DraconicSyntax

Beta Build v0.8.5x4 - tweaks and bug fixes

Thanks to everyone for their fast reporting - got a lot of critical bug fixes in this build here! Turns out that new build format I tried for the last update was a problem as well - caused all manner of issues that I couldn't even begin to explain. Things have been reverted and the game should be much more stable now! Added a few new settings to the pause menu and have added the optional mechanic for jumping to cost stamina, scaling of course with fullness. A few other long standing bugs have...

Beta Build v0.8.5x3 - Companion!

FINALLY here! So sorry this one took so long - I'd originally been hoping on getting it out before the holidays, but that was a bit of an ambitious goal, and I severely underestimated the time I'd take getting new sound effects into the game (what I thought would take 2 or 3 days ended up taking over 2 weeks). The two major additions this build are new sets of jumping/landing animations to help give the player more weight to their movement when lugging around prey, and of course the new vorac...

Quick status update

Hey all! Sorry things have been quiet here, I've been hard at work on a new major feature for the game in the form of the companion character. I was hoping it would be done before the holidays, but being that its not an enemy or the player themselves, its required all new code to be built from the ground up to consider its behavior, actions, and more (including pathing and collision since it moves differently than anything else).

Fortunately despite the length of time it has taken, it i...

Quick life/development update

Hey all, just a quick personal update - unfortunately I've had a family member pass away quite recently. I'll be taking a little time off to deal with it, so release schedule will be pushed back slightly (but not too much). I'll still be around to answer questions here and on discord occasionally - it helps me to keep things feeling a little more normal, but otherwise you can probably expect my replies to be slower than normal for a bit.

Thanks for your patience while I deal with this...

Beta build v0.8.5x2 - Level 3 and more

FINALLY some new level content after way too long of only having 2 levels. Intractable doors have been added which has allowed me to take advantage of game space in a new way and add subsections to levels, so I've also gone and expanded levels 1 and 2 - each are around 30-40% larger than before. Meanwhile, level 3 is bigger than both level 1 and 2 combined. I've got some more to say about level 3 and its design, but I've got some important things to talk about first.

Recently I came acr...

Beta Build v0.8.5x1

Next beta build for supporters! I'd been trying to crank out enough work that I could actually get some of the new level content I have planned into this build, but I got caught up in a litany of bug fixes and other improvements that needed to happen as well, and I don't want to deprive supporters of the next build for any longer. I THINK at this point I should be able to manage monthly releases for beta builds again, or at worst bi-monthly since there should not be as many giant features tha...

Beta Build v0.8.0x4 - Executives

Executives are in, along with a boatload of new code to govern their bodyguards! I have not slept in 22 hours and I just found out the water for my apartment is off today while they do repairs so I'm keeping this short as possible so I can pass out until the water problem is resolved. Resolving a couple other big life things this next week, but expect a more in depth post about future plans soon!

As always, let me know of any bugs you find :)

Beta Build v0.8.0x3

(Ignore the post I made right before this, I completely forgot to include the download link!)

A solid coding induced migraine later, and scientists are finally in and functional!

I'm so sorry this build has taken absolutely forever - it actually is also still lacking the new executive enemies, but at this point I wanted to just hurry up and get the functional parts of the update released since I think you all have been kept waiting long enough. The start of this year has been a r...

Couple hiccups, but about ready

Another brief update as I don't want to leave followers in the dark on what's going on - where animation almost always takes longer than anticipated, coding tends to bounce between going MUCH faster or taking MUCH longer than anticipated. This time of course it was the latter as I failed to account for how much in depth work is needed to adjust the vore system. Its nothing that's overcomplicated, just a long and tedious process - I seem to have a bad habit of thinking things that are straight...

Development update (Jan 2025)

Happy 2025 to all!

Wanted to post a quick development update to keep everyone in the loop as to what's going on. This month has unfortunately been rather slow for development - as I'm technically a business owner, I had to complete a bunch of tax work this month rather than later on when it's due for most people. Additionally, my computer has been on life support for a bit over a year now - it would get the most random freeze and hard crashes, get stuck in boot loops, and a plethora of...

More vore animations

New levels and enemies have won the poll votes for the next update! Volt Jolt has been hard at work creating animations for a couple different enemies - first up being the scientists, passive enemies who are mostly just going to want to flee for their lives from Mia and be worth some extra DNA points. These enemies are much shorter in stature, meaning there's finally a reason for me to flesh out a number of vore animations for the "half" sized belly!

I'm aiming to have this build out AS...

Poll (tier 4 second vote) - Blind drake, story beginnings, and new levels

Second poll for tier 4 members to cast their second vote!

Option 1: Blind drake rework - the blind drake was always meant to be more of a miniboss status enemy, and I've long had the blueprints in mind to make it a much more threatening predator! It will get an animation update to go along with this rework, as well as its own special soundtrack.

Option 2: Story intro - This will essentially be creating an intro sequence to the game, building out dialogue systems and whatever other...

Poll - Blind drake, story beginnings, or new levels

Back for another poll, now that the previous one has been completed with the latest build! I ended up not putting any new vore mechanics/powerups in the latest build as it was mostly going to be a few small features that mostly required some new animations - I do plan on adding these features still, but they're not critical mechanics that are going to shape how I develop the rest of the game, so I'm setting them aside for the immediate moment in favor of other new content the game could use -...

Beta build v0.8.0x2 - ledge grabbing, 8 directional aiming, and resprited enemies

Though the general ideas of ledge climbing and aiming a gun are fairly simple ones, both on the front of animation and coding these ideas were fairly complex to execute. 8 Directional aiming required over 300 new frames of animation and several hundred lines of code to make sure the proper animations are used at all times, and ledge climbing was probably one of the most complex things I've coded since creating navigation scripts for the enemies to make sure it can work with any ledge and won'...

So many frames (directional shooting)

Another 100 frames completed over the last couple weeks - although technically it's 300 frames due to the alternate versions of frames that have to be made for the varying belly sizes :')

These will allow for shooting in 8 directions though as opposed to only being able to fire forwards - I aim to add a number of new hazards and things that will require a little more aiming with the gun.

Current plan is to work out ledge grabbing next then I'll get the next beta build up! After th...

Beta build v0.8.0x1

Next build ready for you all! This one would have been ready a little sooner, but it seems my neverending summer of busyness continues as I lost a couple weeks of work to moving into an apartment. HOPEFULLY this will translate into more time I have available to work as I no longer have farm chores to manage, but I've traded those for monthly bills, so we'll see how things shake out. I'm still trying to shoot for the goal of monthly releases with beta builds, so hopefully these posts will cont...

Update v0.8.0 plus beta room

Now that the public update is finally out, here's the v0.8.0 changes plus beta room access for patrons!! Now that the public and Patreon versions are finally caught up, I'm going to take a short break from work to try and recover from 9 months of animation, then I'll be on to working on the winning choice of the poll - new powerups, base mechanics, melee, and vore mechanics! I'll see about making a more in depth post soon when I'm a little less exhausted.

Poll: What comes next??

Whew, been a long time since I've been able to make one of these! This will determine the next steps in development for GLUTT. For tier 4 members, there will be a second post for you to cast your second votes! These polls will remain open for 2 weeks.

1: New base/vore mechanics/powerups - these will be things like new melee attacks platforming mechanics like wall jumping, and a variety of different possible powerups I still have on my list to add.

2: Blind Drake rework - th...

Polish and adding missing bits (Beta build v0.7.1x5)

I think I will never again be able to accurately predict how long animating takes - fortunately, as of 20 minutes ago, I was able to finish up all the missing animations this week as well as go over and polish some of the existing ones a bit more (a few kind patrons pointed out some inconsistencies to address).

I was not able to get to tweaking the sounds and adding new ones yet, but I wanted to hurry up and get the completed set of animations to you all! I'll probably have another bui...

ANIMATION UPDATE (Beta build v0.7.1x4)

I was pretty honestly terrified I that I'd have to make yet another post about the update being delayed another day, but it's finally together!! ...mostly, anyway....

Turns out I am indeed the BIGGEST idiot because I still managed to forget to do a couple of the crouch animations along the way, so the old animations are still currently in use until I can complete those new animations. I really had to rush getting everything else in as fast as I could so I didn't get to spend super long ...

I tempted fate

It wouldn't be game development without delays up until the very last second I suppose - thanks to an 18 hour long power outtage over the weekend as well as my own hubris for underestimating how long a consistency pass over 3,000+ frames of animation would take, it seems I'm not going to get the update out today.

The good news is I HAVE finished the consistency pass and have begun the process of loading all the new sprites into the project - a couple tweaks needs to be made with the co...

Animation complete - update nearly ready!

Very short post just to let everyone know that the final animation, manual digest, clocking in at 148 frames long with 13 seperate layers and 3 layer groups, has been completed!! Tomorrow I'll be redoing the title art (nothing too crazy, I plan to spice it up later on), then all that's left is doing a consistency pass while I export everything and load it all into the project. If we're lucky, this means the update could be ready by the end of the day tomorrow, but worst case now is it will co...

FINAL PUSH

Between moving residences and random spring sicknesses, life seems to conspire against me in finishing this update. I really hate when updates are delayed, especially repeatedly like this, as it makes things feel like progress is slowing down. Really, progress is still largely steady despite interruptions, I think I just regularly underestimate the workload in creating all this.

Anyways! I'm keeping this one short - as it currently stands, I have 2 animations plus the title screen art ...

Development update (March '24)

Hey all! Wanted to get another announcement about development posted here since I know not everyone follows the Discord - things are going well all in all, and I'm getting down to the last few animations needed for this update. Out of the player's 207 seperate animations, there are just 14 left to do! Above is a redesigned digestion animation I've been working on, still with some further adjustments to make, but coming along well.

Recently I unfortunately had a family member hospitalize...

Development update

Happy holidays everyone!! :D Here's another mostly completed animation for ya all I for

Just wanted to take a moment to give a quick general update on progress towards the next update - currently it's looking like I'm around halfway done overall with the new sprites, possibly a touch further - currently I'm expecting the next update to release in march, though it's possible it could be sooner - I may try and put together another production schedule once we get into the new year, but on...

Beta build v0.7.1x3

EDIT: Left one dumb bug in that caused a crash when getting hit by a rocket, just fixed it and reuploaded the file!

Thanks to everyone who reported bugs!! I've been able to patch every reported bug so far, as well as develop a new lightweight lighting system as an alternative to the performance intense advanced lighting. Simple lighting will be enabled by default, and you'll be able to switch between the simple and advanced systems in the settings menu.

On to animating the player...

Beta Build v0.7.1x2

Next build is good to go, finally featuring the new alien serpent enemy as well as a dynamic lighting system! A note about the lighting system though - dynamic lighting is INTENSE on system performance, and once I actually got all of the lights into the game, I noticed frame drops in certain areas. If you experience performance issues, the lighting system can currently be disabled in settings - I'll be looking to add an alternative lighting system in the near future that's both simpler and mu...

Poll - reworked blind drake or something else

Back with another poll! Before getting into that, quick development update to keep you all in the loop - I've been finally able to work on the first new enemy the game has gotten since the addition of the minimech pilots, being the alien serpent! Redfrog was kind enough to do all the base animations for this enemy a while back, and I finally have the opportunity to get it into the game. The last couple weeks has been cleaning up and adjusting its animations for consistency - though I've been ...

Beta Build v0.7.1x1

Finally ready!! This one took quite a good minute to complete, as it included me completely rewriting the code for every single enemy (minus the blind drake, as that's going to require a full in depth rework). But now the new detection systems are in, the enemies use all new AI, have new pathfinding capabilities, behaviors, and more. I also did a massive amount of reworking collision code for the enemies - so far as I've been able to test, pretty much all major collision bugs should be fixed....

Poll - advanced pathfinding or sooner beta build release (tier 4 second vote))

Tier 4 members, cast your second vote here!