Hi everyone. A new update is here.

This past month I’ve committed some time to developing a new area. If you’ve played the last update, you will know there’s a certain village you came from. Construction of said village is underway.

While I’ve gotten a good feel for the scale and layout of this village, please note nothing at this stage is final. This village is intended to be one of the key locations that will show up in the eventual story mode, but until then, my plans are for it to become the central sandbox hub location and point from which I can test proc-gen wilderness, NPC scheduling and navigation, different types of dungeons, construction, etc.

It is a well-fortified village bordering the wilds with open farmland, rolling hills, shops, taverns, guilds, and many nooks and crannies to hide secrets. The whole thing sits comfortably within a square kilometer. Once the map itself has been sufficiently built up, I will link a gate so you'll be able to explore it.
 

As part of village construction, I have been amassing a collection of prefabs, and I figure now would be a good time to mention a couple of my ideas regarding player base construction. I think we have two options to consider.

Method 1 involves placing exterior facades, creating an interior space that resembles a self-contained world, similar to the interior environments found in Skyrim or Stardew. These buildings can be a lot bigger on the inside, and you can decorate them however you wish. This method would quite easily let you have magic houses and tents you could pick up and relocate.

On the other hand, method 2 would be your standard modular building system. Build and place walls, doors, roofs, etc. Thereafter, you can proceed with interior design the same way you would in method 1.

Method 1 is certainly the more performance-friendly option on its face and does not place as much emphasis on exterior design, but it is not as seamless, and having a façade forced upon you may be considered restrictive by more confident builders.

From the feedback I’ve gathered so far, it sounds like method 2 is the more popular approach and is what I’ll be pursuing primarily unless I hear more from you. I still think it would be cool to have method 1 later down the road even if it’s in some limited capacity and reserved for special items. Think of a “house in a box" or magic tents that are bigger on the inside. I am also considering the feasibility of magical artifacts or magic that lets you pick up your whole house to relocate it. Put it in a snow globe or marble, and plop it down somewhere else later. All things to consider once the base framework is up and running.

The village map will contain a few plots intended for purchase and building. I may experiment with prebuilt furnished/unfurnished dwellings as well, so those not interested in base building still have options. It would also be a good demonstration of the tools to show what could be built.

We now have a quest notification panel, which will notify you when an objective is completed or its completion status regresses. I’ve also tweaked some of the objective logic to correct an issue where completed objectives would repeatedly attempt to advance after already having advanced.

Additionally, repeatable quests will no longer remain in the player log post-completion. There was a suggestion to have repeatable quests remain logged, but display a counter for how many times you have completed it. It's a great suggestion and I'll be taking it on board for a later update.

I’ve added several potion crafting recipes based on the transformative properties of our current set of raw ingredients. You might also notice the appearance of both the cooking and crafting stations has been updated. The crafting station now resembles a hammer and anvil. It’s a little more compact and is more distinct than a regular table with a cloth draped over it. The crafting station has also gained a few recipes. You may now break down arka crystals for use in potion production.

 

Pregnancy morphs have now been added to all existing apparel sets. As everything is now in place, this week I will be implementing the sex / impregnation systems and flow for triggering scenes upon defeat.

Plans have evolved since I started on this. Initially it was planned that by default scenes would be completely text-based, like much of the item effects. It’s not unheard of for RPGs to go down that route, but many have noted that some visuals would go a long way.   As I like the freedom text gives (and the fact it’s easily scalable and manageable for a one-man crew), the compromise I’ll soon be testing involves the use of animation windows, so as you navigate through a given scene, you can have a focused window on the side showing body parts slapping together. The animations can be reused across scenes and in some cases are entirely modular. Some text and some visual illustration to go with it. I’ve seen the same method used in a number of H-RPGs, and it works well. We’ll have to see how good my execution is.

The other alternative I considered was VN-style CGs to accompany the scene text, but we don’t have the resources to pull off something like that right now. There are solo cases where I do think ero-animation will work. Multi-actor scenes are really the main source of most headaches.
 

I’ve updated and added back the eyewear items, which have been missing since the body update. These items used a different attachment method than standard apparel, which is why they were skipped, but they’re back now.

We also have a new knight armor set. The new armor set is “The Swift Knight's” armor set. It is a skimpy, trimmed-down variant of the first set. Once we have equipment buffs in, this set will serve as a higher-grade variant of the original that's lighter weight and has a lower movement penalty while not compromising on protection.

Implementation of this set involved some modification of the equipment system to support skin-tight clothing. Equips can now draw textures directly onto the player skin. This was used to create the leotard, thigh highs, and upper-arm sleeves of the set. This will allow bodysuits and other skin-tight clothing elements to be created quite easily. It should also make creating underwear sets a lot easier, as the common issue with those is that they need to hug the player body tightly, which complicates masking of sub-layers and creation of body morphs.

Furthermore, I’ve made a slight change to the layering and masking procedure. Equipment that is masked (hidden) will no longer be considered when building the masking rules. i.e., a higher layer item (e.g., skimpy knight armor) may hide a shirt being worn below it to avoid clipping but not the player's torso (skin), as you want skin to remain visible. Previously, if the shirt below the armor was set up to mask the torso layer below it, then hiding the shirt would result in the player appearing to have no torso beneath their armor. The new approach, which only considers visible equipment when building masking rules, should lessen the rate of clipping and avoid the body void issue when mixing sets.

On that note, this new armor set can be combo'd with different underwear if you wish to forgo the leotard.

Before I go, one final announcement. I got a cat! These first few weeks have been chaotic, but everything has settled down and she’s will be working as head of morale from here on out. Last months spiral into madness is but a distant memory. Cats really are the best medicine.

If you’re following along on Discord, you might get to see some cat pics. If you're not already there, come and hang out! But that is all I have for you today. Please don't hesitate to ask questions or let me know what you think. Until next time~