State of the Game - Patreon Reopening (Patreon)

Evening folks - it's time, and the Patreon is back open for business! For those new to the place, the way things will be working is that status updates and patch notes, like this one, will be posted to the public. A patron-only post will be following with game and cheat code infofor those of the appropriate tiers, so keep your eyes open for that. Also, before I get into the latest update, let me announce that the Overseer's Edition of Carnal Coup is currently on sale, both to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of the launch and the re-opening of normal Patreon business! You can find it at Steam here, or itch.io here.

So, let's get into it. I should start off by saying that while a lot of work was accomplished over the past month and a half, you will find very little in terms of actual playable content in this update compared to the public release. As much as I would have loved to have started off this grand re-opening with the launch of the first real chapter in the game, there were just too many systems needed to set up the proper gameplay loop first. The good news is that the preliminaries are pretty much all checked off now, and I do expect to have actual story scenes starting in the next release. Which incidentally is currently aimed for the 14th - for the newbies, I generally set my releases for around the first of the month (give or take my schedule on the actual calendar day), and on a mid-month Friday. HD art packs generally come around the 2nd or 3rd week of the month, but with no specific planned date.

So without simply regurgitating the entire patch notes list, what can you expect to find in this release? The primary system of note is the Personnel Department you will find at Watch Station following the introduction, where you will be able to cash in some shiny new requisitions for new crewmembers. You will also be able to exchange crewmembers you don't care for - while there's more of a cost for higher-ranked crew, ensign trading is essentially free. There is also a new crew roster interface, through which you'll be able to 'seduce' those who strike your fancy. As the game itself notes, this is a very early and quick implementation, expect romancing shipmates to become much more involved in the future. Consider it an early adopter's bonus for now. Other items of note:

• You can now do some free travel around the galaxy, although there's not yet much to find out there.
• The rest of the rooms on the Citizen-class ship will now be open following the tutorial, and you can assign crewmembers to work at the new stations and earn resources. Note that resources are earned as time passes, and it is my intention that time will mostly pass while in hostile territory. However, as we don't yet have anything to do in hostile territory, for the moment you can kill time at Watch Station.
• You'll note that there is a minor scene involving the Captain's Office. Game scenes and activities will generally be based out of 'hub' scenes for each location, for Watch Station it will be the docks, and the Captain's Office will be the hub for ship-based activities, which will move around with you. Other locations do not yet have any hub scenes created.

Aside from that, I did want to make a particular note about save game compatibility. Carnal Coup was (more or less) entirely savegame compatible from the first release to the last, and I would like for that to also be true of Carnal Voyages. Towards that end I did a fair bit of work this release in cleaning up some potential issues there, but as we're still in a state of heavy functionality changes this is probably the riskiest period for savegames. Carnal Voyages is also quite a bit more mechanically complex than Carnal Coup, and may have more edge cases to it. So in short, if you have any issues with save files from the public release let me know and I'll see about patching things up for next round.

Now, what's next up on the list? At a minimum I'd like to get in a 'welcome to the Harian system' intro in for the next release, as well as a basic hub scene for the area. I've also gotten in the first set of duty assignment writeups from my new writer, and I'd like to get at least some of those in as the duty assignment system isn't much of a system if there's no content in it. As we're looking at less than two weeks for this particular cycle though, I'm not going to promise too much more at the moment. And I think that's about all I have for tonight, so in conclusion: thanks for your support to everyone who signs up, enjoy the patch notes below, and patron game links to follow!

v0.2.0 Change Log

Game Functions:

Maps:

• Added Galaxy Map and Harman System Map, with ability to travel from one system to another.
• Map travel has been sped up, this may be revised back down when faster ships are added.
• 'Heat' system has been added when passing time in hostile systems. Heat is decremented when passing time on the galaxy map or in the Figura system. There is currently no consequence for maxing out your heat.

Watch Station:

• Added ability to change your crew gender preferences post-intro.
• Added ability to transfer current crew members for requisitions and requisition credits.
• Added ability to upgrade, downgrade, and spend requisition credits, and to spend requisitions.
• The Intro sex scene featuring the Admiral's secretary can now be replayed from the Watch Station docks.
• The game will now begin tracking time starting at the conclusion of the tutorial. Time will pass during travel, additionally a placeholder function has been added to the Watch Station docks to pass 10 hours. This will be removed once more activities to 'burn the clock' have been implemented. Note: resources may be capped or removed in a future update, so don't go wild on spamming daily updates.

Other:

• Added additional NPC Personality Traits: Rock, Flighty, Partier, Studious, Chill, Hothead, Bold, Cautious. (Note: will only appear on newly generated NPCs)
• Added additional rooms and station functionality to the ship, which can be used after the Introduction. New ship stations can provide speed and damage bonuses, and produce regular resources. Stations will provide extra bonuses depending on the stats, traits, and rank of assigned crewmembers.
• Daily reports will be posted at the conclusion of each day, detailing the activities performed by crewmembers who have been assigned to ship stations that day.
• The Crew Roster will now be accessible following the tutorial. The roster can be filtered in a number of ways, and selecting crewmembers will bring up their individual profiles. Viewing their personal traits will bring up the option to seduce the crewmember - note that this is temporary functionality and will become much more complicated to pull off in the future.
• Rank insignia images have been added to crew face portraits in various locations.
• A confirmation has been added when overwriting save files.
• Added functionality to play certain scenes when at certain locations.
• Added cheat code functionality and new cheats option: Free Requisition Packs.
• Old Carnal Coup background track has been replaced by new music from Dark Fantasy Studio.

Scene Content:

• Added Watch Station Personnel Department scenes.
• Added a Captain's Office scene which will be your main home for scenes played aboard the ship. Currently not much to do there.

Art Content:

• Harian and Seeder faction logos added to Galaxy Map.
• Added 'Captains Quarters' background to the romance panel.
• Added background images for the new ship rooms.

Codex Entries:

• Trait entries added for new traits.
• A new 'Setting' tab has been added to the Codex. This tab has 1 current entry, 'Date & Time'.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed issue with audio not looping.
• Corrected trait typos.
• Some code structure changes for save compatibility purposes (should have no visible effect).
• Fixed possible issue where a player could be stuck following the bar seduction encounter.

Known Issues:

• Due to changes in ship station functionality, crew will need to be re-assigned to stations in games from previous saves.