TLDR: New features and systems, status on update, and what we've been up to.
Everie sprite has been entirely reworked (including a new nose!) and now has a nude version underneath. This also includes a ton of new facial expressions!
Hey everyone it's been a little while! Life has been a bit turbulent for members of the team, and not to go into too much personal detail but a lot of stuff has been happening IRL for me personally in particular, and it's definitely caused a slowdown in some areas. One thing that also slowed us down was that we were remaking the sprites in a new format, and the main reasoning behind that was to allow for some new additions which we'll be talking about later on in this post. But first we're happy to talk about our current progress and also list out a bunch of the new stuff we're working on!
Not fully finished, but we think it's a bit cleaner! (arrows are something we're looking into improving as well...)
While working through the systems we realized that the UI really wasn't up to snuff in many ways, and we really wanted to go back and try and improve it overall. Positions of main UI elements have been moved around a bunch, and a few of the extra ones have been consolidated to free up some on screen real estate. Main reasoning is that it's not fun to have the screen cluttered by a bunch of icons going in different directions with inconsistent styling, so we've moved them to the top of the screen as well as removing the pull down for the inventory and giving it a proper dedicated button instead. We've also moved the objective panel into the phone, and the phone will be packed with a bunch more stuff as well!
Phone UI is entirely placeholder and purely for function right now, but you can get a picture of how it will work!
The phone now includes the ability to go through all the USB pinups the player receives throughout the game. You'll have to put them in a new place in the player bedroom to unlock, but once you've done it they'll be added to your phone and you can look at them any time! Another one of the features is the ability to finally replay the NSFW scenes. This has been a highly requested feature, and has taken a bit more legwork to get functional but we're hoping people will be happy with it! The big issue with the tool we're currently using for conversations is that because we keep jumping between adventure mode and text mode, it's impossible to allow for backtracking after a conversation is done. We've added menu specifically to address this issue, and we're gonna work on adding more repeating moments in case players want to redo non-NSFW conversations again without having to go through the menu again. Finally the last feature on the UI front is the proper addition of the store.
Still very WIP, but the idea is to let you buy items and get an image preview with a description before you purchase.
You'll now be able to use your hard earned money to get brand new items for the girls! This will be simple stuff like gifts for Everie and Fae, but will also include some new spicy things like lingerie! If you buy something nice enough for the girls they may even let you see them wearing them ;) . The main reason we've redone the sprites is to allow for stuff like lingerie and other outfits to be easily added onto characters without everything having to be redrawn. We're hoping this will let us add a lot more stuff for players to do, and also add some more interesting interactions with each of the characters. It's been a bit tricky getting the UI to work, but now it'll have an active graphic once one of the items is clicked, it'll have a description for each item, and will show the price and the ability to purchase. We're still in the planning stages for a proper Junky minigame, but we wanted to get the shop properly working before we went too far with it. We have another section of the store that'll come in the future, but we wanted to get this part working for the Cyberia update.
New panning tech (background is just Forgaris stretched, we'll have the new one done for update though!)
The last thing we wanted to mention was the addition of something exciting: panning backgrounds! This is a new feature that'll let you scroll across the new landing area on Cyberia (this gif is the testing grounds not the actual background) and we're hoping it'll feel a lot more engaging then compared to normal static ones. Sure we could have just made a single background, but this is also tech we want to incorporate for stuff in the future. We're really aiming to improve the game overall and do some exciting stuff, and we're excited to show it off properly as soon as it's ready.
In summary features to expect in Cyberia Update:
-Improved UI
-New Phone interface
-New Scene replay menu
-New Pinup gallery menu
-New store interface
-Improved sprites
-New panning background tech
-And much more...
And that's about it for this public post! We'll be giving patrons a brand new pinup extremely soon! We have no firm ETA on the update, but we just wanted to give a proper status update rather than just keep you waiting. Once the update is functional though we'll be allowing patrons to play the update before it's completely finished, partly for just simple bugtesting but also because we want you to be more involved with the process. We'll be showing off new sketches of the backgrounds for higher tier patrons soon as well. Tune in for more exciting stuff very soon!