Finally, a new update for the public!

Due to the long time it's going to take to do Phase 2, I decided to do a minor public update now instead of waiting for all 3 subphases to be done. Even though this isn't even Phase 2a yet, this has a hefty amount of updates.

So, what is in this update?

The Boring Shit

• Asynchronous Loading
• Minimap switching

The big one here is async loading. When you switch levels, it fires up a loading screen with a spinner which stops spinning. This is because the loading screen is split between the levels. When the game triggers a level change, it shows the loading screen, and when the level starts is shows the same screen to make it seamless. The problem is in-between when the actual loading happens and you get a screen that looks like the game froze.

Async loading basically happens outside that flow, so it continues without needing to worry about the loading behind it. It does have limitations, mostly with generated levels, where it stop the loading screen before generation. This was resolved by adding a secondary generating screen to hide the generation stage.

Second, Minimap switching. There's some situations where you don't need to see the map. So it toggles itself on and off, mostly for the inventory screen.

Interesting but a bit dull Stuff

• Visibility updates
• Swimming
• OpenForest Entrance
• Levelgen improvements
• Enemy movement upgrades

So, first up we have visibility. If you go into a bush, you're In Cover. If you then crouch, you're Hidden and enemies have to walk into you to find you. But there was no way of knowing this and the screen was full of bush so you couldn't see anything. The new version has a tag in the UI to show In Cover or Hidden. If you are hidden, the camera zooms out to give a better view of the area, and both yourself and all visible enemies get red outlines.

Swimming sort of works. It's an early version. The enemies will just run across the bottom, and it only works if you walk into the water. If you jump in you glide across the bottom and have to glide to a bank. This needs work.

The biggest issue with Open levels was the player starting in a falling pose. This *should*  now be fixed. The cause was spawning on terrain that triggered falling, then being moved to the actual start point without updating. The solution is to spawn the player on a flat structure. So there's now an entrance.

Levelgen had some issues. Mostly things spawning inside each other, enemies spawning next to the player and so on. These are now resolved.

Enemy movement was literally random while wandering. This meant there was a good chance you'd try to sneak past someone and they'd just rotate and see you. They now choose their destination, but will turn to face that direction before moving over several seconds. This should give some predictability to their movements and a chance to hide if they start to turn.

The best bits

• New Artstyle
• Combat added
• Struggle Update
• The Hornlizard

The most obvious change is the outdoors environments. We now have better grass and foliage, and a cohesive artstyle which should be less taxing on GPUs. Buildings, dungeons and characters have not been update yet, they're coming.

Basic combat is now in the game. Left Mouse attacks, Right blocks. If you block an incoming attack, it does no damage. Any damage taken damages your upper clothing before dealing HP damage, similar to the lower clothes and struggles. Enemies can attack you as well. All enemies have a generated Aggression value. Some species are more aggressive than others and this modifies the chance they will go for violence over sex. However if you attack someone, it increases their aggression. The more you hit them, the more likely they will be to fight back.

Struggle has had the "Hit E to escape" thing removed and replaced with a mouse-wiggle. Shake the cursor to increase your escape meter. Eventually I'll add back in the E key version as an option in the game settings for people who prefer it.  The longer you struggle, the faster the meter decreases, so you have to go fast. The exception to this is if you have clothing on, where it remains at a fixed difficulty until the clothes go. There's also now a Surrender option which automatically removes the relevant clothing to prevent it getting more damaged.

Hornlizard. It's a new Work In Progress enemy type. Sometimes you'll see a broken arch in the open levels. This is the roost of the Hornlizard. It's a small psychovore reptile, meaning it feeds on emotions and feelings. It only triggers if you get too close to its perch, but it will then chase you until it catches you, you exit the level or you get far enough away from it. Once it attaches to you, it feeds on Lust, Pain or Boredom, so anything that fits those criteria done by or to the player will increase the relevant meter.

Currently that's all that it does. The next phase for it will be to set up a buff/debuff system. The plan is for the lizard to be a nuisance to start with. For example, if the Lust meter is 0-100, while it's below 50, it's givving you a debuff on sex related stuff, so things like making it harder to escape a struggle, more stamina damage, etc. Once it gets above 50%, it becomes neutral, meaning it's partially attuned to you for that stat and it's no longer a debuff. Hit 100% and fully attune with it and you get a proper buff. Hopefully this should then let you interact with your lizard, as well as have it participate in stuff.

The idea is that it's a nuisance to start with, but by training it you get a good reward that makes the effort worthwhile.

The bugs

• Enemies were not dying at 0 HP
• Some enemies had no death animations
• Male enemies would die then get back up and die again in a loop
• Savegame was overwriting the players name with the levelname on one unskippable map
• Dead enemies would still sense players
• Dead enemies still had their map markers visible
• Surrender functionality stopped working
• Panties and bras were invincible
• Rocks stopped hurting enemies
• Player got trapped with no control after sex
• Health and stamina stalls in Pineridge did nothing
• Enemy ai stopped working after masturbation
• Player could masturbate while captured, breaking capture and the game
• Innkeeper had incorrect dialog option results
• Sometimes inventory slots would vanish
• Randomised enemy spawning would crash Forest_C. Just that level, no other one.
• Enemies got stuck in hunt mode and never went back to Investigate Mode
• Fixed enemy movement speeds, so they only run when in Hunt Mode
• Enemies would hear a rock distraction and head straight for the player
• Masturbating enemies still had collision, so blocked corridors

Finally

There's a few big changes needing to happen, and if you fancy helping out with this game and potentially future games, and have skills in any of the following, I'd love to chat to you:

• Music (all music in the game is licenced and has gone up by 150% in cost per month, so I really need to get rid of it)
• 3d modelling & rigging - terrain, buildings, props or characters
• Social Media/project manager/etc

That's it, there will be bugs, so please report them if you find them.  We have a Discord and if you want to support this project, please check out Patreon so you can get your name in the credits.