(CoC2 also released a public patch yesterday!)

Writing this feels like emerging from the dust to ask, “What year is it?” This Azra expansion has been an enormously long time coming, and I must apologize for the length of time between patches. Our other primary content coder was similarly abducted by a massive expansion at the same time, preventing us from having much to share for a little while, but now? Now we have TWO fully functional (and large-sized!) character expansions to sink your teeth into! Azra and Nasti are both rolling in steamy new content!

Meet Cleantha on the expedition! (By Adjatha

I must confess, this expedition has been a bit of a difficult birth for me. Conceptually, I had struggled to come up with a suitable set of plants to retrieve, let alone encounters that would be worth discovering for Myrellion. It’s one of our most well-developed and explored planets, with lots of content across hosts of civilizations and species. I personally was drawing a blank. It was a relief to be approached by Skom with his offer to pen it himself. I gladly accepted and helped brainstorm some of the initial ideas. We had a LOT of back and forths over a couple months, changing plenty here and there to keep me happy with how Azra was presented and keep him satisfied that he was getting to write the content he wanted to write. I know I’m not the easiest to work with, but he kept up with my shifting demands admirably.

The whole experience lit a real fire under my ass, and I wound up blocking out an entire follow-up expedition for Dhaal complete with puzzles, NPC personalities, and more already figured out. I hope to get on that soon, but there remain a few I’s to dot and T’s to cross before I can move on from this. The second rescued flora still needs added to her crew menu, and I intend to slide some further discussion of your relationship with Azra in along with it.

Stay tuned!

0.9.123 Changelog:

• [Backer Exclusive] Azra’s third expedition has finally landed! This level 10 adventure is almost entirely authored by Skom. The expedition crosses Myrellion’s deepest caves to capture a rare lichen and a species of non-aggressive tentacle vine. Along the way, you’ll encounter some rather atypical examples of Myrellion’s native species and fun new scenes to experience with them. I personally recommend fighting the final encounter for the two new weapons they have to drop! Completing the expedition will add a new thickness-reducing option to Azra’s plant samples menu, and sufficient testing will unlock an item that allows the player to toggle off breast swelling during lactation – a must for players who have grown tired of intrusive log updates! And of course, two new repeatable scenes have been added to Azra’s menus as well. (Coded by Fenoxo)
  • Warning: As fresh, very complicated content and transformations, it is recommended you preserve a copy of your save from before the mission in case of issues. I slammed so many genital permutations through the scenes to test them, but there may be crashes only wider testing can reveal.
  • Coming Soon Notice: the tentacle species will be added to the plant samples room soon. Top men are on it. TOP MEN. (Top Fen, lul)
  • Disclaimer: this content does not include pregnancy yet, but I’ve fully planned out an expedition on Dhaal that I’m itching to dig into that will bring us to that fabled land.
• [Backer Exclusive] Nastizia “PC Lost” Path Expansion. Penned by Nonesuch and coded by Leek, this massive expansion clocked in at over 200 pages in the original google doc. After “losing” the competition for the chance to breed her, you can continue to interact with them submissively, filling a new submission meter that unlocks more brazen use. Allows following along with Nastizia’s pregnancy and participating in the debauched parties that happen every three days. Includes chastity cage content and potential penis size reduction, for folks that are into those!
  • Twenty days after the events of Part 1, the player receives a formal invitation to return to Princess Nastizia’s temporary estate on Tavros. Nasti is now pregnant and intends to remain on the station throughout her pregnancy, hosting influential gatherings while preparing for her eventual ascension as heir to the Romavian throne. The player becomes a regular guest and confidant rather than a one-time visitor.
  • Nonesuch Disclaimer: “Hello, Nonesuch here. I’m aware that this expansion to Nasti will be aggravating to the players who’d sooner not submit to Riya. Firstly I want to reassure you that the win path *is* coming. I solemnly promise I’m not going to leave this content half-finished! Secondly I want to explain how this state of affairs came about, because it likely looks a bit troll-y from the outside. As I worked on the Nasti xpac it became obvious I was going to have to split the work in two: the loss path on its own ran to 88k words. And when I put the vote to my patrons as to which half I should focus on (they fund almost all my TiTS work these days), they wanted the loss half more! Subs have a tendency to put their money where their mouth is, I have found. So in summary: win half coming, market forces. I very much hope those of you who are into getting dommed by Lt. Batra enjoy it – I did put a lot of work into it. Thanks!”
• [Now Public] Venus!
• [Now Public] Since this patch was a long time coming, I bumped a bunch of new items to public access early. Enjoy!
• New Busts (by Adjatha): Giallo, Boshra, Cleantha, Nyrean Cuntboy
• New CGs (by ToonNik): Ardia reclining in bed and Syri’s crew toy mating press scene.
• New Ship Art: the K7 Clydesdale, by Lionpaws with edits by Jacques00. This one had been misfiled and cold storage, but we got it nice and warmed up for you.
• Added support for weapons that can only single attack in a round. (Fenoxo)
• The shrinkwrap bra should now be interactable. The menu will allow to squish your boobs down to specific sizes! (Jacques00)
• More spacesuits will allow spacewalks on Zheng Shi. (Jacques00)
• Potential crash fixes. (Jacques00)
• Improved lipstick description consistency. (Jacques00)
• Behemoth transformation scale color fixes. (Jacques00)
• Removed the Dhaal Maid Outfit from sale as the item and its procs did not meet our quality standards. It may return if it is touched up in the future. The files remain in the game, so players who have already purchased it may continue to use it (or load it with the cheat menu). (Fenoxo)
• Various other small fixes! (Mostly Jacques00, tbh)

Have a sneak peak at the first encounter on Azra’s upcoming expedition: a male Nyrea with a penchant for gambling.
Art by Adjatha

I’m still cooking Azra’s quest (trust me, I’m not happy about it being unfinished either), but I couldn’t keep putting off a patch while I’m stuck ass-deep inside it, especially when there’s a backlog of community-submitted items and NPC to put in your hands!

0.9.160 Changelog:

• [Backer Exclusive] Giallo the male-presenting Rahn! You can find him hanging around New Texas. Written by badbreadpuns and coded by Leek.
• [Backer Exclusive] New Community-Authored Items: Antigrav Bottoms, Psyker Robes, Star King Tattoo Wrap, Clingy Tee, Tank top, Jacked Armbands, D-strings, Rectangular D-strings, Pixel D-strings, Dragon Tattoo Wraps, Woman Tattoo Wraps, Armor Tattoo Wraps, Muscle Shirts, Gun Control Armbands, Cowboi Boxers, Leather Vest & Chaps, Bodyshape Shirt, and the Bodyshape Shirt Plus. They’ll scattered around on a variety of clothing vendors across the game. The bodyshape line of shirts also include some actual resizing effects, for players who want to appear as a different thickness – or have a shirt that passively trims off any gained, excess thickness. (Coded by Leek, improved transformation texts & some tooltips rewritten by Fenoxo)
• [Backer Exclusive] New Community-Authored Transformation Item: Zhat Zhing! This item is sold by the Seer on Myrellion and transforms the imbiber into something called a yinglet (with permission from the creator of the species). Written by Jarylan and coded by Leek.
• [Now Public] Velika’s Expansion
• [Now Public] The Space Leviathan
• The Arctic Rescue Nurse Outfit was reworked. It’s no longer sold and is instead a rare drop on Uveto. The tooltip was rewritten to better fit the universe’s lore and the stats adjusted (generally buffed). The “self-rez” effect was slightly nerfed, reducing the amount of HP & lust recovered from 50%ish to 33%ish. Low-quality activation texts for the self-rez were also rewritten. (Fenoxo)
• Gas Greandes reworked: they now display individual messages for each NPC on the field instead of lumping the damage together for a single number display. The texts were also tweaked to be more straightforward. (Fenoxo)
• Pussy Plumpness has been reworked. A number of descriptions were only checking for the specific “slightly_pumped”, “pumped”, and “hyper_pumped” part flags, even though other effects have been added since that increase overall puffiness by one step (like the equine vagina type or a temporary effect like “Soak.” Description functions and appearance screen texts were updated to properly refer to the overall plumpness level (and also make sure not to use the “pumped” adjective unless you’ve actually been playing with the pump).
• Adjite Piercings were not causing their intended effects. They have been updated to cause swelling on certain body parts when equipped (penis, balls, vaginas, clits, breasts) and also increase the fluids produced by the associated part while worn, with certain piercings having stronger effects. A new Adjite piercing has also been added (but is not yet available – pending Azra’s 3rd expedition) with the strongest effects of all.
• The Survival Instincts perk should output more clearly and concisely when it activates. It was also adjusted for NPCs to make use of as well. (Fenoxo)
• Numerous combats with “survive X turns” as a victory condition had textual addendums added to more clearly signpost that your goal is simply to survive long enough. (Jacques00)
• Pregnancy improvements with the Gryvain Agent. (Jacques00)
• Breed N’ Brute and TamaniCorp Breed Ring should now trigger more reliably. (Jacques00)
• Fixes for the mannequin not rendering correctly.

Ginny art provided by the fabulous Adjatha!

It’s been a hot little minute, and let me start of by saying clearly that Azra’s quest isn’t quite ready yet – but it is baking to a nice golden brown in the code furnace at this very minute. I’d estimate it’s about half-cooked, depending on how long the finishing glaze takes.

In plainer terms, a few roadblocks have slowed me down. The most recent example? There’s an optional battle at the expedition’s midpoint with a trio of cockvines that seemed conceptually simple to implement – until I actually started trying to wire it up. They weren’t set up to properly handle multi-target battles at all, let alone having multiple cockvines on the field, each with their own progressive grappling actions going on, each dumping huge spammy attacks that were often three paragraphs long. Before I did anything else, I had to go through and convert all the:

"You dodge a tentacle." 
to 
"${StringUtil.capitalize(target.getCombatName(), false)} dodge
${target.isPlayer() || target.isPlural ? '':'s'} a tentacle."

Then the hidden grapple stage statuses needed reworked to directly tie back to their points of origin and their target selection reworked to stay locked onto partially grappled targets. As I was working through it, I made numerous tweaks to reveal more of the hidden status effects to the player and improve the combat flow of the encounter. In short: cockvines had basically every part of their fight reworked to run cleaner, more logically, and format better over two days. And then I wrote shorter versions of their attack texts to keep a fight with that many bodies in it legible.

I lost another two days of potential coding to having my house’s air-conditioner replaced – the unit is in the closet just outside my office, so I wasn’t really able to smut around at my smut-minting station as I normally would. Instead I wound catching a hit of inspiration and blocked out about three pages of outline for a possible fourth Azra expedition set on the twilight cyberpunk world of Dhaal from my laptop. I can’t promise that it will come with any direct rapidity, but it’s a big leap forward from being so idea-blocked that Skom had to come in to design and write the quest (as he did for Myrellion’s expedition). I can say that I’m really happy with what I have planned for it already, as heist missions are always a treat in any game!

There was also a little side adventure into improving our blackjack user experience with Jacques00’s help (he did all the real work!), but I’ll let the improved experience speak for itself. For now I’m gunning to have Azra quest drop in the coming week.

0.9.159 Changelog:

• Known Bug: The player character portrait doesn’t seem to be updating correctly in all cases, Jacques00 is aware. I’ll hotfix when I have a solution handy.
• [Backer Exclusive] New Dhaal Encounter: Ginny, the short, stacked XO! She’s more common in the southern Stacks, but she’ll pop up in the Gyre at times as well. Written by Magenta Needle, she was implemented by Leek with a small touch-up pass to some of her combat effects by Fenoxo.
  • New Bust: Ginny, by Adjatha.
• [Backer Exclusive] Grimald Dates! Roughly seventy pages of new content for spending time with Grimald in all sorts of ways~ Written by Magenta Needle and coded by Leek.
• [Now Public] Catching Rummi
• Player Bust Updates: It should now have a variety of non-human head shapes added as well as support for some non-human body types. Ear types to come in the future!
• Reworked Blackjack Interface – give it a try! It should feel a lot more like a “real” blackjack game now. (Relentless demands by Fenoxo, actual code & work by Jacques00.)
• Reworked Cockvine battle – now features proper improved combat flow, improved status effect visibility and information, reactive anti-drone attack (and support for new “drone” types in said attack), and less random new line returns adding spaces where none were needed. (Fenoxo)
• Fixed Azra’s axe-kick not displaying damage dealt. (Fenoxo)
• Fixed a Shock Hopper attack potentially affected by the same bug as Azra above. (Jacques00)
• Removed outdated and broken ‘classMST’ parser and replaced it with a new clMulti parser. (Example: [char.clMulti smuggler mercenary engineer kineticist|I’m a smuggler|I’m a mercenary|I’m a tech specialist|I’m a kineticist|I’m none of the above]) (Jacques00)
• Assorted Frosty consistency fixes. (Jacques00)
• Fixes some issues with browser-based translation & the react framework. (Jacques00)
• Hardlight suits and power armor are no longer prevented from use by the “Priapism” effect. (Jacques00)
• The number of force darts is now properly displayed. (Jacques00)
• Amber encounters now pause navigation to prevent missing her while walking quickly. (Jacques00)
• Fixes for VR versions of the E.G.G. quest encounters. (Jacques00)
• Fixes for the Siren’s Bounty face transformation effect. (Jacques00)
• Tail transformation effects have been unified with a shiftTail() utility function, and used through most TF items. (Jacques00)
• Minor pregnancy and typos fixes. (Jacques00)
• Many small user interface improvements. (Jacques00)