Demo 2 progress update: NPCs (Patreon)

Hey all!

I'm back with another progress update. I managed to get more art work in than I expected, both in terms of pixel art and visual effects, so that's the main bit for this update

Rhythms

As part of the work to make rhythms easier, following feedback, I've added an "approach circle" (see animation above!) that should help you read when to press to the rhythm. It pulsates in and out with the other animations, and has visual feedback when you rhythm at the correct time, and when you fail. I'll probably make some small tweaks to it before release, but the gist of it is there

I know there are some people who struggle with rhythms because of injuries or disability, and others who just prefer to avoid them, so I've added an accessibility option that lets you auto-rhythm by holding the rhythm button. I still want to ensure people don't reach for this option by making rhythms a fun and enjoyable challenge for more people, so I'm going to continue incrementally improving them - for example I'm aiming to add sound effects to rhythms for the part 2 demo release because we react faster to sounds than visuals

NPCs

I've finished the Guidess tutorial and animation (you saw the thrusting loop above) - this means you can ask her to show you the tutorial at any time after you've collected the 10 liquid she first asks for. The tutorial walks you through rhythms, edging, horniness, libido, riding/movement, and gaining liquid. As an animation it's simpler and only has one thrusting speed instead of several as the entities do, which means you'll have an easier time learning/training.

I've also added a couple of new NPCs - the first one being the arena lady. She exists as a quest NPC for the entity wave arena minigame that's coming in the demo part 2 update, but also to help guide you through the entity wave arena by giving you some advice. She doesn't have any full animations now, and it's unlikely she will have one for the demo part 2 release, but I aim to give her a full animation in a future build

The second new NPC is an orc lady who is quite tall compared to all the other NPCs - she's also part of the cat-tailed lady's quest, and she's located in the "sky village" just above the blob plant farm. I've done and added a full animation that you can unlock with this NPC, where Erisia gets to use her mouth a bit more because it's one of the skill types that needs more animations. I might keep this animation as a surprise for when you play the game, but it is fully done :)

I'm also progressing the cat-tailed lady's quest reward animation - I busied myself with the other NPCs so this one isn't fully done yet, but work is continuing

Interfaces

I've done some work on the in-game menu - it has a magical feel to it instead of just being a gray square. The minimap now has "fog of war" so you have to explore an area before it's visible in the minimap - so you'll know what areas have been visited or not, while being able to comfortably get around the areas you've already seen. I want to improve the look of these a bit more before showing them off, but we're getting there

Performance

This is a quick one - I've focused on reducing your GPU's memory usage by about 40 MB and there's still space for more optimisation here - I'm not done yet! It's mostly just consolidating textures that can be, unloading textures that won't be used again/for a good while, and not loading the dark forest (and other) textures until you get to that region in a later build.

Otherwise, I've gone through the existing animations and done touch-ups - which is grindy and not fun work, but I feel it needs to be done - the most noticeable one being the main menu animation now has a profile view of Erisia's face instead. Most of this is just making Erisia's look more consistent across the board, and I hope to finish it up this week so I can get it out of the way

That's about it for this one - the next progress update should be in late-mid July, hope you look forward to it!