v0.08 Dev Blog #4 (Patreon)

^ Another image from this scene with Sydney. As I stated previously, who appears here depends on who is still alive in your play-through.

Hello everyone,

I'm terribly sorry that it's taken me this long to post another development update. As I've stated on the discord and in previous development blogs, this is not because I have not been making progress, but because I didn't really have anything non-spoilery to show. There should be a couple of surprises in v0.08 that I do want to keep hidden until you get a chance to see the scenes in game. One of those scenes should become clear in the eventual Beta release.

The Excuse/Ramble Section:

And speaking of an eventual beta release, unfortunately I have to talk about that first. If you're keeping up with the smaller updates I post to discord, then you'll already know that I won't be able to have a release put together by Christmas (Just 3 days away right now for me) as originally intended. Instead, I will continue to work through this holiday period and hopefully have some form of a release before the end of the month/year. However, at this point, I can't even say for sure what that will look like, and honestly it could end up just being a simple Alpha sandbox test.

Let me start by going over a list of what is currently fully playable so far from the new content:

• ...

Yeah, it's that bad. I couldn't release a build right now even if I wanted to since there's nothing new to play that fully works yet. Unfortunately, game development doesn't really work in chronological order. As essentially a one man team, I've been slowly working on every aspect of development by myself. This means I'm constantly switching back and forth between Renders, Editing images, Programing features/back end, Game/Level design, Writing, and Implementing story, quests and sex scenes.

This means that I've done a lot of work on everything. But nothing is 100% finished yet, not even the intro. Primarily because I have to redo my development sandbox first to account for all of the new Body Types. Now, I did anticipate this, it's just of course taken me longer than I suspected, which probably doesn't come as that much of a surprise by now since this has never not been the case with any of my work... Though I know it's not an appropriate excuse to fall back on.

I broke it down a little bit on Discord, but I'll try and explain it a little more here (Would love to record a podcast/stream to talk about what I'm working on, but I've currently got family staying in the room next to where my setup is, so I don't really have the chance. They know what kind of game I'm working on, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start recording a podcast and get into a loud ramble about the game's niche fetish content at 3:30am in the morning, lol.)

Essentially, the key challenges when it comes to v0.08, are about overhauling all of the RPGM events that I've been using for certain game features. For example, the pause menu image of Tiffany's body is tied directly to the 2D sprite/character data. So before, I basically had 4 different Tiffany characters in the game. (1 for each armor piece she had on). But now, that's been expanded 3-fold since she has 3 possible new body types. It's not as simple as simply replacing all of the existing events and character data with copies that feature the new proportions. Because I now have to perform a check at most stages of the game (whenever an image is show on screen) to see which body type she is supposed to have, so that the correct image is shown. Before this point, all I was checking was how many armor pieces she has. But now that checking work has trippled.

This wouldn't be such an issue in of itself. However, RPGM is so frustratingly basic, that it doesn't include native support for very simple programing functionality such as [If Or] / [If And] / [Elif] statements, or custom events that can have variables passed into them from the script call. This mean's every scripted conditional check is basically just a long-winded sequential series of inefficient, and cluttered nested "If" statements with a singular optional "else" checkbox in the interface. This simply makes everything very time consuming to implement. But the biggest problem is with the development interface itself. Even implementing the most basic things like dialogue scenes takes a long time basically just working in and navigating through cramped GUI windows of un-collapsable segments of code that makes it really tedious to ensure what you are actually working on in complex events. Anyone who's worked with RPGM and tried to do anything adventurous will tell you that it's clearly not designed for new ideas/features. A really dumb and messy amount of work goes into making sure that the correct sprite, armor pieces, dialogue cg, etc is displayed at the right time for your Tiffany's in-game state.

That's really the main thing here. RPGM is not designed for a protagonist who's outfit/body changes all of the time during gameplay. Every time I introduce a new level or choice/variation into the game. Things get exponentially harder to keep track of and make function correctly behind the scenes.

Now, I will admit that it is possible to make things a little easier if I use Javascript calls instead of doing everything with the native GUI based programing tools. But this too gets messy and doesn't make things that much easier. Besides, my Javascript is admittedly quite rusty as well. But again, this isn't a problem of things being too difficult to program. Everything I'm trying to do is possible and quite easy in theory. RPGM's development environment just makes writing complex events/features very time consuming.

^This is a variation with her Base Stage: 1 Pregnancy Stage: 1

But obviously it's clear why I am going to so much trouble here. It's because this is an extraordinarily crucial part of the game's core mechanics. Having Tiffany (and other girls) getting stripped of her clothing at variable instances; Having her proportions change at dynamic times throughout the game based on specific player choice; and thus making sure the in-game CGs & sprites reflect & keep track of these changes to her appearance is integral to at least half of Terminal Desire's role playing experience.

TD would be super easy to develop if Tiffany just wore her full outfit all the time, and that was it. Only being naked for sex scenes, and returning to being "fully dressed" after every fight. But that sucks. I don't want that. I made this game primarily because very few other games feature fun stripping mechanics that dynamically alter the outfit of the player like this. Very few games manage to successfully pull off multiple body types in a way that feels complete and fully supported, without restricting massive amounts of content to certain body types.

I'm happy with how Terminal Desires functions in this regard, and I fully intend on keeping things this way. Luckily, it is one of those cases where once a repeatable event is properly overhauled (and tested) then you don't really have to add much and can just use it whenever you need to in the game. Dialogue scenes, combat scenes, sex scenes, item/skill effects (like using an armor repair kit or reloading). These all need to be overhauled in order to function with the 3 new body types, while not breaking the game's existing content from Day 1-2 that feature Tiffany's original Body & outfit.

Yes, this will get even more complex when I add the additional 3 body types in a later version(for the final stage of her growth), along with any additional costumes I decided to add later down the line. But that's why I am taking the time now to properly overhaul all of these existing events to account for both the stuff I'm adding in v0.08, but things I plan on adding in the future as well. I'm trying to be safe and smart about this. So that's the way I'm going to continue developing these back-end sections of the game. So that when players get to experience the game for themselves, all they see is something smooth that works the way they expect and offers a lot of individuality and replay value to their play-throughs, without them even noticing all the messy, painstaking back-end work that went into making what should be super simple functions work as intended.

For example, earlier this week I've finished a new custom event call that will easily display the correct dialogue CG for Tiffany with just two lines of code whenever I want to show an image of her during those scenes. This will make dialogue scenes a lot easier to add from now on, and it takes into account the different body types/armor pieces and expression variations easily. I posted about it on the discord channel for people who want more info on this specific example. I will also post more small progress updates there over the next week or so where I should finally finish everything that I've started for this overhauling phase of development.

^ Yes, lol, I realize I am stretching this ramble out quite a bit, I'll move on soon :)

Anyway, That's part of what I've spent a lot of time on this month so far. But there is admittedly still a long way to go. Though I hope to wrap up work on most of these overhauled events in these coming days. Problem is, after that, I'll have only just gotten back to square one. I'll then still have to fully finish implementing all of the new content as well. I have still yet to finish completely rendering any of the new sex scenes I wanted to add into the beta as well. However, it really does depend on how certain things go, and how long they take me. Some days I make huge strides and get quite a lot done. On other days though, I get barely anything done at all, despite spending the same amount of time working.

So that's the main reason why I currently have no idea how long v0.08 is actually going to take me. Only that the end result will be worth it, for the sake of future version's development. Though admittedly, the new content in v0.08 will be rather short, as will be the case with v0.09, which will also take a long time to develop, since it will introduce Tiffany's updated primary outfit too.

Sorry to be a downer about all of this. But I just want to keep people's expectations managed as best I can, with as much heads up as I can give. Also, I don't want people feeling sorry for me here. I'm doing fine mentally. I can handle the workload. I'm looking after myself(stress about screwing up release dates aside, which is inevitable) It will all be fine. It was my decision to implement these features in this manner, at this point in time. I did so knowing it would take a long time (though as usual underestimating the scope of the task), but knowing that the end result would be worth it (which it will). And knowing that I could only afford to make the game this ambitious in the first place because of all of your support which I can't thank you all enough for. Without your support, this game would have to have been a much smaller scale. Everything I do here is in service of the vision that the final state of this game will be impressive, even if it takes me a really long time.

This of course isn't to say that my goal here is to constantly strive for these frustratingly long development cycles. Quite the opposite. You have no idea how much I want to go back to simple monthly releases where I can just focus on new content & scenes. But I intentionally wrote myself into this corner, tackling a new story line with a lot of exposition/character interactions, new game mechanics, and new body types + outfit update all at the same time. Would it have been smarter to tackle these things separately? Perhaps. But that would have meant having some releases where the bulk of the new content is all behind the scenes stuff that would only be seen later. I prefer doing it this way, where I can continue to move the game's plot forward in each version, while laying the groundwork for new game features and additions as I go. Once I get to a comfortable point in the story and back-end development. I will take some time to focus on smaller scale releases. But until then, there's a whole lotta work to be done!

Okay, time to wrap up this lame excuse segment for now. It's been going on long enough...

Cool Stuff Section:

Hey, have some more previews from Bestial Zombie scene:

^ You've seen this "submission" pose before, but of course, it's updated with variations for her new body types. Base Stage 0 on display in all the images unless stated otherwise.

^ This angle is a little skewed because of the camera position. Don't worry, he and his genitals are larger than they may appear here...

Something else I fixed up this week, that I mentioned on discord. Previously (in v0.03) I only actually completed the custom 2D sprite for Sydney in her outfit when she's facing forwards or backwards. But now, since I actually need her to be able to move sideways in this version, I took one annoying night in Photoshop to finish what I put off months ago so she can actually face left & right, haha. Just one example of random things I don't take into account when working on these things.

^ Sorry if the image gets blown up and blurry. It's a pain in the ass to work on these sprites some times, so I only do them when I can't find anything close enough to resemble the 3D model. But I think it turned out well all things considered. All the outfit pieces were on separate layers so I won't have to redo anything for her "stripped" sprites later on.

Now, I've got some fresh poll results to go over too:

First off, it was decided that the Bestial Zombie scene (which I started this week, and posted a preview of above) will be a vaginal penetration scene. You can expect the usual cumflation of course :P

Also, it's been decided that there's going to be two Futa characters in Ali's group that will be introduced in v0.11. One will be the local school's Gym Teacher who can help train Tiffany's strength/physical prowess. It was recently decided she will be of Hispanic/Latino descent.

The second will be a construction worker character who will help the survivors rebuild and fix up various parts of town including base upgrades, and also with various quests. I will go off the second place from the above gender poll, and have this character be of Arabic ethnicity.

I've got some ideas for the designs of these two already, though they will have to wait a bit since they are still far off from being introduced. Neither of these two new futa characters will be immune to the infection. There will be more polls for them soon.

"Jim, why so many polls for characters who won't be introduced for a long time still?" Yes, I understand that it may seem a little counter intuitive when there will be still be a few versions prior to v0.11. However, a lot of details for v0.09-v0.10 are already set in stone. Or at least, the things that can be voted on for those versions, all require me to first design the characters in question. I have already decided on the genders and ethnicities of a bulk of the upcoming characters. So I chose to pick those who I was most unsure about to flesh out first. When I start designing the v0.09 characters, there will most likely be design specific polls about each of them. On topics such as outfits, proportions, etc. So for now, I am simply providing you guys in the $5 & $10 tiers with polls that I am able to do right now, without taking time away from active development.

I also finally got back a long awaited 2D commission piece from the artist Botslim featuring Sydney and George:

Sydney's hair is a little off here (Though I may be getting an updated version sent later...), but apart from that I love the detail in this piece. Hopefully you'll be able to see a similar scenario in game one day ;). You can download the full sized image from the attachments of this post. You can also checkout the artist's other work here:

• Twitter
• Pixiv

Also, the reason why there might seem to be less 2D commissioned pieces of late, is because I'm currently in the talks with a Voice Actress for Tiffany and I soon expect to be using those funds for their originally allocated intent: paying for voiced lines. I am currently waiting to receive some test audition lines to see if we can find the right voice for her. Though I won't share any more details until something solid is confirmed.

There will still be new commission pieces though. I will probably get another from Flowerxl soon, plus there's a couple of sketch comms in the works, and GrownUpJuice is still working on the Cover Page for the Terminal Juggs comic. I've seen the line art and it's amazing. Don't worry, I will be sharing the finished product with all patrons even though the comic itself is currently only available to Special Forces patrons. Of course, weekly page releases for that will continue without pause.

As for DNA Valkyrie Volume 2, it's is being self-edited by Camille right now. Though I will still need to do a pass on all of the chapters before they will be ready to start posting weekly again. I am waiting until I have at least some kind of release out for v0.08 before I spend any time on that though. We will make up missed weeks with some double chapter releases later down the line.

Finally, I've got one more preview to share, since I've almost finished writing and implementing this opening scene. It's another long exposition dump (of course) because I can't help myself. However, I will add the option to skip it along with the long DAY 2 ending scene to make playing multiple play-throughs easier. I will probably do this with some older scenes as well, but maybe in a future version. I don't plan on touching any of the Day 1-2 content apart from essential bug fixes in the next release. Anyway, enjoy:

^ Purposefully selected the vaguest line to avoid spoiling parts of Lara's story.

Thanks again for all your support. I will still have a special Christmas themed image posted in the coming days, along with some more polls for $5 and $10 patrons. Like I said, I'll be continuing my work without a break until I have something to release. So I'll be posting small updates on the discord server. When the time draws near, I will start maintaining an progress percentage post here as well. I will post again a few times this year since I'm not going anywhere, but in case any of you are going away until the new year, I hope you all have a very enjoyable & happy holiday season.

~ Jim