Devlog 3/4/26 - Still Combat & looking ahead
Yep, its another post about the combat system. Unfortunately this thing is pretty big and complex so its taking a bit of time to get through but it feels like the end is coming soon. The worst mechanics are working mostly and its down to bugfixes and some variety into the system. Work pressures have meant there's not been anywhere near as much work as I'd like put in over the past fortnight.
Apologies for the lack of images on this one
Combat changes & Fixes
There were a bunch of issues where the player would get locked out at various times, misalignments for attacks and so on. These have been fixed, UI has been added for combos, and some other things. Through testing, I realised that the combat system was leaning too far into combat. The idea is that combat is an option but the main point is sex so enemies got given a Grabby Hands attack where they'll destroy clothing as well as raising their arousal levels. The player has been given a Tease action to raise all valid enemies arousal state as well. Now the combat can be completed simply by getting the opponents to hit a critical arousal point so they start masturbating and drop out of the combat. Of course, you'll also have to deal with enemies who are not attracted to you who probably will be aggressive. Similarly, if you attack enemies that are attracted to you, you risk raising their aggression high enough for them to become violent as well.
Takedowns
Enemies can now start takedowns either by initiating the combat or by having full ATB. I've just started on the players ability to do takedowns. At the moment I'm running through the flow of it for F/M but once thats done its relatively quick to add in the M/M and M/F options. I'm deliberately not fucking too much with takedowns because we're so close to a critical future phase that'll make huge changes to them and sinking too much time into it is just a waste. For example, right now the sex sections of the takedowns are on a fixed loop of something like 10 loops for LoopA then 10 in loopB. In the future, it would all be controlled by how you're doing the sex and orgasm progress between player and enemy. but we can't do that yet, so it's just loops for now.
Next Phase
There was a plan for the next phase, however I've had a bit of a rethink about it, and I think there's a few housekeeping jobs that should be done before diving into another hefty phase of dev work.
The next phase is now a bit of character work. Making some tweaks to the character models, adding some hairstyles, things like better matching skins between body and genitals so it isn't necessary to use fur tufts to hide the join. Some more body morphs would be nice, as the females all have the same smallish breasts so it would be nice to be able to tweak characters and have some variation there.
On top of that, we'll be hopefully setting up a website for the game. We're working on adding some interesting stuff for supporters into the game and we need a way to actually sell things outside of the game. One of those things is hopefully going to be character cameos. We'll be releasing a set number per month while we're doing the cameos. That gets you an in-game character skin with agreed stats and name. Then in the character creator, adding your characters name will pull out your character ready to play.
We're also looking at full selectable character slots, NPC characters and some other stuff, but thats down the line. This phase will improve the character models and allow us to offer these things which we hope will help support and improve the game. Keep an eye out for more details!
Then...
Sex, basically. The combat system is the foundation and entry point for the new sex system. The next phase is pretty much just getting sex working better, a new way. New struggle system as well. This phase is pretty much the most important one of the whole game. After that, there's only a few more real major features to add other than new species, characters and worlds. In fact, after sex, there's only 3 real features to add:
Proper Wolves
Competitors
Bosses
Everything else is just improvements or modifications of existing stuff and we start moving into the endgame...
Finally
I'm pretty busy with work stuff at the moment. I'm trying to stream over weekends though. I can be found on Picarto, usually 1200 - 1500 and 1900 - 2200GMT sat and sun. It's looking unlikely I'll manage this weekend due to crunch time, but I always announce streams on Discord shortly before starting.
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Extra Stuff!
In the next few weeks we'll be adding some exciting limited time Sales to Patreon, with discounts for Patreon Members at the $10+ tiers. In the first round we'll be selling Custom Player Characters, Wandering NPCs and Nameplates within Pineridge.
The first two will be limited in numbers available in the first round (subsequent rounds will be when we have additional Species available), while Nameplates will always be available. Look out for more information in the coming weeks!