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You're totally fine, waiting on updates is understandable.

I'm mostly doing good, had the flu for like a week a little bit ago which definitely put a halt on things lol

Dev speed is a little slow right now because I'm trying to get things like commissions set up for my non-game things, (ideally so I can spend more time on the game than working a day job), but should hopefully pick speed back up soon. I think I'm like, a third done with the update? maybe closer to half?  Most of the rewrite stuff has been done, and I'm like halfway done with the pixel art I need. One enemy with more complicated attacks been fully finished, but none of the actual level scenes have been made yet. Counting the one that's fully completed, I have animation sets for 3 enemies done, with the goal amount for the next update being 7 (each zone is supposed to have 4 unique ones minimum, and the Squirrel is already done sprite-wise)

Also, since you're the one who asked originally, can confirm that controller support has been implemented, and works fine. I'm testing it with a gamecube controller lmao

I'll probably be doing a little mini update sometime soon for clarity reasons. I'm thinking that it might be wise to do smaller monthly devlogs.

I post spritework and smaller dev updates more frequently over on my FA. Please keep in mind that I am a solo hobby level dev with a job, so putting out a full update in a single month isn't easily done, especially since a lot of the stuff on the todo list is rewriting major code components to fit suggestions.

I can look into it, but it's not high priority right now.

This isn't too basic at all! A really good chunk of dev time for me is honestly just figuring out what each enemy will be, so things like this are greatly appreciated. Avian characters in particular are a little difficult to implement because they have a more specific place in the game's world than other species, but I like the idea and might potentially have a place I could use something similar to it.

A submit button is already implemented in the dev version as of now; a brief preview of which can be found here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/59455550/

t h a t s a l o t o f f e e d b a c k

I can say that at this point, a few of the issues you mentioned are either redone at this point, or are on the todo list. Attack sound has been changed, regular attack has been replaced with single hit attack, charged attack does more damage, enemies have hit indication, etc.

As for the things that I haven't addressed yet:

• Jump height / drop down - Hold to jump is something that I could potentially implement down the line, and I could definitely see it being an issue with flying enemies in some cases if you can't limit your movement. Currently jumping just adds a velocity impulse to the character, so I'd need to look into how to rewrite the jump script. Fall-through is something that I want to fix, I just need to tweak the code a little so that it checks if the down key is continuously being pressed instead of just a single impulse. All it does is just move the player down slightly, which causes them to pass through the one-way collision on platforms, so I need to make sure this wouldn't cause any issues if it were continuously happening on the ground.
• Menu things - As for the blurry text, I briefly looked into text stuff while writing this, and found that you can turn off antialiasing for fonts. Text looks much crisper as of now, if a tiny bit weird in some places due to font sizing at 2x pixel scale. Enemy messages also look significantly better now too. I don't plan on adding sound settings like the ones mentioned, just because I generally try to keep stuff fairly lighthearted, and that's a little outside of my comfort zone.
• Enemy stun / break invincibility - Enemies actually do have a stun state that they switch to when the player breaks from a grab, it's just not very obvious at the moment. I'll add clearer stuns to the todo list, probably as like a half-opacity sprite type thing. As for the player breaking the grab near other enemies, that's actually something super important that I hadn't considered, because I was just testing on single enemies while making the break system. I will be adding a player invincibility period on break to the todo list.
• Map - I've mentioned it elsewhere, but a map is planned as an unlockable at a later point, otherwise having more diegetic maps and other directional hints up until that point. Fast travel from certain save points will also be implemented probably in the update after this next one, which should limit how much you can get lost as well. The elevators in the large vertical room can have their start position switched, but I originally was worried that people might just drop down the pit without turning on the power, so they were set to start at the top. I've since realized that I can just put a fall-through platform over the default position without any collision issues, so this can be changed.
• Camera zoom - The camera has been zoomed out somewhat at this point. I originally thought that I couldn't adjust the camera zoom without breaking the pixel scale, but changing the game's window scale instead of the camera gets around this, and doesn't break when going fullscreen. (current release scale is at 960p, development version is at 1200p. Not a massive change in zoom, but enough that ranged and fast enemies should be much less bs. ) Zoom can't be manually adjusted in-game without breaking pixel scale or potentially seeing past the edges of the map though.

All of the bugs mentioned have been looked at at this point (the plant thing is actually deliberate; the chain jump is exactly why they don't do instant damage, specifically so that it can be used to climb walls).

The suggestions you've given are pretty good as well, though I don't plan on adding a struggle mechanic to breaks to avoid pacing issues. I especially like the prop mimic enemy, and attacks like the ranged grab. Things like that could definitely have a struggle mechanic still in there for the hook grab before the actual main grab.

I would be open to modding, but I have literally no idea how that would work in Godot, and my code skills are definitely not at a level that I would be able to do it without a lot of research, trial and error. (That and I don't want people to see the actual spaghetti hell that is the entity setup lol)

It's intended to be an instant break, mostly to prevent combat pace issues.

An i-frame dash is planned, but it's going to be an unlocked upgrade for defeating a boss later down the line.

Disabling all digestion enables this

The attack sound has been changed to something more generic as of right now, probably going to do some more sfx work on it later on.

It's intended to stay as an instant break, mostly to keep the game's pace consistent. Also because this is pretty directly supposed to be a Packedrat successor.

That would be the issue; the rendering engine that the game uses isn't supported by that particular Intel Integrated graphics. I can't guarantee that this will work, but if you create a shortcut for the exe, open it's properties, and add that '--rendering-driver opengl3' line after the target, it should open it using OpenGL instead of Vulkan, which is supported. Again, can't guarantee, but worth a shot.

Seems like it's graphics card issue. Do you know which one you have / how old it is / when the last time you updated your GPU driver was?

Yes, but I'd still have to animate them to match each player animation and grab, which isn't any better.

Going to sticky this topic since I have a feeling this'll be a recurring issue at this rate. For anyone who's looking at this trying to determine whether it's safe to download, the only things in the zip file are the game's EXE, and the .pck file, both of which were created by Godot Engine on export, zipped, and uploaded directly. There isn't anything in there that should be remotely dangerous.

I don't think that you can see download statistics outside of the developer dashboard, but the game recently passed 5k downloads in about 2 and a half days (yay), but I wouldn't be surprised if this set off an alarm bell somewhere since the EXE isn't a signed one. Apparently you can send in files to Microsoft to have them scan and whitelist them (signing it), but it costs like a hundred bucks and I don't really have the money for that, nor do I want to spend the time or embarrassment sending Microsoft a furry vore game.

Also going to look into exporting an HTML version so that it can alternatively be played in browser without needing to download it. I'd hate for people to miss out just because windows gets spooked by a zip.

Mentioned this in another topic already, but the current theory is that the large number of downloads over a short amount of time combined with the small filesize makes windows think that the zip is a virus. Both me and another have tried scanning the file with 2 separate antivirus, both of which read it as safe. The only things in the zip are the game's EXE and .pck file, both of which were created by the game engine, and uploaded directly.

Not sure why it's doing this, but can confirm that my laptop thinks the same thing when downloading it. Nothing's been changed in the files though, so can confirm it should be fine.

EDIT: Evidently the way downloads and .Exes work with windows is that once they hit a certain download threshold, they get logged, and since it's a smaller download size with a large burst of downloads, it probably is getting falsely flagged as a virus. 

Scanning both the original zip and the downloaded zip on my laptop with Bitdefender says both are clean.

That I can probably work with! I'm all for using sections of existing animations for different things if it adds a bit, much less time consuming than making new ones. 

Thanks for the kind words, I was not expecting this hobby project to get REMOTELY this level of reception, let alone this positive, and I'm definitely a little overwhelmed by it lol

It's not a super high priority right now, but I'll look into it. I don't have a linux system, so I can't guarantee it'll work correctly on export and won't have any way to really test it.

Sorry I didn't see the first post, it got flagged as spam for some reason.

A map is planned, but it's going to be an unlockable by doing an item hunt quest. I'm kind of going for that vibe that DS1 has with figuring out the layout as you go, and having those 'Oh, this area connects to this area' moments. 

I'm open to making alternate grab animations based on health, it's mostly just a matter of putting work into animations. Extra animations means more work time and higher risk of burnout, with most of the enemies here already having close to 100 frames in total. Making finisher animations longer is definitely immediately doable though, and a rework is planned for the finisher script to allow them be be a lot more varied, and have individual stages. Being able to manually accelerate them is something that I'm looking at, I just need to make sure that it doesn't outright replace the respawn button (I don't want people to have to button mash if they just want to go back to the save point).

I just mentioned this while replying to another post, but the gallery is going to be unlocked through discovery, with an option in settings to unlock everything if you just want to use the gallery without playing through the main game. This is mostly to incentivize exploration and prevent any spoilers that descriptions might give away (which are currently being treated as teasers for future areas lol). I'm probably going to have a thing that shows the number of enemies discovered vs the full count, so there's still going to be a good idea of how much there is.

Despite the other comment, unlocking enemies for the gallery as you encounter them actually is planned; it's just all unlocked right now because it has enemies that aren't in the main game yet. I'm mostly doing this to encourage exploration and mitigate spoilers that you might get from enemy descriptions, but I'll probably include a button in the settings to just auto-unlock everything if that's what you're here for. For me personally this is a game first and a gallery second though.

I would do the sprite variation thing, but it would be a kind of a pain to keep track of what animation variations link to which other ones, so I'm probably just going to stick with one look per enemy. Stronger variations of enemies are planned though.

There is lore reasons as to why Graphite starts in the prison, and a small opening cutscene is planned to be made at somepoint (probably just like an Undertale style slideshow with text). Short answer is that after the curse got apocalyptically severe, the king gave orders to just imprison anyone they suspected might be cursed, which included Graphite. They ended up surviving the longest partially because they were so deep into the facility.

Thank you!

player combat and enemy behavior are the two biggest things for me to address right now, but I am working on changing them so that they make a little more sense. This area in particular is also intended to have really easy enemies, since it's kind of a tutorial area meant to teach about other mechanics like switches, locks and backtracking over combat. Enemies going forward should be more difficult, ideally similar to the Warden in engagement with less damage and health.

Others have mentioned the struggle damage thing, which will probably be getting a rework. The intent was to make it so that it keeps the player on their toes about breaking out of grabs, but it doesn't work very well when it's in intervals. The current plan is to change it do a steady damage rate so that it can chip away at your health if you're not careful about quick breaks. Aside from that, it's the one-tap break just because I like the 3-strikes-you're-out method that Packedrat did, but wanted to give enemies varied damage.

Enemies will start dropping energy and money on defeat once those are implemented, which should hopefully create more of a reason to fight or flee, especially if a harder enemy drops more.

Both of those bugs are something that I'm aware of, so you're emulation otherwise seems like it should be working fine.

To reply to this and also the one above:

Yes, but only in a couple of boss scenarios.  One is a macro fight that requires damaging them from the inside (extremely similar to the one in packedrat actually), and another is a magic user that may potentially shrink the player, but I'm still working out their fight details.

Enemies are coded in a way that lets them target other specific enemies, so it's definitely possible.

I am hoping to include more vore stuff that's relevant to main gameplay, it's just a little difficult to do this in a way that respects the content filters without potentially breaking things by removing mechanics. That's also why I'm hesitant to have filters remove scenery in the case that it becomes a necessary part of the level design. Interactivity in the finishers just isn't really that big of a focus for me, but it's not off the table entirely. I will say that one of the big things I'm going to be working on is reworking the finisher script so that each stage is it's own state instead of it all being one script. This should allow finishers to get a lot more complex, allow for randomized animations, and make it so that they don't all follow the same framework. From there it's just a matter of how much time I want to spend on a single enemy's animations. 

As for enemies and combat, it's in a bit of an awkward spot right now because this is intended to be a very easy area, and player combat is top priority for things I need to work on. After this location enemies are supposed to have more unique AI, kind of along the lines of the warden in actual avoidance difficulty. The Squirrel for instance will be able to throw projectiles that stun you for a period of time, making it easier for other enemies to get you, or for them to rush you. The current plan for player attacks is either to remove the flurry combo entirely, or to make it so that only the first hit does knockback (allowing you to parry fast enemies if you time it well).

Also can confirm that breakables are in the works, and enemies will have money / energy drops.

Good to know, the level switch system is a bit hacky, especially around the main menu, I'll note that down.

Thank you! I might open up donations at some point, but I'm intending this to be free to play all the to the end.

I like the idea of having more states, though I'd need to rework some of the current base finisher code, or make another one with extra steps. Currently it has one for the initial grab, swallow, struggle loop / endo, digest, post digest, disposal, and post disposal; and checks for filters on each one, all in one script. It might be an good idea to make these all separate scripts so that I can just have a custom order of events map for each enemy instead of using the one framework, which would open up finishers to do this.

I'm not planning on adding a struggle system, partially because this is really intended to be a spiritual successor to Packedrat, and because it would break up the flow a bit too much in my eyes. I'm picturing getting grabbed by an enemy, struggling for like 10 seconds, and then immediately getting grabbed by another enemy that was already nearby, which wouldn't be super great. Plus it would make bonfire runs a LOT more obnoxious down the line.

Alt scenes are sort of planned, but they're mainly intended for bosses going forward, with maybe like a few exceptions for regular field enemies. 

1 life mode is a good idea, though I only have a single save slot right now so I might need to add in others just so that you don't lose any and all progress across the board, or maybe just a second button for a no death run.

Did you turn off oral or lower the digestion settings at all? That's the only reason why it wouldn't play consistently as of right now.

Sure! As long as it's on a site that it would naturally be found on, that's fine by me.

I wasn't able to replicate this, are you sure you aren't just respawning after being defeated? The spawn for the sandbox scene is pretty high in the air.

Being able to filter enemy gender for grabs and finishers is probably a good idea, though the 'pass along' mechanic is a little out of my scope right now. 

Suggestions like this are appreciated while I'm early into development, because there's only a small handful of enemies that I'd have to set new variables for.

Thank you!

Will do, good movement is a high priority thing for me personally.

Probably not all of them, but like most of them. I'll try to include one if it makes sense for the regular animation, as opposed to enemies like the Curseflower that don't really have anything they could do after.

I had someone on my FA DM me about adding a one-shot mode so that you don't have to wait for your health to reach 0, but I like the submit button a bit better. I could also add a little extra dialogue for that.

A map is planned, but it's intended to be an unlockable that you get from doing a search and find quest around mid-late game. The fire collectibles are actually health pickups, so I guess you just didn't get hit lol. They're going to be a random chance drop from breakables at some point, I just wanted to throw some in in case the save run was a little lengthy in a couple places.

The painting idea is really neat, I'll definitely keep that one in mind.

You're good lol

Music volume can be lowered in settings.