v0.10 Dev Blog #6 - More stuff no one asked for... (Patreon)

Hello everyone, 

It appears I've ended up compressing the last 2 weeks of progress into a single blog rather than two separate ones... Sorry about the wait for info on what I've been doing and more previews. Hopefully something I have to show today piques your interest... 

If not, there will be a separate (expect last minute per usual) post for Terminal Quickies coming by month's end. It will have the next part of Lara's story (A Case of Conception) and an update on what's been happening with the Jailbreak story.

v0.10 Progress:

Although there may be some head-scratchers in today's blog, most of what I've been working on is straight out of my previous post that outlined my plans for ALPHA #2 (which appears at this stage to be progressing smoothly enough). As such, a lot of what I'm about to go into I've covered in theory before in either that post or another. Only difference is now I have some images since I've actually gotten a chunk of this implemented. So I'll try and keep it brief and let the pictures speak for themselves with just a bit of "light" commentary.

To start us off, at the top of this post is Tiffany developing a drinking problem :P

Well, to justify such sudden (planned)"drunk" side effects it only makes sense that she chugs a large volume of Fairchild & Co's Hard Whiskey (Case of Conception readers may recognize). Speaking of, I have a plugin that adds a number of visual screen blurs, sways and some other neat effects to simulate a drunken state similar to what I'd hoped to achieve. I am still playing around with it though, figuring how "annoying" it should be and how long it should last. This one does break save games though which means, assuming I include it, ALPHA #1 saves won't be compatible with ALPHA #2 as expected. But hey, that is the whole purpose of adding all this stuff now so that I can severely limit the number of potential save game breaks later. 

But as stated, adding some alcohol to the game was more for the sake of Crafting/Cooking/Combat than the actual "Drinking"/"Drunk" mechanics which will be fairly light in v0.10, and get expanded more later. 

One such item is one I talked about. The "Respecberry Cocktail" (feel free to suggest a better name :P) is the item you'll be able to craft at Rank 2 Cooking to "respec"/reallocate your stat points. Useful if you put them into the wrong category, or just want to try a different build (because the evil Dev nerfed Attack & made Agility have a little more presence >:D  Planned HP & DEF improvements not in yet, but soon).

I would like to add a variation of the drinking render to reflect which beverage she's drinking (And something for non alcoholic drinks + all food too) but right now I just needed a good visual cue that you've consumed a status effecting item (like the pills) and will worry about my ocd later when there are less important things to render.

And ofc, the main one was craftable Molotov Cocktails that can be thrown by Tiffany or her companions (Debra & Lara for now). I'm showing off Debra's here because I also got around to rendering her Frag Grenade images (so she can throw them now if Tiffany happens to have some on Day 2), but since that's just a reused pose for the most part I didn't think it was worth also showing those here too.

One more tangent briefly before I get back to the Molotov, you can see I've also added a new visual indicator to the combat screen to keep track of the turn order. It goes from left to right. Debra had her turn last here which is why there's a gap between her and Tiffany at the start of the next round of turns. I noticed it could be difficult to keep track of which girl's turn it currently was when in combat with a companion. This will become more of an issue later when more enemies attack at once. This should help you keep track of not only whose current turn it is, but when/which enemies are attacking next.

Right, so a Molotov does a fair amount less damage than Frags, but they set the target "Ablaze". This status ailment means that the target takes burn damage at the end of every turn. On top of that, the damage type is set to "Fire Damage". This damage type sits alongside the new "Shock" & "Bleed" types that I have also added for the new weapon upgrades. I've also gone ahead and given all enemies basic resistance values to these types. In general, Infected are more resistant than humans to these. Except for Sewer Zombies who are quite resistant to Fire but weak to Shock damage.

As for "Shock" and "Bleed", you can find those on the two craftable weapon upgrades you'll get access to at Crafting Rank 2. The stun baton is an effective way to stun enemies for a couple of free hits. But it's an even more effective way for me to give all those extra batteries some use. :') Yes, it costs one battery each time you use the stun baton. I think it's a fair gameplay trade off though considering you can buy batteries and find plenty of them while looting. Does it make "lore" sense... Let's just say even a Rank 4 Crafting Tiffany isn't so great when it comes to energy efficiency. :P

As you can see in that crafting recipe, the Stun Baton also requires Electronic Scraps. They were previously those quest items you find for Terry's "Helping Hand" quest, but I've gone and made them regular items now so that they can be used in crafting recipes. It also means you might not have to go to those same 3 tedious locations to retrieve those parts for Terry if you already have found some earlier. Potentially making that quest a little less annoying. 

Not pictured here, but the Combat Knife can be upgraded into the Serrated Combat Knife to do Bleed Damage and inflict a "Bleed" damage over time ailment. It doesn't have a cost per use, but it's chance to inflict "Bleed" isn't guaranteed unlike the baton's battery powered stun. There's no special renders for these weapon upgrades by the way. They use the existing baton/knife attack move renders. 

And yes. I know. I really did waste time adding a light Fishing mechanic instead... 

Again though, it's mostly to further benefit the existing Crafting & Cooking Skills (by adding more recipes) Surviving Skill(Each Fishing attempt will give at least 1 exp) and further diversify the loot pool. That really is the common theme of everything I've mentioned so far. It's all just continuing to build upon the Skill/Loot systems I put in place in the 1st ALPHA. To help round everything out.

Anyway, it's a pretty simple system right now (likely will expand in later versions). There are a few water locations where you can try to catch something. Essentially it's a random chance pull that's influenced by Tiffany's Luck Stat, Survival Skill Rank, Rod Quality & Bait Quality. You'll either get nothing(well, still 1 Surviving Skill exp), a fish, a non-fish loot item, or pull up a Sewer Zombie (in the future, will add Zombie Gators & Zombie Octopus/tentacle monsters) who will break your rod and engage in combat. (See, it is still related to zombie fucking!)

You need a rod and some bait to fish. Each attempt uses 1 bait. Also, the worst rod (Crude Rod) has a limited number of uses before breaking. But the better types won't break from overuse. Increasing your Crafting & Surviving skills will unlock the recipes for better rods, or you might be able to find some while looting.

Speaking of looting, lockpicking will work in a similar way to using a crowbar to access certain areas, but also certain locked loot containers. I plan on adding adding at least this building with the green roof to lockpick into, and locked loot container throughout the game's maps. You'll churn through more lockpicks than crowbars, but you'll also loot more of them and can craft them. 

As for that annoying loot notification overlapping bug. I think I have a solid fix for it, but it's going to be a pretty annoying job to implement and restructure the whole RNG looting event. Hopefully it doesn't take me too long though. It's gonna be my next focus. 

Oh yeah, nothing too big here, but as you can see the shop now has stock. You can see on the left how much of an item George has to sell when you go to buy it. Items with no stock will be greyed out with a "sold out" message. I'll make sure there is reasonable stock, I just didn't want supplies to be "infinite". I can also setup discounts and change stock at different parts of the game much more easily now. You won't see too much change from this, but on my end, dealing with the different variables for the shops is now 20 times easier. :')

I haven't setup the new shops for Hitomi/Milburn & Jebadiah, but that's about 30mins work total so not a big deal now that I have things working the way I want them. 

"OKAY, BUT WHAT ABOUT SCENE PREVIEWS!?"

Yes, I have a some of those too! Work on Debra's Combat Sex Scene with the Futa Zombie has begun: 

An extra sneak peak will go up after this blog for the Special Forces tier. It's hard to believe this is only the second scene featuring the generic Futa Zombie... Apologies to those who I've kept waiting. As a reminder, this will be a mating press scene. ;)

Also, here is another preview from the Sewer Zombie scene to tide you over until next month:

I gotta get back to the Double Dick Zombie scene I started ages ago as well... Next month.

Polls:

Got some poll results, to quickly go over before I wrap up my "light" commentary... But first, new polls up for the $5+ tiers:

Gallery Unlock Poll - Whether Gallery Scenes should be fully unlocked from the start. 

Pregnancy Stage 1 - Belly Size Poll - Whether to increase the size of Tiffany's Pregnancy Stage 1 Belly (the biggest current Day 3 body) for new renders moving forward.

Tiffany Stage 2 Body Poll #5 - Veins Re-Vote - About the strength of the veins visible of Tiffany's Stage 2 Boobs.

And now, some poll results from recently ended polls:

v0.10 Zandre & Ziana Scene Poll #2 - This poll was to choose who would get which of the previously selected scene types for their seed extraction scene. It has been decided that Zombie Kiana will get the Combined Double Titfuck scene & Zombie Andre will get the Cock Worship (with Licking & Ballplay) scene. These will be added at some point by or before the v0.10 Full Release and accessible by interacting with their corpses after Tiffany or Lara takes them down. 

• Tiffany Stage 2 Body Poll #1 - Proportions
• Tiffany Stage 2 Body Poll #2 - Color
• Tiffany Stage 2 Body Poll #3 - Veins
• Tiffany Stage 2 Body Poll #4 - Outfit Restrictions

For #1, Bigger wins. I'll make some minor adjustments and re-render those stage 2 images. But I will keep in mind that things are already getting out of hand. :')

For #2, Light (Option 1) wins. This one was pretty evenly split down the middle all things considered so it seems like the "Light" colored nipples is the best crowd-pleaser.

For #3, While Option  #3 (Darker/Clearer veins) is the clear winner on an individual basis, it's actually not as simple.  Because Option #1 (No Veins) + Option #2 (Light Veins) actually got more that half the total votes. This means that the majority is actually against Option #3. So I can't in good conscious make the change to make the veins any darker without a majority support. But it was a close vote, when you consider it like this, and consider that Option #3 didn't have a picture reference to go off. So what I've done is made a render of what option #3 would actually look like, and we're doing a re-vote(poll #5 above) for this one just between option #2 & #3 to get a more definitive result.

For #4, Option #1 is the clear winner. So Tiffany will be restricted to wearing no more than her bikini top & bottom when at Pregnancy Stage 2.

Closing Words:

As I said, look out for a Terminal Quickies update before the month ends. Next month, I'll be making sure to move back to focusing on the Debra Barn scenes and getting them implemented alongside the other combat sex scenes I've been working on for her before doing anything else. That way I should be ready to launch ALPHA #2 in time for the end of April with whatever other features I manage to squeeze in.

Thanks again for all your patience & support! 

~Jim