Progress Update- March! (Patreon)

Development is going well! …but my communication is suffering. To make it doable for today, I’m just gonna give a quick summary of where things are at. Lots of technical stuff this time, so there aren’t any screenshots to show off.

I don’t do April 1st shenanigans btw. Don’t be scared.

If you missed the streams, VODS are here. ('Videos' tab at the top.)

What’s being worked on?

Bounding boxes

Touching bodies/parts now works (super well)! It took digging deep into the 2d display code to get that working in a modular and reliable way. Hard to describe beyond- what was once spaghetti is now clean. This stuff solves a difficulty from previous versions in handling touches that drag from one character to another.

Basically now, touches are logged during a game tick, processed at the end of that tick, and sent to all systems that might use them. In the past, a touch would be used the instant it happened, making it really hard to do stuff like analyze how hard/fast/rough the motion is. Now we can do that!

Touch and stimulation

Touches translate into different stimulation types depending on their motion, what’s being touched, and what’s doing the touching. E.g. rubbing, petting, penetrating, scratching, poking, etc. It’s a bit tedious cause it generates a bunch of code work right now, but the input/output of touch to stimulation is working well.

Sensation and sensitivity

Stimulation filters into sensation, like pleasure or tickling, or more complex ideas of sensation, like teasing. That’s based on the sensitivity of the body part (and individual character) to the type of stimulation. Also tedious for the same reasons, but also working!

Simplification

Some of the code for the Entity Component System was relying on the idea of different game mechanics being split into different entities. For example, a butt might have a fluid container entity, a stimulation entity, a color entity, etc.. I’ve instead decided to collapse all game mechanics into a single entity. So basically, one object (a body part, toy, etc) is just one entity.

This choice makes it way simpler to make interplay between game mechanics work smoothly. I realized when trying to make wetness (fluid mechanics) interplay with sensation (touch mechanics) that this simplification was gonna be necessary.

So, I’ve been doing some serious refactoring. This isn’t really a pivot to a new way of doing things, but more like, the current methods maturing into a more solid design. It doesn’t give much in the way of visuals to show off though :(

I’ve been jumping between the code for many different game mechanics without it getting confusing or difficult to make things work. Refactoring this is proving just how much more sturdy the engine is now. This simplification is mostly finished, but is gonna take a few more solid days of work I think.

Putting it all together

I’ve been mostly working on body parts. Since the many uses and interactions with body parts are the core of this game, this means I’ve been working on pretty much every aspect of the game code. We’re at this point because enough of the groundwork has been laid to start putting the game mechanics together into a game again, and seeing how they fit.

The current task is some pretty intense engine work, and I’ve been doing it for over a week straight, so I’m kind of lacking the energy to present it better. But I’m excited! Things have mostly gone from theory to an actual usable game-in-progress.

There’s more work to do. Gotta finish this simplification task, then stimulation and sensation. Then I’ll be doing some toys mechanics (yay). I’m not ready to make a prediction on a release date yet. Getting there though!

… and that’s all I got in me for writing today. Sorry for the dry post! I’ve got a better plan for next week’s post, so hopefully it’ll be easier to stay in the weekly posting habit.

 I code better than I communicate. I get a bunch done but no one knows about it >.<’

Thank you all so much for sticking with me through this long development cycle. I’m getting pretty hyped about how well the engine is turning out, and I can’t wait to be able to start sharing playable versions again.

That’s all for now! <3