End of June Update

So, it's been a month of a lot of silence. I've been focusing on some key aspects of the game and reworking some mechanics. Let's get right into it.

Spoilers Ahead

Reading through my current changelog for the next release, we have, at the top of the list...

 The Intro

The intro has changed significantly. Gone is the old intro. A return to a familiar intro has taken its place. After going through the typical character build menus, you are greeted with a receptionist who welcomes you to Hotel Debauchery, asks you to sign a contract and gives you sparse instruction on how to conduct yourself within the estate.

This was done because of the re-introduction of the life-ring. Essentially, the old narrative beat of being captured and mistaken for an inchman is still going to happen, but now you start a bit before that. This gives the player a chance to interact with the world, get familiar with the life ring mechanic, fuck around with giantess and npcs, try simple combat and exploration, all before meeting the Inchmen and having to actually deal with plot.

I was reticent about this change but after some experimentation I began to like it immediately. The flow feels much smoother and more natural and I'm realizing some of the changes I made with the original One Inch in Quest were not for the best.

Next up, battles and giantess encounters.

I've been spending a lot of time with battles, ailments, and giantess encounters. I've had to really dig through the code to make this all work and in the process I realized that, go figure, learning a new engine while programming complex systems has negative drawbacks. One of those being the way in which I've scripted most everything is bad. Just truly lamentable.

That being said, it's not totally unsalvageable. I'm coming to terms with the reality that I am not going to rewrite core scripts from the ground up to fit a syntax or format when, ultimately, those scripts essentially achieve what they're supposed to, even if a seasoned GDScript pro would look at it and cry at the absolute disrespect for optimization.

I've fixed most of the major problems I needed to and corrected things were I couldn't ignore them. The result is a pretty sturdy system so far that I can't wait to expand on and add new encounters for.

Giantess encounters use the same system as the turn based battle system but they heavily utilize dialogue scripts, which act as mini cut scenes in place of enemy attacks. Encounters can reward experience, money, and items, just like battles, but can also reward affection. AS seen above.

Affection money and items can be reduced based on the number of strikes you end the battle with.

Strikes were a concept introduced in the latter version of Quest and they are make a comeback here as a key component of all giantess encounters.

As for normal battles, there are a few new enemies, conditions for spawning/despawning, ai, and moves.

Ailments

This is a fun one. I spent a good amount of time reworking ailments. Previously, the effects in battle just didn't happen. They weren't scripted at all. Now, everything from an ailment increasing stamina cost on attacks, to poison effects, to infatuation reducing accuracy is functioning during battles.

When afflicted with an ailment, you can hover over it and get a brief description of it.

Some ailments have a hidden ability internally called escalation. These ailments morph into more robust versions of themselves if you are afflicted with a weaker version of it and hit with an attack that successfully inflicts the same ailment.

Summary

Those are the most notable changes, but there are a ton of other minor additions and updates. There's new music, new craftables, new NPCs, new animations, new sound effects... I actually spent a significant amount of time on sound in the last month. There's also the new interaction with Rene which is currently 90% complete.

Rene is now planned to act as she was always sort of supposed to be, a mentor as well as a giantess you can interact with. She will teach the player crucial skills and provide crafting recipes and tools for other giantess encounters.

Roadmap

This release will be pre-alpha 4.0 and while I will likely update it to 4.x as needed to fix issues, I intend for this to be the last pre-alpha. Everything is there, I just need to get past a few more bugs and mechanics issues as well as finish some content that I have put on the backburner for quite a while.

I won't release 4.0 until I have the following finished

• Tina's climbing and introductory event

• Olivia's climbing and introductory event

• Gwen and Roxanne's dining events

So, basically, I am aiming to release 4.0 to patrons sometime this month. Hopefully sooner than later, but at the moment I can't provide an exact date. Thanks for your patience. It's been a tough first half of the year. I'm behind where I wanted to be by this time but I am confident I'm on the right track.

As always, feel free to ask any questions or raise concerns and I will do my best to respond quickly.