I've managed to somehow break everything, so v0.3.9 is delayed for at least another week. I'll give you an update on progress (with an expected release date) on Wednesday or Thursday.
Thursday, 23 July 2020
Small Delay
Once again, I've ended up not quite managing to get everything ready for a release in time, so I'm going to have to delay v0.3.9 by a couple more days. I'm now aiming to have it ready by the night of Saturday, 25th.
The main reason for this delay is that it took me a little longer than expected to get the Rat Warrens finished off, and so I've run out of time in which to get things polished and tested. I could have potentially released this version tonight and then made a hotfix for it, but I'm worried that there will be some major bugs in the parts of the Rat Warrens content which I haven't been able to test yet. Instead of subjecting you to this buggy content, I thought it would be best if I gave myself a few more days in which to make sure that it's all working as intended.
I'm sorry about this delay, and for the short notice of it. I'll definitely be able to get this all ready by Saturday, so there really shouldn't be any further delay to v0.3.9's release.
Sunday, 19 July 2020
Progress News
Hello once again,
I just wanted to make this small post to let you know that things are progressing relatively well, and that the planned release of v0.3.9 will still be on the night of this Wednesday, 22nd.
What you can expect in this update will be the finished version of the Rat Warrens, bug fixes, an update to the summonable-Elemental mechanics, and the spa room upgrade to be added. There are still quite a few other things which I'd like to get added, but I'll roll those into v0.3.9.5, after which I'll (finally) get started on adding the Fields content in v0.4.
Thank you all for your feedback and bug reports in the comments, and I'll see you again on Wednesday night (or in the early hours of Thursday morning)!
Thursday, 16 July 2020
Version 0.3.8.9 Release
Hello again,
Here's the public update which I said I'd get released today. While it should be mostly stable, I ran out of time in which to do some thorough testing, which, combined with the fact that the Rat Warrens are still in a state of 'under construction', means that I've decided to label this version as v0.3.8.9 instead of v0.3.9.
There will be a further public update this time next week (Wednesday, 22nd) which will get all of the loose ends and bugs sorted out. Sorry about this version not including the finished Rat Warrens content as promised, but I decided to do a big rework of parts of it, and so it's taking a little longer than expected to get completed. It will definitely be finished by v0.3.9 (along with the 'spa' room upgrade content and the Elemental rework)!
I also want to make a separate note to say that I've temporarily disabled the ability to start Axel's quest (the Rat Warrens quest) in this version, as large parts of it are under construction. It will be re-enabled in v0.3.9 with all of the content completely finished.
Also, I apologise for not giving a progress update last Thursday. Although I pushed my progress to github, making the post completely slipped my mind...
I'll try and do better next time and make a progress update post this Saturday (18th) to let you know how things are going.
As always, you can also build these releases yourself from the public github's dev branch (which is always kept up to date with the very latest version):
https://github.com/Innoxia/liliths-throne-public/tree/dev
(There's a build tutorial here.)
IMPORTANT: If you're building through github, you'll now need to place the 'liliths-throne-public/res' folder in the same directory as the exported .jar!
v0.3.8.9 Download Links
This is still an alpha, and contains bugs and half-finished content!
.jar:
Pre-zipped: Mega
Full folder: Google Drive
.exe:
Pre-zipped: Mega
Full folder: Google Drive
32-bit .exe (For 32-bit Windows):
Pre-zipped: Mega
Full folder: Google Drive
v0.3.8.9 Patch Notes
- Updated the lacy plunge bra icon. (by DSG)
- Fixed typos in plate carrier, heavy plate carrier, and combat helmet descriptions. (by DSG)
- Slightly decreased size of save files.
- Added accessor for RacialBody in parsing, using the 'RACIAL_BODY_' prefix. Also added 'getRacialBody()' method to Race class for access to RacialBodies.
- Added 'appendToTextStartStringBuilder' and 'appendToTextEndStringBuilder' methods to correctly parse text to the game's 'start' and 'end' StringBuilders (for use in mods that apply effects).
- You can now define 'criticalHitText' values in weapon mods, which allow you to define hit descriptions which are only shown when critically hitting. (For an example, see 'res/weapons/innoxia/dagger/dagger.xml'.)
- Added accessor for AbstractFluidTypes, using the 'FLUID_TYPE_' prefix. Added a version of the GameCharacter.ingestFluid() method which takes an AbstractFluidType instead of a FluidInterface (so it can be called via parsing).
- Added a version of GameCharacter.calculateGenericSexEffects() which can be called from the parser. Added accessors for SexParticipantType ('SEX_PT_') and GenericSexFlag ('SEX_FLAG_') for use in this method.
- The 'SPECIAL_PARSE' command should now work correctly as logic in conditional statements (it gets parsed before the conditional is checked).
- Converted last of the body type enums to abstract classes and added accessors for use in the parser for all of them.
- Added options to have sex with slaves who help you to wash when taking a shower or bath in your room. The Slime Queen's bath sex scene and Pix's shower sex scene also now use the ongoing-cleaning and water lubrication mechanics of having sex in a bath/shower.
- Axel's quest (involving the Rat Warrens) is under construction again, and as such, I've disabled the ability to start his quest in this version. If you've already started it, then please wait until the next release before continuing with it!
- Characters are now only vulnerable to arcane storms and combat loss at maximum lust while they have the 'arcane impotence' status effect. (i.e. Only if their arcane stat is less than 10.)
- The chance for an Enforcer encounter to trigger in alleyway tiles has been increased from 2% to 2.5%.
- The 5 alleyway tiles closest to Dominion's Enforcer HQ now have a significantly higher chance of generating Enforcer encounters than normal alleyway tiles (15% instead of 2.5%), while also having a lesser chance of generating a generic attacker encounter (10% instead of 15%).
- Increased maximum shielding values from 100 to 500, and made it so that a value of 500 in any shielding category grants complete immunity from the related damage type. (Only used for fire and ice elementals being immune to fire/ice damage.)
- Removed the diminishing returns factor from all damage attributes and made it clear that these are referring to percentage increases wherever they're displayed (in tooltips and stats screen).
- The 'spell efficiency' attribute is now capped at 80 instead of 100, and all damage attributes have a lower cap of -80 instead of -100.
- Removed the 'cum quantity pregnancy modifier' from the game. (Now that cum quantity has a more direct impact of higher volumes staying in a character's orifices for longer, this modifier was no longer needed.)
- Slightly altered the pregnancy calculation to be: 10% + (Cum-character's Virility% / 2) + (Womb-character's Fertility% / 2)
- Randomly-spawned NPCs will no longer have the 'martial artist' trait.
- Changed the 'pentagram piercing' rarity to 'common'.
- Improved description of 'Angel's Nectar' to correctly state that it removes intoxication and psychoactive effects. You can now also enchant it to create a potion that regenerates or removes hymens.
- There is no longer an arcane stat requirement for NPCs to absorb bottled essences.
- Added some flavour text for characters with the 'pure virgin' fetish (and who are either still vaginal virgins or have a regrown hymen) performing or receiving the 'pussy tease' sex action (with both penis or tail).
- Added some variation in the tail/penis-vagina penetration sex action descriptions for when the character being penetrated is still a virgin.
- 'Stop ongoing' actions are now coloured differently than the 'start ongoing' actions.
- You can now recolour human skin to any colour, just like with other covering types. (Humans will still only ever spawn with natural colours.)
- NPCs' 'home' icons on the minimap are now semi-transparent to make it clearer that they aren't actually there.
- Improved 'barren' and 'firing blanks' tooltip descriptions to make it clearer how those perks work.
- NPCs who are not your slave, elemental, or one of your friendly occupants will now automatically spend their perk points when they level up (via draining your levels or gaining experience from beating you in combat).
- When losing a level (from orgasmic level drain), characters now additionally lose a random perk if their perk points are reduced to below 0 in the process.
- The clothing & weapons sold by Finch, Nyan, Kate, and Vicky are now generated in stacks of 2-6 instead of just 1.
- Added some pet names for use in Amber's scene where she walks you and you run into her friend & their pet.
- Reduced the default capacity for several races' (reindeer, squirrel, rat, rabbit, and bat) vaginas, as they were still using values from before the penetration girth/depth rework.
- Enforcers who choose to give you a handjob after the strip search will now only finger your asshole at the same time if they have a positive desire towards the anal-giving fetish.
- Sex scenes no longer start with a spam of 'X area was already lubricated by Y' messages.
- Added more staircases to Lilaya's house.
- The 'begin slave interaction' actions in Lilaya's house are now coloured according to the slave's femininity.
- Added setting to enable bad ends in gameplay content option (on by default). (There are no bad ends in the game just yet, but I may start adding some alongside new content in the future.)
- Parsing fixes.
- Fixed a minor issue where Finch, Kate, and Nyan would sometimes not generate the correct number/type of enchanted clothing for sale.
- Fixed issue where having the 'opportunistic attackers' content setting turned on would cause some Encounters to never trigger.
- Fixed bug where two human half-demons would create half-demon offspring instead of imps.
- Fixed issue where demons/lilin who had transformed to look like a different race would create offspring of a subspecies based on their appearance, instead of their true demonic race.
- Fixed bug where if you had the American tourist background perk, the conversion of colour to color was followed by a random pair of parentheses.
- (Finally) Fixed issue where Scarlett would sometimes not appear in Helena's shop after sending her there during Helena's romance quest.
- Fixed related issue where Scarlett's location was not being set properly during the stage of the main quest where you need to buy her from Helena.
- Characters who have lost their vaginal virginity and then regown their hymen now correctly have their new hymen torn in situations where they should be losing their virginity.
- Fixed bug where the 'Defend yourself' action in the Enforcer encounter would be on every button instead of just one.
- NPCs who spawn with enchanted clothing/weapons that pushes them over their enchantment stability limit will now automatically take perks to give themselves more enchantment stability.
- Fixed issue where ingesting addictive fluids during sex would not display a message about the ingesting cahracter's addiction being satisfied.
- Fixed issue with the name of fluids not being parsed correctly in the tooltip for the addiction status effect.
- Formatting of attribute numbers in status effect tooltips no longer always has a trailing '.0'.
- Fixed issue with the flow of dialogue in Amber's 'Insult her' scene.
- Vargrs, hellhounds, and demonic-fox-morphs now correctly spawn in with red canine-like cocks.
- Fixed bug where your character's health would sometimes keep on dropping during character creation.
- Fixed issue where Claire would react as though you hadn't used the resonance stone in the Rat Warrens quest even when you had.
- Fixed a parsing error with the description of crotch nipples recovering from being stretched after sex.
- Fixed the asterisk denoting whether hair is long enough to be pulled in sex not being displayed in the character creation's hair length choice box.
- Fixed issue with half-demons who have a unique name not gaining any name variation when they were taurs.
- Fixed bug where offspring would react as though you're enslaving them with a collar even if you used a different item of clothing.
- Tauric Enforcers will no longer spawn wearing slacks (which should have been impossible to fit onto their tauric bodies).
- Fixed issue where the description of slaves initiating sex with you after sleeping in your room would be missing unless you went to sleep with your slaves already having the 'pent up' status effect.
- Fixed issue where not all of the intended enslavement effects were applied when getting Enforcers to enslave a criminal for you. (i.e. They now correctly have their true name revealed and their starting obedience is set to -100.)
- Removing and regrowing a character's vagina now correctly regrows their hymen.
- The Slime Queen's bath and Pix's shower scene now correctly clean your body & clothes.
- Fixed issue with incrementing health and mana not working when called from within status effects.
Monday, 6 July 2020
Version 0.3.8.6 Preview Hotfix
Hello once again,
I've got a hotfix (v0.3.8.6) pushed to github, in which I've managed to completely finish off the alleyway Enforcer encounter, as well as get several bugs fixed. There are also numerous updates to DSG's Enforcer clothing, as well as some minor balance changes and other small things.
As mentioned in the previous post, the other big change in this version is that the ability to have companions in your party is now locked behind a content toggle in the gameplay settings. Accounting for companion content was proving to be too much for me to handle in a reasonable timeframe, so no more dialogue variations or support for companions will be added from now on.
I am planning on reworking the way Elementals function for v0.3.9, but for now, they will continue to function like they always have done (as a persistent companion). I will also be adding more interactions with slaves & friendly occupants in the future (including dating content) to make up for the fact that companion support is being dropped.
There may still be some bugs in this version, but I'm pretty sure that I've caught all of the major ones. The next update will be the full release of v0.3.9, which will be out on the 15th July at the very latest.
I'll make another post on Wednesday or Thursday to let you know how things are progressing.
I package and release these in-between preview builds for backers over on my SubscribeStar, but anyone can play them at any time by building them directly from the public github (which is always kept up to date with the very latest version):
https://github.com/Innoxia/liliths-throne-public/tree/dev
(There's a build tutorial here.)
IMPORTANT: If you're building through github, you'll now need to place the 'liliths-throne-public/res' folder in the same directory as the exported .jar!
ALSO IMPORTANT: Make sure you build from 'dev' branch.
v0.3.8.6 Patch Notes
- Modernized the replacement/displacement text blocks of all items to the newer, more compact style
- General improvements to item descriptions and replacement/displacement text (including fixing US/UK spelling discrepancies and some typos which were at least two years old x_x)
- Buffed the default poison resistance of the Enforcer's gas mask to 15
- Added five new set bonuses (clothing not listed have been stripped of their set bonuses):
- Grants +1 lust resistance
- One from each list below is required unless locked out
- Over-torso: All varieties of the Enforcer's coat/waistcoat, including unique variants, Enforcer's commando sweater/sweater vest
- Leg: Enforcer dress slacks
- One from each list below is required unless locked out
- Over-torso: Enforcer's stabproof vest
- Hips: Enforcer's utility belt
- Grants +5 lust resistance, +3 energy shielding, +5% critical damage
- One from each list below is required unless locked out
- Over-torso: Enforcer's plate carrier
- Hips: Enforcer's battle belt
- Grants +7 lust resistance, +5 energy shielding, +5% critical damage
- One from each list below is required unless locked out
- Over-torso: Enforcer's heavy plate carrier
- Hips: Enforcer's heavy battle belt
- Grants +5 lust resistance, +5 fire resistance, +3 energy shielding
- One from each list below is required unless locked out
- Over-torso: Enforcer's riot armour
- Hips: Enforcer's riot belt
- Wrist: Enforcer's riot arm guards
- Ankle: Enforcer's riot shinguards
- Head: Enforcer's riot helmet
- Added handcuffs (wrist slot).
- Added unique Enforcer coat variants for Wesley and Aellasys. (Characters will be added soon.)
- Fixed minor issue with outline colouration in the Enforcer's utility belt icon.
- Slightly improved game's performance (by updating character status effect checks and removing some background parsing).
- Reduced size of save files by about 800kB.
- Companion content is now locked behind a toggle in gameplay options, and is disabled by default. No further support for companions will be added going forwards, as accounting for companion variations, both in the writing and dialogue framework, was taking a huge amount of time and slowing down the pace of the game's development too much.
- Added full content for the Enforcer encounter, which can now trigger in both Dominion's canal and alleyway tiles. Increased the chance of this encounter triggering from 1% to 2%.
- Martial artist perk now triples base unarmed damage.
- Base unarmed damage is now calculated as 20% of a cahracter's physique, and is no longer capped at 8.
- Characters can now only perform sex actions of one corruption level higher than their current level without gaining corruption. (e.g. A 'pure' character can only perform 'pure' or 'vanilla' actions without gaining corruption.)
- The boundaries for the six levels of physique/arcane/corruption perks has been standardised to 0-10/10-30/30-50/50-70/70-90/90-100.
- Slimes no longer have -100 unarmed damage as their subspecies modifier, and instead have their base unarmed damage reduced by 75%.
- 'Unarmed' weapons (such as the knuckle dusters) now include the equipping character's base unarmed damage in their damage calculation.
- Characters now gain unique effects from non-flesh body materials, instead of the effects being part of the subspecies status effect. (Only affects slimes and elementals at the moment.)
- Elementals no longer have two perks giving them their core stats, and instead have an 'Elemental' trait which does this.
- Elementals' attributes are now determined by their body material, and are applied via their racial status effect.
- When a character wearing a condom cums, and the condom doesn't break, they now pull out of whatever orifice they were fucking (so that they can remove the condom).
- NPCs will no longer stop all ongoing 'foreplay' sex actions before starting their preferred 'main sex' penetrative action (if the action is available to them).
- Disabling anal content now only disables actions involving a character's anus, not their ass. (So you can now perform/receive hotdogging even if anal is off.)
- NPCs will now only suck their own tails during sex if they have both the performing and receiving oral fetishes.
- Characters who have the pure virgin fetish and a virgin vagina (or a regrown hymen) will now have a very strong aversion to performing sex acts that involve having their vagina penetrated. (This also affects sex type generation during quick sex.)
- Slaves will no longer have sex with other slaves who aren't attracted to them, unless they are willing to rape that other slave. (Willingness to rape requires non-con content to be on and for the slave to have a non-negative fetish desire towards raping others.)
- Slaves now have a chance (25%) to bond with one another for each hour that they spend together (either in the same room or at the same job). The chance to bond is reduced if the slaves are shy and increased if they are confident or related to one another.
- Bonding events can either result in a positive or negative change to the slaves' affection towards one another. Being kind or related to one another increases the chance of a positive event, while being selfish decreases it.
- Slaves will now only masturbate after 12 hours of having the 'Pent-up' status effect, instead of 6, so (if their setting enable them to) they will be more likely to have sex with other slaves (or ambush the player for sex).
- Improved information shown in slave job tooltips.
- 'Daily fatigue' has been renamed to 'daily stamina'. All slaves have 24 stamina, and instead of slave jobs increasing fatigue, they now drain stamina. The 'idle' and 'bedroom' jobs now have no effect on a slave's daily stamina.
- The icon representing items in a tile is now shown in the main map screen.
- Rainbow colours are now parsed correctly.
- Buffed the 'tourist' perk by making all enemies suffer -1AP. (Silly mode occupation.)
- Changed Dominion's street and boulevard 'Characters Present' to have less Enforcers, as well as adding 'centaur carts' as being present in boulevard tiles.
- The girth of rat tails now tapers off instead of being the same value all the way to the tip.
- Half-demon rabbit-morphs are now called 'jackalopes'.
- Reduced the fine which Dominion alleyway prostitutes need to pay off from 20,000 to 10,000 flames.
- After completing Helena's romance quest, Scarlett will now slowing regain affection towards Helena until she is neutral towards her.
- Moved the 'copy dialogue' and 'export character' buttons from the top-left and top-right of the dialogue title bar to the very bottom-right part of the game's UI.
- Improved formatting of offspring map dialogue.
- The 'Inno-chan's gift' debug item now works on the player character.
- Increased save file name length limit from 32 characters to 64.
- Updated the icons for physique/arcane/corruption attributes.
- Added unique colours for association with unarmed, melee, and ranged damage.
- Added a tooltip to show you what your unarmed damage is when you hover over an empty weapon slot in your inventory.
- Added 'tapered tail' as a demonic tail type.
- Numerous parsing, formatting, and typo fixes.
- Fixed issue where characters with a lisp wouldn't have their dialogue parsed correctly if there was an ELSE conditional within it.
- Fixed issue with VAR parsing in xml files sometimes throwing background errors.
- Items of 'Unique' rarity will no longer automatically be deleted from tiles.
- Teleporting or using any other means of fast travel will no longer cause any dropped items in your current tile to avoid being automatically deleted.
- Loitering for 8 hours now correctly passes 8 hours instead of 4.
- Fixed issue where entering and then exiting the enchantment screen while trading with someone would allow you to fully manage the trader's inventory.
- Fixed bug where your clothing would sometimes be duplicated after the Enforcer encounter's strip-search sex scene.
- Fixed issue where all status effects that had a 'time remaining' value assigned to them (most noticeably the 'pregnancy' effects) would be deleted upon saving & then loading your game.
- Fixed issue where externally-defined status effects would not be applied to your character after loading a saved game until you took an action.
- Fixed issue where the 'prevent creampie' flag was not working when calculating generic sex results. (This was the cause of the bug where Scarlett was letting random harpies cum inside of her even when she liked you.)
- The response buttons are now correctly refreshed to what they should be displaying after using any of the loiter actions.
- Fixed issue where enslaving a storm attacker on a street tile which also had a friendly occupant living in it would result in the post-enslavement dialogue breaking.
- Resting until sunrise/sunset now rests you to 5 minutes past the exact time of sunrise/sunset, which should fix the issue of shortening/lengthening day times causing the rest button to sometimes rest you for 24 hours + 1 minute.
- Fixed bug where the 'important status effect' screen would keep spamming 'cleaned vagina' messages if you had both pussy and vaginal-urethra creampies and had a dildo inserted into your vagina.
- Fixed incorrect tooltip description for the sex positioning action to move beneath a taur in order to perform oral on them.
- Fixed issue where not all characters would not react to a character's sexual areas being revealed in sex.
- Fixed issue where characters who cuoldn't see each other were reacting to each other's sex areas being revealed (such as the two people you service in the nightclub's gloryhole scene).
- Fixed issue where the availability of the 'incest tease' and 'vaginal tease' was incorrectly based on the performer requiring a vagina.
- Any Constables which were spawned and incorrectly stayed in the tile after the encounter had ended will be automatically cleaned up when loading into this version.
- Fixed bug where viewing your offspring's character screen or using the offspring map would sometimes throw a background error and cause the game to lock up.
- Fixed bug where you were able to order a custom slave from Helena even if you couldn't afford it.
- Fixed bug where custom slaves ordered from Helena were ten times more expensive than they should have been.
- Saved clothing elements which have been corrupted and saved as being equipped into an impossible slot should now have their loading gracefully cancelled by the game.
- Modded clothing will no longer spawn on randomly-generated NPCs with colours that are not defined as being available for them.
- Fixed issue with a singular unicorn being described as 'An unicorn'.
- Fixed bug where if a character was already addicted to a certain fluid type, they would never recognise any other character as having also given them their addiction, even if that other character has addictive fluids.
- After combat, the active response tab no longer incorrectly remains on whatever tab you were on during combat, and instead resets to the first one.
- If you somehow gain access to Brax's office after completing his part of the main quest, you (and Brax) will no longer get stuck in the tile.
- Fixed bug where after asking Ralph for a big discount, he would start fucking you without displacing your clothing to gain access to your pussy/ass.
- Finch now correctly stocks weapons and items which are tagged as being sold by him. (So he should now correctly stock the 'riding crop' weapon.)
- Fixed bug where after performing a double anal creampie, the orgasming character would end by penetrating the second target's vagina (even if they didn't have one...) instead of their asshole.
- Fixed bug where the 'Forced TF Racial Limits' option would be in every content option category, instead of just in 'Gameplay'.
- Scarlett now correctly stops calling you by the name you told her to call you by when releasing her from being your slave.
- Fixed weapon description always displaying its stats as though the player had it equipped. (So when a weapon is equipped by an NPC, it now correctly shows the damage as though it's using their stats.)
- Fixed issue where Lyssieth was being detected as a human instead of an elder lilin.
- Fixed bug where if you were a demonic slime, your self-transformation choices would be limited to just human or demon.
- Fixed related bug where you wouldn't get a slime's bonuses if you were also a demon.
- Fixed bug where self-transformation horn options were being displayed in the 'Hair' category.
- Shopkeepers will no longer generate randomly-enchanted items which should have defined pre-set enchantment (such as clothing/weapons which form part of a set).
- Enforcers now only equip condoms if they have the associated fetishes for that behaviour. (i.e. They either dislike cumming or you have a vagina, you aren't visibly pregnant, and they have a non-positive desire towards the impregnation fetish.)
Friday, 3 July 2020
Plan for v0.3.9
Hello again!
After taking a break over the past several days, I'm feeling a lot better than I have been over the last two weeks, and so now I'm ready to get started on finishing off the rest of v0.3.9. I'm still aiming at the 15th of July for the full, public release, but hopefully I'll be able to get it out sooner than then.
Plan up until v0.3.9
By the end of this weekend, I am aiming to have the following finished:
Release a preview hotfix
- Fix the bugs that have been reported in the preview release of v0.3.8.5.
- Completely finish off the Enforcer alleyway encounter.
- If time is left over, I'll try and add some other small stuff.
By the 15th of July at the very latest:
Release the full public version of v0.3.9
- Fill in all of the Rat Warren placeholders.
- Fill in the player's bathroom & spa room upgrade content.
- Spend any remaining time on adding as many small features that I've previously mentioned as possible.
Companion Support
I also need to mention the fact that I'm planning on dropping support for companions in this next version. This wasn't an easy decision to make, especially considering how much time has been put into them, but the amount of complexity that they've been adding to new content has been a large part of the reason why so many releases have been delayed. Not only was it taking a considerable amount of time for me to both write and make the framework variations for companions, but doing so was very repetitive work and was draining my enthusiasm for adding new scenes.
As an example of how companion support was slowing me down, I'll give a quick example of how I need to take into account attractions & available sex areas when starting a sex scene with a random NPC:
Without companions:
- Check NPC attraction to player.
- Check if the NPC's desired sex type with the player is available.
With companions:
- Check NPC attraction to player.
- Check NPC attraction to companion.
- Check companion attraction to player.
- Check companion attraction to NPC.
- Check if the NPC's desired sex type with the player is available.
- Check if the NPC's desired sex type with the companion is available.
- Check if the companion's desired sex type with the player is available.
- Check if the companion's desired sex type with the NPC is available.
The situation gets even worse when there are two or more random NPCs, as I then need to check all of the possible variations between the player's companion and these extra NPCs. Having to factor in all of these variations is what's been causing a lot of the delays in getting new content added (especially in the Rat Warrens), and so that's why I'm going to have to drop support for them.
How it will be handled
Starting from the next release, companions will be completely disabled by default, but you will still be able to enable them (via a content toggle), so no content is actually being removed by this change. All of the slavery and friendly NPC content is unaffected by this; it's only the mechanic of adding NPCs to your party which is being dropped.
Going forwards, I won't be adding any support in normal scenes for companions, but I will try and compensate for this somewhat by adding more options for slaves and friendly NPCs (such as taking them out on dates and other such things).
Elementals will also be getting a rework, and while they will no longer be summoned as persistent companions, they will still function in the same manner during combat. I will also be adding a way to start an interaction scene with them, so you'll still be able to have sex with them and talk to them about things. I'll be greatly expanding this once again once I get to the stage in the game where Elementals will be properly unlocked in a lore-friendly way (the current elemental spell books are just temporary).
There will also be some unique scenes and areas in the future which will involve temporary companions, similar to the way things work in Claire's quest, so the companion mechanics won't have been a complete waste of effort.
Summary
So, to sum up:
- Supporting companions is causing a lot of the delays when adding new scenes.
- As such, all new content from now on will no longer support companions.
- You will still be able to access all current companion content by enabling the companion content toggle.
- Slaves & friendly NPCs will have dating and other scenes added as compensation (in a future version).
- Elementals will be slightly reworked (for v0.3.9).
- Companion mechanics will be used as part of special quests later on.
I know that a lot of you liked the companion mechanics, and to you I'm very sorry about dropping support for them, but if I kept going as I have been, then it would take me absolutely forever to finish this game.