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January Status Report 2025
🕑 Added 2025-02-07 20:46:22 +0000 UTCAs expected in the last status report v26.8 with the prior update eating into Jan there wasn't quite as much stuff given the time constraints, but I think it still ended up a solid update.
But to start from the beginning of the month there's the v26.7 release and wrap up that you should already be aware up, which took about a weekish and bug fixing. Then after that it was more bug fixing and typos, but those went into v26.8, and then editing the Perpetua event edits Val did, and doing quite a bit of back and forth on the harpy CG with Houra. Which persisted through about 2 weeks I think before I implemented it into the game, during that back and forth I also took care of other things, like editing Val's Venefica scene and Oluap's ghost gloryhole scene, doing the QoL to make the slime quest hopefully easier to start for people, and further refining plans for the capital and its revising its full movement map document [It's doodles] to better reflect the plan. I had an existing one [it's also doodles], but it definitely wouldn't have worked for the more finalized mechanics I planned on.
Then I wrote descriptions for the Livewire and Fashionable Succubus when they have art off, along with the 'encyclopedia' entry for the Livewire and adding them and their event to the Labyrinth. Which as mentioned in the patch notes all the capital events will later require unlocks to add to the Labyrinth, but given those aren't in the game I don't see a reason to lock them off from being used in the labyrinth anyways until then.
And around that time is also when the editing for Val's Ancilla+Vili scenes occurred, and I made Rika actually auto-save the game at that certain point again, because that broke for some reason and stopped auto saving.
By the time this was all said and done it was pretty clear I wouldn't have the time to make the next combat encounter for the capital, but I still had time to make progress on the capital, so as mentioned in the other status report I focused on making the movement template for going to other districts, and triggering encounters, along with a few events to go with it.
The Lady in the Window event in the Starlight district was originally going to be a succubus, but as I was writing it my brain did things and had a much more interesting idea inspired by urban horror stories, so while it doesn't have art, and likely won't get any as I think it could muddy the appeal of the scene, I hope people enjoy it as an esoteric 'dungeon trap' for the Capital.
And while the Capital is not done yet, and I didn't put in all the districts to move to [I probably could have it just would have felt VERY empty], the intention is for it to revolve around the time passing mechanics a bit more than exploring, with events to push things closer to night, and getting more dangerous at night, like the mob encounter. Some stuff may get tweaked or changed as it's closer to completion or based on feedback though. Said time mechanics are also why I needed to revise the internal use [doodled] map mentioned earlier, as it was going to be too easy to get back to the Eros District to rest and reset the time back to day. Once things are further along I can probably share a 'cleaned up' version of them to show the difference if people are interested. [I will again stress doodle, as to not let people thing it's a proper map map.]
Then on the last day while waiting for some last editing passes to the content, somewhat fresh of fixing a nightmare mode issue with stat checks, I had the consideration on Temptation Check difficulty modification with perks, and some of its surrounding balance, and tuned down the amount of bonus you get from non-willpower stats, and added penalties to temptation checks to a handful of more lewd leaning perks that didn't already have a lot going on, or no willpower debuffs already in it, and added a new general perk to boost up your temptation checks, and may add further upgrades to that tree in the future like the spirit increase or resistances one.
In general I think at some point I'm going to need to go over and hit all stat checks and their scalings with a hammer to make the system healthier for both the numbers to beat, and the bonuses you get, to make it less swingy, of course energy and favor changes would likely be needed with this so it all functions better as a unified system. Don't know when/if I'll do that though. May need to lightly chip at doing it in between things given it's not exactly a pressing matter atm. I do however like temptation checks getting bonus/penalties from some perks though without directly hitting willpower.
All that rambling aside, only bug fix that was needed after the update was one to actually add in the Venefica scene because my dumb ass thought it was already in the game when I saw the file for it sitting in a folder. It wasn't. But aside from that there's very few bugs to clean up for this update, so I'll be able to get on to v26.9 shortly, and will definitely be working on more capital progress, likely another of the generic combat encounters. But regardless I will keep chipping away at it in smaller doses rather than trying to find/make time to do large chunks and then not given all the other work I need to take care of, which happened a number of times last year, which is why there's a number of assorted content updates during that time. While this kind of more incremental progress to the capital may not be the most exciting, there will be tangible progress for the Capital, and I hope people look forward to further updates.
Comments
Dynamatic Daniel
The lady in the window scene was a stroke of genius! It definitely had that "dungeon trap" vibe, which was a great reminder that - "oh, yeah, we are in a monster girl city, hey?" I think it was also really cool for world building too, because the possibility of some advanced spiritual magic, or some kind of shadow monster girl makes interesting new possibilities for Ars Delusia, even if we never really see it used in things other than this scene! I think making the shadow stuff take increasing amounts of spirit for successive 'gasms would also be interesting from a fear kinda perspective, but I can see that causing problems depending on future plans for the city. Personally a huge fan of this update, as it lays groundwork for more exciting things to come! Thanks as always for your hard work, Thresh!
