Progress update- Poses, hitboxes, and the debugger (Patreon)

Lots of fun stuff today! This post is better viewed on subscribestar btw since there are images with fun bits that Patreon doesn't like.

Also there's a stream starting in a couple minutes!

To new patrons: We’re in the middle of an absurdly-long update cycle. Here’s the summary and how to access content.

What's being worked on?

Pose swapping code.

When you use a toy, especially p*netrating someone with a d*ldo, that toy usually swaps to a new "pose", in the same way that a character might make a new pose. I went over the technical parts of this last week. This week I finished implementing and testing the code. It took some engineering, but it works!

It doesn't look much different but it's very exciting lol. The different parts of the game are now getting woven together. In this case, player interaction, positioning, posing, and p*netration. 

Pose ideas.

This is a long term thing, not an initial release thing!

Since this is the same code that could swap around the characters' actual poses, I decided it was worth sketching out and seeing what might be fun. Thanks to the pose-swapping code and all the foundational work I've done on the engine, this isn't impossible to do anymore ^^

We did some experimenting in last week's stream~

(uncensored stuff on substar btw)

This'd be a lot of work due to the mane, tail, and face all being at different angles, not to mention the p*netration animations, but I'm happy to put that work in if it's worth it gameplay-wise. Some other variations to play with hip angles-

Also, a smaller-scope idea was to add a leg position to allow hoofjobs, which I think is pretty neat. Maybe not in the initial release but this could be possible sooner ^^

Toy hitboxes.

Am experimenting with letting you simply grab the toys that are attached/inside the character via their hitbox, removing the target icons the previous versions used. I like the idea of making things feel more grounded and involved, and I think this helps!

There's a downside of things being hard to grab when they're covered or inside. I'm gonna have to prototype some ideas for how you "grab" toys. For initial release I'll stick with simplicity to keep the scope under control.

Still working on wrangling hitbox code, so I'll show this when it's more solid!

Debugger.

This thing has gotten pretty big now. There are 18 different pages on the debugger, targeting everything from animation to emotions to the basic code components. I'm living by the philosophy of- As soon as a feature becomes painful to debug, make a tool for it.

This has worked really well. Without rules like that I tend to over- or under-engineer. Now, I nip potential long-term problems in the bud without having to overthink things.

When is release? Dunno yet, but my Trello has the release checklist.

...and that's all for now!

Thank you lovely people for supporting me. My life is getting more and more hectic as I gear up to move, but that hasn't slowed work on the game down at all. I'm excited as hell to see this thing come together. Plus, it makes me feel much better when I'm putting out regular playable builds. I'm doing my best to keep this project in scope, and keep my focus on the quickest sane route to a playable release.

Y'all are amazing <3