JULY FIRST UPDATE: 

THE NEW FEATURE IS OUT... But first;

Zephyr and her unevolved form Cluffy have won the monthly monster poll.

But who cares because the buggy CAMPING UPDATE IS OUT. No way to sugarcoat this, we are going to be grinding into this one all week with bug tests... Read on.

CAMPING UPDATE. After a miserably overworked season of automating call centers Invader Incubus FINALLY has time off (2 weeks) and managed to finish the next major FEATURE (alpha) build for EGGOMON. After the battle system, Camping is easily the most complicated thing going on, even though it doesn’t feel like it on the surface. 

THIS IS A TEST BUILD. New monsters will come in a couple days (along with the new poll). This means you start with a team of mature monsters. To play normally, dismiss them. I’ll be adding 2 new monsters this Thursday. 

ADDED CAMPING: 

How it works:

Monsters got their calories bar in yellow, and obedience bar in red. Every day monsters lose calories. 

The less calories a monster has the hungrier it is. Hungrier monsters lose obedience at the end of a day.

FIREPITS are little points near most major roads and some POI’s. Walk up to a firepit and interact with it [R] to start camping. Camping heals your monsters for 50hp. On the camp screen, you may first open your inventory [I] and then use numbers and arrow keys to target monsters which you can feed food. Then start camping with [C]. Your monsters then take turns seeing how much obedience they have left. The lower the obedience, the higher chance there is of the scout being mounted and possible bred. Breeding works like it does in battle, the scout might use up her BP (contraceptive Barrier Points) to avoid an impregnation, and her bonus fertility increases the likelihood of getting knocked up. The monster that mounts the scout regain some Obedience, since it likes her more now. 

ADDED WARP SPEED: Previously a dev only ability I will be leaving it in the game for now. Hold [z] and you will send the clock ticking at warp speed into the next day. 

ALTER: The LOSS LOOP of monsters getting hungry, and then forcibly breeding the scout in the camp isn’t well balanced yet. For one you start with a load of food which trivializes the problem for some time. Expect a lot of these numbers to be tweaked over time, feedback appreciated.

ALTER: Time now passes at half the speed it did. Originally every second caused one TICK of a days clock which lasts for 240 ticks (so seconds). I doubled this a while ago in order to speed up the passage of time., Now that the player can enter a warp speed with [z] and that time warps to the next day when resting at camp, the passage of time has been reverted to its original state of 1 day = 240 seconds. 

ALTER: Changed the Rosedew Meadow ambient track to one that doesn’t include insect buzzing. 

FIXED: The tires on the ends of the road for the plains map didn’t have a collider, allowing the player to walk out into the void.

FIXED: You can no longer flee a battle after losing a battle and cause the game to become confused. 

Known Bug: Game is desyncing or some shit after running too long on older PC’s. I am losing my mind trying to track down this bug and figure out where the garbage is collecting in GODOT.

Known Bug: You can still do shit with a stable stud monster, like moving it after it mounts a scout, and have it still be counted as in the stables breeding a scout. This is about to be fixed with a bug repass on the stables which will include a once-per-run scout recovery.

Probable bugs: X-anims might need a repass in several places because I had to make room and change code for a new Xanim: Cowgirl, which has monster sprite parts that will underlap and overlap the scout sprite. This is why Thundama took so long.

Coming: AFTER much discussion I will be redoing the unlocks system into a levelling system. Basically you will earn persistent skill points and spend them before going into a run. ALSO I am (soon) adding an item called SANITY SALT that will allow you to recover one scout from her bad end, once. More instance of this item will likely be super rare and tough to find in the game. 

Furthermore, I have recently picked up several huge bundles of royalty free SFX and music from HUMBLE BUNDLE, so expect loads of new sounds going forward. 

I have 2 weeks off of work to JUST focus on EGGOMON (until the 15th) so you can (constructively) harass me plenty on F9zone until then, just like during launch I will be slumming about. There will be a new LINUX version once this release is bug fixed, no point releasing a buggy LINUX version.

VULCHA has won the poll and is in the game with her animation. Her unevolved form, HARPI will grace the skies of the plains as well. 

N

NEXT MONSTER POLL is out now. We shall vote on the second SPARK monster to be added to the game.

Do you want a powerful Zebra warrior to dwell on the plains? Or a gigantic, slumbering, lizard woman?

This month I wished for a BIG STRONG lady to counter the continuing introduction of smaller Wind types. I made a Zebra, because electric zebra’s are one of my favorite monsters, and then I went a bit overboard... The Thunder Lizard monster is the largest monster to date, so big she has to squat to be seen fully in frame. I hope the vote is close, but I feel like it might get crushed by one side.

Rosaria has her X anim, FINALLY I can stop thinking about it, and all the XANIMS, until the day comes I remake them all in 256 pixels with 10 frames, instead of 128 and 5 frames, F***. Next I will be adding a bunch of x-anims to make them compatible with new mirror style and thus, new scouts (who are different sizes and shapes). So some old / early monsters will just get MORE animations. There’s also a new position for the scouts coming next month: Cowgirl, which I was uncomfortable with since it didn’t show off the monster enough... But whatever I guess. Interestingly I can also make it so the monsters will be feet facing or head facing the camera and make the scouts facing the camera or facing away (so cowgirl / reverse cowgirl). 

CAMPING is almost done, I ripped out most of its half-finished code in order to get this VULCHA update out. You will be getting it this weekend. Camping is mostly finished and operational BUT didn’t make sense since the monsters you control couldn’t get agitated enough to FORCE you to camp (and then relieve their frustrations on you).

Camping works like this: Ideally you camp every other night, keeping your monsters well fed the whole time. Each night monster burns some calories. Calories are like a fuel tank, and you fuel them up by feeding them food from your inventory. When you camp, you get an opportunity to feed all of them, then choose to REST with [R]. 

When you choose to rest each monster you control takes a hunger test. During a hunger test each monster reviews if it is well fed. If the monster has lots of calories it doesn’t lose any obedience, and might gain some obedience (unlikely). If it is hungry it loses obedience. 

Then each monster takes an obedience test. The lower obedience is, the more likely that monster is going to make a move on the scout. If their obedience test goes badly for the scout, the monster mounts the scout and attempts to impregnate her. 

Go more than 1 night without camping and the monsters feel agitation, each time they are agitated they lose obedience automatically, and it gets worse if you put it off. Rest at rest points, which are going to be little fire pits spread across the map, and keep monsters fed. NOW the kicker is you probably WON’T be able to keep a full team of fully evolved monsters fed. Evolved monsters burn lots of calories and food is going to be scarce, trapping you in a position where you have to keep moving from zone to zone looting as much as possible. Just a BUG types can keep loading a scout up with eggs when mating in the stables, VEG types actually lose less calories a day, their unevolved forms lose NONE, WOW. (Each type is a bit special in its own way (forthcoming EGGODEX will explain more idiosyncrasies)) 

My idea is to keep lots of wild food sources off the main roads, forcing the player to explore and keep moving around the map. The main road will still lead you to landmarks where crates of items might be, but exploration will be rewarded. (I know you all know the 4 maps and the world isn’t big yet)

And of course, none of this is in the game YET. But almost. It feels pretty good to me from a macro design perspective, and so far in the game it works okay. But I think the rates of hunger, and loads of polish explaining what the fuck is going on, is needed badly now.

SO PLEASE IGNORE THE CALORIE AND OBEDIENCE METERS AND REST WARNINGS. I didn’t pull those out for this 1st of the month release.  

TEMP: Saving and loading data is suspended for the time being until I can overhaul the process this month. I was using an old method that wasn’t suitable for GODOT 4.0. You can still earn unlocks they just are not recorded, for now. 

CHANGED: Plains ambience isn’t as loud.

FIXED: I hadn’t added spark or wind stones to the key random stone function. They are added now. 

APRIL MID: 

Added hidden lore blurbs.

There are now hidden lore blurbs in the drop base, these will eventually populate all maps, unique locations especially. When standing beside an object of interest hit R, this interacts with the collider, and causes the lore inspection to trigger a short pop. Don’t mind the little monster in the jar. She enjoys the job she was specifically bred to perform non-stop...

The player can now sprint. Press shift to begin sprinting, press it again to stop sprinting.

Sprinting drains scout stamina. Cannot sprint when stamina is fully drained. Stamina pool max increased by increasing your fertility (with herbs).

MONSTER DROP: The first SPARK type monster enters the fray. A yellow, electric mouse? That will never work. She uses the first SPARK move: Snap Bolt

She’s only catchable in RosedewMeadow, where you might find her EZ encounter in the bushes beside the drop base. Or a regular encounter on top of the hill.

Aithon has been moved out onto the plains, where a horse belongs.

Drakia has her X anim, FINALLY I can stop thinking about it.

I also wasn’t feeling Drakia’s face, so I changed it to be more intimidating, which is in line with her lore as a dangerous dragon. 

I'm all hands on finishing up CAMPING NOW. Finally, a way to heal your monsters. And also for them to become hungrier, fall into a frustrated breeding frenzy, and betray your trust, making you their breeding stock. Truly the feature that monster catching games have been missing since the beginning.