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Sunday 31 July 2016

Soo Cubus Pre-Alpha 2.3.5 / 2.4 Patron Preview.

It is, once again, that time. The highlights:

- Amelia has a house, a sex scene, and three sex animations. Standard fare. With her finished, that brings a close to the NPCs! Yaaay! They still get lots more stuff to do, obviously, but there aren't any more match-making peeps planned. (For the moment, anyway. Six is already a lot on my plate for the planned 'good' ending.)

- All six of the lovers also have introductory scenes that shine more of a light on their personalities and provide some extra humour. These lead into sleepovers, but the initial sleepovers are a bit mucked at the moment, and a day won't actually pass. Click the icon again and things are normal.

- Another item has been stuffed into the mall. This one has a purpose that should be obvious if you've played through the game a few times, and lets you bypass one of the endings and get at, potentially, two other endings.

- Speaking of which, there's another branching path that can lead to a battle. You'll find it on your own. (Coincidentally, the slimy ending is back! Not a hint at all!)

- 'Enhanced' a few more backgrounds. Nothing drastic.

- Tinkered with the sewers some more. I think I'm going to spend a bunch of time on them this coming week - they're bare-bones and a little boring at the moment.

- And, in advance, I know Mindy's intro text is broken. Discovered that right at the end, looked at the time, and said 'Fuck it'. Big ol fuck it.

As for 2.4, available on Patreon...


... well, the sewers look a little different... and have a few new monsters... oh, and Hard Mode is functional now, and opens up a new areaaaaaa... yep. STUFF.

Tuesday 26 July 2016

Sid bug problem.

One of the ever-helpful users on Legend of Krystal alerted me to the fact that the sex cut scene with Sid is bugged. DO NOT CHOOSE MOVIES OVER SEX WHEN SPEAKING TO SID. This option is currently borked in this build, and, I suppose, the next one as well. Very irritating, as it leads to a straight-up freeze. Working on a fix now. Just... get your fill of the movies before you go boff Sid at his house.

Monday 25 July 2016

Pre-Alpha 2.2 / Pre-Alpha 2.3 Preview!

Need to stop leaving this until late, late at night. I am dumb. New stuff:

 - New graphics. All of the characters have pixelated cut scene counterparts, more or less completely replacing the traditional art. Many have new animations, as well. (The thug from Sew's intro scene has been cut out to save a bit of space. Not sure if I'll add him back or not.)

 - Revamped cut scenes. There are only two 'slice' scenes in each one, where there used to be three, but these are now animated. Not sure if I'll go back to three or not.

 - Sid now has a sex scene. Yay!

 - The endings have not been fully redrawn yet. I was trying to get them done, started to rush, realized the art quality would suffer, and decided to hold off. In the meantime they still have the same ol' art in place.

 - 'Enhanced' backgrounds. I wanted to get to them all; only managed to change a couple. Over the next week I'm planning to finish them up. These were of secondary importance to finishing the character art.

 Please let me know if any of the sprites in the revamped areas are off-centre or anything. I tested as much as I could, and I don't think there are any issues, but it's possible some of the sex scenes aren't properly positioned anymore.

As for Pre-Alpha 2.3, well, more new graphics! Alsooooo...


By god, is that a nun? And a robot? In an airship? Maybe.

(Also, patrons, in case you're seeing this and wondering where YOUR new version is, it's coming shortly. Just have a few things to tidy up and finish. Gimme an hour or two. None of you should be awake right now anyway.)

Monday 18 July 2016

Pre-Alpha 2.1 / 2.2 preview.

Yep. New stuff:

- Sid is ready for consumption. There's a new animation tacked onto the theatre specifically for him, and once it's done his house opens up. You know what to do from there. Note that there is NOT a sex scene attached to his house like the other NPCs yet, as I didn't want to start one until I begin committed work on the cut scene pixel conversion.

- Similar to Sew, it's possible to bork your chances with Sid - though in order to go after him you need to make a sacrifice. Choose wisely!

- Added more random attribute animations. By my count there are seven left to do. Gettin' there.

- Tied to that, the chances of random events going off have been upped to one in twenty. That said, I increased the value of Int by tying it into this formula. The higher your Int, the greater the chances a random event will go off. At the moment this will eventually override normal animations altogether, so eventually I'll introduce a mathematical ceiling to prevent the normal animations from vanishing. Ran out of time this week.

- Tweaked a few of the random events to make them less OP.


- Fixed a few glitches. That goddamned Charisma stat boost at the Pub is finally repaired. (I think.)

As for the Patreon-exclusive release...


I like the way the church looks better these days. Though the carpet could look a little more 3D, if you know what I mean.

Sunday 17 July 2016

Next build will be a day late.

I'm likely holding back the next Patron-only build until Tuesday so I can finish work on overhauling the sprite graphics. Because I release both public and patron-only builds more or less simultaneously, and because it's such an involved process, I'm going to hold back the public build as well. You'll probably see it on Monday night / Tuesday morning. Sorry, Sid fans.

Sunday 10 July 2016

Pre-Alpha 2.0.5!

2.0.5?! What madness be this? Yes, I fucked something up in the last patron-only build, so I released a quick patch job. I'll just bypass the borked version with you public folks and go straight to 2.0.5. The new stuff:

- More ability-specific animations. Getting close to done. Soon every area will have one specific animation for each ability. (Upon testing and seeing them again there's one in the club I really don't like, and will probably replace it in the near future.)

- A new animation for the alley, finally bringing it up to three. I don't really like the 'best' one all that much, to be honest, but it'll do for now. 

- A new animation for the landlord, and slightly stiffer penalties for not paying your rent. Occasionally he'll sap Soo of an ability point.

- Added the four beasts in the sewers. Each beast is relatively rare, is tied to a specific ability, and requires some hefty stats to ward off. You'll only find one beast per game, as you can only have one ability at a time. This includes a Hard Mode beast, so despite what the ability screen says, you will find different content there. 

- In addition, besting the beasts will also unlock occasional, unique animations when you sleep at night, having paid your rent. The beast you beat will come to pay an altogether more cordial visit, with a significant payoff for each. (Those of you facing the HardBeast, let me know if the results are... wonky. I didn't have enough time to sufficiently test her bonus, and depending on feedback I may change it to something more run-of-the-mill. And before anyone says anything, yes, the StrBeast's bedtime animation has some holes in it. They have been fixed in the next build.)

- Tied to the four beasts, I've temporarily increased the limits for getting the Slimy Ending in the sewers. You'd need to explore the sewers for a few years real time to get the ending, I suspect, given the number of digits I added to the original flag.

- I know the Pub's freebie Charisma box is borked. I kept forgetting to change it because it was such a minor issue. It is fixed in the next build. You can stop telling me. (Though thank you to those who did.)


- Last, somewhat unexciting, I fixed an exploit that allowed players to cheat the horse races. Thanks to those players who pointed it out.

It's up. It's ready. Go to.

Tuesday 5 July 2016

Art vs. pixel comparison.


This change is more or less what you're voting for, FYI. Though I'm not sure if I'm married to the thick outline or not.

Sunday 3 July 2016

Pre-Alpha 1.9, and the advent of items.

It's SunMonday, which means it's also update day. On the docket this week:

- The mall is now open for business. You can purchase basic items that both boost your stats temporarily and permanently. Not sure if the temporary stat boosts items will remain in play, but the permanent ones are expensive enough that they don't break the game, and I've found them rather handy while testing. There's also one super-expensive item that should satisfy some players. Plenty more to come in the future. (And no, you won't find any secrets by hitting those blacked-out boxes. Ze toggles do nuzing!)

- Added a bunch of animations tied to specific abilities chosen at the beginning of the game, and tied a few of the existing random encounters to those same abilities. I'd ultimately like to have one random event for each ability at each location; at the moment all of them except the library have one. By next week there will be more.

- Also added more animations in general. The landlord gets another one, which will be part of a later 'punishment' series to make the game a bit tougher, and the gas station, street, church, and prison all have three normal animations. (I swear I did another one, but I can't remember which it was.)

- Added 'Give In' and 'Leave' buttons to the sewers. You can now submit to monsters to your hearts' desires. Also tried to make it so monsters will show up a bit more often by tweaking the effects of Int on your progress through the sewers. Will continue to mess with this formula going forward, as well.

-Yes, at last, fixed the bug that keeps you in the sewers after Joe's warning. You'll be shunted outside instead. No more slime monster ending. (Unless you go looking for it, I guess.)

- Last, added a little Patreon symbol that links to this page. Hint hint.

You know where to go by now. Next week: more animations to add to the pile, tweaks to the sewers, and the addition of the ability beasts that I pimped out earlier. There are four, and they are (sexually) ravenous.

Also, probably, other stuff. Enjoy!

Saturday 2 July 2016

Mindy!


I meant to post this a few days ago, but I lost track of time. Meet Mindy, the storeowner in the next public update. She will sell you things! I anticipate people will want to see her having sex, which I may will probably will almost certainly implement in a future update.

Mindy's creation leads me to an important question which I've been mulling over for a while, now: should I convert the cut scene art to pixel art, and just have a full-on pixel game? Pretty much all of the praise I've gotten for Soo Cubus has been for the delicious pixels, and by this point I've more or less decided I'm a better sprite artist than I am a, y'know, real artist. I can also animate the cut scene stuff to at least a small degree, which I'm hesitant to try with traditional art.

Vote on the poll to the right and help me decide, plz. I suspect the pixel art camp will win, though I may hold out for an overwhelming majority before I make the full-on 'change' decision. If I do get rid of the traditional art (which, honestly, would help pare down the game's size by a decent bit) I'll post the pictures in a gallery on the blog, so they're at least not gone forever.