0.28 Draft Design & The Future of Stationmaster (Patreon)

0.27 is currently building. It would normally be time to put the direction of 0.28 to a vote, but there's only one content update left in the plan. Before I get into the design, I want to touch on what that means for the future.

As strange as it is to write this, after two years of development (and despite all of my efforts to introduce bugs), Stationmaster is rapidly approaching version 1.0. 

On the one hand, it's a bit of a relief. This project has consumed a lot of hours, and caused its fair share of grief (looking at you, gender overhaul). Mostly, though, I'm dreading it. Stationmaster has been such an important part of my life for so long that the thought of losing it as a project leaves me feeling aimless, and interacting with the community that you've all built around the game is often the highlight of my day.

Rather than deal with that in a healthy way with some combination of a new hobby, therapy, and alcohol, I've decided to prolong the inevitable. Regardless of pledge numbers, there will be another stretch goal vote before the end. Possibly more than one, IDK, I'm not a wizard. 

As for what comes next, the real answer is that I don't know yet. I've been toying with a couple new game ideas (users on Discord might have heard me talking about one of them with unearned certainty). I've also been toying with the idea of a break.

Regardless of how that goes though, I wanted to thank everyone who has been here, whether you were around since that first public build, or just showed up this week. It's been an amazing journey, and without your support and ideas, it would have ended a long time ago. I can't overstate how much I appreciate this community, and you're a big part of the reason I hate the idea of stopping.

And back to your regularly scheduled programming:

0.28 Draft Design: Cutscene Improvements

Animation Engine

We all know the animations and alignment could use some work, and that will be a priority for this patch.

Adding strip controls on the H screen so characters can wear clothes during sex (where not mechanically impossible).

New Environments

The big ones will be 3D environments for your palaces on your owned planets/asteroids/stations. These will show when you visit, and visibly change based on upgrades (and possibly stats like obedience/fear).

Beyond that, there are a bunch of planned environments for events, as well as some fixes for current ones (mostly to cut down on clipping during certain faction leader scenes).

Other Stuff

The animation fixes and new environments are likely to consume a lot of time, but I'll try to get some unrelated bug fixes and features in as well.