The primary goal for this month is to further expand the commented replay system so that it can also be used in campaign mode.  The list of stored actions will need to extended to include a small number of campaign-specific actions (like choosing which city to attack next) as well as the much larger list of Forsaken-specific actions (all the training types, all the Splendor-related options, and unique interactions like picking which Forsaken should benefit from the Velvet key, among others).  The total list of actions which need to be accounted for is pretty large, but because the framework is mostly in place, I don't think it'll be overwhelming.

However, being able to leave comments on your replays is only valuable if the same sequence of actions always leads to the same outcomes, and this is much more difficult to guarantee in campaign mode.  I've already put significant work into ensuring that all the random factors between cities (like the personalities of the Chosen) are properly seeded, and I've even attempted to isolate the random number generation of flavor-related actions from the random number generation of gameplay-related actions, so that players who use different content toggles or who engage in custom sex scenes in the middle of a commented run will still remain on track.  But I haven't yet done the thorough testing required to make sure that the outcomes truly are reliable.

This testing is going to be a significant chunk of the work required for the coming update.  If it goes well, then it should become much easier to introduce players to Forsaken mechanics (which I know are a lot tougher to get into than the already-pretty-tough main gameplay loop).

All that said, I want to ensure that this update includes a decent chunk of actual new content as well.  If time permits, I'll want to spend the latter part of the month doing some more improvements to custom sex scenes, and there's also some half-written "conversation mechanics" I had to shelve awhile back which could potentially add a lot of interesting flavor to the Forsaken in your Favorite position (and which might also be adapted to let characters in custom sex scenes have some more coherent chatter with each other).

This fixes a potential crash when loading Day 1 saves from old versions, as well as some incorrect behavior with the new Angel action logic.
Click here to download.  Mirror.

This update includes advancements and additions to various subsystems, which were generally too large to fit into an update alongside a major feature, but too small to be the sole focus of an update.  I think that most players will find something to enjoy in this one.

First up, continuing from last month's work, the commented replay system has been expanded to account for item interactions, which means that scenarios involving items can now also be reliably replayed!  On top of that, exporting a .par file will also create a .txt file containing the entire set of instructions for easy review.  A bug which was causing instructions to be overwritten when rewatching the replay has also been fixed.

This release also includes some balance reworks which have been a long time coming.  Angel Chosen have had two of their T3 Adaptation moves completely reworked.  Ego Murder, rather than preventing the player from issuing new orders to Thralls, now ends all Surrounds early, sort of like a Surround-based team-wide Detonate.  And Twisted Reward, rather than providing a huge one-time trauma resolution, now provides very strong damage mitigation to Defiler+ and Orgy actions involving the user.  Lastly, the Aversion Distortion has been buffed so that Aversion Chosen fleeing the battle now enable Orgies (but not Defiler+ actions) as though they were Surrounded and being affected by the same Defiler as their partners.  This means that when two Chosen are suffering from Aversion and fleeing from the battle, the third can actually be put in an Orgy all by herself.

A significant new custom sex scene action commissioned by Kalloi has been added, the Demonic padlock, which deepens the existing orgasm denial content.  Only subjects wearing chastity belts can be targeted by the Demonic padlock, which means that it currently can only affect Forsaken (who can be given chastity in the Customize menu) as well as Chosen who naturally wear chastity belts (currently possible only for custom Chosen whose outfits have specifically been given "persistent" chastity belts, but more ways of applying chastity to the Chosen are coming soon).  When subjects are affected by the Demonic padlock, they lose the ability to orgasm entirely, and this persists even after the end of the custom sex scene.  The padlock will temporarily unlock for Chosen who are trying to commit lustful sins, but it will lock itself up again immediately afterward.  Subjects who have been denied orgasm for a long time will gradually grow more desperate and more submissive in custom sex scenes, as they hope for the Demon Lord to show mercy and allow them release.  A new type of custom sex scene action, "Response," has been added to let the player specifically decide how to handle it when a Demonic padlock subject asks to be let free.

Players who have made a wrong move before starting a battle only to realize that their last save was a few days back should be happy to hear that the game now also allows you to rewind to the start of the day, before doing any purchases or other pre-battle actions!  For save file size reasons, this feature is somewhat limited - it only allows you to return to the start of the day during the current play session, and loading a save will not allow you to revert any actions taken immediately before that save.  But even so, I hope this will be a nice quality of life improvement for players taking on the game's harder challenges.

This update also includes a new feature in the form of a code contribution by one Hoshikawa Emi: the "size limits" feature.  The options menu now includes a setting for applying a maximum and minimum for each body asset size, so that Chosen will never be randomly generated with a size outside the specified range.

Finally, there's also a new vignette commissioned by SuperSkippy, featuring a Core Morality Chosen experimenting with ways to cope with the stresses of battle.  This one was pretty fun to write, so I hope everyone enjoys it.  The details may be found in the vignette checklist.txt file.

As always, there are also a few miscellaneous bugfixes.  Next month, I hope to completely finish the commented replay system, allowing it to account for Forsaken training and the other campaign-specific mechanics.  There are a lot more player actions to account for, and the problem of how exactly to deal with indirect effects on the gameplay from content toggles hasn't yet been solved, so this is going to be a challenge.  We'll see how much side content can be fit in alongside it.

Click here to download.  Mirror.

The commented replay system has now been expanded to include item-related actions, meaning that all the other single play scenarios (Casual, Challenge, and all the species- and boss-related ones) will be able to work with it as well.  Additionally, the autosave system has been expanded so that you can always return to the start of the day even if you didn't manually save there.

The day start save required some thought as to how to implement it in a way that wouldn't outright double the size of the game's save files.  The solution I ended up going with was to have the game only keep track of the most recent day start autosave.  After loading a save, the game will no longer have a day start save to look at, which means that you won't be able to return to the start of the day when switching save files or closing the game and starting a new play session.  This isn't ideal, but improving it will basically require rewriting the save code to be faster and more efficient, and that isn't within the scope of Release 63.

That does it for the quality-of-life features this month, and now I'm turning my attention to the game rebalancing and custom sex scene improvements.  This is pretty time-consuming, because the best way to know how well this sort of thing works really is to just thoroughly playtest it myself.  Hopefully it pays off.

I'm starting this month off with some more work on the commented replay system.  An obvious missing feature (which only occurred to me after it was too late to implement it by R62) is the ability to export the full set of instructions to a .txt file.  This would be useful not only for players wanting to look ahead at what the plan is, but also for writers to be able to double-check their previous comments without needing to go through the entire playthrough themselves.

A somewhat less certain feature is re-adding the ability to automatically proceed through a commented playthrough with a single keypress.  In the previous implementation, you could just press the spacebar to perform the next move in the battle, regardless of what that move was.  But this raises the risk of a reader accidentally double-tapping the button and missing a comment.

In any case, this also seems like a good time to add a "back to start of day" button to go along with the "back to start of battle" one.  The commented replay system is already set up to return to the commentary track when using the Retry button during battle, even if the player went off-track earlier in that same battle.  This way, even if a player accidentally takes an action which isn't part of the commented playthrough, they don't have to load their last save.

Once all of this is done, it'll be time to return to writing more flavor content for custom sex scenes.  The goal for this month is to improve how orgasms are handled, since right now they can be pretty disjointed with whatever actions are performed on the same turn.  I also want to take a look at some balance reworks for the gameplay, but whether any of that actually makes it into the release depends on whether the changes I have in mind turn out well during playtesting.

This update represents a very significant step forward, though it might take some time before the benefits reach the playerbase as a whole.  After being unusable for a long time, the commented replay system is finally back and better than ever!  With this, experienced players will be able to use in-game tools to save every step of their run, both to compete against each other and to share tips and strategies with newer players.  Now that the game is nearing maturity, it's high time to get polishing features like these worked out.

In repairing the commentary system, I've also worked out a couple of bugs which had been making it more difficult for players to share Chosen teams with each other as well.  The "Export" feature in the Data menu is used to take the current Chosen team (in its Day 1 uncorrupted state) and store it as a .par file which may be easily sent to another player so that they can keep their .sav file without needing to lose all their other progress.  If the playthrough contains commentary (via the Commentary: Write option in the Options menu), then this will also be stored with the .par file.  Presently, this only works for Classic and Challenge mode, but players will soon be able to share entire Campaign mode seeds with each other using this same system.

On the content front, this update contains another system with a lot of future potential in the form of more humanoid Demon Commander customization content commissioned by Kalloi.  When sending a Punisher-type humanoid Commander against the Chosen, the player can now choose to use a "Seductive" approach or a "Humiliating" approach.  Against Chosen suffering from Total Vulnerability Break, this will give you some much more flavorful descriptions than the current default battle text.  Going forward from here, it will be possible to add more approaches and more situations where those approaches give you some more interesting variant flavor.

In the coming month, I'll be continuing to expand the commentary system, as well as take care of some much-needed system reworks and adjustments based on player feedback about the midgame of campaign mode.  And once all of those are finished, it will be time to start looking ahead to the final species and final bosses of Reign's route.

Click here to download.  Mirror.