This took a long longer than I expected, though this is the first build that has zero paid assets in it! Despite the majority of the work being spent ripping out paid assets, there's still quite a few changes that I'd love to share:

• Steam Audio: Instead of messing with my home-grown reverb system, KoboldKare now uses Steam Audio for some awesome realtime audio reflections and reverb. This does take a decent amount of CPU, and can be easily disabled in the Audio options menu.
• Raymarched goop: All fluids now use an analytical raymarching algorithm to really make things goopy and sloppy, it still needs an optimization pass and can be disabled by setting Goop Quality to 0 under the Graphics Options.
  
• Custom Terrain system: KoboldKare uses a custom brush-based terrain that fully supports very dense grass and even decals! Paint the whole world and make a huge mess!
• New stores: A hardware store, a gardening store, and a construction building enter the city. All with functioning stock to buy!
  
• Item rework: No more "egg boxes", you work straight with eggs now. Flasks have been replaced by more thematically appropriate gardening tools, and there's a dedicated item for milking kobolds now. New models for all seeds!
• You can change an NPC kobold's inventory by simply throwing equipment at them!
• Penetration refactor: This is definitely not the last rework, but now penetrators can enter any hole (oral), go all-the-way-through, has proper oviposition, tentacles, and is generally faster and more stable. Definitely makes everything rubbery and stretchy though, hope yall like it!
• Multiplayer now has text chat! Press enter to yip and yap with other players.
  
• Better controller support: Menus are now traversable and browsable with just a gamepad, and keybinding hints in-game switch to gamepad equivalents to help with learning the controls.
• Added buckets, they function as a lower-level watering can, but also are great for storing lots of fluids.
  
• Physics-based animations are no longer flimsy, because ragdoll limbs actually have rotation forces now. Definitely needs a bit more dialing in though.
• Decals no longer create seams on models if your graphics card supports Conservative Rasterization.
  
• Added an onahole to ZanyZtuff, you can finally jerk other kobolds off, or share it with them!
  
• Player Preference rework: There was a series of bugs that was caused by the old json player preference system. All user options will be reset and stored in the registry now for simplicity. On the bright side options are super clean and easy to work with as a developer!
• Jiggle physics fixes, they work at any framerate, and no longer flip out when trying to "catch up" during hitches.
• Temporarily disabled kobold imposters, try not to make too many meanwhile please!!
• New map: after testing the large scale map, I've come to the conclusion that it wasn't working out! It scoped the project up majorly without much of an upside. The map is now smaller and easier to work with, it's lacking polish currently but as the project goes on the areas will be small but packed with tons of detail and purpose.
• Lighting adjustments, more ambient light, better use of ACES, and a new Brightness graphics slider for those who have different kinds of monitors.

With all that out of the way, I've had some realizations on where I want KoboldKare to go. For the next couple months I'm going to focus on two things: Scoping down and simplifying. Systems are getting very complex, bugs are really difficult to fix, and systems are noodly and far-reaching. The game being open-source is pointless if the systems are impossible to penetrate. (hah) I'm confident that I can get KoboldKare to be a clean, simple, and fun game-- though for now you'll have to deal with the current buggy mess! Sorry!! Thanks to the some of the many hands that work on KoboldKare: Zarniwoop 1029Chris Gruff Kious Dr. 0range Solphyx Firgof Jack Black Cat Studios And Kasiir for their amazing screenshots in this update.

[ 2021-09-18 02:21:47 CET ] [ Original post ]