Progress Update- catching up

Okay, so I've hired some help to write these posts, cause I'm terrible at keeping up with them. This should help me get them out weekly, instead of putting them off cause they take too long.

Starting with personal stuff: Oof. Stress.

My work routine has been in tatters lately, and focusing has been difficult. To get things done, I keep turning to old habits of working late at night and stressing out. As a result, I ended up not taking very good care of myself and ultimately had to take some time off to reset.

I haven’t been struggling with the code itself. In fact, I feel optimistic about how it’s going, but it’s been a challenge to get everything else out of the way so I can focus on it properly.

Today’s stream was much more focused than usual. I decided to just put on some music and code, instead of doing Discord shenanigans, and was able to get through a good chunk of work. If you missed the streams, VODS are here. ('Videos' tab at the top.)

What’s being worked on?

Blue indicates progress since last time.

Game Object data/structure ~ 92%

Currently, I’m knee-deep in the remaining work. While the old structure isn’t great, I can still use some of it for now as a crutch so that I don’t have to rewrite everything in one go.

I’m focusing on body parts right now, which are the most complicated objects in the game. Since I now have the option of remaking things, all the body part data can be put in one place. Before, they used to be pieced together from several different areas in the code. It has become much easier to start attaching body parts now that they’re all grouped together, sort of like lego pieces. This makes it much easier to consider adding additional unique features to bodies in the future, for example taurs, multi-breasts, or multi-penises. It’ll take basically no additional code to add/remove standard body parts, which makes my job a lot easier.

ECS components/systems ~ 18%

This is going well! I’ve been working on AI interactions, toy feature basics, sizing, fluid coatings, animation controls, and pairing the UI with the new features.

Currently, I’m implementing NPCs. This will ultimately just be a simple object with a number of modular components that’ll make up the body parts and brain. This has been going very smoothly because each time I create a component, I can just use it in the next feature I’m working on. A lot of the work is already done this way.

Here’s a very simple example with the Vibrate and Scale features. Both use a simple 0 to 1 linear ratio to determine how strongly vibrating or how big the object is. So there’s just a Ratio component that does the work for both. I don’t have to spend a bunch of time programming the UI to handle both of those things separately. Anything with a Ratio can just automatically get the same UI, without me needing to code anything more specific.

While progress on this has been slow, that’s due to the aforementioned personal reasons.

UI ~ 18%

Not much extra to say here. Basically, this will go up with the Components section unless I hit a snag. Mostly just using old code, but wiring it to new places, and making it appear dynamically instead of hard-coding it.

Q&A

Which characters are currently planned to be added to the game?

Gen 5 characters are the most obvious next ones. Hard to think too much about new characters right now, since the process of adding new assets has ground to a halt. I’ll address this again a bit later- I want to start doing community polls for new characters/species and stuff. Just… gotta wait until it won’t bury me with extra tasks.

We have ball gags, but are there plans to add regular gags?

Yep! I think there are some new ones in this update, and more can be added as we go.

The new physics allow dildos to bend. This allows for new possibilities. For example, will we be able to slap the characters with toys or shove them around on their faces to incite various reactions? Imagine making a character connected to a dildo cum because you slapped someone with it.

Slapping/rubbing is absolutely a good idea. It’s possible, too, since there’s already bounding boxes set up. I’ll really delve into these mechanics during the Portals update, since it’ll be real body parts instead of dildos linked to the part.

Any plans to add oviposition or extra long toys that’ll go in one side and out the other? Oviposition- yes, almost certainly! Will probably be much easier when I’m done with the current changes. Toys that go all the way through- there are a couple of minor challenges, but I think so!

Portals? Yup, they’re next! I’ll talk a lot more about how these’ll work when it’s time to tackle them.

Cum buckets? Storing fluid is a thing I wanna work on. Buckets/tanks for individual characters are technically possible already, I just need some spare time to give them sprites and stuff. So yes, probably!

That’s all for now!

I’ve been struggling lately to get my work schedule on track. Lack of sleep and other stressors have really made it difficult to progress. I’m doing my best to adjust and keep going. Sucks to have issues like this on a project that’s already slow. 

The good news is that things can turn around surprisingly quickly. The last couple of days things have been stabilizing and there’s been much better progress. Hopefully that keeps up.

Also, my Discord server has gotten a lot more official recently. I hope to open it up and get some more people involved soon. It’s a lot to think about in the middle of this update, though >.<

Thanks for reading. I hope to have a lot more progress to show next week!

<3