Star Knightess Aura 0.40.0-prerelease-3

ITCH | MEGA | ITCH-DELUXE | MEGA-DELUXE

This week half-way continues the work from last week in closing out the Maid Academy and in the other half, adds a new dungeon level to the final dungeon. Overall, there are three main additions.

First of all, I did *hopefully* most of the Paulina world state update. It was a lot more work than expected and the naive approach I had used to distinguish between what sprites need to be displayed in what scene, etc. got outscaled by the complexity. I implemented some auxilliary helper logic to bind NPC sprites to those of Actors, which in theory should ensure that the correct Paulina sprite gets displayed. Likewise, RPGMaker for some reason doesn't keep track of the "Collapse" grapic of an actor, I extended it with that functionality and set the right properties for Paulina. I tested quite a lot but I bet I still overlooked a lot. 

There just a lot of different states (before cursing, after being cursed, being at the maid academy, first vice decions, etc etc coming back as a maid, coming back as a male and it goes on) and even though Paul is pretty quite, there are still quite a few events he has some level of participation in.

Then, the next item, I made a post about the new Maid Training 4 H-CG. That one also took quite a while to integrate x_X Blowjob scenes with rotating partners are kind of crazy, there are so many image frame changes, it looks nearly a little bit animated :'D

One weird thing about this scene, officially there are 4 partners in it, but the assets were a bit more limited for representing the males, so it's not fully accurate in representing everyone rotating around. But I think it's good enough and the time and money (210 USD ;_;) on making generic males assets is already enough :'D

And finally, we have one more level in the final dungeon. YOU WILL LIKE THE LAVA LEVEL AND YOU WILL EAT THE HEAT. (Since I know it can be annoying for some people, I decided to make the mandatory part of the level fairly short, with mostly optional dungeon parts to mine some more Pyromantium) Also, if you lost to Sathanas in the Fortress, you will reencounter him here, except he's a lot stronger. :'D

You will also encounter him there if you reach the point before finishing the Fortress, giving you an additional place where you can kill him. This will be relevant especially for Pride, although more for the case of killing him outside Richard's Domain as an alternative. Not sure what point there is in fighting a Demon General in this place where they get a massive boost. Anyways, there is one case that I haven't covered yet, which is if you kill Sathanas before you even ever arrived in Draknor Fortress. This case is a bit complicated, I need to look at it and will mostly break the game if you do it, but I think it should be fairly unlikely since this is super later game content and entering Draknor Fortress is early mid game content.

.......Right...? H-haha, well, I will deal with it in the upcoming week.

In general, I only started working on the level yesterday, so it's not well-tested currently. Although I did test a couple of encounters well enough so that the mechanics should be working. I am also unsure about whether Wrath really should be the second level, after having implemented it. I might switch it with the next level, idk. Either way, the next level will be in like half a year or so when we get close to finishing the game.

On the technical level, our assistant developer Trihan mostly focused on bugfixes an some minor quality of life stuff. If you are on NG+, you should now better see which scenes you have unlocked in your current playthrough vs in some previous playthrough.

On the art department, well you saw the update on the Gyaru Laura artwork. Emubi has some private issues that came up last week to take care off, and won't be too available for the rest of the month, but let's see how far we can at least get with the character artwork.

Aaaand that's it for the week! Next week, we return to the real world! I wanted to so some brothel content as well, but I still need to check on our assistant writer Absurdity's manuscripts for those so let's see. Otherwise, I will just focus on Laura content. For the changelog including the public patch, as usual, I refer to below.

Changelog 0.40.0-prerelease-3 (16.02.2024)

• Added Maid Training 4 H-CGs 
• Added map Richard Domain 2 - Wrath 
• Added boss Sathanas reencounter 
• Updated Paulina Adventurer Guild world state after Graduation / Curse Removal 
• Updated Paulina Albrecht Speech world state after Graduation / Curse Removal 
• Updated Paulina Hermann Marriage world state after Graduation / Curse Removal 
• Updated Paulina Reverse Summoning Ritual world state after Graduation / Curse Removal 
• Updated Paulina Hunting a Demon King world state after Graduation / Curse Removal 
• Handled case of ending patronage when Paulina returned to being Paul 
• Added obstacle in Maid Academy to enter Upper Floor from Hidden Room 
• Added special clear state for recollection room crystals indicating that they have been done in the current playthrough
• Removeed page up and page down buttons in save menu when using a mobile device 
• Increased max killed bosses to 112 

Balancing

• Reduced obstacle level for greed chests to 25 
• Added Infamy to Paulina corruption decisions 
• Added HP cost to Break Bondage skill and make Libidas give MDEF, DEF buffs as well as HP regen 
• Gave Lilim+ Tenacity I and have Overpollination give Resistance to Light like Obscurum 

Bugfixes

• Fix typos in prerelease content 
• Fixed game crash when ExtraWindows plugin is turned off 
• Fixed Passion getting Exhausted instead of Animated Robe in troop 447 
• Fixed skill text in compendium being able to overlap traits 
• Fixed John Rising incense lure not removing drugs 
• Fixed viewed scene script lines being in the wrong part of their events 
• Fixed Womb of Lust not triggering when curse is completed
• Fixed vice path of Something is Fishy to also mark Poisoned Elixirs as completed
• Fixed default values for autosave options when no config save is present
• Fixed John being able to learn spells that cost 0 MP but have costs from other sources
• Fixed manual in Maid Academy Hidden Room not having direction fix flag
• Fixed walkable table tile in Arwin basement
• Fixed Stone Mind II not being 6 turns yet
• Fixed aura_dev recollection variable being set to the wrong value in scene 4
• Fixed Tutored By Richard 4 giving +1 George relationship instead of -1
• Fixed typos in public content
• Fixed only one Sahagin getting paralysed by back attack in troop 136
• Fixed Anti-Magic Armor+ not expiring on day end
• Fixed Sathanas not using more powerful Furorem if all previous hits missed