v0.10 Dev Blog #2 - Still Plodding Along... (Patreon)

Hello Everyone!

I hope everyone is doing well out there. I'm sorry it's been so long since the last one of these. As usual, some things got in the way, and other things took longer to get implemented than expected. So as expected, I don't have as much interesting new content to share as I had hoped. I also apologize for cutting this post super close again (as always). I meant to get it our yesterday but got distracted troubleshooting  the new perk implementation. But I'll get to that. I'm short on time so let's just dive right in. Apologies for any grammatical  mistakes I make, I don't think I will have time to proofread...

v0.10 Progress:

Clearly I spent way too much time this month on implementing the random combat dialogue lines and getting the audio cut up and in game for that. It's all worth it of course, I probably should have just divided the labor up a bit better so that come end of month, I'd have more visual things to share with you guys. Though there were some other things i had to take care of earlier in the month that contributed to this delay. Regardless, in case you missed it, I did release a short 2~ish minute video demoing the current state of melee line implementation. You can find the link to the video & more details here. As mentioned in the post, the full audio demo I am working towards putting together will also showcase story scene lines and sex scene lines/moans/new sfx. So I will continue to make progress towards that next month, but may also focus more on some other things to keep it more interesting for you guys while you wait.

Of course, I did some other things too. As you can see from the post's main image, I started work on rendering some of the missing images that were cut from v0.09's prologue end  scene. You were of course always intended to actually get your first look at Viper-8 in game. That render is of her communicating with Dr. Slater from inside of the chopper that shows up at the end. There are a few other renders missing here, mostly from Sirus' perspective. Once I've got those done, I will move back to add in the cut parts of Tiffany & Lara's sex scene with The Fister. I will probably show off one or two of these new shots in every Devblog until v0.10 is out, so look out for those.

One of the other things that was discussed, voted on and implemented all this month (kind of on a whim since I'm feeling in a Particular RNG mood this month) was the implementation of randomized items to the various loot containers found around the game:

^ Here, I am opening the same chest on 4 different playthroughs.

Your odds of getting rarer items are influence by Tiffany's Luck stat. So there is now a reason to put stat points into luck (see the previous dev blog for stat point allocation talk). If you have a companion with you, it will take the average of their Luck stats. This means taking a lucky girl will improve your odds of finding better loot if you Tiffany is not. Or, taking an unlucky girl might make balance out your Tiffany's good luck. Of course, this will have to be balanced and fine tuned. Especially as new items are added to the game. But I am happy with where it is right now. Though I do need to put in some additional logic to the code so that you don't find certain items in some containers (You shouldn't find a Frag Grenade and $500 in a trash can, nor in a fridge, etc.) And don't worry, not everything will be randomized. I will still be manually placing some items in key areas to make sure that you can actually complete sections of the game where you need ammo to kill things or batteries to see in the dark, etc. And of course quest items and items dropped by named characters will always be there (unless some unique situation where it makes sense to randomize)

Anyway, speaking of adding new items, you might have notice one in the screenshot up above. The "Ammo Casting Kit". This is one of the new ingredient items used for the crafting skill which I have started to implement. Still working things out with this one, but for now. You will be able to access the crafting menu from the pause menu, or by interacting with crafting bench areas. You can find one such area set up George's shop:

Most items will need to be crafted at a bench(like ammunition), but some items will be possible to craft out in the field (like crafting washrags for the stealth mechanic which will now use this interface). I don't want this system to be too annoying though, just somewhat sensible/immersive. So I plan on making sure there are plenty of crafting areas in useful spots, like at the Pharmacy, Farms, and in the Casino. Some items will also require reaching a higher crafting level to access. Some others might require Tiffany finding a recipe. 

I will tweak these recipes & results ofc. For instance, right now, I decided it would be better to combine lead, primer and gunpowder into a single "Ammo Casting Kit" item to keep things simple, but idk yet. I guess it depends on what other "ingredients" I will need for other craftable items. You'll be able to buy some stuff, but you can also find others. Zombies will have a chance of dropping casings when killed, etc.

There will also be a "Cooking" version of this menu, but that will be tied to a new Cooking skill rather than Crafting, and accessible from kitchen areas instead. Overall, I'm happy with how this is all coming along so far. It seems like the RPG aspect of TD will be much more engaging with these new additions for character building and gameplay.

All this would be complimented nicely by the Perks and Traits that I'll be implementing. 1 Perk Point to spend each level up. I started work on implementing this part of the system using a plugin I'd had my eye on but it turns out that while 95% of it works as intended, there is a bug somewhere that's not properly attaching the perk logic to Tiffany from the perk menu, despite it working when I add it to her manually in a test scenario.

^ What the Perk Menu will look like... If I can fix the bugs with it... :'(

I just added two of the perk ideas I had to test things were working, I'll have heaps of perks available to choose from when v0.10 launches. But the menu might not look like this if I can't resolve these issues easily. I will need to do a bit more testing to find out exactly what's going wrong, but I might have to do something from scratch that doesn't look as clean GUI wise if I can't figure things out. If anyone reading this happens to be a Javascript/RPG Maker MV whizkid please DM me if you'd like a bit of work to help me get this working or commission a new plugin that does the same thing. :) I should just fix it myself though, I just don't know how long that will take and would rather just move on to other things and settle for my crappy event based version of the perk system which I could add just as quickly. 

But because I don't want to break saves in the future, I'd rather get it working properly this way before moving on. We'll see. Anyway, tldr, there will be perks regardless, it's just a matter of whether they'll have a nice menu to go with them or not.

Onto some things more sexy than me whining about Javascript because I'm too busy/lazy to sit down and just learn the rest of it, I started work on rendering and implementing the Masturbate and Undress features.

Accessed under "Sex Moves", right now these two are only available outside of combat, but I do intend to add similar "Tease" and "Self Strip" combat moves in the future.

"Undress" gives you the option to have Tiffany undress her outfit pieces voluntarily. This can be useful for cases where you want to preserve your outfit pieces from destruction if you know it's likely in an upcoming encounter and you are low on repair kits. This way you can undress before and dress up again afterwards without having to waste those outfit repair kits. This can also be used simply for Roleplay purposes. I plan on adding a "Exhibitionist" trait of some kind that you can pick with your perk points if you want that kind of play-style. This still operates in the same way the stripping does. Belt->Top->Bottoms. You can't mix and match. I don't think mix and matching will be possible due to the amount of extra variation renders I'd have to make. So if you undress the belt, then go into combat and get Tiffany's top destroyed, you won't be able to put the belt back on until the top has been repaired and put on. 

This is unfortunate because that doesn't make logical sense and it really irks me. So idk, don't be surprised if I flip flop on this much later when I have more time. :') Just not in the foreseeable future since because I simply don't have the time for that right now. Main problem is the story scenes. I can re-render variations for all the reusable scenes "easily" enough (though I'd really rather not), but there is likely to be a lot of consistency issues if I try to do the same with fully rendered story/sex scenes. Plus it's just a massive time sink and we have enough of that going on right now as it is! So for now, we'll just have to say the "lore" reason for this is that all of the girls order their outfit pieces and refuse to wear combinations outside of their preferred order because "fashion". :P Idk, best I can do right now to justify this thing that doesn't really need to be justified considering it doesn't make sense that the zombies always strip in the same order too, but that's because they are dumb zombies all operating under the same hive mind like decision making process. Where as the girls have agency and should be able to dress/undress in whatever combination they want... Anyway, enough of this rubbish for now!

Of course, choosing to "Masturbate" will start with Tiffany Undressing so that she is nude. Masturbating will not pause the game, if there are zombies on the map they will still move towards Tiffany, but they will wait patiently for her to finish and enjoy the show before engaging in combat. I'd like to change the dialogue depending on whether a zombie is waiting to engage her, and maybe add some extra spice too... But that might be a little difficult to implement right away and something for a future version. Though I will now be marking areas as "Cleared"  with v0.10 so there will be some differences in the dialogue when jerking off in safe vs dangerous location at least. 

Right now, masturbating will restore 3 END points once per day. But I might balance or change the benefit of this. I will probably also add a "Wanker" perk that grants additional benefits. :P I am not sure if I will have time in v0.10, but I would like it for an addicted Tiffany to be forced to masturbate if she hasn't been feeding her addiction frequently enough. One of the "downsides" of being addicted to something.

This fingering scene is the default masturbation scene. To unlock more masturbation scenes you will need to search for & collect the various sex toys hidden around the game's locations. Speaking of which...

Polls:

^ Just a small sample of what's to cum ;)

Thanks to a previous poll, the purple horse dildo won (who would have figured?) and will be the toy that gets added first in v0.10. The others & their scenes will be added in future releases. And I will have future polls to choose which order they get released in including other designs. 

Right now there is a poll out for the $5+ tiers to choose how Tiffany should play with her new toy if she's lucky enough to find it and add it to her collection. A vaginal scene is winning by quite a bit as of now...

^ This will be the image that appears when Tiffany first finds this toy. This is the "Non-Slut" expression.

Right now, Special Forces members are also getting a sneak peek and vote in this new poll for the Nun & Priest Characters that are debuting in v0.11. I will show off their final designs to everyone else later. Some things still need to be finalized.

And one other poll that I've just ended was the final one for Holly's Outfit. Magenta panty won over Black panty. So for everyone who hasn't seen yet, here is Holly's final design for TD with her buffed proportions and new outfit:

Keep in mind that she will first appear in v0.14 in Ali's group. I will keep designing the rest of the upcoming characters in advance because there is simply so many of them! Holly is still wearing her uniform from her Pizza Delivery job. Though minus the badge and hat. I might add the hat tbh, we'll see... Maybe her delivery girl escapades are better left to explore in a future Terminal Quickies story...

Terminal Quickies:

Speaking of... While I've been too busy these past few days to do the final edit on the second part of Lara's story, the second piece of art for the story have finally been completed (Minus some minor details with Ioan's hair missing an extra touch of grey that will be fixed in the full release).

Popsiclebunny is the artist for this story. And the third one is almost complete as well. (Yes, the spice starts there, don't worry). Don't be blaming the artists for the delays by the way, they've both still been going through extremely rough times, as I'm sure many of you have been too. I've been helping to keep them afloat with advanced payments while they deal with their real life issues. But these stories should be coming out more frequently though. Expect one or two updates next month not including part 2 of Lara's story "A Case of Conception" which will be posted for you all to read in the next few days once I've taken care of some other things. And yes, hopefully a big update to the Jailbreak story too. Thank you all for being so patient with this. I know it hasn't gone as intended.  

Also, it's not much, but I may as well share these extra Lara reference renders I did of her exposed thong. Three guesses as to why these are needed. :3

Closing Words:

Not many closing words this time, not because I don't have them (clearly I can type nonstop if no one stops me!) but because I am dangerously close to not getting this out before the "End of the month" in the next 20 minutes...

Thank you all so much for your continued patience support. I hope you enjoyed what little I had to share. Still not anywhere close to a release. My main goal for June is to finish up everything that I've started  in terms of features (not scenes) and then see how far away I am from an Alpha Test to help find what's broken and give feedback on all the new gameplay features I'm pumping in. But I'll keep trying my best to provide some interesting visual previews to keep you entertained as well! 

~ Jim