V0.5.4 Progress Report

Happy new year, everyone. I hope you all had a nice slide into the new year, as the german saying "Guten Rutsch" ("Nice slide") goes.
As scheduled, it's time for the progress report for v0.5.4 which has a big focus on the new player experience. The game has grown a lot over the last 18 months. (Has it really only been 18 months? Feels like forever ago.) 

1. Isekai Branch

As you may have already extracted from the patch banner, the new TF is an anime girl transformation. With this branch I'm trying out something new. I found a writer who's currently writing a story for this, and I'm eager to see if the quality of it is good enough to actually put it into the game. I know it's a bit of a risk, but I have so much other stuff to do for this patch, which all focuses on making the game better understandable for new players, and I still wanted to add some new TF content.

2. Branches Clarity

So... let's get into all the things I think could need improving when it comes to understanding the gameplay. As you know, finding the TF branches is kind of the main mechanic of the game, but from some new players I still often get reviews that read something like "I always get transformed into a clone of Himari. I don't know what to do." or questions on how to reach a certain content.

I figure the main problem with this is that the player makes a lot more choices in the game than just those that are relevant for reaching branches, but I also don't want to just say what the right way is. Exploring the choices the game offers is a big factor.

So... my solution is a bit of an expansion on the new Legacy item added last patch - the hourglass. The hourglass was supposed to just be a light overview of what branches there are and what endings the player has already found.
That was a nice first step, but it not only not solved the underlying issue of players not knowing how to access certain branches, but also increased the issue, because now players know that there's even more content they don't know how to access.

The new system includes an overview of exactly what choices/quests lead to what ending. But it's not immediately readable. Instead, you'll slowly uncover the map. Only endings and nodes that the player has already visited will be displayed, and everytime the player reaches an ending, the timeline of only what led them here is played, whether they have the legacy item or not.

This way players should always understand what specific interactions led to what outcome, and that changing those events will lead to different outcomes. Hopefully this will make the game clearer without taking away exploration.

3. Clothing Shop Rework

Next up is the clothing shop. I know this should have a way smaller priority, but I think it has just exploded too much. When the original system was implemented, we had like five different outfits. There have been so many new clothes since, that some categories are now completely chaotic. In addition to that, the new pattern system has added the ability to add several more versions of one piece, but the UI was just a placeholder that sat completely detached from the rest of the system.

So, from the next patch on, all color- and pattern-options of one clothing style will be grouped.

As you can see, this leads to a much cleaner overview, but also means that you can't see what color options are available for any specific style. That's why I added a new color filter in the side menu, where you can select the main color options to quickly see what styles are available.

This will also show the first option that matches that color in the overview.

4. Puzzles Rework

Another thing to improve is that the basic trap puzzles haven't been improved on in a long time. They are still working exactly like in the original release, most are even from before the v0.3 rework from 2021, so some date back to the original prototype from 2019. I'm not planning to change the puzzles itself, but I think there are some improvements to be made.

For example, I get a lot of questions on why a certain object is not trappable, and I agree that it doesn't fully make sense that that's not the case. Even if they don't lead to the NPC actually getting trapped, just not having any interactivity is going to confuse some new players. The prime example for this is the bird house. As some of you may know, you don't have to trap the house itself, but the bird food. However, there not being any interaction with the bird house will just seem strange at first.

While this is a typical point-and-click-adventure-style puzzle, I think I'm going to look for exactly these types of clarity issues and add more interactions, that describe why something doesn't work.

Please let me know on Discord what puzzles threw you off at first.

Originally, I had also planned to add some variations like Himari not always using the same color bottle, and Katelyn not always using the same dumbbells, but I'm not sure if I'm going to implement that now. What do you think?

I have to say that this is going to be a process, that'll happen over several patches, but I'm going to lay the groundwork for that as soon as possible.

5. Abigail's & Katelyn's Bedrooms

Back to the regular new content. Last patch, Himari's bedroom was added. This time, I got two more of these bedrooms for you.

Above you can see a preview of Abigail's room. The image below shows a preview of Katelyn's room.

As with Himari's room, these are only Pre-End-of-Week-show-remodel for now. The alternative versions will be added at a later date.

This also goes for any interactivity or story that leads into these rooms.

6. More Memory Refactorings

I don't want to promise too much, but I will try to do more memory refactoring this patch. Really depends on how much I have to change the writing for the new TF branch.

Honestly, I think the main game is in a good state memory-wise, but there's one problem: the game start. It seems that Unity is loading some kind of file into memory at game start that will let the memory usage grow really really big. That's because I'm using the Resources folder for most art. I'll probably have to change to using Addressables, but it's not that easy, because there are about 300 calls of Resources.Load in the code. So replacing the system isn't just like pressing a button. I'll have to rewrite huge chunks of code, and that'll take time.

However, I did a quick test for switching out just one of the subfolders and the result didn't bring any improvements on memory usage but a huge raise in build time, so I'll need to do a lot more research and tests and then see where it leads. It doesn't seem to be as easy as switching out the load-call though, so... I'm not promising much for this patch except some experimental code changes.

That's it for this patch, and while it may not sound like it to some, let me assure you that it is actually a huge amount of work. I also hope that I'll be back with more news for Femdemic, Kinky Demons, and other side projects, that are in the pipeline.

Best,
Rel