Plans!!
Apologies for the radio silence, I haven't been able to make any decent progress on development stuff lately so I haven't had much to bring up. (Also my job makes me want to forcibly remove my brain stem with a pair of needle nose pliers, but that's life babyyyy). That being said, I felt it would be appropriate of me to lay out some of my goals before I start working on the next Chapter! I really want the first chapter to feel "finished" so I don't have to keep jumping back to it while I'm knee deep in new content. So, in no particular order...
- Probe Finding!
I really want to keep the probe hunting mechanic, but I could definitely stand to make finding them less tedious. I've got a couple ideas in mind as far as accomplishing this goes, but the prevailing idea is to have an item in the player inventory that can be used in menu to list the number of probes in an area. I'll be playing around with that for a minute to get it how I want it, but I'll definitely be open to feedback once this mechanic's out!
- Sprites!
I don't personally care much for the default RPG Maker character sprites, especially since they kind of clash with the ones that I've made (X2 is supposed to be about four feet tall, so it's a bit silly how she towers over everyone else lol). I'm not sure how much of a priority this one will be, since I'm still relatively new to making sprites so it takes me a long time, but I do want the major characters to have their own unique sprite sheets at least. Here's a sneak peek at the Director's! (Still a WIP, so it's subject to change) 
- Combat...?
I've been toying with the idea of adding some actual combat into the game for a select few encounters. Just to be clear, the dialogue system is 100% here to stay! I tore too much of my hair out trying to make it work, so I'm not about to try and replace it. But I have some encounters in mind that would focus more on actual fighting than just X2's awkward seduction techniques. Plus, it could be used to highlight her past as a soldier, which I think would be neat. Making combat in RPG Maker is something I still struggle with, and I'd like to improve in that regard (especially for future projects).
- Touch Up!
I noticed a few art pieces have some color clipping through the lines. They're not too distracting, but now that I've noticed them they bother me and I hyper-fixate on things like this. This one's low priority, but I would like to have it fixed before starting on the next Chapter. Also, the Director's left arm is fucked six ways to Sunday in her intro cutscene.
Not that she minds; it's a small price to pay for spicy chips.
- Area 51 and the Sewers!
I mentioned in an earlier update that I had an encounter planned for the sewers, but I've also been wanting to change how the Base level is meant to be played. As it stands, it's pretty easy to just blitz through, especially since the agents don't actually do much to impede your progress. However, since each dialogue encounter is unique and takes a considerable amount of time to code and write for, having a dialogue encounter for every single agent in the Base is a tall order. I'm still trying to work through that little bump in the road, so it'll probably be a while before I have a solution for that. Also, sewer encounter! I don't wanna spoil that one, but hopefully it'll be ready for the next build. Maybe.
- Mobile Port?
I might be making a mobile download before too long, but since I suspect I'll be updating the first chapter somewhat frequently I'd rather not have to manage two different downloads. This one might have to wait until I have the first chapter released exactly how I want it, but we'll see! If the new fixes I'm working on take longer than I'd like, then I'll probably drop a mobile download in the meantime.
- Gallery!
Currently there's no gallery option. The image files are accessible, but I understand that they're not exactly very well organized so I'm looking to add some kind of gallery feature here eventually. Gonna be a minute, since it's not my highest priority at the moment, but we'll get there!
- Rations!
Currently, rations are absolutely fucking worthless! They're a vestige of the earlier combat system that was, you know, an actual combat system, and required some kind of healing mechanic. I have three ideas to remedy this issue;
FIRST: I add the option to use a ration halfway through a combat dialogue. The con of this option is that I don't wanna. The label system I have for dialogue encounters is inflexible as hell, so that would be annoying to implement.
SECOND: I make it so the player doesn't "heal" after an encounter, so they will need to use rations afterwards to make up for any dialogue mistakes they've made earlier. The con here is that I don't want to be too punishing with the dialogue combats; I feel like they play too much like a guessing game sometimes, and I don't want to be overly harsh.
THIRD: I just FLIP THE BITCH and get rid of them entirely, since they just feel tacked on at the moment and I'm not entirely convinced that they fit in with the rest of the game. Biggest con here is that X2 really likes snacks, and I feel like having rations on hand leads to some fun interactions when she's preggers.
I think that about covers what I'm working towards as far as a final release of the first chapter is concerned. What do y'all think? If you've got any suggestions, feel free to comment below! (Aside from kink or story suggestions, please. I prefer to have that stuff figured out on my own.)
Thanks for sticking around to play my goofy-ass little game, I appreciate the support!
Comments
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You should do to the probes what was done with the tokens coins, in hellbrain's games make them shortly flash in the area so the player know where to head
There are a few probes that do that actually! Most of the probes that aren't out in the open (the ones hiding in boxes, holes, crates, etc) have their lights blinking. They're dimmed out a bit so it's not super easy to spot, though, so I might make them a little brighter for the next update.
I already mentioned a possible post-birth sprite update in an earlier thread, but would it be difficult to have dedicated nekkid & gravid Gestational Pool sprites?
That is an idea I'd like to implement for sure! It would take a while to do, since I would need to make nakey sprites for each size and make censored versions for the censored route, but it seems doable. I'll probably get around to it after I've made sure a few other things work the way I want them to.
That's awesome!
For rations maybe in a later update they can do something similar to probes and find them scattered. If you find some you can eat to increase butt, bust or pregnancy. I like that idea from preggopixels game. Like human food reacts differently to X2's species if they consume human food
It's funny you bring that up, since I was planning on a few later scenes with X2 experiencing weird reactions with human food! They probably won't result in any permanent changes, though. As for rations, I think I'd prefer to keep them as a kind of healing/buffing item.
Still, hidden food items later on could be fun! Thanks for the suggestion!
your welcome since pregnant woman crave weird combinations of food you can base it on that
mmmm, making an item that tells you how many probes there are in an area is much better than "Hey idiot, can't find the probes? Why don't you just look it up?" I feel like putting it in would be easy, but there's a lot of nitty gritty things, like "What about sub area's"(which is only in the city ATM) and "I wish there was a hotkey so I didn't have to go into the menu to see how many I have left"
For the rations, I think not healing at all is a bit rough, but healing a set amount after a dialogue encounter, like say, 50 hp, would be alright, or like Kaja mentioned, it giving you a buff or a shield from the first set of damage you'd take also sounds both mechanically feasible and fitting story-wise, ie "MMM just had a yummy snack and now my BRAIN works better"
Originally I did have a mechanic that would have X2 recognize when she had all the probes, but I couldn't get it working for the Jam version and it's been back burner since (sorry it's been such an annoyance lol)
And I also really like the buff idea, though I'll have to toy around quite a bit to get it to work. Having it heal just a little is also a pretty good idea, I might combine them!
As I mentioned above, I'm sorely lacking in rpg maker combat experience, so balancing them might be a bit of a headache, but it'll be good experience for sure!
Rations could provide minor buffs if you eat them before battle
That's a pretty solid idea, great suggestion! I'll try playing around with that