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I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing something, but aside from not having the time to add in any optional content, I also can't find anything important that's actually missing.
So let's get this release out in the world and one of you will tell me what's missing and I'll be mortified about it.
(and for posterity; it's not the cult segment - the story for this update is meant to happen inside of a day (not counting travel time) so not enough time has passed for a cult segment to be here)
Anyway, here's the change log.
Well, the test build was buggy, but it wasn't completely broken. In too many places.
I still have a good deal of testing to do, but now that I've actually done a little bit of it (and have had some help from my VIP Patrons (shameless plug: Join Today!)) I'm really happy with how the new detection system works for the new stealth segment. Same with how "stealth optional" the segment is.
See, I'm a gamer myself, and as a gamer, I know how gamers feel about forced stealth segments. Especially long forced stealth segments. That really conflicted with how I wanted to handle this update, because with how the characters involved behave, it being a stealth segment is really the only way it was going to work. So, not only is it an optional quest (meaning you don't need to do it at all in order to continue with the story), it's also stealth-optional. The new trophy does require you to actually stealth your way through the mission, but if you don't care about the trophy (or you get the trophy and decide to double back to eat all the enemies for XP) you can just fight everyone without caring about consequences. I even went another step further and made it so you don't fail the stealth requirement by getting caught; you only lock yourself out of the trophy if you defeat an enemy. Granted, running away does set you back at the start, but you still get a second chance. Or third, or however many times you get caught and run away.
Other than that, the simplest solution seems to have ended up being the best for the new shop. I still need to give it a bit of polish, because as it stands right now you get a snippet of BGM that you shouldn't, but everything that needs to work for core functionality works just fine. Contract Selling should be all caught up as well, though like I anticipated, that plus a bit of playtesting is all I managed to get done today. I also need to actually implement the new animations in Evdokia's Estate; they're done, they just need a quick edit to fit the screen size of the game and to be placed within the game files, but I haven't actually done that yet.
But the TL;DR of all this is that the update is finished and just needs a few days of polish and bug fixing to bring it up to snuff. I'm happy to remain committed to the Friday (October 4th) release date.
Then it'll be on to getting this year's Haunt update, v0.18, done. Which will hopefully not take as long as this update did because it'll have less going on, but I'm sure I'll find some new mechanic to torture myself with as I experiment with translating what's in my head into actual playable game.
If you want the update right away on Friday, go join my Patreon or Subscribestar. The latest update always goes out to my Patrons and Subscribers first. They also get patch notes to accompany the test builds and extra development news and the ability to vote in polls and a bunch of other stuff, but I know the updates are what you really want.
Speaking of shameless plugs and game updates, Maids & Masters is in another mega-bundle. There's some good stuff in there, click here to check it out. It's free!
Apparently I've decided to take a "bottom up" kind of approach to filling out all these maps. Rather than do the story-relevant bit first (which is effectively an extended stealth mission; kind of a combination of the aggressive path for Viridius and the catacombs part of Griselda's segment), I've decided to make a bunch of new animations for Evdokia's Estate (there's four right now, but I may make a few more once everything else is done) and work on the bit for Emily's Master.
Emily's Master is a bit of an exception when it comes to Estates. It isn't explorable like other Estates (which there is a narrative reason for, I'm not just being lazy about making another dozen maps, honest), so it basically functions as an extension of Emily's shop, and an excuse for a new means of purchasing things to be added so I can get around an engine limitation I discovered while updating the new customization options in v0.15.1/2. The trouble with this is that the accommodations I need to make for the new system to work without either breaking something, neglecting something, or sacrificing something are a little more complicated than anticipated. Which in turn means it took longer than I'd have liked to make progress on it.
The good news on that is that it's nearly done at this point (and should be complete tonight), and thanks to my Patrons being generous with me, I can focus on development work for the rest of this week, get the test build out to VIPs on Friday, and focus on fixing any bugs next week (provided no more wrenches get thrown into the gears and cause a delay). Once I get it finished, I'll also never need to mess with the shop setup again, as it's built in a way that includes the final tier of equipment before you have full access to it. Provided I don't have any bugs in it that need fixing, anyway.
Which just leaves that stealth segment. I know how gamers feel about forced stealth missions, especially long forced stealth missions, so - trying not to spoil anything - there is something in place to accommodate that. If you don't want to do the stealth mission, you won't be forced to in order to progress the story. You will have to do it if you want the full story for the new area, but it isn't going to be required reading. I still have a few more maps, enemy types, and mechanics to build out, but I should be able to get at least the majority of that done for Friday. It might be missing the actual ending, but that depends on how smoothly/quickly things go. All I can really say right now is that I'll do my best to get it all to a point where I'm happy with what will be in the test build.
If you want to get your hands on that test build, all test builds go out to VIPs on both Patreon and Subscribestar. If you don't want to shell out for the VIP tier, all the other paid tiers still get access to the patch notes, which goes into a little more detail of what's in the update and what to expect than what you get in the posts I make here. All tiers also get early access to each build at the same time, so if you want to play v0.17 as early as possible, give the pages a look and consider joining a tier.
I'm definitely not sick enough to actually consider myself sick anymore, which would be great news if it weren't for the lingering headache that still haunts me every time I try to get work done. I'm doing what I can to mitigate it, because I genuinely want to get v0.17 done in as timely a manner as possible, but it's a struggle. I'm also tired of talking about not really being sick, but still having trouble getting a decent amount of work done. Hopefully this will be the last time I mention it affecting development and I can actually get the other Estates in the region done and get v0.17 out.
On that note, Evdokia's Estate is nearly done. I still need to finish populating it with events and hide the various Estate goodies around, but the maps are done. Then I need to get some new animations rendered, because Evdokia has more or less served her purpose in the story at this point, which leaves her Estate really only existing as an excuse for more lewds. There is still a meta trophy that her Estate is a part of, but other than the usual rare items you can find at Act 2 Estates, there's not a lot going on there.
Which is actually going to be something of a theme with this update. Without spoiling anything, the story segment for this update is going to be a short one, and the other non-story Estate is basically only going to exist as an extension of Emily's shop. There's still plenty of content to find in the update, and I expect doing everything to take at least an hour for most people. A lot of it is optional, though, so I'm also expecting a certain type of player to be a little disappointed at the comparatively few minutes of story there is in v0.17.
I'm pretty happy with where the region is right now, though. I still want to find a few more places to fit in combat, because my testing has my Maids around level 28, which is still two levels shy of where I want them to be. That might resolve itself once I get the story segment done, but even if it doesn't, it's probably close enough.
That said, I'm not sure there'll be a new test build this Friday for VIP Patrons. The wilds segments are at a point now where I think I can safely call them complete, and Evdokia's Estate is at least completely explorable, but that's not a lot more game than what was in the last test build. I'm hoping I'll be able to get the other non-story Estate done this week, and if I do, that feels like enough to justify a new test build, but I may not. The remaining Estate is going to be a lot of math for me to do, and I need to copy over a lot of infrastructure from Emily's shop to make sure everything works as intended. Not to mention updating Emily's shop itself so you can actually pick up all the new stuff you can buy. What I want to do is double down and get everything done over the next two weeks, have the next test build be the final one, and leave myself a week to playtest and focus on QoL.
It's a good thing the Patron poll seems pretty well decided on the "it'll be done when it's done" option, because not only does that take some pressure off, that preferred timeline above puts v0.17's release on October 4th. I also had some client work come in, and I'm not sure how long it's going to take me to get through that yet. I've been told that it's relatively low priority, so it shouldn't affect development on Maids & Masters and hopefully v0.17 won't be any later than the 4th. If you do have an opinion that you want heard, that poll is still active until this Friday, and is available for both Patrons and Subscribers. Even if you're in the minority, I'd rather you say something - even if that's just leaving a vote - rather than be unhappy with the outcome in silence.
Much to my chagrin, the cold that I caught over a week ago at this point is still clinging to life. While I do feel well enough to be able to get at least some work done every day, what's left of the cold makes it much more difficult than I appreciate to concentrate on work. All of these wilds segments should be done by now, and while the vast majority of the work is done, what's left are the bits that require me to be more able to use my brain than I currently am, which has made reaching an endpoint on them an exercise in frustration.
The good news is that I think I'll be able to justify getting a test build put out this Friday. The wilds may end up still missing a few finishing touches that make each section feel more unique, but I can at least get someone else's opinion on how much of that is needed or if I'm just mentally stuck on it.
I've also got another two enemy types built out since the last post, bringing the total new enemy types for the wilds up to five. Most of these enemies also do things besides just poison you, too. If nothing else, combat will hopefully feel a little more varied than in previous segments of the wilds that only had one or two new enemy types, and only maybe three enemy types total.
I'm also hoping combat will feel a little more rewarding. I'd originally wanted the Maids to be somewhere around level 30 at this point in the game, but obviously the mountain regions didn't have a lot of opportunities for combat. Even if you've been keeping up on the combat that did exist, most of your Maids are probably going to be around level 24 on the high end. I haven't tested all the combat available in the new maps yet to see approximately where levels will be if you complete all of the new combat encounters, but I made an effort to make the new enemies worth a meaningful amount of experience. Hopefully without making them overly difficult to fight, so if you happen to be a little behind on levels, it doesn't prove overly difficult to catch up by fighting the newer enemies.
While I'm busy hoping for things, is it too much to hope you'll click on a Patreon or Subscribestar link? That poll I've been talking about is going to be running for all Patrons and Subscribers for a little more than another week.
Maybe I'll stick to hoping I wake up tomorrow to find the last of this cold has finally left me.
Well, I'm finally taking some actual time off, but it took getting sick to do it. I'm fairly certain I'm already over the worst of it, so I should be back to normal before Friday. This Friday's Patreon/Subscribestar post is a poll about development anyway, so I don't feel too bad about not having enough done for a test build. And with me being sick and not getting as much done this week, that poll is going to be all the more important.
To avoid being vague, the poll is going to be replacing the "which Estate is next?" polls that I held for the first half of Act 2, and instead is going to be more about how I want to handle my usual monthly releases, since there's an increasing likelihood I won't be able to finish v0.17 before the end of September, and v0.18 is likely to be of similar size and complexity. This might apply to v0.19 and beyond as well, since what I want to do with the first half of Act 3 is yet again something I've never done before.
I have still gotten some work done, though. Something I'd wanted to add more of but never got around to adding to the mountains - segments of the wilds - are already blocked out in a general sense for the South Desert. There's five segments in the new region, one of which is already map-complete. There are also four new enemy types - so far. I wanted to take a crack at making wilds maps that weren't just paths with sections of mazes, but without a decent variety of landmarks and enemies, they might actually be "big empty maps" like some people like to complain about. I take enough pride in my work that I don't want that to actually be true, so I still want to find at least two things to make unique about each map that gives you something to find or do besides fight enemies, and I might still make another enemy or two to try and round things out a little more.
But so help me, if I get the complaints anyway, v0.18 is going to have maps so big and so empty it'll make the Deep Wilds look like Times Square, and I've already got the lore justification for it.
The three Estates in the region are also a little different than usual. You've already met Evdokia and know everything about her that the story needs you to know, so exploring her Estate is entirely optional. Then there's the Emmerich Estate, where you can finally meet Emily's Master and unlock the opportunities to invest in tier 4 and eventually tier 5 gear (which will unlock a little non-linearly; he'll explain it when you get there). Lastly, there's the actual story segment for the update with the ancestral Wickham Estate, home to Viridius' older brother, Aridius.
The other two Estates will probably still get their own blog posts as I develop them, but I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll be doing my best not to talk about Aridius' Estate too much. Though I will say that it, too, is going to be a little different from the way you've been interacting with other Masters up to this point.
It was actually based on that difference that I was starting to become hopeful I might be able to get v0.17 done more quickly than I was anticipating, but that was before I got sick and lost two and a half days (so far; it's likely I'll be losing the rest of day three and most to all of day four), so there definitely won't be a test build on Friday, and it's impossible to say how that'll affect the rest of development for v0.17 in general.
That feels like it should be the end of this post so I can hopefully get more sleep and get over this cold faster. If you wish you could send me soup and nyquil, maybe consider becoming a Patron or my first paying Subscriber. It's basically the same thing if you think about it.
Finally release day.
Despite having what I thought was a decent amount of time to playtest and make sure everything worked as intended, I (and a particularly helpful Patron) already found a handful of bugs in the new content just in the time it's taken to get the first few uploads done.
This is going up a lot later in the day than I'd like because of that, but releasing a build with known issues before uploads are even complete felt terrible. I don't want ya'll to have to sit through bugs or download and apply patches when the bug has already been fixed. Even if it means I have to babysit uploads for a cumulative 16 hours.
If you any more bugs (though I hope you won't), even if it's as small as a typo, please let me know so I can fix them for v0.17.
Here's your change log:
v0.16
Added the next story segment - the Ambrose Estate. Including:
- A new Estate to explore, including Ambrose City, featuring multiple unique shops.
- Some shops allow the direct purchase of equipment, other shops offer special events.
- The opportunity to recruit a third optional Maid - Iris.
- The fifth cult segment, featuring new repeatable scenes unique to the cult segment.
- Several new trophies, both for new and existing content.
Added an event to the 1st floor of the Ambrose Tower Hold to explain the door on your first visit.
Added the missing Trophy entries for partially implemented trophies.
Added Trophy 31, which can be earned in Uncle Gil’s Estate.
Added the first affection quest for June, Chloe, and Iris.
Added additional dialogue to Chloe’s love shack scene.
Added a secret boss fight related to Trophy to Lalita’s hidden attic.
Fixed a customization bug where the wrong statue could appear outside the servant quarters.
Fixed a customization bug where the wrong statue could appear outside the guest house.
Fixed a bug that caused the Location entry for the South Mountains to not be discovered.
Fixed a bug that prevented June’s love shack animation from being displayed properly.
Fixed a bug that prevented Chloe’s fireside chats from becoming available at the love shack.
Fixed a bug that caused an image to not display correctly during Chloe’s love shack scene.
Updated a handful of things in the trophy room, mostly for clarity and ease of use.
Updated the Trophy Codex to match changes to partially implemented trophies.
Updated Lalita’s hidden attic to have an indication of progress toward unlocking the secret boss.
Updated Tiny Spiders to have less health, but an increased chance of inflicting poison.
Removed the “end of content” message from v0.15.
Various other minor dialogue and event updates.
v0.16 could've almost come out last Friday, so it should be no surprise that v0.16 is going to be coming out in early access this Friday, August 30th. I say "almost" because while the story was complete, there were a number of things (like Emily's shop) that hadn't been updated yet, and the cult segment actually requires the optional content I've been meaning to add there, because without a way to advance time, this cult segment actually doesn't have a way to continue forward to actually trigger. So now there are three new repeatable scenes specific to the cult segment, all the other little bits are done, I have a few days to try and fit in the optional content missing from v0.15.2, and there's a new trophy available for actually conducting your investigation rather than spending all your time banging someone in the storage room.
Speaking of trophies, if you like those, you're really going to like v0.16. Not only is there a trophy for Ambrose City, but there's a trophy to get from Archibald (which marks the third trophy it's possible to fully miss), the new trophy for properly investigating the cult, another trophy having to do with the cult that can be earned (or missed and gotten from Big Dick) that has been waiting for this update, and a trophy that I meant to implement way back at the start of Act 2 but didn't for a number of reasons. That's an entire five trophies to find in this update. Plus the third optional Maid, if you're into that sort of thing.
There's also more than 100 new renders for this update (nearly half of which are associated with the Ambrose City trophy) and 7 new animations, which if you're familiar with how Maids & Masters usually updates, is a lot for something that isn't a Freeze update or v0.15.2. If exploring is more your thing, there aren't any new Wilds maps, but there are nearly 40 new maps to poke around in, two sets of affection items to find, a slightly more hidden box of Silcrow, those five trophies and new Maid I mentioned, and a couple new mazes (one of which you can't solve by clicking the next open space and letting the game do the work for you, and I'll be very disappointed if no one complains about that).
And then there's the actual story. Like I've been mentioning, there are story beats here that I've been wanting to get out for quite some time, so finally getting to them feels really good. v0.16 is a lot of things that I've been eager to do for a long while, so I really hope you enjoy playing through the update as much as I enjoyed making it.
I just hope development continues to go this smoothly, because v0.17 and v0.18 might end up taking longer than a month to develop. There'll be a poll about that on Patreon and Subscribestar about that this Friday as well. The story will also really start to move near the end of v0.18, with Act 3 starting in v0.19 (though v0.19 is likely to be the Freeze update - it's complicated). I have to try really hard not to rush or get ahead of myself on that, because I'm incredibly excited about telling the rest of this story.
If you're looking forward to it too, maybe think about checking out my Patreon or Subscribestar and giving me some support. Most of the posts only go out to those that give me financial support, but there is a free option, and I will be making that development poll about v0.17 and v0.18 available to those of you in those free follower spots as well. If you do decide to support me financially, you get access to an invite to my private Discord server, early access to all my game updates and demos before anyone else, news and behind-the-scenes info that no one else gets - and that's just at the lowest tier. There's also a bunch of limited slots available for the higher tiers so you can get the same special treatment (plus all kinds of other benefits) at nearly half the cost. Thanks for thinking about it, and if you read this whole paragraph, I appreciate you.
I haven't play tested it all yet, but I'm still more or less on schedule with progress. v0.16 isn't quite done yet, but the Archibald segment at least is down to its last two scenes. I would have that second-to-last scene written already, but I started to feel like I was jumping the shark a little bit, so I had to slow down and let myself sleep on a few story beats. That aside, I think I've done everything with Archibald, Master's origins, and giving Lalita a few opportunities to be sweet, so all that's really left is getting those last couple story beats in there, tying a bow on it, and connecting the cult segment to the end.
The optional portions of the Ambrose mansion are also done now. I may need to redo some things for puzzle difficulty balancing once I test them, but they're done. The optional Maid is also now fully recruitable, though I still need to add her to your Estate and make sure you can repeat her scenes - and hopefully you enjoy those, I tried out a different animation method to try and get more fluid whole-body movement, and while I'm not sure the overall process is faster, there are technically fewer moving parts, so it should make creating custom animations go a little faster if I keep using it and get better with it.
That means the only bit that's really left to do, aside from those last two scenes, is the cult segment and the optional content that's been missing from there. There's actually not a lot in terms of the optional content to include there, but some of it does tie into the related trophy, and it may become impossible to progress past the cult segment if I don't include it with this update, which would be kind of a problem.
I can't say 100% of that will be done by Friday for the test build, but I hope it will be. Once all of that is done, the following week will give me some time to go back and implement at least some of the missing content from v0.15.2. Given the sheer amount of it that I had wanted to include, I doubt I'll get it all in there, but I should have time for the basics - namely, the affection quests for June and Chloe, plus Trophy 31. If I have extra time, I'll be able to get the affection quest implemented for the new optional Maid as well, but I doubt I'll be able to go much further beyond that.
Updating the love shack content to match what the affection quests are supposed to unlock would take me at minimum two weeks to implement focusing on nothing but that. I'm honestly not sure when I'll have time to develop that, because what I want to do for v0.17 and v0.18 will end up with very large updates, and I need to focus on that if I'm going to stick to monthly updates without going back to alternating between Maids & Masters and Precious Kouhai.
But that's about all there is to say about development for now. The other thing I wanted to talk about is Subscribestar. If you're not familiar, Subscribestar is a Patreon alternative. It allows you to support me financially, giving me stable monthly income. If you don't already know because you don't follow me on Twitter or BlueSky, I'm happy to tell you I recently got my Subscribestar page approved! Starting with the test build for VIPs and the patch notes for the other paid tiers going up this Friday, everything that goes up on Patreon will be going up on Subscribestar (though I have already posted a few things for people who join now - more on that in a paragraph).
This is important for a number of reasons, but the one that's most relevant to you is that you can give me that monthly financial support without getting Patreon involved. While I'm more than happy to continue to grow my Patreon page and I'm definitely happy to keep my Patrons around, I've seen people say they can't support me on Patreon despite wanting to because Patreon doesn't support a payment method that's available for their country. So, if Patreon isn't an option for you, I'd appreciate it if you gave my Subscribestar page a look.
And as a show of my appreciation in advance, I'm doing a bit of a launch celebration. For this week only - ending on Friday - people that subscribe to the free Follower tier get access to a Discord invite. I normally reserve invites for paid members, volunteer play testers, and other types of people I want to include in my community, so if you want to be able to chat directly with me about my work in real time but can't afford to support me financially, head to my Subscribestar page and give that Follower tier a click.
Ambrose City is now completely finished (minus fixing any bugs I haven't found yet) and the trophy for the area is now implemented. That brings the city up to 21 maps total across two different districts, containing three locations dedicated to special events, ten locations dedicated to different types of gear, five that have something for your Estate (mostly customization options, but there are a couple other things to find), the two area maps connecting all the shops, and a handful of other things just for flavor.
Between the special event(s) that the trophy unlocks and the new sub-system that becomes available with some of the new Estate customizations, there are also just shy of 100 new renders in this update, not counting anything I render for the story itself. Hopefully you have fun finding all of those, because I had fun making them, and that's a lot more renders than is normal for me.
With that done, I can now focus on building out the Ambrose mansion and putting together the actual story. My mind has been a little more scattered than I'd like on that front, but I'm going to blame that on having so many things I want to do that I'm losing focus on what the story needs in order to move forward. There are definitely a few select beats that I want to hit no matter what, but there are a few other things - like how many negotiation segments there should be, what those should be about, how those will affect the story and where that will leave certain things going into Act 3 - that I'm not 100% settled on what I want to do with just yet.
Things are still coming along at a good pace, though. It's been really nice getting a number of things complete and being happy enough with it that I actually let myself relax for a few hours at the end of the day instead of feeling like I haven't done enough to move on and working 14-hour days. I still don't want to jinx it by promising anything at this stage, but I'm hopeful that I'll actually be able to fit in the content that was missing from v0.15.2 and not have quite so massive of a backlog of optional content and QoL additions. Especially since some of those will be necessary for the cult segments coming up.
I'm pretty happy with how the new progression of regular test builds has been going, too. If you're not familiar yet, near-weekly test builds have been going to VIPs and patch notes have been going to my other paid Patrons over on Patreon. If you want in on those test builds (or just the patch notes, along with early access to all my updates, weekly posts, an invite to my private Discord server, and whatever else I can come up with) I'd really appreciate it if you stopped by and considered giving me some support. This year has been particularly rough in a lot of ways, so a sub even that bottom tier would mean a lot.
