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Friday 25 November 2016

Pre-Alpha 3.9 / 4.0 Preview / More Mindy Stuff.

Lotta stuff this week. Let's break it down now.

Pre-Alpha 3.9

This week's release is all about bugfixes, and thus ain't that interesting. The details:

- Changed the intro screen. I liked the concept of the original, but it was too... messy, I guess? The new one comes across as more elegant. Somehow. I don't know.

- Changed the sewer battles so you don't have to wait several seconds once you drive off a monster. A Leave button appears instead.

- Added a text box that pops up if you try to start a New Game, warning that the old save (and all related achievements) will be deleted if you proceed.

- Fixed a little bug where the exit button disappears when scrolling through Sid's gallery.

- Tidied up the status screen a bit. The sound controls have been shoved behind a button, similar to the opening screen, and there's now a box showing which ability you chose when you started the game.

- Have made Strength the 'default' ability, assuming you forget to choose an ability when you start a new game.

- Tried to add Skip buttons to several of the king scenes to speed up repeat viewings, but they lagged the hell out of the scenes and generally wreaked havoc. I unfortunately don't have enough time right now to set them to rights, but this problem should be remedied by next week, and most of the needed infrastructure is already in the code... just disabled.

- Though it's not a bug, per se, I've noticed a few people complain about not getting keys they should have earned, or certain events not triggering properly. I suspect these problems stem from the Skip button itself - Stencyl may not register variable changes in a new scene for a split second upon entering that scene, and I think players who are going through the game for a second, third, fourth, fifth, however many times, are hitting the button too quickly.

I assume this is a Stencyl thing that I can't really change myself. My plan is to eventually go through and change the scenes a bit so the Skip button isn't created for about two seconds, allowing the variables that get altered at the beginning to do their thing. Until then, I recommend not spamming the Skip button too hardcore. Give the scene half a moment to load properly.


Yep. No monumental changes. I was too busy to go nuts last week.

4.0 Preview

This week's Patreon release is much more interesting, as it includes the final two endings, as well as a slight tweak to one of the achievements. The two endings are the hardest to get by far, 'cause, hey, you needed some kinda reward for collecting all those damned keys. 
Also, something looking like this might be involved. Maybe.

Mindy Stuff

The release of the new game's first build is just a week off for patrons, and I figured I would share another little look at what to expect. I give to you a little preview of the status screen!


As you can see, this game is going to feature far more stats than Soo Cubus, allowing players to customize their Mindy to a much greater degree. This will lead to a planned forty different endings (by comparison, Soo Cubus has a mere eighteen, last I checked), which should drive you completionists fuckin' batty.

A few other things to expect:

- RPG-style combat, more robust than Soo Cubus, with explorable dungeons
- A season system that will change stat accumulation and some of the scenes
- Lots of goofy storytelling tied into a large number of branching stories, depending on how you proceed through the game
- Sex

Might sound like I'm overselling some of the features - never wise, in this post-No Man's Sky world - but I'm pretty sure I can make it all work with my current skillset. Lookin' forward to the new challenge, and to your reactions to what is coming.

Thursday 17 November 2016

Pre-Alpha 3.8

The slowing down continues, as I'm shifting more and more attention to the new game. Highlights:

 - Added a new potential ending. This one can gift you with a key if you get through it, and the key itself is a clue as to what you need to do. Might have to zoom in to see it properly. (Someone suggested an ending along these lines ages ago. It's incredibly specific, and I anticipate many questions about it in the future.)

- Changed the College, Pub, and Gym somewhat. Rather than having money subtracted when entering from the city screen you jump into the location for free, and you can decide whether you want to get a +1, a +2, or a +3 stat upgrade. +2 costs $500; +3 costs $1,000.

There is still a chance when doing this that you'll trigger the 'bonus' animations that cost zero dollars, though I've removed the stipulation that you need to have a particular ability to trigger the animation. I would ultimately like to make this a bit more robust (and maybe replace some of the animations, 'cause I don't like them that much anymore).

 - Changed up the explosion animation. It used to look rather shitty. Now it does not.

 - If Amelia shacked up with the landlord and she was one of your lovers previously (not via dating, the other, harder way) you would simply lose her as an option. Now she'll regain her lover status after she, uh, 'ditches' the landlord.

 - The Chr ability animation for the alley now removes Stamina, just as it should. Dagnabbit, will I ever be done with those stupid animations?

 - The sewers properly display a message after returning from a battle, where there was previously an empty text box.

 - You can no longer clickspam the sewer 'end of the line' prizes for increased bonus stats. I don't know why the engine is being so dumb about removing the buttons, but you may experience about a second of lag after you make your choice. Trying to find a way to eliminate this, but for the moment at least you are restricted to a single stat bump, as intended.

The bug hunt continues, and next week / this week's Patreon is a bug hunt period. I need to make more headway on the new game, as I didn't get a whole lot done on it this week. The cut scene for the new ending ate up way too much time, thanks to Stencyl's constant refusal to cooperate. ... or my lack of programming skill. I'm improving, though...

Anyway. Two more endings to go, and one of them will be epic, I promise. Enjoy!

Tuesday 15 November 2016

A little bit of Mindy.


It occurs to me that I've been sticking almost exclusively to discussing the Soo Cubus builds on the devblog. I've been working on much more than that lately, and it's about time I reveal some of my progress outside of Patreon. (Though if you do check out Patreon you'll see news about this stuff much earlier, and more extensively.)

I still haven't decided on a name for the next Cubus game, but as you can tell (and as you voted for) it's going to star Mindy, and detail some of her post-Soo Cubus exploits. Statistically it's going to be much more complex than Soo Cubus, which will be great fun for me to program, and I will refer you to the game Princess Maker if you want an idea of what's to come in the future.

I'm hard at work on the first build, which will be available to patrons at the beginning of December and everyone else at the beginning of January. I'm still going to be fucking around with Soo Cubus in that time, of course, so fear not that the original game might get left behind.

Plenty more to come. Keep your eyes peeled.

PS: I've noticed recently that Blogger alerts when people post comments aren't coming through to my email anymore, for some reason. No clue how I can fix this. In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments about Soo Cubus, I recommend trying me through the Legend of Krystal forum. I check the Soo Cubus thread there more often than anything else when it comes to comments and critiques and whatnot, even if I don't respond immediately.

(You can also, y'know, chuck a buck or two my way and get me on Patreon instead. I'm just puttin' it out there.)

Friday 11 November 2016

Soo Cubus Pre-Alpha 3.7

Getting down to the wire. Now that the big 'ol ending has been broached Soo Cubus is mainly about tying up loose ends, adding a few more conclusions / related bonuses, and polishing, endless polishing. This week's highlights:

- Added a new ending. It's kind of an old ending rejigged, but it's still a thing. The splodey Earth one aside, this might be the hardest one to find, so two hints: it's in the sewers and you need to get two other endings first before it will trigger. Might also maybe involve something you couldn't fight before. So I guess that's three hints.

- Related to that, there's now a gallery for all the other stuff. It combines the hobo fights and the sewer monsters. Unlocking it is the reward for getting the ending mentioned above. 

Please note that the gallery is still a little screwy, and I can't figure out why it does some of the things it does. The ChrBeast is a particular point of weirdness for me, since it does not appear when you're clicking to the right - but if you click back to it from the IntBeast, it appears as it should. Utterly perplexing. I'll keep messing with it, but in the meantime the weirdness can be dispelled just by scrolling through characters and / or fiddling with the red splooge button.

Please let me know if you experience anything wrong with the hobos or monsters in their 'natural' environments. I had to change the coding of the base characters to make them work in the gallery, and though I've tested them as much as I could in HoboFights and the Sewers respectively, I haven't managed as much testing as I would've liked. What I've seen so far leads me to believe that they work fine, though.

As a side effect of all this, the monster and hobo cumming animations now loop if you keep pressing the splooge button. Again, this is a bit wonky with the beasts.

- Finished up the cut scenes that didn't have character expressions.

- Fixed some of the text problems. It won't appear before the text box appears anymore, for example. Let me know if I missed any of these, though I think I got the majority.

- Did a bunch of specific tweaks to various cut scenes. The scene just before entering the tower will have a different number of keyholes showing depending on how many keys you currently have, for example.

- Gave Soo a 'defeated' animation during combat, assuming you lose a battle. It gets a few seconds of play time before the screen transitions elsewhere.

- Also changed Soo's Resist attack. The sword strike was epic, but it didn't seem silly / sexy enough for a dumb game like Soo Cubus.

- Tinkered with the achievements / bonuses screen so it's not laggy. At all. I suspect I can do something similar with dating to make it less laggy, too, but it's gonna take a lot more work to rejig that clusterfuck of a scene, let me tell you what.

- Fixed the lover coin thingy where you lost your lover if they died but were resurrected.

- Fixed the lover intro scenes, so you get the amount of Stamina you're properly owed.


That's it for the current one. The next Patreon build adds yet another ending - only got two left to do, now - and fixes a bunch of stuff, as well as makes it easier to purchase stat boosts from the Pub, Gym, and College. Huzzah!

Friday 4 November 2016

Pre-Alpha 3.6. Yes, this one has the good ending. Fucking finally.

Yep. As promised, I got the good ending done this week. Finally. At fuckin' last. Good lord this took a long time. The details:

- Gather six+ keys and things will go differently at the tower. It looks the same at first, but it ain't.

- There are three new bosses. Be prepped.

- The ending is a fair bit longer than any other in the game. Obviously. There is, of course, a failure ending as well. Both have been added to the achievements thing when you restart the game.

- The sex scene near the end of the ending varies depending on which characters you've successfully wooed. There are alternate scenes for two male lovers, two female lovers, one female lover and one male lover, one female / male lover, or no lovers at all. The dialogue changes as well; if you want more 'substantive' conversations, stick with a single lover.

- Linking up with that, wooing characters via dates, getting items, and one other (deadly) method now contributes to this ending. The possibilities for that final sex scene are endless! Or... not, but, there are a fair number of combinations, so shut up.

- Game over! Weeee!

Let me know if the ending is wonky at all. I tested the ever-living fuck out of it, particularly the lovers mechanic, but there's still room for error. I kinda worry that the scene before the second battle might be problematic for some people, and if that's the case I'll re-jig it somehow.

In addition I made some more changes:

- Added another ending. No hints, but it shouldn't be that difficult to find, and it adds a bit of a twist to something players have been able to exploit for ages. Keep playing and it will almost certainly pop up. And yes, this is a bad ending, so... okay, I guess that's a bit of a hint. Avoiding the ending is also beneficial in its own way.

- I got tired of Soo looking so dull when attacking, so she now has two different attack animations, one for Resist and one for Persuade. I tend to like Persuade more, and you will too.

- Combat clickspamming is no longer a thing.

- Tinkered with a few odds and ends throughout the game.

So... yeah! That's Soo Cubus 'done'. When I say 'done', of course, I don't really mean 'done'. There are lots of bugs to vanquish, lots of sprites to polish, lots of typos to correct, a few more endings to add... and... things. To thing. Suffice it to say that I bet I'll be working on Soo Cubus for a while.

Assssss for 3.7... because, yes, there's still new stuff getting plugged into the game...


I'll just leave this here. Go to Patreon to learn more. Go, go! For the good of my bank account!


Weekly updates will continue throughout this month. After that I'll be switching to the bi-weekly schedule. Then, starting in January (for the public, anyway - Patreons get it in December), a new game! Huzzah!