The the eternal conflict always heats up around this time of year, and leading my armies demands more of my time. Someone must resist those anti-porn heaven-seekers, and it's hard to turn down an old-fashioned skeleton orgy. Before I go, I've got a excellent release for you.
JUST DOING SKELETON THINGS
As the release name may suggest, this is a big one. Why? Mostly because I'm a nerd and 32 is the 5th power of 2. You may recognize the sequence: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024... Well that's about it. Despite all logic, many years of getting paid for computer stuff seems to make those numbers feel important (or, it's just an excuse to have a little fun ;). In any case, we've got two big things for you this release.
The first is something I mentioned back in the previous change log: a new player character avatar. This one is quite unique, because unlike most avatars out there in text games, we took things pretty seriously. Instead of a handful of breast sizes like you'd normally see if you're lucky, we have 26 (+flat). And it's not just 26 static breasts, either. We've got 3 nipple variations for each size, and 4 areolas as well (currently just puffy and normal). Instead of one or two pregnancy bellies we have multiple for a standard pregnancy, and then we go all the way up into the realms of fairly-absurd hyperpregnancy. We've got three body types, 6 hip sizes, vulva variations, arousal, cum, etc. cocks and balls of various sizes and types. In this release, there are literally 1,358,622,720 possible combinations represented on the avatar.
Work is still ongoing with the avatar, as it takes a lot of work to make art with all these variations. Drawing them, in a way that they can be layered, then exporting hundreds of images, and then coding to choose and layer them. Right now the avatar is just the body, and it isn't quite complete (there still needs to be shading on the breasts, tweaks and fixes here and there, more variations like areola size, and 'fun' items like milk). It's a great start though. Next month it'll also have a head, with different hair, makeup, and facial expressions. (Even some fun stuff like cum from a facial.) I think everyone enjoys seeing a visual representation of their character, but I know it can be somewhat disappointing when that representation doesn't really match. We're using our staff artist for this, gave them a break from CE, so we'll be able to keep expanding this periodically in the future.
The second item is either a stroke of genius or perhaps just madness, that happened to me back in early June when I was struggling to work through burnout. I figured that the weakness of life sims is that even though the format gives you a lot of control over your character, you don't always want to simulate all that time. Even in AW where we put a lot of work into reducing the make-work elements common in life sims, there's still periods of time without much going on. We've worked add a variety of ways to pass time quickly when you're not off wading in rivers, exploring forests, or getting fucked in one way or another... Even if the "extra time" isn't as bad as some other games I can think of, it's still not ideal.
Enter the Evening Activity System (EAS). A totally optional way to pass time in the evenings, in a more interesting and life-like fashion. After letting the idea percolate for a while, I came up with the design, and gave it to our lead code cat to implement for 1.32. The idea is that when you have some of that extra time, you can use the EAS rather than manually skipping time or performing time-passing activities like watching TV. This will give you some brief content, along with various possibilities for exciting/sexy events in the AW style. The usual result will be doing various activities to maintain your mental/physical health, or hanging out with friends or neighbors, or any number of small everyday type things. Interspersed with that will be more fun things like perhaps taking part in an apartment building barbecue orgy.
Obviously to start with it doesn't have a ton of content, but assuming that you like it, I've designed it so that it's super easy to add all manner of events and tons of the small but unique everyday things you'd expect in Appletree. I hope the EAS helps alleviate some of the "life sim grind" without removing all the freedom that makes life sims fun. Please give us your feedback on Discord, as I'm sure it'll help us improve it. I believe the EAS is fairly unique, at least I haven't seen something quite like it in all the text games I've played... so hearing from you can really help with the trial and error aspect of breaking new ground.
I also wanted to mention that we set up a new way to accept bug reports. Maintaining bug tracking software was just too much of a hassle, as it seemed to have problems fairly routinely, and people didn't like making accounts (and without accounts, well, there be bots). Just accepting reports on Discord has been, well, a nightmare. It isn't anyone's fault or anything, just the nature of the environment being too chaotic. So now we've kind-of gone for a new approach utilizing Google Forms. You can check out the bugs page here.
So that's enough words from me, the troops are waiting. Thanks so much for making AW possible, we hope you enjoy this release!
Change Log
- Redid fundal height calculations to use fancy math based on the diminishing returns of geometric volumes and other such bullshit.
- Should be a useful number again.
- Accounts for all abdominal wombs now.
- Needed for avatar belly size, because hyperpregnancy.
- Major update to the character menu status tab.
- Uses circular progress bars for stats instead of the larger ones, saving space.
- Includes more information in one place, and doesn't look so disorganized.
- Wider space for avatar when using the new avatar.
- New Avatar
- Holy shit this was a lot of work. It always seems easy, but it never is.
- Not complete, more options expected, breast shading, also head/face/hair to be added
- 391 individually hand-exported pngs for layering. (182 more than the total male and female Koikatsu body portrait images!)
- Currently 1,358,622,720 combinations possible with the code.
- Loading old saves may require you to enable it yourself in the settings, otherwise it is the default option.
- New avatar options in the game settings menu.
- Allows you to disable it in favor of the old portrait.
- Allows you to force certain options such as body shape, nipples, and pubic hair.
- Allows you to limit or disable arousal and/or creampie cum on the avatar.
- Different erect and soft penis sizes, current erection strength determines which is used.
- Has some special genital options (horsecock, hucow cock, tentaballs).
- left and right breasts layered separately, so that things can fit between them.
- 26 breast sizes, even more than in the hover example images.
- Arousal is based on arousal level, with 2 stages, unless you are wearing a pussy seal (shown on avatar).
- Cum amount has 3 levels based on the amount of cum, including internal cum (unless sealed)
- You can have cum on your avatar with a seal, if you have cum on your body (groin, thighs, asscrack).
- includes a teat nipple variation, this is also used when nipple girth is set to max and length is at the 2 highest values.
- Inverted nipples happen for the inverted and partially inverted nipple lengths.
- Puffy areola happen at max areola puffiness for now, but are limited to a default nipple until others are added.
- Pubic hair will turn to the "bushy" option if you go long enough without grooming, otherwise respects your pubic hair style.
- Fixed an issue where the tentapet could be killed while gestating by getting another creampie. (and other bugs)
- Thanks to Klorpa for fixing a bunch of typos!
- Evening Activity System!
- In order to make the game less "grindy" we decided to introduce a new system which allows you "fast-forward your evening letting your character to decide what to do using your guidance.
- Can be started from the action panel every evening. Choose the length, your character's focus this evening and the sexual activity level, press start and enjoy the results!
- Your character need to have either "slut" or "liberated" kinks to have more options for the sexual behaviors.
- Being a shamefast will result in a single sad sexual option of "Avoid when possible" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- There are 15 different evening events (25k characters) and the list will be expanded in the next releases!
- You can still get ahem, "surprise sex" if your sexual option was set to "Avoid".
- Every activity have some impact on your stats.
- Character chooses activities basing on her personality, kinks and traits. Take note that a character with addictions or a more "unhinged" character can spend their evening in a more crazy and unsafe way.
- Please tell us if you like the new system and propose what events we could add in the feature!
- Note that the system is still in the development so it can still be a bit buggy.
- Stephanie the lifeguard
- Don't even try to get drowned on her shift.
- (New small scene at the pools and lakes) (3500 chars)
- Bugfixing
- Usual stuff, removed a lot of bugs you've reported in the bug channel and new bugtracker. Typing out the full list is boring and unnecessary so I won't do it.