll catch you next week!

-Regulus

v0.11 Level Poll.

Heyo everyone here's this cycle's poll. For any newcomers: The winner of this poll will be the level to follow v0.10 (Catiya2). The Hscenes in the build will be focused on their corresponding character. (The character following the planet name)

Thank you all for your support!

Brief Overview of Catiya2.

Hey everyone! I know I said I probably wouldn't do a post today, but I'll at least give a little rundown on what to expect for this build, and post the poll for the next level.

There won't be much to post here, as the work for it is just starting.

I'll quickly start off by saying I will be doing a hotfix for v0.9 in a couple days here. I have a couple things reported, and I'll be patching them up. If you have come across anything let me know ^^.

Anyways!

Catiya2 will take place in a port city of sorts. You will be flying through water channels, and be facing off against Nova's forces again. The image above is our base concept art for it.

The boss to be featured here is planned to be Nova, herself. You will have your first face off with Nova. This means for the first time since v0.1, you will come in to contact with her.

The planned Hscenes for v0.10 is going to be 3 Hscenes involving Female Aether. One of which includes Nova. This Hscene was teased in the last post. For those who may have missed it, here is another look

With that, I will be posting this cycle's poll. There will be another option this time to shake things up a bit. The options will be:

-Raptura2 (Lana)
-Titas2 (Tanya)
-Neos2 (Nika)
-Zol'gan2 (Rooster)
-Finale1 (Nova)

This upcoming week I am likely going to be focusing on breaking up and animating the above Hscene.

Overall, this week is going to be a bit slighted as well. I will likely be looking to do next week's post late on Wednesday or earlier on Thursday. As a result the Hscene might no be in a completed state, but if it is not by the time of the post, I will be sure to finish the coverage on the following progress report.

I'll catch you all then! I hope you all enjoyed v0.9, and Siren's new content!

-Regulus

Siren's Diving In! Starbreed v0.9 Out Now!

Here we go! The initial release of v0.9 is raring to go! If there are issues, please check back to see if there are hotfixes, if not be sure to let me know ^^! Let's check out the changelog!

v0.9 Changelog:

MAJOR: 

-New level: Pearlus2
-2 new Hscenes for Siren
-New Hscene with Pom
-Upgraded Siren Ability
-Added Hscene Gallery in Hscene Room
-Added Character bios in Hscene Room
-Added ability to change music in the hub via Hscene Room
-Overhauled female Aether in Hscene room
-Due to a bug Female Aether's in-game transmissions were never in v0.8.. but she should be now.
-New pinups in the shop.

Minor: 

-Gave Siren an alternate hairstyle
-Added alternate outfit for Rooster
-Made it so Rooster's passive can no longer kill the player
-Pix's satchel no longer detonates from shooting it. It now will detonate when you press the satchel button again.
-Increased MITE and Lana attack range
-Made it so in some boss fights, Lana, MITE, and flame wave attack range are massively increased (So you can use them effectively against the Golem, and Pom.)
-Pix's EX satchels will no longer explodes from the other satchel's explosions.
-Added new facial variations to Pix's 3rd and 4th Hscene.
-All controls now use the new input system
-When using a gamepad, if no UI is selected, it will now search for a button to select (previously UI being unselected would render UI navigation impossible with gamepad)
-Made it so purple attacks (purple claws, and spider attacks) now do initial damage on impact as well as their drain.
-Pausing in game now displays your ally's abilities.
-Pom has new transmission art when she is friendly.
-Made is so in Hscenes with Female Aether toggle, the initial state will depend on whether you chose female or male aether in the hub.
-Removed "Delete Data" button on the menu screen.

Bug Fixes: 

-Added affinity to Nika's card in party select
-Fixed a bug where the "Highscore" just showed the score from the previous play of that level.
-fixed a bug where Affinity would overlap in event conversations
-fixed a bug where a part member's name would disappear during a dialogue choice.
-Fixed a bug where Aether's glove and jacket options didn't work
-Fixed a bug where some ally abilities would persist during exiting camera pan.
-Fixed a bug where auto-targeting abilities would shoot at targets long passed
-Fixed a bug where you could not select no party members after you had selected some.
-Fixed a visual "flicker" when selecting party members.
-Fixed a bug where Rooster would sometimes not show their "Help" portrait properly.

Initial Release:

v0.9.1 - August 1st.

Hotfix:

v0.9.2 - August 7th

-Siren's EX ability will now have a description.
-Party abilities will no longer show from the "Setiings" Menu in the Hub
-Female Aether should now show in Pearlus2
-Fixed a bug where a couple transmission lines would not show in Pearlus2
-Fixed a bug where Siren's alternate hair would reset upon leaving the scene.

Download Links:

PC: https://mega.nz/file/JX8wgRjJ#H0K9roGz5zWuAkW-F29mpEN0KyiQmm861dPgOb5cnpI

Linux: https://mega.nz/file/Me1lyDoQ#8oZ8cV0P7ITe8sT7pelcAADjhe8xMznkc4sFklivyNY

v0.9 Build Wrap Up! Small v0.10 sneak peek.

Heyo everyone! This one will be quite long, as there was quite a bit of last minute stuff, and bug fixes this week! Let's get into it!

--------

DAY 1

First thing that was done was a new transmission portrait for Pom. (As she is on your team now, we will have a more friendly face)

You may have noticed I also moved this into the "Hscene Room". This just made more sense to me, as Pom is a source of information, and a way to get to Hscenes you want. I felt it only made sense to combine all of that into one place.

Note that this menu IS accessible before you get Pom. The only difference will be that the transmission portrait will not be there and the "Sex" option will be gone.

In relation to the Hscene Room. Aether has received a bit of a glow-up, and Female options are now accessible again

Unfortunately there are still no new actual animations.

Something else that needed to be addressed was Rooster's new outfit. I forgot about one of the cardinal rules of 2D sprites... involving writing... oops.

The issue is that Rooster's conversation art will switch sides in event conversations, like with Tanya. This means the text is mirrored too... making it backwards.

Because of this AmHidden drew a separate texture. A script detects whether her sprite is swapped or not, and will automatically replace the sprite with the newly drawn one.

A bit of a silly thing, but I thought it would be cool to talk about a bit.

---------------

DAY 2

The next thing I did was address some remaining Input System issues. (Things that I forgot, or hadn't switched to the new input system).

After that, I fixed up, and finished the remaining parts of the Pearlus2 Boss. Resizing things, reworking timings, etc.

And of course the ending transmissions

A QoL issue that was around, and made gamepad almost unusable was the way Unity handles "Selecting" buttons. I created a script to search, and select any button if there is none currently selected. (Previously if a menu, or button became unselected via mouse click, the gamepad navigation would essentially lose all function.) This should no longer happen. This was actually more annoying to implement than it seems ahah.

After that I made some fixes, and changes to previous Hscenes.

 Now Male Aether will be Idle by default (Instead of female). I may actually set the default state depending on whether you are Male/Female Aether outside of the Hscene.

------------

DAY 3

Next was fixing up some final things in Pearlus2. (Slightly mistimed things, adding Pom's power cell, etc.)

I had to make some changes to the giant clam, as the scaling was breaking the colliders on it. Some re-parenting fixed it up though.

After that I created a "perimeter" of visible objects around the player to make the underwater segment see more isolated.

This essentially creates a rendered face for the fog to apply to.

Don't mind Siren's squished face. In previous previews, you could see the surface, and open areas in the skybox. Now you will see the red haze in all directions properly.

After that I went back to the hub, I rigged up, and implemented Siren's alternate hairstyle.

While working in the hub, I added the new Pin Ups to the shop.

For the final part of this day, I had to do a bit of fixing on Pom's Hscene. At certain angles her breasts would clip with her face. Actually, even after the fix, they still kind of do, but it is much better than it was before.

----------------------------

DAY 4

This was where I dove into the meat of some fixes and changes posted in the Discord. First I fixed some UI issues in the hub (Like affinity layering over itself, and names not appearing during dialogue options.)

I fixed an issue where Aether's gloves and jacket options wouldn't work.

I made it so Rooster's active ability can no longer kill the player. Instead it just does not let you use the ability.

Also, some abilities would persist during the outro cutscene. This "Could" kill you in rare cases. Upon finishing a level, all abilities cancels upon transition.

Next was something I really wanted to address since v0.8.

There is a fairly important change to Pix's Satchels.

Pix's satchels can no longer be detonated via shooting them. They will instead be detonated via remote detonation. (Pressing Pix's ability again). This allows the player to more accurately explode the satchel where they want.

This was changed mostly because you would essentially be unable to throw the satchels while shooting, as they would just blow up in your face.

One other change is that the satchels will not blow eachother up from their own explosions.

In the case above, previously ALL satchels would have exploded upon the bottom one's impact.

The final thing I did this day was fix a bug with "Enemy Scanners". Sometimes things like Siren's passive, or Lana would continue to shoot something even though it has long since passed. These targets should properly clear now. Do note that this does technically mean the auto target abilities have been slightly nerfed because of this, as it actually worked in the players favor in many cases. (Just in rare cases it would completely break) Fret not though, as they have been buffed in other ways which I will cover later in the post.

-------------

DAY 5

I decided to remove the "Delete Data" button from the main menu. Considering there is only 1 file, starting a New Game essentially resets the data anyways. The Delete Data button was basically just a pointless landmine that you could press to kill all your data...

Next was fixing a bug with Highscores. Previously, it actually didn't save your Highscore... it just saved whatever your previous play-through score was... oopsies. It should now actually only show high score.

There was a bug where you could not choose 2 "Empty" slots for party members, and it would lock you with 1 party member.

Another nice thing, is I got rid of that annoying "flicker" when choosing an ally, and with switching back to overview.

I fixed a bug where Rooster's "Help" segment in Zol'gan wasn't showing their actual H-portrait.

I set up Pearlus 2's medal thresholds, and fixed some still persisting bugs in the hub (Mostly stuff involving the new Pom window).

I added "cm" variants to the character heights in the bios.

Finally, I went back to some Hscenes, and added mouth variations. (I also added these variations to the new Siren scenes)

Expressions on these Hscenes should be less static now.

----------

DAY 6 (Today)

I actually made some last minute changes today.

Proximity weapons are a bit weird because they really depend on the scale of the level. If the enemy needs to be close, it's really great for close up levels, like Catiya and Raptura, but stuff like Zol'gan, they would rarely actually come into range. This is a bit of a level design issue more than anything, but for now I felt the easiest remedy would be to extend some of the ranges. MITES range has been greatly increase, along with Lana's range (from 40 to 100).

Something that really annoyed me was how some abilities/weapons would be rendered completely useless in some boss fights. Like the aforementioned proximity abilities. This is fine for stuff like Siren's passive which is realllly just supposed to be a defensive/proximity guard. I found it bad in the case of MITES and Lana though.

I have created a function within some weapons to register when a boss fight has started. (Sort of like how Flame shot worked with Pom previously). When certain boss fights start, Lana's range, MITE range, and Flameshot's range will be increased by a massive amount, essentially making it so almost nothing can fall out of their range.

This means Lana, and MITES should now work against Pom as well.

Something that I didn't address that I still want to is Nika's active. In any stationary boss fight (and Pom), it is completely unusable. Not only that, but it just sits there in your face. I may not have gotten around to it this build, but it is something I want to address in the future as well.

Alright everyone! That should sum up this final week of development! I'll catch you all on the 1st for the launch of v0.9. There may not be a progress report on the Friday, as I'm going to be away most of this week, but I will if I feel there is enough to report about (in the few days I will be working).

Something else I want to mention ahead of time is that in next week's Poll, as usual, we will be determining the next level. (for v0.11) This time another option will likely be available, however, as I may be adding Nova's first level to the poll.

With that I will leave you all with a the first sneak peek of v0.10. The base art for v0.10's "extra" Hscene.

Alright everyone! Catch you all on the 1st!

-Regulus