Saturday, May 28, 2016

v0.22 is Live!

Click Play the Game above to check it out!

With this release, the Stone Door is finally complete! It's been a hell of a journey, and I've gotten some really promising feedback so far from people that were really emotionally impacted by the game in one way or another as they took the next step after figuring out the nature of their relationship with Lith. Looking back, I do wish I'd eased back a little more on the length with some of the later portions, but my instincts kept wanting to go epic with the big finale for this miniature adventure novel, even though there were about twelve different finales to write. So it was a pretty huge challenge! But it's finally done with, and I feel both fantastic and fantastically weary to close off this chapter of your adventure with Lith.

I'll get into what this means for the game and its future in a moment, but first, just to be clear: v0.22 adds the last path needed for the Black Collar Stone Door. You should now be able to safely choose any path you wish with any collar and play through to an ending or to your chance to return to the Void and stay there. Also, I've added two new pieces of art, as usual: one to give you a better look at a couple of the creatures you encounter in the Stone Door, and one to illustrate Lith's thought processes if you're especially persistent in discussing a certain topic. Now that I've got a few nice porn shots in the game, I've been opening up to getting art that's a little less directly pornographic, just to enhance the reader experience in a variety of ways. There's still plenty more sex stuff coming down the pipe, of course, but these pieces are rather less lewd than previous additions.

Lastly, I've added one new feature that I saw a couple requests for and rather liked. There are now ten pieces of art in the game, not counting the loading animation, the various chibis for character creation, Lith's face in the upper left, or over a hundred bits and pieces that are assembled to make the aforementioned pieces of art in the correct configurations. Finding all of them can be a bit tricky, and a little hard to remember if you just want to see the art again. So I've added a gallery feature!

The gallery doesn't let you see everything for free, of course. When you first open the game, it'll check your old files, and any events it's sure you've already opened will have their associated art unlocked. For everything else, you'll have to find those scenes in-game to unlock them in the gallery. This will also help serve as sort of a checklist, so you can know if there's more art to be found somewhere else in the game. Plus, the art will always configure it to your current save file, so if you play the game one way, then start a new file, you can see how that art would look with that version of, say, your and Lith's anatomy, quickly and easily. Of course, some pieces of art assume certain things, so they might show things not quite how they are in your file.

That covers the new material in this release! Now, a lot of you may be wondering what's next, if we're finishing up this huge chunk of the game. The answer is, lots! I've got tons of things I've been waiting to do until I had the Stone Door finished, so it's more a question of, what do I do first? The Big Thing on the horizon is the next Door. Supporters can get a sneak peek at what this will involve in the cheat-enabled version of the game, but for now, suffice to say that it'll be Very Different. One problem with it, though, is that it will be, even more so than the Stone Door, something that's hard to release in smaller parts. So at this point, I'm thinking that I'll actually be working on it over the next few versions (letting supporters see the partway content in the meantime) while releasing lots of smaller things I've been wanting to do on the side, until it's finally ready to go out all at once.

And there's lots of little things I've had waiting for me to come back and work on them! I don't want to make any promises, as I intend to mostly work on whatever feels most interesting at the time, but I've been wanting to expand the wooden door sexy/fun content, as well as add more content to the first half of the game and generally work on refining the experience. A lot of my old writing is looking sort of shoddy compared to my newer work, some of the gameplay is still confusing and unbalanced, a lot of gender-related content still needs to be filled out, and it wouldn't hurt to add a little more variety in available actions here and there, I think. I probably won't be able to hit all of this, but I've got lots to take a shot at for smaller updates and additions while I'm working on the content for the new Door!

Now, this update did come out later than I'd like. I'm really unhappy with how my progress has gone here, because while I'm technically still inside the schedule (release sometime in May), I'd much rather be releasing at the beginning of the month than at the end. So for v0.23, I'm going to try and focus in on the project and pack in new content quickly, to try and get a new version ready as soon as possible! I don't know if I'll be able to make the first week of July, but it's what I'm tentatively aiming for as an ideal. I just hope I can pack in enough little things for it to feel like a worthwhile release! Also, the art @_@ Art has been a huge headache for me lately. We'll see!

And on a final note, once again, if you haven't seen the other project I'm working on, I'd encourage you guys to check it out! The Cathouse Tale is a fully 3D-rendered furry porn game, so other people are actually doing the bulk of the work, but I'm handling the writing as well as acting as sort of a coordinator and public relations guy for the team. It's been really challenging the last month or two since we're finally getting things going again, but I'm hoping that I'll have more time to come back to my own work this month now that we're hopefully all set up to start plugging away at it!

Thanks for reading, guys! I hope you enjoy the new content, and that you'll like all the new stuff coming up in both projects!

23 comments:

  1. Thanks for the hard work

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  2. I just recently found this, saw the '2012's everywhere and got really scared that it was another dead project. It's not, and it's beautiful and amazing! This is, by far, my favourite story-based game. The first thing I'm gonna do when I have spare cash is throw it at you. You're awesome and so is this!

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    1. Haha, thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying the game! And what do you mean about 2012's? Is there something I'm forgetting to update? x3 Either way, thanks for the feedback!

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  3. The new artwork looks really nice.

    Got the full gallery except the one between 'Lightning' and 'Ruin, part one'.
    No idea where to find that last one even though I've replayed through all three collar paths again.

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    1. Hmmm! Looks like you missed one along the black collar path. But, like with "Seal the Deal," it will only be available in a certain state...

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    2. Thanks, found the last one now. :D

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  4. So is all the new content for the black collar path?

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    1. All the new written content is for the black collar this update, yes. The new art is more in the middle, though, and the art gallery feature can be nifty in general ^.^ Hopefully the next update will be a lot more diverse, though!

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  5. So, I'm really confused. I'm capable of unlocking the achievement of having unlocked a collar but the option to summon one never shows up in the item menu?
    Also, I used to be able to get to the point of unlocking them with no problem, but this time it's become far more difficult.

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    1. Hmm! There shouldn't be anything different in this update that makes it harder to unlock collars, the focus of the changes was in post-collar content. As far as summoning the collar, the best thing I can think of is that if you wait too long or do too many other things after unlocking a collar, you might no longer meet the criteria to actually summon it @.@; For example, if you unlock the blue collar, then act very black collar, the blue collar may become unavailable. Also, you do need to have fifty points to actually summon items!

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  6. How come you are not using dropbox for this update?

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    1. Because my dropbox account has just about permabanned me for generating too much traffic! @_@;; I liked it better, but I literally can't link anything on it right now, you just get an error screen. I'm talking with their support now, but it looks like I won't be able to use it for my main link anymore even if I do get it restored.

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    2. That is very weird. I hope everything get's settled.

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  7. I can't seem to play the game. I downloaded it but once I reach the main screen (with Lith shaking his/her booty with a button that says 'play') I can't click on anything or start the game.

    I currently have it running on Adobe flash player but I have a sinking suspicion that it's incorrect and I need a different engine to play this game on.

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    1. Try using your internet browser

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  8. Okay, if I download it from google drive it gives me an swf file I have to play in an swf flash player and if I save link as, I get a html document that gives me a blank screen. What's the deal?

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    1. Okay, so it's supposed to be an swf file, but didn't it use to be html?

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    2. Sorry, the tip about using "save link as" is old, and I just removed it! I used to host the game on dropbox, and that allowed you to play it right in your browser or right click and save the link. But my dropbox account has blown up, so I had to switch to google drive! Sorry for any inconvenience! It sounds like you've run into the same issue I have, in which browsers don't like to run downloaded swf files on their own anymore, which is strange, but I think it's just something to do with Flash itself.

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  9. Hello, I can't seem to get the end content of the stone door. All i get is a disconnection in the dialogue leaving me no choice but to load a save. Does someone know how to access content past that point please?

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    1. Hey! Sorry for the confusion! The text "glitching out" and ending with an error is how this game does endings. If you've found that, you've reached the end of the game's publicly released content! Although if you find the right choice, you will be able to return to the void, which in turn will allow you to continue to content past that point... once it's ready ^.^; You can get a preview of that on the Patreon, but it's not ready for public release yet!

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    2. when is the preview for patreon coming for public release

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