[UE4] Feign - An Adult Fantasy RPG [In Development]

[slaen]

 

Download Feign Proof of Concept Build 1.5

Help support the project on Patreon

 

Finished a lot of groundwork in this build.  The systems for non-combat encounters are all in place.  NPCs can now trigger dialogue barks, animations, stun the player, and grapple with the player.  The player can also now trigger sex scenes through dialogue alone.

 

Quick notes:
Head out either town gate and somewhere off to the left there should be a slime girl walking around.  
If you want to see the tease, stun, and grapple features don't have a weapon readied in your hand and she should just automatically come up to you.  This is just the rough basis of these systems which will be fleshed out in the future.  

 

The slime girl's weapon attack animations are placeholder.
She is the only NPC with all of the new systems implemented.  

 

Version 1.5 Changelist: 

• Tease/Stun attacks initial testing version
• Grapple System initial testing version
• AI has a basic concept of if the player has a weapon equipped and readied
• Slime girl full animation scenes
• Slime girl texture polish
• Implemented a few sounds
• Dialogue option to skip directly to sex scenes
• Vendor system was updated so that vendors will pull inventory from an actual container - the blacksmith is currently the only one with this setup.  Gold isn't being charged yet so that testing is easier.  
• Character creation polish - new color preset options for some categories and UI layout tweaks
• Tavern has blockout temporary assets for interior props
• Spawning after being defeated in combat should work now
• Hotkeys for speeding up time (insert), slowing down time (delete), pause (end), reset timescale to normal (home).  Also added an unlock camera with a weapon readied (equals), and toggle HUD(backspace).

 

On 12/10/2019 at 3:20 PM, Just Checking said:

God damn that dude is shredded.  Looking forward to seeing him in action, running my poor guy down and punching him/her to the moon.  Are you going for a savage, bestial type mino like Elder Scrolls or maybe something a bit more intelligent and coordinated, like it's another race of almost humanoids rather than just a vicious monster?

At this point I think most of the monsters will be almost humanoid races more than vicious monsters.  Most all of them will be really single minded in what they're after and how they go about getting it.  I figure they'll be relatively simple and one dimensional which should contrast with some of the ideas that I have for the human NPCs. 

 

 

[Madison09]

This looks very neat but please, for the love of god, cut down on the needless running in these sort of games. If it take more then 20-30 seconds to get somewhere interesting then something is wrong.

[AttritionofContrition]

It's been a while since I played but wow, I don't even recognize the town.
1.1

Spoiler

1.5

Spoiler

It's so much more colorful and lively with all the npcs running around. It's also nice to have some feedback sounds for landing blows but every time npcs fight they sound like they're right beside me, scared the crap out of me the first time. Noticing some buggy behavior with sex, nothing you probably aren't already aware of but some animations get stuck and never end (npc>npc only) or you right click and block in the middle of sex, cancelling your party of the animation, sometimes the slime won't grapple properly and just walk into you. One more thing, I have a vr headset now and every time I open the game it tries to wake my headset which isn't a big problem as I leave it disconnected when not in use. However, something I've seen in other unreal engine games is that if you do have a headset connected it will crash the game once the headset goes to sleep after being idle for so long. Something to be mindful of if you never plan to touch vr which would be amazing even if it were just the headset.
 

 

2 hours ago, Madison09 said:

This looks very neat but please, for the love of god, cut down on the needless running in these sort of games. If it take more then 20-30 seconds to get somewhere interesting then something is wrong.

See I'm the opposite, I loved riding on my horse between towns in skyrim or other games with long stretches of land between towns. I guess it all depends on what you define as "interesting" though. If there's something going on every few feet it makes the world seem too "busy" if that makes sense? It makes exploring that much more rewarding when you finally do find something. That's just my take though.

[Just Checking]

13 hours ago, Madison09 said:

This looks very neat but please, for the love of god, cut down on the needless running in these sort of games. If it take more then 20-30 seconds to get somewhere interesting then something is wrong.

 

11 hours ago, AttritionofContrition said:

See I'm the opposite, I loved riding on my horse between towns in skyrim or other games with long stretches of land between towns. I guess it all depends on what you define as "interesting" though. If there's something going on every few feet it makes the world seem too "busy" if that makes sense? It makes exploring that much more rewarding when you finally do find something. That's just my take though.

Kind of with Attrition on this one, less because I like the wander though, and more because trying to pack everything too close together can be problematic in itself.  If npc's are supposed to be able to interact with each other, for instance if monsters are supposed to attack guards or something, having them be 20-30 seconds from your hub would mean you'd also need to be pretty strict with npc movement or detection or something or they'd just be accidentally wandering into aggro range all the time.

 

Also from a slightly more world building perspective you usually want a little space for yourself if you're inhabiting an area.  Goblins shouldn't be building their den/village/whatever they live in thirty seconds from the town they steal from.

 

A happy middle ground could probably just be fast travel points so you can go from town straight to wilderness points where areas of interest can be accessed with ease.  If these are active from the get go then anyone who doesn't want to walk doesn't have to, like how towns in Oblivion could be fast traveled to from the beginning of the game when the player couldn't have visited them yet.  Of course this is all a problem for the future, when such things as dungeons or enemy camps are ready to be worked on.

[slaen]

On 12/16/2019 at 4:56 AM, Madison09 said:

This looks very neat but please, for the love of god, cut down on the needless running in these sort of games. If it take more then 20-30 seconds to get somewhere interesting then something is wrong.

23 hours ago, Just Checking said:

A happy middle ground could probably just be fast travel points so you can go from town straight to wilderness points where areas of interest can be accessed with ease.  If these are active from the get go then anyone who doesn't want to walk doesn't have to, like how towns in Oblivion could be fast traveled to from the beginning of the game when the player couldn't have visited them yet.  Of course this is all a problem for the future, when such things as dungeons or enemy camps are ready to be worked on.

I've been been going back and playing a bunch of Bethesda games and trying to figure out how they handled all of this.  I do agree with not having a lot of empty space and pointless running around.  But I also like the idea of using the environment and landscape to tell stories and build up a specific mood or tone for the next encounter.  Fallout 4 had some new encounter usually after less than a minute worth of walking but on average those bits of content were more bite sized.  Skyrim the content wasn't nearly as dense but there would still be something to do just around the next corner.  Going back to Morrowind there were entire patches that were just landscape without anything interesting going on. 

 

At the moment I'm leaning towards something close to the Skyrim level of detail.  A little bit of walking and then a chunk of content.  Something so that the world feels large and logical but not empty.  The fast travel systems I've also been thinking about how to handle.  I agree that's a great way to get people directly into the middle of content and the type of content that they want to experience.  I was thinking of going back to something sort of like the Morrowind fast travel systems.  Outside any major content hub there would be a carriage or something similar that the player could use to instantly travel anywhere else.  There could also be the old mark and recall spells to give the player a one off customized location to travel back to.  Then the final piece would be the Almsivi intervention type of spell or scroll which I would make function more like Diablo's scroll of town portal.  So quick summary overview - long distance travel between major hubs would be the carriage/silt strider like option,  mark and recall spell I imagine the player would use to get to wherever their player home was, and then for short hops from a dungeon entrance/exit back to town the player would have their town portal scroll.  The theory is that this would make the player interact with the world a bit more than Fallout 4, where I would skip over entire chunks of the map once a fast travel node was unlocked, but still give the player the option to cut out bits of walking that aren't that much fun - like the walk back to town with a full inventory after finishing a dungeon. 

 

Hah, sorry for the tangent - back on the interesting content without walking stuff.  I never played it but didn't Wildstar have a character class that was based around exploration?  I'd be interested to see how they handled that if there was always loot at the exploration locations or if it would just be a really cool scenic area.  Also what do people consider "interesting"  too?  Is that a new combat encounter?  Something to loot?  Or would some bit of environmental art like an old abandoned campfire or stone circle or something that isn't interactive but adds something cool to look at?

 

On 12/16/2019 at 7:40 AM, AttritionofContrition said:

It's so much more colorful and lively with all the npcs running around. It's also nice to have some feedback sounds for landing blows but every time npcs fight they sound like they're right beside me, scared the crap out of me the first time. Noticing some buggy behavior with sex, nothing you probably aren't already aware of but some animations get stuck and never end (npc>npc only) or you right click and block in the middle of sex, cancelling your party of the animation, sometimes the slime won't grapple properly and just walk into you. One more thing, I have a vr headset now and every time I open the game it tries to wake my headset which isn't a big problem as I leave it disconnected when not in use. However, something I've seen in other unreal engine games is that if you do have a headset connected it will crash the game once the headset goes to sleep after being idle for so long. Something to be mindful of if you never plan to touch vr which would be amazing even if it were just the headset.

It's slowly getting there, one piece at a time.  Yeah, the sounds I'm still figuring out how to even set those up correctly.  I haven't gone back and tested the NPC vs NPC animations in a while and it sounds like I need to do a polish pass on that.  Hah, I didn't know that you could block during the sex scenes and cancel stuff I'll see about that.  The grapple stuff will probably also be a bit fragile for the next few builds it only fires right now if the player is stunned, which only happens with that one hand raise animation the slime girl does, otherwise the slime girl doesn't know what to do.  As another note I was looking into the first person animations desyncing from each other - I fixed one bug with it so that some scenes will advance properly together but others still completely break.  I think for those first person animations I'll have to rip out the system and rewrite it.  I think it's happening because I'm not linking the first person animations and third person animations so even when they are triggered they are slightly out of sync and then if the first person mesh isn't rendered the functions won't get called on it to update until the player switches back to that camera view.  Uh, the VR stuff I don't have a clue.  I could try doing some googling but I don't have a headset and I haven't done anything special to the game to even tell it to look for a headset.  I'm guessing it's just a default UE4 behavior?  Not sure how to handle that yet.  Sucks that it causes a crash though. 

 

Thanks for all the bugs.  I was thinking earlier that there's a enough rough edges to the game now that it would probably be worth taking most of a month and just smoothing those out. 

 

[AttritionofContrition]

18 hours ago, slaen said:

Uh, the VR stuff I don't have a clue.  I could try doing some googling but I don't have a headset and I haven't done anything special to the game to even tell it to look for a headset.  I'm guessing it's just a default UE4 behavior?  Not sure how to handle that yet.  Sucks that it causes a crash though.

It seems to be a default behavior. Googling around I found a post that says "Go to your Plugins in the editor and uncheck Oculus and SteamVR plugins". That post is dated back to 2016 though but it's hopefully still relevant.
Edit: Found a character creation bug, if you toggle the clothes off while adjusting the body sliders it gets screwy. To reproduce, turn the "overall thickness" slider to max, turn clothes off and then attempt to turn the slider back to minimum. The changes are still made it just isn't reflected in the creator other than a visible neck/wrist seam. This only occurs when the clothes are off, toggling the clothes on updates the sliders.

Quote

Hah, sorry for the tangent - back on the interesting content without walking stuff.  I never played it but didn't Wildstar have a character class that was based around exploration?  I'd be interested to see how they handled that if there was always loot at the exploration locations or if it would just be a really cool scenic area.  Also what do people consider "interesting"  too?  Is that a new combat encounter?  Something to loot?  Or would some bit of environmental art like an old abandoned campfire or stone circle or something that isn't interactive but adds something cool to look at?

In wildstar it was less of a class and more of a system made to reward your play style. Going off of memory your choices were:
Explorer: You get missions tailored to exploring and platforming and abilities that aid in movement such as reduced fall damage and an ability similar to the mark and recall spells.

Soldier: You get more combat oriented missions and abilities that were kind of lackluster, was my least favorite path.
Settler: You can build temporary buildings in marked places that other players can use with various benefits, their abilities revolve around summoning different services like vendors, crafting stations, and mailboxes.
Scientist: This was the path that revolved around lore, you study objects and learn more about the world of wildstar. They get group summons, a town portal and another ability I never remember using.

It was an interesting concept but I never liked the idea of being shoehorned into one path, the explorer and scientist were my two favorites. As far as what they rewarded, I don't remember, I want to say crafting reagents and money. I don't ever recall getting anything useful out of doing those in comparison to just questing. It did often leave you overlooking high up vistas at the end with ways to get down such as a slowfall, it was a lot of fun. Speaking of going off on a tangent...

As far as what I find interesting, I like all of the above. Back in vanilla wow my fondest memories were of exploring places and finding objects lying around with no one around that tells a story. Like in Tanaris(a desert zone) you'll find a random rocket car crashed into a hill but all of the rocket races are in the zone over (thousand needles). How did that car get out there? Did the driver survive? I think that's why I like the fallout series so much, often you'll have the environment tell a story without any words.

Loot I'm kind of iffy on. On one hand I love looting but on the other I always spend so much time looting in games like fallout 4 and skyrim that I end up doing that more than anything else. I like loot but I think it should be more sparse and valuable with less containers per environment. There is no worse feeling than picking a master lock chest only to get less than 100 gold value out of it.

Combat encounters are great, especially the ones you don't see coming like the one outside of whiterun, the bandit camp situated in a small outdoor cave. After you kill the group at the camp and approach to start looting another group spawns nearby and takes you by surprise, or it did me at least. For some reason that was one of the more memorable encounters I had just because I'd never ran into that kind of situation before.
 

[slaen]

Just wanted to drop a quick update.  

 

I was able to find some time for bug fixes this week.  Did a few AI sanity checks so they stop breaking things as much.  They should be a bit more reliable when choosing when and how to attack and they also shouldn't leave the scenes menu open after defeat anymore.  

 

I think fixed the worst of the camera clipping through walls.  That offset over the characters shoulder would make it clip through walls that were on the characters' right hand side.  I'm still testing the fix but so far so good.

 

Finally lots of design work and the first "dungeon" has been started.  I'm trying to keep the scope small to one or two rooms and focusing on getting the visuals and feel right.  The plan is to use this to prove out the rest of the features needed for a basic questing system, faction relation interactions, and the player reputation system.  This is one of the final steps before moving to alpha.  

On 12/17/2019 at 8:52 PM, AttritionofContrition said:

It seems to be a default behavior. Googling around I found a post that says "Go to your Plugins in the editor and uncheck Oculus and SteamVR plugins". That post is dated back to 2016 though but it's hopefully still relevant.
Edit: Found a character creation bug, if you toggle the clothes off while adjusting the body sliders it gets screwy. To reproduce, turn the "overall thickness" slider to max, turn clothes off and then attempt to turn the slider back to minimum. The changes are still made it just isn't reflected in the creator other than a visible neck/wrist seam. This only occurs when the clothes are off, toggling the clothes on updates the sliders.

In wildstar it was less of a class and more of a system made to reward your play style. Going off of memory your choices were:
Explorer: You get missions tailored to exploring and platforming and abilities that aid in movement such as reduced fall damage and an ability similar to the mark and recall spells.

Soldier: You get more combat oriented missions and abilities that were kind of lackluster, was my least favorite path.
Settler: You can build temporary buildings in marked places that other players can use with various benefits, their abilities revolve around summoning different services like vendors, crafting stations, and mailboxes.
Scientist: This was the path that revolved around lore, you study objects and learn more about the world of wildstar. They get group summons, a town portal and another ability I never remember using.

It was an interesting concept but I never liked the idea of being shoehorned into one path, the explorer and scientist were my two favorites. As far as what they rewarded, I don't remember, I want to say crafting reagents and money. I don't ever recall getting anything useful out of doing those in comparison to just questing. It did often leave you overlooking high up vistas at the end with ways to get down such as a slowfall, it was a lot of fun. Speaking of going off on a tangent...

As far as what I find interesting, I like all of the above. Back in vanilla wow my fondest memories were of exploring places and finding objects lying around with no one around that tells a story. Like in Tanaris(a desert zone) you'll find a random rocket car crashed into a hill but all of the rocket races are in the zone over (thousand needles). How did that car get out there? Did the driver survive? I think that's why I like the fallout series so much, often you'll have the environment tell a story without any words.

Loot I'm kind of iffy on. On one hand I love looting but on the other I always spend so much time looting in games like fallout 4 and skyrim that I end up doing that more than anything else. I like loot but I think it should be more sparse and valuable with less containers per environment. There is no worse feeling than picking a master lock chest only to get less than 100 gold value out of it.

Combat encounters are great, especially the ones you don't see coming like the one outside of whiterun, the bandit camp situated in a small outdoor cave. After you kill the group at the camp and approach to start looting another group spawns nearby and takes you by surprise, or it did me at least. For some reason that was one of the more memorable encounters I had just because I'd never ran into that kind of situation before.
 

Oh cool, I just turned off those VR settings.  That saved me some time, thanks!

That character creation bug is a funky one.  I'll see if I can figure out why it's doing that.  It's something when toggling between male and female anatomy and then toggling the clothes that seems to trigger it on my end.  Hmm.

 

That's a bummer about Wildstar I really thought they had fleshed out those roles better.  Still it's at least interesting that they acknowledged that some people weren't there only for combat. 

 

I'm with you for the environmental storytelling.  Those little details really sell the world and let the player create their own stories about what happened.  This is one of the things I'd like to do.  The loot stuff I'm a little torn on.  I like in Fable 2 most of the time if you find a treasure chest you know it's going to contain something cool.  But then in Skyrim, like you mentioned, since loot is randomized sometimes what is in a chest is less than exciting.  Of course the good part about Skyrim's system is that it works for a lot of content in an open world game.  Fable 2 has the advantage of being relatively linear and much more structured than Skyrim so the very unique curated loot system works much better there. 

 

Hah, I think I know the encounter by Whiterun that you're talking about.  I like stuff like that.  I'm assuming there's an extra trigger there that fires when the player has cleared the original bandits or else when the player opens a chest or something that will then spawn the new bandits to come up from behind.  That would be worth the extra level of scripting to make those encounters work. 

 

[slaen]

 

Current state of the minotaur - beefed up his legs and changed up his face based upon people's feedback.  Thanks again for the help Synlaine!  I did like the last version of his face so that isn't disappearing completely I'll most likely roll that into some demon character at some point in the future.

 

Posted some information about changing up Patreon tiers and slowly transitioning into an alpha state for the game over on Patreon.

 

I've been mostly working on the quest system and other various odds and ends over the holidays. 

The Quest system is almost done.  I'm implementing the very first quest right now and seeing what other features I need to add.  But it's there, there's a Skyrim like quest journal that is in and seems to be working.  With the quest also comes the very first "dungeon".  I'm keeping it straightforward and basic for this first test case.  In the future the dungeons will get larger and more complex.  

The Imp also now has facial expressions.  I still need to hook those up to the rig inside of maya and then it'll be time to start on his actual animations. 

I've been working on a lot of environment work, bug fixes, and trying to make the save system more stable.  Oh, and the title screen should finally load the character from the most recent save game.  That feature took me a lot longer to get working than I expected. 

 

 

[Just Checking]

Hey nice, Mino's looking pretty good.  Always a little disturbing seeing those huge neck muscles (trapezius, I think?), but I can't say it's inaccurate how they get like that with enough bulk.  Dude looks like he could punch the brain out of your skull.

 

Anyway looking forward to seeing the first dungeon and how well that all comes out, keep up the awesome work.

[RmX93]

This game really need a bigger publicity it's insane how good it looks and how well made it is. One of the most promising projects I saw lately. Keep up a good work slaen!

[superlerk123]

Ya i hope they keep at it.. I had to do a double take at the patreon profits this should be making way more than what it is.

[Arc134]

On 1/7/2020 at 5:48 PM, slaen said:

 

Current state of the minotaur - beefed up his legs and changed up his face based upon people's feedback.  Thanks again for the help Synlaine!  I did like the last version of his face so that isn't disappearing completely I'll most likely roll that into some demon character at some point in the future.

 

Posted some information about changing up Patreon tiers and slowly transitioning into an alpha state for the game over on Patreon.

 

I've been mostly working on the quest system and other various odds and ends over the holidays. 

The Quest system is almost done.  I'm implementing the very first quest right now and seeing what other features I need to add.  But it's there, there's a Skyrim like quest journal that is in and seems to be working.  With the quest also comes the very first "dungeon".  I'm keeping it straightforward and basic for this first test case.  In the future the dungeons will get larger and more complex.  

The Imp also now has facial expressions.  I still need to hook those up to the rig inside of maya and then it'll be time to start on his actual animations. 

I've been working on a lot of environment work, bug fixes, and trying to make the save system more stable.  Oh, and the title screen should finally load the character from the most recent save game.  That feature took me a lot longer to get working than I expected. 

 

 

I'd have a question about this game.

 

Is there gonna be exhib or humiliation fetish theme planned for the game?

[slaen]

 

Working on creating the early game clothing sets.  This one is sort of a blend between Legend (the movie from 1985) and the Legend of Zelda.  At some point I want to make the scale mail from the end of Legend as well.  I'm also still trying to find the best body shape for sculpting so that the outfits will fit all of the different body shape combinations.  So far it seems like this middle half bulky body shape works the best but showing off the sculpts doesn't look as impressive as if it was on one of the more extreme body types that are in the game.  

 

The low poly and the base texture bakes for the minotaur are finished.  Working on the textures then it'll be time for rigging.  

 

Also had a chance to do some environment work.  Trying to start detailing the areas directly around the town which means making some new trees and new farm buildings. 

 

On 1/7/2020 at 8:25 PM, Just Checking said:

Hey nice, Mino's looking pretty good.  Always a little disturbing seeing those huge neck muscles (trapezius, I think?), but I can't say it's inaccurate how they get like that with enough bulk.  Dude looks like he could punch the brain out of your skull.

Hah thanks, I have a tendency to really emphasize the traps in a sculpt.  I like how intimidating it makes the silhouette.  Hopefully it doesn't cause too many rigging issues I'm sure that his horns are going to intersect with those traps during some animations but I'd rather have him look good than worry about the technical limitations. 

 

On 1/9/2020 at 4:34 PM, RmX93 said:

This game really need a bigger publicity it's insane how good it looks and how well made it is. One of the most promising projects I saw lately. Keep up a good work slaen!

Thanks!  It's always a big morale boost to hear stuff like this.  It's funny though, I know how to make games but I have no idea how to market them. 

 

9 hours ago, superlerk123 said:

Ya i hope they keep at it.. I had to do a double take at the patreon profits this should be making way more than what it is.

I'm still trying to figure out how to handle the whole Patreon thing.  This year the game is going to be moving into an alpha state and coming next month I have a big update along with changes to the Patreon tiers.  Moving over to the tier plans for early access builds similar to almost every other adult game on Patreon.

 

9 hours ago, Arc134 said:

Is there gonna be exhib or humiliation fetish theme planned for the game?

Maybe?  I don't have anything specific in mind at this point in time but at the moment the player can initiate sex scenes anytime and any place they want to or go around in whatever level of dress / undress they want.  Is that sort of what you were thinking for exhibitionism stuff?  and for humiliation themes currently if the player loses in combat then they end up on the receiving end of the npc that defeated them.  Or was there more specific content you were looking for?  If it is content similar to something like Under the Witch then eventually things like that will make it into the game once I get to the point of implementing different personalities and dialogue barks to the different npc races.

 

 

[Arc134]

Quote

Maybe?  I don't have anything specific in mind at this point in time but at the moment the player can initiate sex scenes anytime and any place they want to or go around in whatever level of dress / undress they want.  Is that sort of what you were thinking for exhibitionism stuff?  and for humiliation themes currently if the player loses in combat then they end up on the receiving end of the npc that defeated them.  Or was there more specific content you were looking for?  If it is content similar to something like Under the Witch then eventually things like that will make it into the game once I get to the point of implementing different personalities and dialogue barks to the different npc races.

 

About exhib yes it what i was thinking about.

 

About humiliation, i was thinking about somes abusers Npc that could degrade our heroine/hero by stripping he/her publicly or use somes bondage stuff something like that 

 

This is things that could spice the game a little bit, i giving somes ideas. 

[slaen]

 

Quick update this week I had time to finish the low poly, the bakes, and then get some rough base textures on the minotaur. I'll keep updating the textures as I go and while I'm working on the rig.

Most of the week was eaten up moving to a new place. Now I'm just waiting on my stuff to be delivered so I can put my computer back on a proper desk and get it off the kitchen counter.

 

On 1/14/2020 at 2:03 PM, Arc134 said:

About humiliation, i was thinking about somes abusers Npc that could degrade our heroine/hero by stripping he/her publicly or use somes bondage stuff something like that 

 

This is things that could spice the game a little bit, i giving somes ideas.

Hmm, so like stuff like a character getting stripped and then locked in the stocks in the center of town over night sort of thing?  Eventually I'll get to that point.  There's a level of interactions that would need to be written to coordinate the actions between the player and multiple NPCs at once that I haven't written yet. 

Thanks for the input too, ideas and suggestions are always appreciated!

 

[Just Checking]

Wow dude the mino's looking great!

 

5 hours ago, slaen said:

Hmm, so like stuff like a character getting stripped and then locked in the stocks in the center of town over night sort of thing?  Eventually I'll get to that point.  There's a level of interactions that would need to be written to coordinate the actions between the player and multiple NPCs at once that I haven't written yet. 

 

Something I would be stoked to see eventually in a similar vein would be some kind of situation that opens a character to continuous interaction without having to restart everything after each one.  An example might be a character waiting at a gloryhole or even just splayed out on a bed or table something, someone shows up, and after the interaction they return to waiting for the next one.  Being locked in something like a stocks would allow for the same situation.  Actually is it possible to separately work animations on the upper body independent of the lower body?  I'm just thinking of a character locked in the stocks, someone comes up to... participate in the town's justice system, and maybe someone else decides to do the same, but instead of having to wait for the first guy to finish his interaction before the new one can begin he just goes to whichever end of the locked person isn't currently in use.  When it's finished, character resumes their locked in stocks waiting either for release or the next person.

 

In a lot of the stuff on LL, the system works in a way that the setup for the interaction has to be done after each interaction, which doesn't lend well to the "don't mind me, just waiting for sex" vibe, especially regarding things like Sexlab interactions.  Bondage devices work sort of like that with some mods, but then there's a lot of animations and things people have made that don't really organically have a way to start, you have to just use an animation starting mod like SL zzz, and then suddenly there's a whole gloryhole setup spawning at the location.

[slaen]

 

Quick before and after of one of the areas outside of town.  Trying to get more localized scene details in rather than the blank wide open spaces.  Lots to do, like finishing those trees, and a ton of polish for the environment assets and models themselves.  

 

I also had a chance to fix a handful of bugs.  The bug when an npc gets knocked down but they still face the player I think I finally fixed, I hope.  Same with the character editor bugs of the body sliders not working sometimes when clothing is toggled on and off.  

 

The game is also at this really awkward phase of development right now.  The base systems are all in place, nearly everything works somewhat reliably, but there isn't really a game just yet.  It's almost as if I was building a car and I had all the parts, the engine is sitting over here, the tires are in a pile over there, the hood and windows are over there.  Everything is there for the basic car but I can't get in it and drive it around yet.  

 

So that's the next big push.  Putting all of those pieces together so that there's an actual game.  The very first quest is mostly complete, this will be the first major test of the core gameplay loop.  I also have the sex scene system pulled apart into pieces in the hopes of giving sex scenes a bit more personality and context, at least initially when the player is defeated in combat.  This will probably take a few iteration passes to get right but I think it'll be a step in the right direction. 

 

On 1/21/2020 at 3:59 PM, Just Checking said:

Something I would be stoked to see eventually in a similar vein would be some kind of situation that opens a character to continuous interaction without having to restart everything after each one.  An example might be a character waiting at a gloryhole or even just splayed out on a bed or table something, someone shows up, and after the interaction they return to waiting for the next one.  Being locked in something like a stocks would allow for the same situation.  Actually is it possible to separately work animations on the upper body independent of the lower body?  I'm just thinking of a character locked in the stocks, someone comes up to... participate in the town's justice system, and maybe someone else decides to do the same, but instead of having to wait for the first guy to finish his interaction before the new one can begin he just goes to whichever end of the locked person isn't currently in use.  When it's finished, character resumes their locked in stocks waiting either for release or the next person.

 

In a lot of the stuff on LL, the system works in a way that the setup for the interaction has to be done after each interaction, which doesn't lend well to the "don't mind me, just waiting for sex" vibe, especially regarding things like Sexlab interactions.  Bondage devices work sort of like that with some mods, but then there's a lot of animations and things people have made that don't really organically have a way to start, you have to just use an animation starting mod like SL zzz, and then suddenly there's a whole gloryhole setup spawning at the location.

That is a really great idea.  I hadn't put much thought into doing stocks in the middle of the town but that would be really cool.  Suddenly crime and punishment takes on an entirely different dimension compared to something like vanilla Skyrim. 

 

WIth the gloryhole scenarios and stuff would the player just sort of hang out and watch people walk by at first?  and then randomly and NPC would choose to come up and interact with them?  Is that part of the fun of the gameplay?  Almost like fishing in a way?  Where the waiting is the buildup and then the payoff is when the player actually "catches the fish"?

 

So the animation setup to have two characters acting on one character in stocks in theory is possible.  In some ways it's similar to how I'm handling melee animations when the character is running vs. standing still the top half of the animation will blend in and overwrite the top half of the body animations.  The biggest downside is that it would require a good chunk of time to write out the AI, create the animations, and make the environment assets.  It's also one of those systems that I'm guessing some people would really appreciate but then others would skip over entirely.  Which sort of means that it's a feature that has to wait until the future until I can devote some extra time to it.  I do really like the idea and I'm guessing there would be a number of applications for the system.  Isn't there some meme / trope of girls getting stuck in like windows or holes in walls and stuff that would be nearly the same thing?  Hmm, maybe this would also be something I could bundle in with a crime and punishment system when I get to that point in development.  I'm also not super familiar with this sort of content so if anyone has ideas in a similar vein that they would just like to throw out there feel free.  It'll be some time before I can get to things but if I have a roadmap of what people are looking for it's a whole lot easier than figuring it out on my own. 

 

 

[Screws]

First of all I love diss man's right here suggesting the glory hole stock stuff 10/10. I'd even say you could make a snare trap version out in the wild where players or npcs can be caught in uncompromising positions in non lethal hunting traps!

 

Btw @slaen For animations for combat I'd say look at Assasin's creed more along the lines of AC Unity, pretty well flowing animations and id say put in the option for killmoves. You need combat that flows so don't loom at games like skyrim where it's ice skating brawlfest. I love skyrim mind you but the combat is rather clunky. You could try a Witcher style combat system or hell go ham and make it like Dragon's dogma which would be awesome but it's mainly geared towards climbing big beasties and skill anims. 

[Just Checking]

That environment change looks spectacular, nice.

21 hours ago, slaen said:

That is a really great idea.  I hadn't put much thought into doing stocks in the middle of the town but that would be really cool.  Suddenly crime and punishment takes on an entirely different dimension compared to something like vanilla Skyrim. 

 

WIth the gloryhole scenarios and stuff would the player just sort of hang out and watch people walk by at first?  and then randomly and NPC would choose to come up and interact with them?  Is that part of the fun of the gameplay?  Almost like fishing in a way?  Where the waiting is the buildup and then the payoff is when the player actually "catches the fish"?

 

So the animation setup to have two characters acting on one character in stocks in theory is possible.  In some ways it's similar to how I'm handling melee animations when the character is running vs. standing still the top half of the animation will blend in and overwrite the top half of the body animations.  The biggest downside is that it would require a good chunk of time to write out the AI, create the animations, and make the environment assets.  It's also one of those systems that I'm guessing some people would really appreciate but then others would skip over entirely.  Which sort of means that it's a feature that has to wait until the future until I can devote some extra time to it.  I do really like the idea and I'm guessing there would be a number of applications for the system.  Isn't there some meme / trope of girls getting stuck in like windows or holes in walls and stuff that would be nearly the same thing?  Hmm, maybe this would also be something I could bundle in with a crime and punishment system when I get to that point in development.  I'm also not super familiar with this sort of content so if anyone has ideas in a similar vein that they would just like to throw out there feel free.  It'll be some time before I can get to things but if I have a roadmap of what people are looking for it's a whole lot easier than figuring it out on my own. 

In regards to that being part of the gameplay, I think it's less that and more one of two things, an RP option for your character, or a very easy way to just have some animations play.  If you were to somehow work sex into having some kind of usable impact on the game, it could also be a slightly easier way to grind whatever that impact is, unless it's just temporary buffs or something.

 

Regardless, I just thought it'd be a nice feature to see.  Don't feel any kind of pressure to wok on it immediately, or even at all.  Like you said, it's kind of niche.  It CAN have applications depending on how things are worked, but those applications are restricted completely by what consequences sexual activity actually has in your finished game.  I remember you listed Corruption of Champions as one of your inspirations, and lord knows that had consequences, either in the form of pregnancy or rarely transformations and addictions.  That's one possible practical use of the hang out and wait feature.  The other is in the event you want to include prostitution or some kind of public use theme anywhere, at which point a whore can set up shop somewhere or whatever without having to rely on the time honored LL go to of walk up and talk to everyone or have to walk around in circles.  I mean, the mods in newer don't do that so much but it still has to reset everything and wait for the setup to be put back in place by the player or the system to have to process an separate in between state that often ends up with the player just standing there for a few seconds.

 

The only other actual possible use for it I guess could be making gangbang interactions seem a little less clunky, but again the uses are only apparent in a few places.

[slaen]

 

Worked on the transformation systems a bit this week.  Currently there's just a test potion item that I'm using that can be picked up in the world.  When the player clicks on it in their inventory it will consume the potion and trigger a specific set of transformations.  In the screenshots I'm using the rough Imp assets to test the systems and get a feel for how and where everything should go.  

 

So far the system will support horns, wings, tails, genitals, and almost everything that can be changed in the character creator.  As I make more characters I'll keep adding new transformations with the various parts and pieces of those new characters.  

 

Should I add things like new ear types?  Like cat, dog, cow ears?  I'm hesitant to add them as a new slot because they won't overwrite the human ears.  So the player would have a set of cat ears on top of their head and then the normal human ears would still be there too.  Is that too weird or funny looking to outweigh the positives of adding custom ears?

 

On 1/29/2020 at 11:39 AM, Synlaine said:

First of all I love diss man's right here suggesting the glory hole stock stuff 10/10. I'd even say you could make a snare trap version out in the wild where players or npcs can be caught in uncompromising positions in non lethal hunting traps!

 

Btw @slaen For animations for combat I'd say look at Assasin's creed more along the lines of AC Unity, pretty well flowing animations and id say put in the option for killmoves. You need combat that flows so don't loom at games like skyrim where it's ice skating brawlfest. I love skyrim mind you but the combat is rather clunky. You could try a Witcher style combat system or hell go ham and make it like Dragon's dogma which would be awesome but it's mainly geared towards climbing big beasties and skill anims. 

Oh, hunting traps are a good idea too that could use all the same systems. 

 

Well I appreciate the amount of faith that shows in my game development skills for the combat.  But wow. Assassin's Creed or Dragon's Dogma are just hugely complex systems compared to Skyrim.  Someone brought this up and I agree with everyone that Skyrim's combat isn't the greatest.  But the Skyrim system of combat still serves its purpose of giving the player a way of feeling like they're in a fantasy setting with swords and magic.  Plus it's really easy to make and design for especially compared to Dragon's Dogma.  Don't get me wrong Dragon's Dogma is awesome with climbing all over the enemies and learning weak spots but I mean, wow, that's a ton of work, some massive systems, and then getting all of the animations to work with those systems.  Unfortunately that's a bit out of scope for the project right now. 

 

But the plan is also that combat is only a supporting mechanic to reinforce the fantasy world setting and not the core experience.  It should give the player a reason to use cool swords, or cast awesome spells,  and level up stats.  The real focus should be the adult content but without the combat, or the fantasy world to explore, and the NPCs to interact with the adult content would lose context.  I'm also planning and hoping to give the player enough alternatives to combat so that if they don't like the combat then that's fine and they can still have a fun experience without it. 

 

On 1/29/2020 at 1:33 PM, Just Checking said:

That environment change looks spectacular, nice.

In regards to that being part of the gameplay, I think it's less that and more one of two things, an RP option for your character, or a very easy way to just have some animations play.  If you were to somehow work sex into having some kind of usable impact on the game, it could also be a slightly easier way to grind whatever that impact is, unless it's just temporary buffs or something.

 

Regardless, I just thought it'd be a nice feature to see.  Don't feel any kind of pressure to wok on it immediately, or even at all.  Like you said, it's kind of niche.  It CAN have applications depending on how things are worked, but those applications are restricted completely by what consequences sexual activity actually has in your finished game.  I remember you listed Corruption of Champions as one of your inspirations, and lord knows that had consequences, either in the form of pregnancy or rarely transformations and addictions.  That's one possible practical use of the hang out and wait feature.  The other is in the event you want to include prostitution or some kind of public use theme anywhere, at which point a whore can set up shop somewhere or whatever without having to rely on the time honored LL go to of walk up and talk to everyone or have to walk around in circles.  I mean, the mods in newer don't do that so much but it still has to reset everything and wait for the setup to be put back in place by the player or the system to have to process an separate in between state that often ends up with the player just standing there for a few seconds.

 

The only other actual possible use for it I guess could be making gangbang interactions seem a little less clunky, but again the uses are only apparent in a few places.

Hmm.  Well the transformation stuff will be a thing, and I'll probably add some sort of addiction system as long as I can make it more fun than tedious to deal with and a handful of people have asked if there will be a pregnancy system.  So that would be a good starting point to use for different sexual consequences. 

 

Making a prostitution system would be relatively simple, I think.  There would probably need to be like an item that would trigger that state on the player and then just plug something into the perception checks for NPCs.  Then a generic dialogue / negotiation sort of thing when they approach the player.  Something I'll think about and come back to in the future. 

 

Hah, gangbang content.  Creating animations for that stuff just seems like it would be a huge headache.  But it's also a similar system to what would be needed for multiple scripted actors performing a scripted scene.  Which would be a nice system to have for more complicated story elements in the game. 

 

[AttritionofContrition]

1 hour ago, slaen said:

Should I add things like new ear types?  Like cat, dog, cow ears?  I'm hesitant to add them as a new slot because they won't overwrite the human ears.  So the player would have a set of cat ears on top of their head and then the normal human ears would still be there too.  Is that too weird or funny looking to outweigh the positives of adding custom ears?

They do look funny but some people like that. I say go ahead and implement them, if someone thinks it looks weird they'll pass on it while someone else may love it. The more customization options the better, I think.

1 hour ago, slaen said:

Hah, gangbang content.  Creating animations for that stuff just seems like it would be a huge headache.  But it's also a similar system to what would be needed for multiple scripted actors performing a scripted scene.  Which would be a nice system to have for more complicated story elements in the game.

Ever since the goblin girl animations were added I've been hoping for a group animations. That would be amazing if you could make it to where compatible enemies could join in on an animation. Sounds like a massive bit of work though, unless you kept the group animations to two different races max... but even still. Most of the games that I've played with such a system always kept it to very strict pairings and I can understand why.

[Screws]

@slaen I actually didn't realize why I didn''t think about it before. Maybe the Fable series combat system could be good. Maybe along the lines of the First Fable game? 

[slaen]

 

Help support the project on Patreon

 

Sorry, I've been a bit absent this last week.  Getting everything together for this build has been rough.  But a ton of progress has been made!  The most basic gameplay loop is in.  The skeleton of the quest system is in.  More narrative based sex scenes are waiting on scripting and more animations.  Things are really getting there.  I also switched over the Patreon tiers to give early access to the latest builds and moved to the pay upfront model.  Hopefully the project will start paying for itself in the near future. 

 

Version 1.6 Changelist:

• The new behind the scenes preview level has gotten a basic implementation.  The $25 tier has access to this level and can see some of the rough sculpts and assets that I've been working on.  Of course these are work in progress and subject to change at any time.  
• The minotaur is roughly in the game.  He needs a full set of new animations still.  The retargeting on his placeholder animations didn't go so well and his feet have trouble touching the ground.  
• Dynamic spawners are in the game and should be working properly now.  Enemies that are dynamically spawned and then defeated will respawn at that same location after a day or two of ingame time has passed.  This is the most basic gameplay loop.  The player can leave town, defeat enemies, take their gold, then return to town to heal and wait for the enemies to respawn, and then repeat the entire process.  
• Lots of environment work.  The rough blockout for an old mine has been started and gets progressively rougher the deeper into the mine you go.  
• The first quest has been started.  To try testing it out for yourself speak to the bartender in the tavern.  Only two solution paths are currently implemented - the player can solve the quest through dialogue or through violence.  
• Quests have dialogue hooks, separate quest stages, a new functional tab on the players' inventory screen, plus some other stuff I'm sure to be forgetting.  
• Factions have gotten a bit of love and for testing purposes in this build attacking ANY character will decrease standing with that character's faction.  When the faction reaches a negative enough level members of that faction will attack on sight.  
• Imps have facial expressions ready but still need sex animations and scenes.
• Title screen should display the character from the most recent saved game.
• Saves still don't work between versions - yet!  I'm actively working on this but it's been more difficult than I at first thought. 
• The narrative sex scenes aren't completely ready yet.  They tie in with so many other triggers and character behaviors that I disabled them to not completely break the current sex scene functionality.  
• Adjust running speed, sprint speed, and ducking speed.  I'll keep tweaking these numbers to find something that feels "right" plus at some point I'll give them proper animations.  There still isn't a cap on stamina use though - just to save people some time running around and looking at the new content.  
• Trading systems and UI should all be working.  Items will cost gold and can be sold for gold.

 

On 2/4/2020 at 5:35 PM, AttritionofContrition said:

They do look funny but some people like that. I say go ahead and implement them, if someone thinks it looks weird they'll pass on it while someone else may love it. The more customization options the better, I think.

Ever since the goblin girl animations were added I've been hoping for a group animations. That would be amazing if you could make it to where compatible enemies could join in on an animation. Sounds like a massive bit of work though, unless you kept the group animations to two different races max... but even still. Most of the games that I've played with such a system always kept it to very strict pairings and I can understand why.

That was the conclusion that I came to with the transformation stuff - that it was better to give the people the options to look how they want.  I think the tradeoff is going to be worth it.  And the amount of different ear types and placements that I've been looking at there wasn't one solution that fit all of them unless the human ears stay on the head as well.

 

Well if by group animations people are cool with a bunch of goblins or imps standing around them playing "solo" animations then that will be in there once I get those animations made for all the different races.  The part that's difficult with group animations is when I'm trying to figure out where and how to arrange more than 2 characters for a scene.  Even then in the early days if the player was knocked down and then 2 npc characters would trying to interact with them at once things would get complicated.  Usually it would send one or both of those characters flying off into space, never to be seen again.  I guess it just comes down to time, effort, and resources though.  If the project is doing well and if enough people want group sex, who am I to argue? 

 

On 2/4/2020 at 11:03 PM, Synlaine said:

@slaen I actually didn't realize why I didn''t think about it before. Maybe the Fable series combat system could be good. Maybe along the lines of the First Fable game? 

Haha I've actually been playing through Fable 2 the last few days seeing how they handled a number of different systems.  Looking at their combat system they generally have attackers forming a circle around the player and then attacking at all different times.  Where the AI currently in Feign walks straight towards the enemy and starts swinging.  So I do want to look into how difficult that would be to implement.  Also the various moves of dodging, blocking, parrying, are something I'm thinking about too.  Blocking is roughly in the game but needs some polish.  Dodging will take some changes to get it feeling alright in the first person camera view.  But yeah I agree Fable is a very good place to take combat systems that are fun feeling. 

 

[Just Checking]

1 hour ago, slaen said:

Haha I've actually been playing through Fable 2 the last few days seeing how they handled a number of different systems.  Looking at their combat system they generally have attackers forming a circle around the player and then attacking at all different times.  Where the AI currently in Feign walks straight towards the enemy and starts swinging.  So I do want to look into how difficult that would be to implement.  Also the various moves of dodging, blocking, parrying, are something I'm thinking about too.  Blocking is roughly in the game but needs some polish.  Dodging will take some changes to get it feeling alright in the first person camera view.  But yeah I agree Fable is a very good place to take combat systems that are fun feeling. 

 

Fable, much like other games of a similar combat style like Assassin's Creed, use a system that limits the number of enemies ACTIVELY fighting.  Ever notice how in something like Assassin's Creed or Fable you can be totally surrounded by a dozen enemies and rather than doing the smart thing and all beating you with sticks at once they just kind of circle you, yelling and brandishing their weapons while maybe one or two guys at a time will take probing swings or short combos that the player can get out of without getting too badly wrecked?  Actually I think most reasonably modern melee based games run some kind of system like that so players don't get too badly overwhelmed by multiple opponents.  When done well, you don't notice it and you feel like a badass for taking on all those guys at once, who have idle animations that make it look like they're looking for an opening or waiting to coordinate attacks.  When it's not, you wonder if the game's broken because enemies for some reason aren't fighting you.  When it's not there at all, you end up with something a bit more like Dark Souls, where no shits are given whether you're having fun in a fight and you either git gud or git reamed and spend all your time sucking down health potions while you slowly chip down the multitude of guys surrounding you.  Maybe DS does have a system like this and it's just less restricting, with a higher number of active attackers, but I have yet to see any sized group of NPCs not just go ham.  The point is you can probably find some way to help make group combat encounters an engaging experience for the player by looking at good examples of games that have... I guess you could say hard aggro and soft aggro, where hard are actively engaging you and soft are just sort of waiting around for a hard slot to open.  Maybe something that randomly rolls which enemy or enemies in the group will take the next swings, then rechecks them again after an attack is launched.  That way you can't game some kind of initiative system too bad by saying "Ok, he just attacked, he won't for a few seconds now".  This would probably actually be important regardless of how you eventually decide to work the combat, unless you focus hard on limiting the situations in which you find yourself fighting more than one or two guys at a time.

 

Beyond that, just wanted to say excellent work, it's always impressive to see all the progress you make in these updates.

[slaen]

 

Jizztech 1.0?!

 

I wasn't sure what Patreon would really allow so I tried making the fx look sort of safe for work.  But this is the start of adding some fx into the sex scenes.  I'm sure there's going to be a bunch of iteration as I work more with fx and implementing them into the animations.  Also there are some plans for testing a "volume" stat per character.  No promises on if that will work out but it seems like it would be a fun addition.

 

Other than that I've been trying to work through the animations list that needs to get done.  
Human male and female solo animations for max lust states are ready for importing.  
Minotaur walk, idle, weapon ready idle, melee swing, and on top scene with both male and female humans are also ready for importing. 

 

On 2/16/2020 at 10:53 PM, Just Checking said:

Fable, much like other games of a similar combat style like Assassin's Creed, use a system that limits the number of enemies ACTIVELY fighting.  Ever notice how in something like Assassin's Creed or Fable you can be totally surrounded by a dozen enemies and rather than doing the smart thing and all beating you with sticks at once they just kind of circle you, yelling and brandishing their weapons while maybe one or two guys at a time will take probing swings or short combos that the player can get out of without getting too badly wrecked?  Actually I think most reasonably modern melee based games run some kind of system like that so players don't get too badly overwhelmed by multiple opponents.  When done well, you don't notice it and you feel like a badass for taking on all those guys at once, who have idle animations that make it look like they're looking for an opening or waiting to coordinate attacks.  When it's not, you wonder if the game's broken because enemies for some reason aren't fighting you.  When it's not there at all, you end up with something a bit more like Dark Souls, where no shits are given whether you're having fun in a fight and you either git gud or git reamed and spend all your time sucking down health potions while you slowly chip down the multitude of guys surrounding you.  Maybe DS does have a system like this and it's just less restricting, with a higher number of active attackers, but I have yet to see any sized group of NPCs not just go ham.  The point is you can probably find some way to help make group combat encounters an engaging experience for the player by looking at good examples of games that have... I guess you could say hard aggro and soft aggro, where hard are actively engaging you and soft are just sort of waiting around for a hard slot to open.  Maybe something that randomly rolls which enemy or enemies in the group will take the next swings, then rechecks them again after an attack is launched.  That way you can't game some kind of initiative system too bad by saying "Ok, he just attacked, he won't for a few seconds now".  This would probably actually be important regardless of how you eventually decide to work the combat, unless you focus hard on limiting the situations in which you find yourself fighting more than one or two guys at a time.

 

Beyond that, just wanted to say excellent work, it's always impressive to see all the progress you make in these updates.

Exactly along the lines of what I've been thinking about for combat. I was playing the Mad Max game from 2015 the other day and looking at how they handled the encounters.  Mostly because that games melee encounters are sort of a stripped down version of "modern" third person combat.  The whole press x to dodge, press z to counter, all that stuff.  Similar to the Batman games or Shadow of Mordor games.  In Mad Max they just had the enemies group around the player and sort of attack randomly.  The funny thing was that if the player doesn't actually attack anyone, at least in the early game, it breaks the illusion pretty badly because then most of the enemies are just there shuffling around the player and not doing anything. 

I'm not sure how to really handle it at this point.  Your point of adding an initiative system is good but as you mention once a player recognizes that pattern they can begin to game the system.  But adding in some randomness to everything could also get frustrating if a couple enemies just all decided to attack at the same time.  Seems like that could get really spiky with times of none of the enemies acting and then too many of them acting.  Maybe write like an "overview" AI system?  something that has control of all the currently acting AI in combat and then decides who, how, and when one of them will act. 

All stuff to think about in the future for now though.  Plus it might be something that gets confusing or overcomplicated for people that just want to play a porn game.  That and even though people aren't super happy with Skyrim's combat that doesn't stop anyone from playing it.  Between both versions of Skyrim on steam there's still roughly 25k concurrent players. 

 

Hah, thanks!  It's a hell of a project to be working on and a lot of fun getting to actually shape the game.  That and hearing that people actually like what I'm doing is a huge morale boost!