There's been a decent amount of progression in the last week, and some major issues which have slowed everything, just to compensate.

Where are we at now?

First off, the survey of players to get suggestions for control schemes elicited exactly no responses, so I just made shit up. Throwing rocks is now bound to Middle Mouse button, and whistling has gone to F with the intention of maybe making that a general action button to pop up a selection wheel or something to allow different options.

Next, throwing those rocks is now mostly completed. Hitting things makes noises and alerts nearby enemies. Throwing the rocks now has an animation, and the rock is flung at a decent point. Aiming can be done with the mouse, but range has now been limited, so aiming higher no longer lets you throw for miles.

Then a wolf got added. He's had the basics set up and is now hunting in the demo map. I tweaked a few things in his AI, but for the most part that's just a direct copy cos AI improvements are in Phase 2 anyway. Then the capture system got set up, optimised and updated to be a bit more sensible. We went from

to

There's still a lot in there that doesn't work, he's not yet taking or applying damage during sex or struggling, but that's in progress. It's now set up so capture can happen, struggle happens and the full animation plays through all sections to the proper end. Same goes for blowjobs.

As for the struggle mechanic, that is due for an overhaul in Phase 2a, but in an attempt to spruce things up on the way through, the ui has been given a good touching, with the "PRESS E" text getting some jiggle when you press the key, a notification when you pass or fail it and fades in and out.

With the wolf in, the second round of work on throwing rocks happened. The ability to hit the wolf was added back in using the new damage system. The rocks were then given the ability to detect what it's hit, so it can play a suitable sound effect. For now it's just the old clacking noise regardless of surface type, but crucially it doesn't play a noise when it hits a wolf.

The wolf then got some tweaks to his damage detection so a rock impact now plays the sound effect from him, with a nice meaty thud and a yelp.

Audio also got some tweaking with functionality added to allow for attenuation and pitch randomisation. Attenuation controls audio volume over distance, and when the sound plays, the volume decreases over a range, so if you're further away the noise is quieter. Pitch randomisation means every time an audio cue plays, it alters the pitch randomly within a small range of about +/- 0.2. It doesn't sound like much, but for things like footsteps it gives a huge amount of variance while still sounding like it belongs to the same character.

Finally, contextual prompts. In the current game, if you creep up behind a wolf, it'll float the takedown options in the air. If you go to talk to someone or get an item, the E to talk/use prompt just floats there. Well, now it doesn't need to. Taking a cue from the control display in photomode, these prompts are now in the top left corner and only appear when you can do that action. It helps with consistency of the ui for one thing, but for another, it lets you know some of the more obscure mechanics.

I'm reasonably confident that most people miss the recover/masturbate mechanic. I forget it when playtesting, and I built the bastard thing. For the sake of probably everyone, when your HP or Stamina dips below 50%, and you've got no clothing on your lower body, you can use Q to sit down and rub one out, recovering a decent amount of both stats. The idea is that it is good for an emergency boost, but runs the risk of getting caught by enemies while doing it. The problem is the only indication it exists is the button shown in the Controls menu, and there's no explanation of what it does, so if you try it when you don't meet the criteria, you might think it isn't working. Well, now we have prompts to let you know, and the intention is that once I add back in clothing, it will tell you that you must remove clothing to recover.

The problems

There's been two major issues.

First, I've started a fulltime job. I tried to make this game profitable enough to enable fulltime development on it, and I do have plans down the line, but my bank account has been running on empty for months now, and everyone wants money off me, so I've had to fold and go back to my old job. The game development strategy did not work this time. At points during the first phase of development, I was doing up to 18hrs a day, 7 days a week on this game. Now that's cut down to a few hours each evening and some time over weekends. It is very unlikely the timescale of 3 weeks per subphase is possible, so the whole timeframe is knocked out.

Second, I had a hard drive failure. My computer has 2 SSDs and 2 normal drives. One of the normal drives is where the new version of the game is stored, while the original game files are on the larger of the two SSDs. That SSD failed. I've managed to recover most of my data, but some files were irretrievable. The problem is I don't know which. So far I've been ok and everything I've needed has been available, but this prompted me to look at disk drive health, and annoyingly the drive I recovered to is showing signs of being on its way out too. So the race is now on to get the updated version complete so I no longer need to rely on the files on a potentially failing drive. I will replace the duff drives, but it's probably going to be a few months before finances stabilise enough to make it possible.

Finally

That's it. The joblist is probably going to be putting back in Takedowns and finishing off the wolves, adding fluids, generating wolf stats and inventory/clothing.