Project Wild One v0.04: Time and Ties

As of now, many of my supporters can play the newest version of Project Wild One! More of them will get access in about two weeks, and around a month from now, the release will go public. Let’s talk about the new version!

This update was supposed to be a short, simple one. That was the goal, but… there were troubles. I’ve talked about it more elsewhere, but the short version is, I finally caught Covid and it had some pretty serious consequences both in the short and long term. To this day I feel just a little less sharp than I used to, but the weeks after I thought I was recovered were in particular a very gradual climb out of stupor. I made problems for myself trying to get going again that I then had to fix later, and it’s been quite a labyrinth getting to a fully ready version to release.

There have been a lot of little changes since the last version, but the big one was an overhaul to the user interface. A lot of that isn’t visible, as I’ve moved a lot of stuff around behind the scenes, but the “delayed playback” of v0.03 has finally reached a more solid and presentable form with the “swinging queue” system you’ll see in this update.

There are three important aspects to this change and why I’m making it. Firstly, I’m hoping to improve performance by spreading out the calculations the game makes over time. This should make for fewer issues now and in the future as the game grows more complex, and hopefully allow even low-powered devices to enjoy the game, no matter how ambitious I get with the coming AI system.

Secondly, I’m now giving each character in the game a little more “weight” timing-wise, by letting each turn scroll in one-by-one with a pause between them that’s half-normalized, half-weighted by how much in-game time passes between one turn and the next. This should subtly help it “feel” like all these creatures are actually there, logging their actions individually, but I’m trying to keep it from feeling too much like a drag between turns as well.

And lastly, to make the nature of time in the game much clearer, I’ve added the most visually prominent change: the turn queue, a graphical display of everyone’s upcoming turns that expands and contracts as needed and shows how much time any of your potential actions would take, as well as how that would relate to others’ turns. It could still use a little visual polish later on, but it should be a big help for the time being keeping track of what’s going on and why you’ll sometimes get an extra turn or one fewer than others.

That was the big goal I picked for this update, but various complications turned it into a long-running development where I’d hoped it would be a quick, bite-sized addition. I knew it would be frustrating to ship an update with just that, so I ran a vote for my supporters for something quick to add as a treat! They seemed pretty excited about just about all of the ideas I could spitball, but there was one clear winner: Knots!

So the second big addition for v0.04 is that you can finally knot, and be knotted! You can toggle the possibility in the game setup menu if you’d rather avoid any possible delays being locked to this or that strange creature a while, but hopefully it’ll add a little something special for those that enjoy it. I should note that right now, though, the regular furries you meet in the game never have knots: if you have them enabled, they’ll sometimes show up on the more monstrous creatures you can run into out there. Happy hunting!

Also, to go along with both this new reason to slow down, and the new time display, I’ve included one more small addition from the vote’s runner-up entry: the new Relax action! You can recover a little faster if you drop your guard for a little while, but you’ll take longer to be able to act again and be more vulnerable to attack in the meantime. Still, this can be a good way to show you’re willing to make yourself vulnerable, which can help encourage others to feel comfortable around you. If you’re struggling to be diplomatic when you’re a slavering monster incapable of speech, this may be just the ticket!

Past that, I’ve made a number of small changes to go over quickly:

• Multi-level traits now show a level number for clarity.
• The “Forgiving Orifice” trait has been fixed to do more of the things it’s supposed to do.
• You can now break someone attempting to put the dick to you to instead put the dick to them in the same way as any other grapple switch (and vice versa).
• Added explanations to the main text feed for when you try to start a grapple but they dodge you, or you fail to break the existing grapple.
• Switched penetration system to a more precise number system, hopefully fixing many different bugs where penetration, especially vore, can lock in place.
• Fixed buggy toggles in the specifics of vore during game setup.
• Fixed upgrade menu to properly display confirmation screen after buying an upgrade.
• Fixed various issues with the character detail display describing things with the wrong words or pronouns.

I think that should cover everything noteworthy that’s visible. A lot of my notes are about the turn queue system, it had to go through a lot of iterations and changes to get somewhere I was happy with it. I do hope that even if it doesn’t seem all that revolutionary at first glance, it improves the experience for players in the long run.

Now that this update is shipping out, the big question is, what am I working on next? The next thing on the priority list is to expand the system for tracking who all is present and where they are. Right now, basically, the game only tracks who is “here” and everyone else is “away,” more or less in stasis. I want to develop a more robust system that tracks locations separately so that AI can meet elsewhere even while you’re doing your thing, and so that you can control multiple characters in different locations at the same time if you want to. That was the main thing stopping me from allowing the player to control multiple characters: what happens if they split up? The game couldn’t really handle that as it is now.

That said, this is all still a sort of stepping stone for getting closer to AI. I want to finalize how the game tracks what’s happening and what’s happened in the past, and tracking locations and who was present when is central to that. That’s all information that will be important to a more considerate, “aware” AI.

Further, I do want the AI to be able to develop relationships not only with you, but with other characters. I want to keep a few parallel encounters always happening in the background just so the creatures you meet feel more like they’re living their own lives in this world, making friends and enemies and such. And it should be fun to occasionally walk in on others in the middle of their own encounters, rather than always getting barged in on yourself.

That’s the sort of thing I want to enable with this upgrade to tracking characters, now that the UI is set up to handle multiple locations properly. However…

It’s true that building and refining this system wore on me, and part of the delay was, I think, that I was slowing down for frustration with all the bugs and complications that inevitably come with changes like this. So I’m going to be considering my options for other tasks to work on, to shake things up and get out of this rut. Right now, PWO basically wants all programming, all the time, but I think I might need to take some time just to write, or maybe work on audio editing for Project Voice. We’ll see where I end up.

I think that’s all I’ve got for this update. I will say, things would have gone faster in the tail end if I had more proofers helping test the game. My team has been eaten up with other obligations and the process slowed down a lot trying to get things tested rigorously. If you have any interest in early access to new builds and helping make these games the best they can be, please consider joining my QA team! I only ask that you show me what you can find in any of my existing releases as a starting point, to show you’d take it seriously before I share my work with you. We need as many hands as we can get, so please consider joining us!

Besides that, you can get random nonsense from me on Twitter, and you can join us on Discord to enjoy a friendly, chill community that feels just a little special. If you like my work and want to buy me a cup of tea, you can support me doing this for a living on Patreon or SubscribeStar.

Okay, all done with the plugs. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the update!