Star Knightess Aura Internal Release 0.26.0
Surprise! I will be at friend's on the 31st so I will be moving the release of 0.26.0 ahead by one day so if there are any bugs I can fix them tomorrow instead of going of celebrating New Year's while worrying about needing to make a hotfix :'D. Also like I mentioned last week, flathunting went very well so I had more time than I expected and got everything planned done (and more).
As usual, if you are interested in the details, I refer the reader to the devlog entries. Here I will be summarizing the development weeks of 0.26.0. So let's take a look at the numbers! This update has seen the addition of 2 new H-CGs, 4 new lewd scenes, 4 new Corruption scenes, 1 new quest, 10 new mental changes (number is inflated because of effectless Novel knowledge pumping), 3 new passives, 1 new skill, 1 new corruption state, 1 new page in the Compendium, and more.
Let's start our review journey in the real world where we last time left of the Rose Seduced By Richard storyline just before it's climax. I wrote the remaining lead-up scenes, implemented the remaining mental change necessary to get Aura to doubt Rose and then finished it off with the Rose and Richard sex scene. Actually there is a follow-up scene after this opening up the next event sequence in the further future.
Speaking up last necessary mental change. There's a lot of corruption to be spent this update, although I'm afraid the larger lump sum of the 6 new mental changes is just triggering the Novel pumping. The related scenes for this haven't been implemented yet, I just had the time at hands to implement them since I plan to finish off the "book" related events next month anyways.
Other than that, get Aura a new mean looking facial base expression in the Instincts Room or revisit the Interests Room where the previously removed table has been replaced with early available sexual interest passives. The new passives work like weaker version of the Fetish/Sensitivity focus passives from Chapter 2. They only have a strong effect if Aura has yet no experience in the related fetish or with the body part, after that they become weaker.
In that way, they make it easier to trigger the first pink lewd scene when trying to resist but don't have a major long-running effect (preserving the game balancing hopefully).
The last new passive is gained (retroactively) after the Library Club 8 event where Aura acknowledges the justification of bullying and looking down on other people. It's called "Evil Can Be Good" and is the first passive that gives a Willpower debuff during Vice checks.
In the memory room there are now more memory dives available, only one related to Rose and the founding of the library club can be changed though. For the others I mostly wrote the memory scenes and setup the eventing. I decided to keep the memory dives which have no mental changes implemented yet marked with shadows so you can check them out if you want to, but won't be confused by the lack of mental change implementation.
The other memory dives include replaying George and Aura's first sex (which only differs from watching it in the recollection room in the detail that it memorizes the complete state of Aura including virginity, appearances, etc.), seeing some more every day life of the Library Club, and seeing the memory of Aura and Alicia meeting again for the first time at Crownsworth.
From the mental world, let's next move on to Roya. There the main addition is the implementation of the Homewrecking quest written by our new assistant writer Absurdity. It finally tells the long-teased story of Albrecht and Nadia getting broken up and Nadia getting stolen away by Rosemond. Of course, all of this due to Aura's interference.
To trigger the new quest, you need to have 5 Infamy, which is a new corruption stat modeling Aura's reputation. When you perform Vice actions with witnesses, such as investing to slavery, you gain this new corruption stat. You can see your current Infamy alongside some other minor stuff I have been tracking on the new Moral page of the Compendium.
Once you have that, you will receive an invitation from Rosemond with an offer that might be a bit hard to refuse should you have the "Evil Can Be Good" passive. :'D
The quest has a Vice and a Lewd route, originally a purity one was also envisioned but the complexity was already quite big I decided to end the quest with this. Originally, I had only planned to implement the quest start + first lewd scene + first vice scene, but as I mentioned above, flathunting went a lot better than I expected so I had the time to implement the full quest.
Having implemented and thus also paid Absurdity for the full quest this month also resolved our issue of having unspent money due to production issuses on the side of our other freelancers.
Otherwise, we have the first addition of the Verdeaux map. There is nothing to really interact with yet on this map, but with this have caught up on the outstanding point from last month. Thanks to Terekov for contributing this and also joining the team as our new mapper!
With this, the only position that is open is the composer one as that freelancer decided to withdraw from the project due to RL problems.
Since we are talking about freelancers, let's close the circle with some talk about the new H-CGs. The Sexy Times With George scenes are now fully illustrated with the addition of the missing Sexy Times With George 2 H-CG. The other one who got a H-CG is John, whose sex scenes are now illustrated. I have also already commissioned the Rose Seduced By Richard H-CG as you have probably seen by now with the Sketch being done.
Aaaaaaand there we have it. There are some more minor changes and additions here and there, as well as changes previously released in public patches to 0.25.0 like the luck stat rework, but that covers about all the new additions of the last weeks. I hope you have fun with the update, if there are bugs, I will still be around to fix them tomorrow. For the complete changelog check as usual below.
Changelog 0.26.0 (29.12.2022)
- Added Sexy Times With George 2 H-CG
- Added John Sex 1 H-CGs
- Added John Sex 2 H-CGs
- Added scene Aura Doubting Rose 1
- Added scene Aura Doubting Rose 2
- Added scene Rose Seduced By Richard 6
- Added scene Rose Seduced By Richard 7
- Added quest Homewrecking
- Added vice scene Homewrecking Vice 1
- Added vice scene Homewrecking Vice 2
- Added vice scene Homewrecking Vice 3
- Added lewd scene Homewrecking Lewd 1
- Added lewd scene Homewrecking Lewd 2
- Added lewd scene Homewrecking Lewd 3
- Added memory Founding Middle School Library Club
- Added memory Middle School Library Club
- Added memory High School Reunion
- Added mental 6 changes for pumping out Novel knowledge
- Added mental change fetish curiosity
- Added mental change sensitivity curiosity
- Added mental change to modify Founding Library Club memory
- Added mental change for mean expression
- Added skill Lightning Sword II
- Added compendium Moral page
- Added infamy moral degeneration variable
- Added option to increase Infamy, Sensitivity and Fetish stats in Deluxe Console
- Added Rosemond story maps (Thanks to Terekov)
- Added Verdeaux map first iteration (Thanks to Terekov)
- Added passive "Evil Can Be Good" added by Library Club 8
- Extended interests room tutorial with pink scenes section
- Integrate Maid Job 2 CG consistency lighting consistency improvement
- Implemented memory replay First Sex With George
- Updated Interests state in compendium
- Increased max vice to 18
- Increased max mental changes to 107
- Upgraded to RPGMaker 1.6.1
Balancing
- Implemented Aura auto-activating Star Knightess instead of getting Game Over in party
- Increased Matthias' taught Lightning Sword rank by 1
Bugfixes
- Fixed various Mountainreach glitches
- Fixed missing display of decline condition in choice for first Hermann scene
- Fixed incorrect calculation of reading progress for mana book
Stats
- Estimated play time: 22-29h
- Word Count: 450k
- Lewd Scenes: 59
- Real World Scenes: 169
- CGs: 27 (+1 Bonus CG)