Weekly Update/Preview Sept 18-25 (Patreon)

Hello. Just the couple of things to talk about this week, though that isn't actually a bad thing. At least, I don't think it is, so that's probably a good sign. I talked about wanting to hunker down a bit over the last week and get things worked on, and I have been doing that. I've got a lot of things in flight still, just not a huge amount that felt tweet worthy. I couldn't really define what makes something tweet worthy in the first place, and maybe the audience would like more words over less of them, but in any case you can at least feel some assurance that I don't personally feel like I'm super behind where I want to be.

... Okay, maybe a little bit of feeling behind, but that's always the case really. Brain just be like that.

Avoiding your problems

During this week, I had a conversation in the supporter only channel of the discord about naming and creating effects for curses. The curses actually talked about weren't this one but I'm still bringing it up for a couple of reasons. First there is the obvious invitation to talk to me about whatever in the discord. Most people probably already know that I am on there suspiciously often and am constantly participating, so I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know, but still. I do like talking about the game.

Beyond that though, it also brings up how there are a lot of different avenues to eventually reach a skill/curse/spell/whatever that finds its way into the game. In the case from this tweet, I thought of a skill name that was mildly amusing, that made me think of some effects that felt like they matched, then I made the icon for it, and while implementing it as a skill I realized it felt more like it would work as a curse. Had to swap some things around, but it was fine. In the cases of the curses I was talking about in discord, I made some icons that I liked first, then built them out from there. 

Basically, there are a lot of different starting points that work just fine, and ideas hit at random times in random places. I definitely have a list of random names/effects on my phone that I've typed up while sitting around waiting for my clothes to dry at a laundromat. It's just a lot of fun to think about this kind of stuff while driving or out doing whatever. Since the game is robust enough for there to be so many different effects and adding them means more variety in playing the game, it seems like a win win.

There are some negatives that I'm at least aware of though. Huge pools of skills/effects/spells (I really need a singular word for all these things to fall under) means it's hard to get a particular, specific one that you want for a build or to unlock a scene. Also, implementing these things, while certainly a lot faster than writing a scene, does take up time that some would argue could be better spent on content. There's a balancing to this kind of thing that I'm still figuring out, but it is nice to say that I feel happy with how the whole skill/curse system is working out.

Rawr

This is listed in the game credits page, but icons for spells and different types of rooms are directly from game-icons.net. The site has a huge amount of variety, and I've seen it used in a whole lot of different projects, both in porn games and not porn games. While there are a number of the different icons that I've edited for my own purposes, a lot of them are just taken directly, so if you feel like you've seen this dragon fellow before, you probably have.

Anyway, I've kinda decided not to say directly what the central idea of this update is, but it does feel somewhat obvious regardless. Might just be due to me knowing the answer while making all these previews though. Who knows. Regardless, this is a sorta-kinda new room type to look for. I say sorta-kinda because for the most part it will act like a monster room, but the distinction is just the type of monster inside.

And no, it's not that you're going to be fighting dragons specifically.

I actually kind of struggled to find something that fit perfectly with what I wanted? The current icon used for monster rooms feels completely perfect for what it is meant to represent, possibly more than any other room type. Since this new one is very much related to monster rooms, how do you improve on something that already feels perfectly appropriate? Honestly, going with this dragon face thingy feels OKAY, but maybe not quite as impactful as I would like. Presentation matters a lot when trying to convey the gameplay experience. While I think this is acceptable, I still have a little bit of time to iterate and decide if I want something better.

Speaking of time though, the end of the month is coming around again. As I said, things are in flight, and I'm going to hopefully be finishing them off over the next week so everything can come together for Alpha 15 all smooth like.

Ideally I'll have a release next week rather than another one of these update devlogs, but we'll have to see how things go. See you then!