Spent the week delving into the guts of Electron to do something pretty complicated, all things considered. We had a couple of complaints about the quality of the images in the downloadable build, so I set about building a system to fix it.

One heads up though: as part of working on the downloadable build, I ended up changing some things around internally. If you were using the save slots in the downloadable build, you will need to save those slots to file before you update. This won’t be a problem again, I just thought it was better to fix what I did as early as possible.

The downloadable backer build now has built-in Image Pack support – hit the button on the main menu and the game will download larger resolution versions of the images, and when complete, will install them into the game for you. The way I’ve gone about this will also minimize the amount of stuff that should need to get downloaded in the future too, meaning further updates to the ImagePack will be much smaller over all – when it comes time to update the game, just grab the latest version and it’ll handle whatever updates are needed to the ImagePack before installation for you!

I’m also shoving native Linux builds out of the door as part of this too, so give me a little bit to make sure all the download pages are updated and these builds should start appearing over the next half hour or so. It’s going to take me a little bit to unclog the build pipes because a lot of things have changed behind the scenes so things might be a little weird for a while.

TiTS 0.9.008:

• Backer: Verusha’s lover expansion is now available. I don’t know much about her, but I’m sure somebody will be along before too long to update the post with some better details! (By Doots!)
• Backer: Backer Downloaded builds now have an option for larger resolution images; the main menu will kind of guide you through the process.
• Public: Dating Teyaal’s daughter is now available to the public. Take her out on the town! (Savin & Leek)
• Paige should have better navigation between menus. (Leek)
• SumaCream should work better. (Leek)
• Bust gallery images should no longer be missing/broken in electron builds. (Gedan)
• Fixed a bunch of wetnessRange things. (Leek)
• Piles of little fixes all over the place. (lowercase_donkey)
• Locked rooms now show with a locked connector more generally than a one-way connector. (Fenoxo)

TiTS 0.9.008, builds 2193+:

• Fixed the missing edanPregHandler function reference.

Edit: All the files seem to be up and all the links seem to be functional!

Long couple of days in the code mines for me – I was planning on writing a little bit more about what I’ve been working on the last week, but it turned out there was nothing ready in the merge-pile for fresh content ready to go out with this patch and I decided I had to rectify that. I’ll still touch on it a little, but it’s not going to be a huge Science Time With Geddy post like I was originally planning.

Now that we have Windows downloadable builds, the ask for a similar feature for Android has understandably ramped up. I could just throw down into that, but I wanted to try something a little bit different first. Browsers have a rather underutilized feature to essentially install a version of a webpage; I never saw the point that much in the desktop space, but it makes a lot more sense to be on mobile. Imagine if you could go to the play page on your Android or your iPhone, and there was a button you could tap on that would install the game, and you’d get a fully offline capable version of the game, with a shortcut in your devices apps to launch it, that would work without having an internet connection – but would update itself if you open it whilst you have an internet connection. No APK problems like we’ve had to deal with for years, no needing to root your iPhone (if that’s even an option with current-gen devices!). That’s what I’ve been working on this week. It’s not done yet, the job is turning out to be insanely fiddly, and time consuming, and there’s a lot of learning to be done to get it right – but I’m getting there.

Edit: Hotfix update changes listed below the main changelog!

TiTS 0.9.006:

• Backers: Narc the Nurse-droid has a new quest that ultimately unlocks the ability to give her a dongle of her very own, and a few new scenes to go along with it. (Fr0sty & Gedan)
• Public: Salvaging the Mastodon is now available to the public build. Get real friendly with all the people populating the Crash Landing bar, and two weeks after your most recent visit you’ll be getting a message requesting help…. (Slab, Leek & Fenoxo)
• Electron builds should not immediately whitescreen. This was caused by unzipping the game into a folder structure that contained a # in the folder names somewhere. (Gedan)
• The FZR Fire Suppression System’s mechanics have been tweaked. Previously it would apply a status that caused -50 evade and doubled damage from crushing attacks. On foes with no inherent evasion, this would result in a 4x damage increase. I’ve (Fenoxo) standardized the “Deep Freeze” affect so that triggering the 2x bonus damage consumes the status and reports it in text (and reduced the evasion penalty significantly). I’ve also tweaked a number of cold damage weapons to be able to apply the effect: Cryolizer, Entropy, and the Glacial Auger.
• Frosty the Frostwyrm’s cold resistance has been increased somewhat. (Fenoxo)
• The usual assortment of various bust tweaks and fixes across the game. (lOWERCASE_dONKEY)
• Embedded image displays of very wide images should display better. Additionally images should render the same the first time they are displayed as every subsequent time they are shown. (Leek)
• Busky’s shop interface has been moved to the new system. (Leek)
• Mirrin had a bunch of formatting fixes that didn’t align with the games style standards fixed. (Leek)
• Bizzy hasArmor crash fixed. (lOWERCASE_dONKEY)
• Kiro & Kally doubleteam softlock fixed. (lOWERCASE_dONKEY)
• A pile of dead code that also includes incorrect value assignments and logic tests have been hunted down and removed. This may clean up a lot of as-yet unreported strangeness in various places. (lOWERCASE_dONKEY)
• Dong Designers color selection should work properly. (Leek)
• Lorelei’s grab attack has been fixed. (Leek)
• A bunch of Bothrioc stuff has been cleaned up. (lOWERCASE_dONKEY)
• TechSpecs “Advanced Shielding” got nerfed a bit (From 20% to 10%) (Fenoxo)
• TechSpecs “Charge Weapon” ability had its damage bonus lowered from 100% of intelligence to 66%. (Fenoxo)
• TechSpecs “Rapid Recharge” passive had its shield change reduced from (int / 3) + 3 to (int / 5) + 3 (Fenoxo)
• The code that drives applying damage was overhauled to help the game better track modifiers like “melee” or “explosion” without having it overwritten by display notes like “minimal.” This should make damage more accurate across the board when interacting with perks and abilities that hook into melee or ranged damage. It will also let us do things like making certain classes more resistant to certain types of attacks in the future – like giving Smugglers an evasion-style ability to reduce explosion damage. I had to change thousands of lines of code all across the game to do this. (Fenoxo)
• A bunch of assorted other little one-liner fixes all over the place that I’m not going to catalogue otherwise this post will literally be about 200 lines long. (Leek)

TiTS 0.9.007:

• Fixed the ship blowing up in combat (Fenoxo)
• Mimbranes, ColourfulSucker, and Vanae had some fixe (Lowercase_Donkey)
• Some Narc crashes got fixed (Lowercase_Donkey)

I’ve spent the last week polishing all most of the rough edges off of the first of the downloadable build types for TiTS! Similar to CoC2, this is based on electron and is presently only available for Windows platforms. I want to make sure this goes out and nobody has any problems before I dig into downloadable-build specific features (don’t get ahead of yourselves, it’s nothing crazy!) and turn a few more things on. I’ll spend a day or two keeping on eye on any reported issues or anything major that needs my attention, and then I’ll set into getting some android APKs churned out.

The astute amongst you may have already spotted the links for these available, and serving version 0.9.004 – I want to make sure I had everything tested in-situ for the final part of the process to make sure all of the download locations and services were working appropriately – so for the sake of ensuring everybody is on a real build version, we’re officially skipping over 0.9.004 to 0.9.005.

As a note about our release process:
We’re releasing TiTS for both backers and public at the same time. Backer builds have additional content enabled, and will maintain exclusivity of that content for at least a month before it makes its way over to the public build. The changelog will note new content that is applicable to backer builds and when it becomes available to public builds.

TiTS 0.9.005:

• [Backers] Bizzy’s mom, Deziere, has been added to the Paragon Playground brothel on Dhaal, as well as a substantial recruitment pack that will allow the player to reunite mother and daughter and put them to work together in the player’s porn studio. (Nonesuch & Leek)
• [Public] Ardia’s Wine’n’Dine expansion is now available to public players. Once you’ve visited her folks at least once, the next time you’re warming Ardia’s bed Ardia is warming your bed, you’ll get a little treat and an offer to visit her home again. (Savin & Gedan)
• Windows downloadable builds are now available for both Backer and Public releases. (Gedan)
• Various fixes for Mitch, including crashes and Trust values not being saved have been fixed. (Lowercase_Donkey)
• Avoid crashes in the inventory display when viewing another inventory set and attempting to click on equipped items in the left pane. (Gedan)
• Reworked a lot of the code behind the Nursery. (DrunkZombie)
• Fixed Mioldan Priestess softlock. (DrunkZombie)
• Fixed a crash in the LDC and ShockHopper drainbunnies scene. (DrunkZombie)
• Fixed a crash with Chance and treated Zil Bull encounters. (DrunkZombie)
• Fixed Bothrioc Quadomme spawn resetting. (DrunkZombie)
• A lot of image manifest tweaks for many NPCs. (Lowercase_Donkey)

Chunking through more and more little things that have been outstanding for a while from the backlog of things that needed to get handled better.

This week I spent a bunch of time experimenting with our new inventory components to find a decent way to repurpose the display for other purposes. What I’ve ended up with needs some more work and wiring in to other places to make it more obvious, but the player inventory screen now functions as an interface to manage piercings too. The buttons at the top of the inventory list can shift between the displays – for now, limited to the regular inventory display and the list of equipped piercings.

I think for the upcoming week I’m gonna spend a little time cleaning up old code and interfaces relating to various inventory handling systems, and then set into finally working on an offline downloadable build. Now that we’ve had a couple consistent weeks of not needing to crank out a bunch of hotfixes, I think we’re stable enough now to call it a good idea!

TiTS 0.9.003:

• [Backers] Mitch is hanging out on Canadia station. (Wheatly & Lowercase_Donkey)
• The inventory screen now supports a view of equipped piercings, mainly to enable a consistent means of identifying and removing them. (Gedan)
• Fixed a bunch of things dealing with piercing equip and unequip processes. (Gedan)
• The Grey Goo armor should now be repairable whilst not being worn. (DrunkZombie)
• Hardlight dongs should no longer impregnate Sela. (DrunkZombie)
• Fixed a crash with Sela. (DrunkZombie)
• Fixed some index issues with genitals that are selected via vaginaRouter/penisRouter/hermRouter. (DrunkZombie)
• Added some more custom card designs. (Jacques)