Dev Blog #77 - Hot August Nights

Greetings everyone!

These last few weeks have been significantly more... eventful than I was hoping they'd be. Everything from 26 hour road trips to second degree burns to major, life-impacting career changes. Luckily, as a result of one of those three things, today officially marks a significant turning point in my life. One that will allow me to put considerably more focus into working on The Company!

But enough of that, let's talk about August!

Staying On Track

For the first time since... um... ever probably... I'm happy to share a solid content schedule for the month! There are some neat things coming in the next few weeks and below you'll find when you can expect them.

• August 8th - Today's devblog!
• August 15th - Anniversary gift to backers, detailed John Devblog for everyone else
• August 22nd - 6.2 Content Voting information and polls go live
• August 29th - 6.1.3 Backer Release (Public release on September 5th, happy birthday me!)

And there you have it. 6.1.3 is a bit further off than I was hoping, but still within the month. This particular update has a lot of moving parts so there's going to be a bigger emphasis on testing for this release.

As far as progress is concerned, all story and event updates have been completed, and the focus has shifted entirely to implementing the Preference and Traits acquisition systems. Those in the Administrative Specialist tier and higher can expect to see a new Dev Build posted within the next day or two featuring a updated passage flow for dreams, specifically those involving Saya, as well as the new player preference selection event which will trigger on September 6th in game.

This event will allow you to select your own preferences without any sort of point restrictions, or just go nuts and hit the random button! This event will also occur during chapter select, of course.

Teasing John

While the detailed John post is scheduled for next week, I wanted to give everyone an idea of what to expect from the update today!

Like Update 6.1, Update 6.2 will be split into a series of releases so as to get content into everyone's browsers at a steady rate. The first of these, Update 6.2.0, will focus almost entirely on shoring up John's existing content. This means:

• Improving introductory serum events to make them a little more clear
• Updating basic serum event structure to fall more in line with how Penny's serum paths work
• Cleaning up existing conversations and events to ensure they're accounting for any new content
• Restructuring Sale's Office code so it's no longer a written representation of C'thulu's Will
• Update that bathroom event to make a little more sense and also account for player preferences

I expect this update to be a pretty quick one, as a good bit of John's content has been recently cleaned up with Update 6.1. Moving on from that is where the real magic begins! All told, the 6.2 update cycle will include:

• Dom John's influence expansion to Tasha and Diana, furthered with you and Penny
• Dom John's content expansion to include more than just bathroom service
• Sub John route without transformation (Friend John)
• Sub John route with transformation (Chanel Route)
• Both routes will split, following the same structure as Penny
• Content Blocks for John and Chanel, meaning interactive scenes for both!

We'll dive more into all of this next week, expect a long one, but for now that's it for this week! We're in for an exciting month, and none of it would be possible without the feedback and support from all of you! Thank you so much, and look forward to next week's short essay of a devblog!