Star Knightess Aura 0.14.0-prerelease-2 (Patreon)

Like every week, grab the latest prerelease at:

https://aura-dev.itch.io/star-knightess-aura-prerelease/patreon-access

Let's dive into the first content update for 0.14.0! This week I mostly focused on expanding Nephlune, with the goal of adding the bar job. To start with the bad news: I didn't get to the lewd parts and the currently (repeatable) bar job 1 is a very short sequence that will get expanded on as Aura increases her outfits and provides "customer service".

With that out of the way, I have managed to write and script all the setup. Meet Liliana in her house and learn more about her and use her connections to get a position as a waitress in the underground pub of the demon worshippers.

In order to infiltrate the demon worshippers and access new areas in the underground city (or in the first place: to properly enter it) you will need to accumulate Trust. You can gain this by working in the pub, and later on through lewd customer service. There are of course also non-lewd/non-corrupt ways to increase trust. In the future, you will also be able to enter the underground city through the dungeons, in which case all the NPCs in here will be shown as enemies.

In general, there are quite a few more NPCs to talk to besides Liliana. Above ground, you can find a bunch more NPCs expanding on the city's lore. And in the underground pub you can also learn quite a few more things. In a way, I guess you could say this update is mostly lore focused and to make Nephlune a bit less empty.

I will be continuing my work on the bar job, this time focusing on the lewd content, through the weekend and then next week I will start tackling the remaining mind rooms (Instinct and maybe I will also get Memories added).

A final minor change is the way lewd books are handled. They now have very minor pink variations. Generally, lewd books are now treated mechanically as any other lewd scene. Your choice is properly shown as pink, you get extra lewd stats, etc. You can also re-read Aura's reaction in the recollection room.

One more item I feel like reporting on is that I have also started doing some evaluation of UI plugins / frameworks / tools for RPGM in preparation of next year, where I want to get started on improving the UI looks of the game. I tried out various thing such as a HUDMaker, Visustella, and other plugins, but sadly the MZ plugin scene hasn't grown as much as I expected. I had to fiddle around so much with the plugins and in the end they were still incompatible with my own custom plugins. So I will probably resort to either making custom plugins tailored to the game myself or outsoure scripting them. I have actually already found a UI designer who I would be interested in commissioning, but let's leave talking about that to once we hit the 3k milestone investment round.

On the bright side, I also did some evaluation of potentially increasing the resolution to 1280 x 720 (something I have been afraid of due to reports about bad RPGM performance) but it seems that the newest MZ versions can handle quite a lot more. So I will most likely increase the resolution in next month's technical week.

As usual, the total changelog containing the prelrease + patch updates, below.

Changelog 0.14.0-prerelease-2 (10.12.2021)

• Added minor NPCs to Nephlune
• Added Liliana Home
• Added Underground Pub
• Implemented Underground Trust mechanic
• Added minor NPCs Underground Pub
• Added materials for trust exchange NPC
• Added Bar Job 1
• Converted lewd books to normal lewd scenes with pink variation, extra lewd, recollection room entry, and so on
• Upgraded to RPGM 1.4.0

Balancing

• Increased Workshop Job Salary by 25 per sold Star Metal
• Increased Workshop Job Max HP gain to +3

Bugfixes

• Fixed typos in Festival of Greed
• Fixed bugs in new lewdness calculations for minimum lewdness
• Fixed out-of-date teleporter after defeating low-demon