by

November Project Balance Update

Thanks to everybody who donated this month. I’ll have a new release tomorrow or so that adds a bit more flexibility to the body part slot system and enables you to respec to transformations/equipment that you already own without spending mana. Also, I’m nearly finished with the art. Just need to settle on a good icon.

Here’s what I still need to do during v0.9x:
– 15 more random events.
– 4 more mortal characters. (1 of which is designed by a patron)
– 1 more mortal character skill.

I’m fairly sure that’s everything remaining that I promised in the Offbeatr. Let me know if I’ve missed something. The funds are dwindling and it looks like I’ll run out of budget in early/mid December, so I’m triaging a lot of stuff that I wanted to do in order to focus on that list. For example, I always intended to add angels back into the game after redesigning how those encounters work, but that’s looking unlikely.

Around v0.95 I’ll have the above items finished but I’ll need a couple more releases to prepare for v1.0 and open access (optimisation, adding ad banners, etc.). After v1.0 I’ll be working on other projects for a while. I’ll keep publishing these project balance updates up until v1.0, but after that it looks like I’ll have to stop because some ad networks have weird NDAs to prevent you from telling others how much (or more likely how little) they’re paying you.

Numbers below:

Continue reading →

Posted in biz
by

Release v0.88

The main addition in this release is the ability to rename the main character and the minions. You can also set whether they use male or female pronouns. I’m continuing to improve the UI on small displays, and I should be done with that after batch of tweaks.

Other fixes:

  • Fixed missing Reject buttons.
  • Fixed skip tabs in encounter on mobile.
  • Made the credits, new account, building and surface missions screens easier to use on narrow displays.
  • Made it easier to tap options when selecting a merge type or side effect on a touchscreen.

 

by

Release v0.87

This is just a little patch that I’ve put out early to hopefully fix a nasty save game loading bug (“Internal Server Error” 100% of the time for certain unlucky accounts).

Other bits:

  • You don’t need to click on a lab or sanctum transformation in order to see the effects. Hovering over them with the mouse will give you a preview.
  • Slightly more keyboard navigation available on the end of encounter screens. I’ll revisit adding more keyboard navigation once I’ve added character renaming. I make sure it interacts with text boxes OK.
  • Spent a while looking for the cause of increased server timeouts over the past 2 weeks. Still don’t know what’s causing them.
  • Fixed up my fuzz testing utility so that it works after the recent UI changes. It’s a script I run on my dev machine that clicks links randomly at high speed. Ran it for quite a while and it bumbled its way all the way to the endgame, but the timeout never showed up.
by

Release v0.86

Added:

  • Lavah finished off the Sanctum background painting! It’s looking really slick.
  • Reformatted Lair header, Lab, Diary and Sanctum screens for mobile.
  • Redesigned transformation selection so that it’s a grid of transformations rather than a table. Separated the details for each into a detail pane allowing for longer descriptions.

Bug Fixes:

  • Fixed error when using a piece of equipment that has no applicable body parts.
  • Fixed error when entering encounter with a mortal left in chastity for a long time.
  • Possible fix for meter animations not beginning on slow or unreliable net connections. Let me know in the comments if this is still happening.
  • Made IE compatibility mode icon go away.

This release I started out with a more ambitious plan to do a Civ-style tree view for the minion transformations along with a Civ-style work queue. It’s funny though, Civ lets you queue buildings and set multi-step research targets, but it doesn’t let you queue multi-step research targets. This is what I’d need to be able to mix beasts and concubines in the apprentices’ work queue. I started towards that, but it was getting too complex for the limited time I have left, so I canned it in favour of a straightforward reformat for mobile.

by

October Project Balance Update

As you might have noticed, I’ve brought on a new artist, so this month has seen a bump in expenditure. Donations are rolling in steadily, but not at the rate I’m spending them. I’m shooting for a 1.0 shortly before I take a Christmas break, and the remaining balance is sufficient to do that.

I should have another release out very soon. It’ll fix the lair screens for narrow displays and fix a bunch of bugs. After that, all the big redesigns in the mobile UI should be done, with only a lot of little details remaining.

Continue reading →

Posted in biz
by

Release v0.84

New stuff:

  • I’m starting to get commissions in from a new artist, Lavah! Her first contribution is finishing off the title painting (it’s based on a sketch by RJ Palmer). Hope you like it.
  • Animated meters. I’ve broken the animation into stages so that you can see the different contributions to the end state. Also, when you lose an encounter, you can see what happened to the horror meter.
  • A new character in Old Town: The Goth.
  • Redesigned the title page.
  • On mobile devices, when you’re in an encounter it defaults to scrolling past the header.
  • Typo fixes.

Known bugs:

  • Sometimes when a meter animates away from zero, it pops to the end position.
  • Animation isn’t supported on IE 8 or 9. You’ll see things jump instead.

As always, let me know if you’re seeing glitches with the new stuff.

by

Release v0.82

I’ve redesigned the encounter menus:

  • It has 1, 2 and 3-column responsive layouts so that it’s comfortable to use on anything between a desktop and a phone in portrait orientation.
  • To save screen real estate, the description for an action is now hidden in a tooltip (tap to see it on a touchscreen). If you’re seeing an action for the first time, it’s also displayed within the button.
  • Buttons are somewhat sexier; not quite so brown.
  • If you’ve got a small display, a row of skip tabs appears. It allows you to skip to different parts of the move list without scrolling.
  • You can select menu options from the keyboard.
  • Some moves allow you to select which body part they apply to.
  • A couple of typo fixes. Replaced a few mentions of ‘anus’ with ‘ass’ to make it less clinical.

Known bugs:

  • If you’re playing an old saved game, you might see descriptions for the all actions appearing during the first encounter after the upgrade. The descriptions are only supposed to show up for new actions and It’ll go back to normal in your second encounter.
  • If you’re on IE8 you get skip tabs no matter how big your screen is. (IE8 doesn’t support media queries)

So far I’ve tested on Windows Firefox 23, IE 8-10, Chrome, a Galaxy S3 running Android 4.1.2 (Samsung stock), a Nook HD+ (also stock), and an iPhone 3G running iOS 4.2. Let me know if I’ve missed any weirdness on your set-up.

This release took way, way too long. Partly it was me being blindsided by web standards snafus (Touch screen browsers send hover events? Whaaaat? IE8 puts the event object where!? Etc. etc.), partly it was the sheer variety of things to test, and partly it was feature creep. I want to do the meters next, but I think I’m going to have to skip some of my zanier ideas*.

* (Like the Lust meter fluctuating according to a heartbeat. If you were to time your button press just right, you’d get a slightly larger increase. Or slightly smaller, if that’s what you’re going for)

by

September project balance update

Income was a bit lower this month. I neglected to update the projected end date mentioned in the donate screen (it still said ‘Late August’), so that probably didn’t help!

This month I’m working on all the UI work that’s accumulated to try and make sure the game is a polished experience whatever you’re playing it on. There’s also a handful of extra settings that I promised over in the forums (like minion renaming and pronoun toggles etc.) that I need to implement.

I still don’t have a new illustrator/colourist lined up, but I’m continuing to make inquiries.

Continue reading →

by

An update on the UI work

This is the menu redesign I’m working on. I don’t have anything to release yet because I want to save it until it’s definitely an improvement on what’s already there.

new_menus

You can see with Cast Loosen there’s a sub menu for the target. I tried out exposing all the arouse/heavy arouse (options #1 and #2) variations in a sub menu, but picking the variation isn’t an interesting decision so I’m going to keep that randomised.

I’m hiding the descriptions inside a foldable section. I figure those are things you really only need to read once. Maybe I’ll default them to unfolded if you’ve never seen an action before, or if you’re on a big display. I haven’t decided which.

Does anyone have recommendations for JS animation libraries? I need relatively simple tweening through a list of keyframes for a variety of CSS properties. Preferably something that runs OK on underpowered devices. JQuery is disappointingly bloated and sluggish.