Development Blog 12 - New Menus and Saving!

New Menus, new options and saving!

Back again with another update, some serious work has been put into this one. Lets start off with the Menu's, there is now Options for adjusting the visual quality of the game in-game, you can also switch the languages in there too (Although only English is properly supported at the moment). Most importantly you can now create save games and load them! What does this mean exactly?

Now you can create a "world" which for now you can name and choose your character, you also have the option to add characters to your world and choose their appearance files too. At the present time there isn't any hard cap on the amount of characters you can have in your world (This may change in the future). Once in game you can then open the new escape menu and save the world and the status of the characters in it. Pretty cool and solid start to more gameplay! There is still a fair amount that needs coding in before we can save them yet but the basics are there.

Now I can add in the fetish stat system I've mentioned before, I will also be implementing a basic family system where by sharing entered Last names counts as being related. I want to do a proper family tree system allowing to set parents/children etc but will hold off until more fun stuff is added. I will be looking into replacing the "browse" button window pop up soon as well, its rather annoying if you're playing in full screen as it minimises the game.

Game now has load screens; now that some things can take several seconds or longer to load depending on your computer the load screens will let you know that the game hasn't crashed or froze.

Additional:
I've rearranged the My Documents After Hours Island folder structure, added several folders and moved others into better locations. Mostly for future proofing purposes and a more logical layout. Lots of characters in one area can slow the game down at the moment, I don't expect too many in one area at a time however but I do want to try to improve it and I hope world layout will help fix it.

I've put a lot of effort into making this as custom as reasonably possible, so much so that in theory you will be able to share your created characters and worlds with relative ease. You can even edit character profile settings and world settings files in a easy to use format.

Clowning Around...

I was doing some testing and made a clown...

Nightmare fuel ensues. Unless you like honking clowns...I mean I'm not going to kink shame your clowning around... big news update coming soon with 100% less clowns.

Development Blog 11 - Get naked

Whats an adult game if you can't get undressed. Time for another massive blog.

I've begun work on the sex scene stuff as previously mentioned, now you can get undressed! You can do this at any time (For now, might make it sex scenes specific). Depending on how many pieces of clothes the buttons on the top left will increase allowing you to take off any piece of choice. Accessories will be at a later date as they're more complicated and I might just separate them into their own menu drop down. Leave button bottom right will stop the scene rather than pressing escape. Bottom left is the speed slider. Menu stuff is work in progress and for now is just functionality than looks, I'll polish it up at a later date.

I'm totally not putting off doing more sex animations... okay I am but for several reasons. I want to get a grasp on how the scenes will work in the first place, doing animations is good but I may need to tweak a few things here and there and likely would have to adjust the animation which is time consuming. I still need to setup multiple characters in one scene and I don't know how that'll be achieved in gameplay. I also don't know how in depth I want to go... I've been checking out what other games do. Some notable ones have complex animated systems where you can make the animations yourself, while that sounds cool its super complex and time consuming... not to mention limiting in some respects. I'm a team of one and I have to work to my strengths so that's not really going to be possible outside of people learning a 3D animation program.

I'm looking to bring something to the table in terms of gameplay, nothing wild and ground breaking but more fun interaction in a sex scene or activity. The joy of video games is being able to do things you can't in real life so I want to explore that aspect more. I'm gonna get real weird with it. I'd elaborate more on what I have in mind but I don't want to let people down if I don't do it.

These straw polls have seriously helped me focus better on decisions and the data is always useful, if you haven't voted in these I highly recommend you do!
http://www.strawpoll.me/10400587
http://www.strawpoll.me/10608157
http://www.strawpoll.me/10608291

I also accept donations which support this game futher!
http://afterhoursisland.blogspot.com.au/p/donations.html

New Donations

I've decided to change how I do donations, you can now donate $2 and be added to a mailing list which will send out with the latest version of After Hours Island development build before the public gets it. Think of the cost as buying an App for your mobile phone.

Question: Why $2 and not $1?
Answer: Fees. After conversion rates and PayPal's cut, $1 ends up more like $0.25 cents or less on my end.

Question: Do I have to keep donating every month to keep receiving development versions?
Answer: Initially, no. You'll be notified when $2 a month rolls out.

Question: Why not Patreon?

Answer: I did have a Patreon for several months but it didn't pick up any momentum (Understandably), for non-US residents you have to go through US Tax and a whole bunch of hoops to receive the money you earn. For the amount potentially received it wasn't worth the effort and I didn't want the money to be chewed up by unnecessary fees and cuts.

Question: Is the game still free?
Answer: Always, by donating you gain access to the earlier development versions (Donation Only) and stable releases a week before they go public.

Question: Why should I donate if its free?
Answer: To keep the game alive! Donations can go a long way to help me out personally to give me more time to work on this and continue to do future updates.

I'll be adding additional donation options soon, keep an eye on the Donations page. I'm looking at doing content request donations, for example for $10 you can get a custom texture for a piece of clothing such as a dress. (Actual prices are yet to be listed) Then it'll be sent to you and added into the games next release.

I feel that this system will let you directly gain the features and content you want and help the development at the same time. I will also include options for private content as well.

Development 10 - Speed Machine

Short brief update

No screenshot this time :(

I've begun work on a sex scene menu, idea that you can interact with the scene and change to another position etc. For now though I've simply implemented a slider that increases or slows down the scene.

Development Blog 09 - Lost in Translation

Translation support is now added!

After checking out where people have been viewing the game from, I've noticed there are quite a few non-English speaking countries so I've spent the night adding in the ability for people to translate the game. While I'm only English speaking myself the hope that people will utilise this functionality and share their translations around.

Its a really simple system, make a copy of a Language xml file, open it with a text editor and any sentences (In theory) you see in the game you define then write a translation for it. The language then appears in a list on the main menu and you can select it. Anything not translated uses the default English in its place.

Not exactly gameplay but I wanted something different to work on and I hope non-English speakers appreciate it. Soon I'll work on something more interesting.