Artist Chickenwhite got herself a new computer that no longer lags when doing 3D animation. So that’s a nice thing now isn’t it.
As far as coding goes, the third puzzle mechanic is now in, all I need to do is go through every map I’ve made and add clue spawners. So at this point it’s largely cutscenes, dialogue, and combat between me and the release. Speaking of.
Poll Results
Last week I asked the patron pals what we should do concerning Slitted Eye suggestions and the UI Update. Well here’s your damn results.
This means that I’ll be yelling at our UI artist to get me the last UI pieces and implementing it ASAP. I have to finish a couple things in chapter 2 first, and then I’ll switch over to implementing the UI.
Look at how generous our 5$ patrons are.
Starting today, there will be a patron post that I will link to in each update post where you can submit ideas. If you’d like your name on the resulting piece (should Koops choose to accept it) please be sure to put that in the answer.
Obviously.
Curious Cat
Way too many links! An unmanageable amount of links!
It’s like deliberately tying votes is some kind of running gag with you people. Which means I get to decide and you get to see Statue Sanya this week if you’re a patron. You jerks.
Other Development
The artists are still hard at work on Slitted Eye. It’s coming along very nicely, but likely will not be done in October. There is a bunch of soundwork I’d like to do on it even if the animations are ready, and I want to spend a bit more time polishing this one than String Tyrant got.
I’ve “finished” the second of the big new puzzle mechanics that is going into chapter 2’s introduction. I put finished in quotes because it can always use more polish and bugtesting, but it works and is playable. It’s even kinda fun and the puzzle generator stumps me, the guy who wrote it, every now and then!
This means there’s one more major new mechanic, a few cutscenes, and all of the initial combat (there are three playable party members in the intro!) and then we’re ready to go on chapter 2’s introduction.
Curious Cat
Way too many links! An unmanageable amount of links!
Having played the game myself, I (Salty) being a tester for it, I can say it has my seal of approval. It has monstergirls, it has transformation, and most of all it has game design and a story. It’s actually fun to play. Hard to believe I know.
I did a cross-promotion to this almost two years ago in October of 2019. Since then a pandemic got in the way but now it’s coming out and you should go play it and enjoy it. If you liked Pandemonium you’ll probably enjoy this. Maybe. I’m not the boss of you.
Other Development News
Koops has now finished all of the concepts for the introduction of chapter 2. I’ve moved her onto making stuff for Slitted Eye. Expect to see Space Lesbians With Ray Guns, The Movie soon.
I’m almost done the second puzzle mechanic set of chapter 2. This one is a bit more involved and will probably have lots of lovely bugs for me to fix, but I think it’s pretty fun and inventive.
Chicken has finished her part of the upcoming commission release. That means she is now back to making 3D models. She is hoping to fix up Urimas’ cat model attempts.
All of the artists are now working on Slitted Eye. We hope to have a playable demo by the end of the month.
Tired of all those block-pushing puzzles that other games have? So are we? As such, Sanya kicks the blocks to move them.
This is basically what game design is.
I’m still working my way through the intro to chapter 2. Block puzzles are completed, the first of three new mechanics in chapter 2’s intro. There’s even more new mechanics later in the chapter, making it a doozy to code. Chapter 5’s big thing was just lighting, which is was less complex than kicking blocks.
All of the artists have been redirected to Slitted Eye work in order to get the game out ASAP. Our goal is to have it up in time for the Spooky Season. I’m still working on cutscenes and scripts for chapter 2 because most of my coding job is done until I have animation renders done.
Hello, all! MarioneTTe here again! This time, I bring you the results of the poll on how mermaids would feel about rope bondage.
In total, there were 61 responses.
You might notice this is a pie graph, and not a bar graph, which would have been much better for this type of poll. That’s because I made a pretty big error while creating this poll and made a second version, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
ANYWAY!, Those percentages break down as follows:
MORE likely – 11
LESS likely – 4
HATE* – 14
Rebellious/Others – 24
Different Opinion – 8
There were actually 9 things listed, so ONE OF YOU decided to post an opinion while also voting in the normal poll! This is fine, mind you, I’m just listing why there are 9 opinions but only 8 in the actual poll. They were:
Nets are used to catch prey/food. Sub mermaids would be into it. Also all of them are jealous of fishnet stockings.
No change in likelyhood compared to Surface Dwellers. And why is that Option not included above?*
Depends on how much of a deviant the mermaid in question is.
Ropes would peel off their scales! No other reason to fear it then any other kidnapping if they don’t suffocate
The REAL question is if they’re into fishnets or not.
Sort of depends if these are mermaids exposed to land dwellers fishing. If so it’s like someone hunting near you, it’s a known danger that might actually get you. As a result it would be fairly niche (getting bitten by sharks and struck by lightning aren’t common kinks.) If not then probably ambvalent based on the merperson.
some mermaids are into it but only ironically, some mermaids aren’t personally into it but complain about cultural appropriation when other species do it, some mermaids prefer handcuffs and sexy police officer uniforms, some mermaids are the kind that have human legs and fish heads and are unable to express their opinion on the matter
mermaids with alraune gfs prefer vine bondage
It would probably depend on the setting? If mermaids were actually being hunted in nets, they’d probably be less into it, but other than that I don’t think they’d care. It’s not like we’re less into rope bondage because we use nets to capture other mammals.
Interesting thoughts, all around! There are a few interesting thoughts in there that might make for an interesting bit of story. We’ll see in the future!
Now you might notice that the options are… a bit odd. One “other opinion” even mentions it: where’s the “no change” option? The astute among you might even notice the asterisks next to the “HATE” numbers, as well as the opinion saying ‘no change’ and asking why that option wasn’t available.
It turns out, I posted the first version of the poll, where I had originally messed up the options and graph type then decided to go to bed then redo the poll the next day.
The second version I made had a “No Change” option instead of the “Hate” option (having “Hate” but not “Love” doesn’t make sense, especially when there are already options for liking it more or liking it less), and it was a bar graph instead of a pie graph. Did you know you can’t change the type of graph after the poll is made? I didn’t!
(If you can, tell me how in our Discord, please!)
I did realize my error a day after posting the poll, but by then it had already received a dozen or so responses and I didn’t want to throw that all away.
Oh, well. The results DO give me a few ideas, but whether they appear in-game or as random story tie-ins depends on whether Salty can be convinced to add mermaids to [LOCATION REDACTED] in [CHAPTER REDACTED] where you have to [EVENT REDACTED] in order to [RESULT REDACTED].
Hmm… That reads kind of like a madlib! “Add mermaids to ___ in ___ where you have to ___ in order to ___.”
Let’s see… “Add mermaids to my apartment in my city where you have to figure out how to stand them up in a stand-up shower in order to keep them from drying out.”
If you want to make Salty very happy, fan art is how you do it. Also the artwork is just superb, somehow managing to be colorful and joyful despite rilmani being literally none of those things.
I’m (Almost) Done the Maps
That’s right, the intro section to chapter 2 is almost mapped. I need some more tiles from Urimas and then it’ll be time for all the glue, scripting, characters. You know, everything that is not placing tiles.
I’m feeling pretty good about how the maps look and feel so far. Very adventure-y.
Slitted Eye Progress
I made a simple internal prototype using sample animations. The engine is “Done” because this kind of game doesn’t actually do a lot under the hood. We’ve also finished about half of the rooms and Urimas’ next assignment is to make the animations for the first level.
And we even got Mario to write some copy for the answering machine messages!
Curious Cat
I snuck a secret cat into the curious cat images. Did you see him? He saw you.
You can download it here (Mega.nz / Mediafire) (Win/Lin/Mac Bundle)
Changelog
Major *Used string pooling to cut savefile size in half or less. *Fixed a serious bug that was massively inflating the filesize of saves. Combined with string pooling, saves are down to ~100kb!
Minor *Fixed typos. *The Region Notifier will scroll offscreen during cutscenes. *Fixed 55’s job change icons being switched for Support and Subvert. *Enemies forced to join your side by whatever means now give half their XP/JP/Platina.
Combat Balance *Magnesium Grenades blind reduced to 30 (was 35). *Paragons now get +100 INI instead of *100 INI. Which was pretty bonkers. *JX-101’s Scavenge now correctly says it targets one enemy. *Buffed JX-101’s accuracy by 30 so she’s not as bad during her section (she’s supposed to be thematically outmatched, but not useless). *JX-101’s Flak Round is now 100% accurate. *SX-399’s Flak Round is now 100% accurate. Just like mom used to make! *JX-101’s Thunderbolt Slug now has +25 to its hit rate. *Christine’s Lancer Inspire now correctly says it targets one enemy. *Fixed several abilities showing the wrong damage factor. I changed some backend code, so please let me know if any more cases pop up. *Christine’s Lancer Inspire now doesn’t glance. *Critical Strike predictions should take into account Critical Strike Damage Bonus tags. *Christine’s Live Wire Chain Zap now does 70 stun (up from 50). *Adjusted some of chapter 5’s enemy stun thresholds to 70 so Chain Zap is useful in specific circumstances. *Added cooldown notifications to Christine’s abilities that were missing them. *Prediction box will now notify you if an effect has a zero percent chance to apply. *Fixed 55’s Spearhead Full Auto being able to miss. Because it wasn’t supposed to.
Bugs *Fixed a bug where the Mines boss was applying DoTs for zero damage. *Bee Sniffers are now listed as being in Starfield Swamp instead of Evermoon Forest. *Fixed several abilities not showing their hit rate. *Adamantite found in the mines should now actually be added to the inventory. *Abilities not in the active class will still tick their cooldowns when you switch classes in battle. They should also now reset correctly after battles. *Fixed abilities with extremely low application rates clamping at zero, failing to take into account bonuses against the negative. *Embolden now correctly lists itself as a Negative charge ability. *Fixed mind-controlled or rubbered enemies (enemies forced to join your team) not giving their paragon KO count. *Updated predictions handler to give Always Hits to stunned enemies. *Fixed Christine’s Bounceback to work when covering an ally.
I’ve cleaned up a lot of combat bugs this week in addition to making maps. The maps for chapter 2’s intro are almost done, but then the bug reports rolled in. Those will be handled in tomorrow’s release.
I’ll be making a Roadmap page a bit later so people can see what the overall plans for the game are.
We’re working on it, and Urimas has just prototyped some of the in-game animations. I’m hoping to have an internal prototype out this week. It’s a fairly simple game to play, there’s just a lot going on under the hood. It’s our most media-intensive game to date.
I’ve had a weird little thought in my head for a while, and I’m curious to find out what the community thinks. To find out, I made a poll!
The question is whether or not mermaids would be more or less likely to view rope bondage positively due to the association between ropes and nets, and how nets are used to capture aquatic creatures for food.
The poll will stay open for one week (until 8/30), after which I’ll add the results and a few additional thoughts on the subject matter to next week’s dev post.
Pandemonium Development 