0.47 Release and 0.48 Preview

Hi, perverts! I hope you're all as well as you can be. I'm happy with the responses I'm seeing to the latest releases.

I'm continuing to have more bugs than I like, which is due in part to a combination of the game's growing complexity and the fact that I'm working on crosscutting features like sophisticated content, new transitions, and some unannounced stuff.

Outside of development, this sort of thing is addressed in part by automated testing, but  it's tricky to do in video game development. Ren'Py actually has a secret, limited, unsupported way to do automated testing, so one of the things I've been working on was figuring out how to use it. 

And I figured it out! I don't yet have the whole game scripted for autotesting, but I've already included checks to make sure certain bugs don't recur, along with tests that quickly make sure that the intro sequence, The Mica Sign, and The Moaning Hole run without crashing. This sort of testing won't catch all the issues, but with a bit more work this should eliminate most major game-blocking issues.

Another change I'm going to try and make is to stop publicly estimating when releases will come out. I'm not good at it, and the pressure to hit an arbitrary date has probably contributed to stuff coming out buggy. I'll stick to updating y'all on progress without making wild guesses on dates.

Reflecting on An Intimate Graduation

This was big! It didn't take as long as the first graduation option, but was almost as big: 20k words. My word counts are taken from the source file, if you're curious, so they include things other than the dialogue and narration. If I were to guess, I'd say 10% or so of a typical source file is stuff that doesn't get shown on-screen as text... and, of course, each player will only see some of what's written due to branching choices.

Something that I consistently hear from some players is a desire for exclusivity in scenes with Theresa. Sometimes this is framed in terms of not wanting to "share" her. I can understand this, although I'm solidly polyamorous myself, so I'm happy to finally have an option for this major story beat that doesn't involve Theresa messing around with other people. The update also included the ability to check in with Theresa so that you can feel a bit more emotional intimacy with her over the course of the game.

It's a bit tricky to hit the right tone with partner-exclusivity in a game like this, which depends on your protagonist getting into sexy situations with a bunch of characters. It's probably possible to play through without being intimate with anyone but Theresa, but it's not really what I'm going for. And if the protagonist is fucking around, it seems weird to let the player hold her to a different standard. As a result, the in-game relationship I'm trying to accommodate is one in which you don't have a specific agreement of exclusivity, but you don't have to see or hear about her fucking other people if you don't want to.

I enjoyed writing some more touching, emotionally intimate stuff with Theresa as part of the graduation. Because things like training and expeditions can be played in a variety of orders, it's tricky for me to write a good relationship arc. Story points like graduation give a good opportunity for this stuff and I hope that things like the relaxed after-dinner activity came across as pleasant as I intended.

Next Release

The main piece of writing in the next release will be "The Chthonic Swelling", a horror expedition for Act I that plays around with crossroads, travel, death, and similar such things. It features a male potential partner and very little in the way of actively horrific bits. This is one where I'm being a bit indulgent with the literary references, so most people will probably pick up on at least one of them. This is mostly done being written; I have a couple more versions of the final sex scene to do, plus the debriefing with Theresa and one of the associated nightmares.

I'll also be including the transition overhaul, where instead of fading to black between scenes there's a transition based on the sort of movement or other connection between the scenes. I might tweak the details of these or adjust individual changes, but if y'all like the result then this'll probably be the finished version of transitions. I'm guessing I'm about halfway done with that task, which is mostly a bunch of search and replace (but where I have to think at least a little bit about each replacement).

Beyond that, there'll be some bug fixes (including Theresa's name potentially ending up with unsubstituted variables in it), some quality-of-life stuff (current Ken visible on exploration menus), and a trial run of optional minor variations when you do a scene repeatedly (for folks who e.g. like revisiting NPC play scenes).

As always, please let me know if you have any issues, suggestions, or comments! You can reply here, DM me on Patreon, or email me at: phanes@phanes.me