General Update - 18/12/23


So, it's been a fortnight since the bugfix version went out, and apart from a couple of reported mysterious crashes, things seem stable.

What's next?

Now I'm actually moving into phase 2a properly, and some stuff has already been done which wasn't even on the list. I saw the number of downloads the game was getting over the last few weeks, and I realised it needs a good look, otherwise things look a bit lazy. It's been so long since Pineridge got anything done to it. The plan was to just update the placeholder buildings as I got time, but time has been in short supply. I had some downtime while figuring out what to do next, so I started updating stuff.

The obvious starting point is the bridge into town.



The bridge now has more detail and proper balustrades. The shanty area underneath is currently missing, it no longer fits the new bridge and needs reworked.



The first house on the bridge that belongs to Stump now has windows and doors, and a new balcony. Stump himself now sits at the top of the stairs watching the view down the valley.

Finally, the biggest and longest to make change: 


The brand new Precipice Tavern.

It has a full interior layout, with furniture and details still to come. It contains 3 floors, with a bar on the ground floor, the first floor has 3 private rooms, a bunkroom and a bathroom, while the top floor has another 2 private rooms, Chobb's Bedroom/office and a rooftop garden.





I've also added money. 

Now, when you go and see Chobb to get a room for the night, it finally takes money from you. The room choice changes the amount. The health and stamina stalls also cost money now, with a price per unit that can vary, so you may only be able to partially heal. You start off with 350g to start the game, but there's not actually a way to earn more money yet.

Finally, I've been playing with the sky and time of day and built a way to switch time of day and fast-forward the sky from evening to morning, but still working out how to do the lighting as well. Pineridge is now set permanently to dusk until that gets completed.

Whats next?

  • Implementing difficulty modifiers (the game difficult currently doesn't do anything)
  • Stop player from falling off ledges if crouched
  • Improve the day - night switch at the end of "The Night Before" quest
  • Permanent wolves generated at character creation
  • Enemy loot drops
  • Explodeable throwables
  • orgasm darts
  • Hornlizard improvements
  • Set up PCG for forests
  • move all sex animations to a datatable (set up animation sequence in table, and auto-play instead of manual creation of each animation)
  • NPC location lists for more logical movement around town
  • Set up wandering NPCs that stop when you talk to them
  • Improve ai decision making for attack/fuck
  • procedural hands against wall to prevent walking into walls (start figuring out procedural animation with something simple)
  • intro scenes - cutscenes and playable sections

There's a few things on there I'm looking forward to. There was some animation stuff, but thats been moved to later, until new character models happen. At this point, new animations are a waste of time, even when they are really important to the game. Hopefully the easy procedural animation task will give me a good idea how to proceed with the rest of it and what the models need to be able to do.

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Comments

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gave the update a try, the intro quest is fine and all just wish there was a way to skip it after seeing it so many times... well that and the animations actually unlocking. last thing i will gripe about is the "world map" system it works but the angle the camera is locked in makes selecting a level a guess as trees get in the way of seeing things. the town was nice while exploring i found a totaly legit entrepanuer in an ally, shame he doesnt have stock yet... also found a bored ape club memeber. judging from the dialogue is he going to take all the players money? if so might want to have options to progress the story with 0 money once the systems in otherwise it might cause a softlock... also tried to get to the lower part of town but turns out its just one big kill plane bummer, on other capture states on the road map what are we talking about? hypno? net traps? one too many lizards lifting the player off to narnia? oh yeah forgot to mention i somehow managed to break the camera... is there a reset because the only way to reset it seems to be save an quit.

Gonna try and field as many of these as I can...

  • The intro quest isn't *quite* the same from this point on. For the updates going forward, there should be more quests and things to do in the town before the actual event. Pineridge has been neglected while trying to flesh out the rest of the game, but now I'm moving back into that area and there should be more to make it work better and actually be interesting.
  • Skipping animations should be less of an issue once I can get interactive sex scenes in, so every time should be as long or short as you want.
  • I agree about the worldmap. It worked until I updated the foliage system, and now it blocks it. I'm probably going to move the text and available directions the the user interface or try something a little different.
  • There is a plan that has already started to be able to earn money in Pineridge, or even to avoid paying for accommodation
  • The lower town is blocked for now. I was going to open it all up at once, but it needs a load of buildings and I didn't have time to spare on them,  so it's just concentrating on the upper town for now. I'm undecided if I'll add the lower town as explorable from the start, or set it as a barred off area until the player completes one of the worlds.
  • Capture states means ways and circumstances to be caught. So for example, at the moment there's 3 states: standing and facing away from the capturer / crouching and facing the captor / stepping on plant. So basic ones would be to add standing and facing captor, crouching while facing away, even if it just means an additional animation to turn them around to start the the other directional state. I'd like to add things like capturing from a lower level than the player, capturing while near a low wall, capture near a high wall and so on. Ways the player can be caught and adapt the animation used to how and where they are. So a capture done in a field would lead to sex on the ground, while near a wall would give something to lay on and get height. But then it would also add in specific ones for specific enemies.
  • I'd like more info on breaking the camera. This is a bug I haven't seen yet. If its the ingame camera, it suggests something tried to take control of the camera or release the camera and failed, so knowing what you were doing will help figure out what is failing. That'll be why save & quit works, it's just restarting the level. Usually it'll be around a capture and struggle, which is one of a few times camera control is disabled to let you do the mouse wiggle without flailing the camera around.

on the camrea break i noticed it happens around the flying lizards you added, primaraly when an enemy grabs you. could the event be bugged and they are trying to atach during an animation?

In theory, it shouldn't be possible for an enemy to capture while the lizard is attaching.

If the enemy approaches and the player is set "Is Busy", they can only stand and wait for you to stop being busy. You go Busy at the start of the lizard capture, then unBusy at the end. I have noticed that depending on GPU, sometimes things happen out of sequence. When the levels are generating and it says what it is doing, each message should play as that thing is done, but on faster GPUs it completes a later item in the chain before a previous one. I think this might be whats happening here, and it's going to unBusy before the camera can finish. Just in case I've also added a second delay at the end before switching off Busy.

I've moved the busy flags to the very first and very last thing in the lizard chain, so that might fix it, but I've been unable to get it to happen for me, so I can't test it.

I'll get a bugfix update out within a week. I can't do it straight away because there's some unfinished work that needs done first.

sorry for the extra work.

It's a bug, it needs fixed. If it's what I think it is, then it's something I never found in testing cos I didn't get the circumstances right.

Anyway, might as well list the other updates done today: 

  • Added check to stop crouched player walking off ledges
  • Improved currency
  • changed health/stamina stalls to cost money
  • Fix for market stalls, so you can only see their price labels when close to them, not from miles away
  • Fixed a small gap in the ground at the top of the main ramp in Pineridge
  • Added Buy and Sell functions with feedback if it is too expensive, to make shops easier
  • Added new stat to player to track where they are sleeping at night
  • Improvements to end of day into morning sequence, moving player from the bar to their purchased bed
  • Worked the purchasing stuff into the Inn, so buying rooms now has feedback if you can't afford the selected room
  • New dialog for Clive the Innkeeper for the morning, to stop player from repeatedly starting a new day
  • Secret dialog for Clive which currently cannot be accessed for if you spend the night with Clive