Bitch Breaker Version 0.21

Welcome to the new hotness.

What's new:

• Bug fixes
• Minor rework of the furniture system.
• Added possible cum layer to Max's Lair (For a future favor.)
• Added missing CRT filters for some menus.
• Added more mods.
• Added the option to mute the music in Max's lair without muting all music.
• More bug fixes.
• Added more bugs.

Bug Fixes:

• The "private coercion" bug is fixed.
• Fixed an issue with a clothing item (pants) being incorrectly named.
• Fixed numerous bugs related to incorrectly spelled wards. (Seriously. I need to stop coding under the influence.)
• Fixed an issue related to images not displaying correctly in the "Let me touch something" favor.
• Fixed an issue that occasionally caused crashes when rapidly opening and closing the PC menu (Why someone would do this, I don't know.)
• Fixed an issue with choices not registering correctly in the Boardroom Meetings.
• Fixed an issue with a work menu image remaining after the menu was closed.
• Fixed an issue certain talk choices leading back to the main menu.
• Misc.

Mods:

• Cow Bikini underwear set
• New body writing choices.
• A full clothing set.
• A full furniture set.

     Despite my greatest efforts, there were a significant number of bugs still present in version .2, which was surprising because I play tested until I felt myself losing my mind. The biggest disadvantage to being a one man team with a full time job and a family is that I literally don't have the time to do everything I want to do. Even simple fixes and features are often very time costly. This means that I have to carefully choose where I put my time. (At some point I might have to finally get some help.) That said, a massive advantage of being the only person on the project is that I've had eyes over every bit of it, and bug reports are SUPER useful. I can more or less tell at a glance where the bug is and how to fix it. Oftentimes, it's overlooked code from an existing bug I'm already aware of, but even if it's something new I'm not entirely lost. Thank you to everyone who posted/sent me bug reports. It really helps.

     I had intended for this version to be simple bug fixes, but as is often the case, once I started digging around in the code, I couldn't help but improve a few things. Among them is the furniture system. When I first began to think about making the game mod compatible I tried to just assign variables to my image declarations, but when that failed for obvious reasons (It didn't occur to me that I was just storing the data as a string.) I turned to the Ren'Py documentation to learn how I might be able to assign variables to images. This lead me to dynamic displayables, which are totally awesome, very useful, and the absolute wrong tool for the job, as I would later learn. "Why?" you might ask. They don't handle animation well. They're fantastic for static images, but if you try to assign a variable to them that directs to an animation, they can't handle it. Ah, but young, naïve UnknownError did not know this. So I built out the entire furniture system using dynamic displayables. To get animation to work for things like the spaceship desk toy, I "cheated" by embedding conditionals in the code that simply read the string stored in the name attribute of the object and told the game to display the animation instead of the static image. This is fine if it's just me making furniture. I can continue to add conditionals to this suboptimal code and bloat it to hell and back with no worries. After all, you've all got plenty of RAM right? And it DID work. In fact, the old code worked so well that I completely forgot about it. Until I started work on a mod guide.

     The mod guide is coming, likely in the next week or so, but until then I wanted to include some more mods that could be used as examples. (You'll find some helpful stuff commented in the mods' rpy files.) This meant making a new item for every modable list in the game so that anyone who wanted to make that type of item would have a reference. This eventually lead me back to that old furniture code. I wanted to demonstrate how one could add animations in a mod by making another animated desk toy, which lead me to remember the legacy code since adding that animation would have involved adding it to the other list of conditionals in the display code for the lair. Realizing that this would be a huge annoyance for anyone trying to make a mod themselves, I fixed the system. While it doesn't seem like it at first, Ren'Py actually does let you use variables in image declarations. You just have to place your variable in brackets within the quotations so that Ren'Py knows that it's a variable and not just a string. It looks like this:  image = "[variable]"  Once you've done that, you can then change "variable" and it will direct the code to the new image and display it. This is the heart of the customization system. When you select a new clothing item, the code changes all of the variables associated with those images. This is why you may occasionally see the code directing these to transparencies. The code needs something, so you can't just leave it blank. But back to the matter at hand, the furniture system. Once I replaced the legacy code I noticed that the fireplace was in the wrong spot. This is because Ren'Py places images based on the top left most pixel. An image can be any size and still line up perfectly if you understand this. (note: This is not true for smaller images with multiple layers since every layer changes the effective size of the image and can lead to...interesting problems.) Because I needed to use conditionals for the fireplace anyway, I simply coded a new position for it. If the image name = fireplace put it here instead of there. Again, that works great if it's just me. But it's not just me anymore. So I added another attribute to the wallart class. This attribute just tells the game which position to use. One for tall art, like fireplaces with chimneys, and one for regular art, like paintings. So if you've made or are making Wall Art, you'll need to update your code a little. (Don't ask me why I didn't just make all the images the larger size. I have my reasons! Okay, I don't have a good reason beyond just not wanting to take the time to resize all of the old images. There are a lot and it was just faster to do it in code. If experience is any indication, I'm going to regret it later, but that's a problem for future UnknownError and fuck that guy.)

     I added the option to mute the lair music because during the extensive playtesting I had to endure while fixing bugs, my wife asked me why that wasn't an option. I honestly didn't have an answer for her. So it's an option now. If you guys encounter any other quality of life issues, let me know. I've spent so much time with the game and it's mechanics that in many ways I've lost perspective. One of my guiding principles for development is that the game must respect the player. It needs to respect your time, it needs to respect your intelligence, and it needs to respect your choices.

BB 0.21: https://mega.nz/folder/gAVGTQCC#cqlDuOguDD73xJhqWiN3wg

New Mod Folder: https://mega.nz/folder/dR1CDC7Z#SBEpRiMeHWaJuESQDt47pQ

PS: Future releases will eventually have these mods integrated back in. They're just there now to make it easier for people who want to make their own mods without having to peer totally into the gaping chasm of a sweaty toothed madman's diseased mind that is Bitch Breaker's greater codebase. Eventually, the mod folder will just be used for content that might not be for everyone, or for more size hungry stuff like music. (70% of BB's size is literally just music.)