Coatl reveal + Devlog #139 + Illustration poll #13 is on! (Patreon)

It's her it's Coatl!!!The base idea with the Coatl species was that it would be a snake woman with wings. I bet no one expected her to have 3 heads though! :BHer mods were Western gunslinger, Top rides up throughout ranks and Narcissist.Western gunslinger is obvious enough! And a poncho was the obvious answer for a top that rides up throughout the ranks. Narcissist was the tough one for sure! I initially considered giving her a mirror of sorts, but it didn't work so well with the gunslinger concept to me, and she was already going to have guns as props, it just didn't feel right. As I kept looking up snake facts, it eventually hit me that some snakes can be born with an extra head, and that's when things clicked! With her being a snake narcissist, having multiple heads snuggling was just too perfect and I was probably never getting that chance again, so I went for it!And since she had multiple heads, 4 arms felt right too! And with 4 arms, 4 guns! And 4 wings, why not! It's a lot, but the arms looked natural enough and allowed for some fun movement, the bottom wings being smaller made it easier to digest, and so did the light clothing. Which speaking of, I'm also very happy with the cobra hood / cowboy hat fusion! It's actually just a very oddly shaped hat made specifically for her, but it's cute ^^In the spirit of keeping things simple where I could though, I figured only the middle head should have a hood, and I gave the other two cute mouth veils instead, and lil feather antennas. Finally, so the wings didn't look out of place, adding various feather rings on her arms and tail felt just right! Quetzacoatl is the feathered serpent after all, so it worked in that sense too ^^I'm also very very happy with her eyes, eyelashes, mouth, the whole face(s) really!Chitei nailed it once again! Though I suppose I shouldn't say "again" in this case considering she was actually my first commission from him, which is even more impressive! Everything is just so good, the shapes, the colors, the scales, the spinning gun, the non spinning guns... I'm glad :B

I hope you'll like her as well! ^^

Here are all the monstergirl ranks (BOOBS!!!):

Rank 1

Rank 2

Rank 3

Rank 4

Rank 5

You can follow/support Chitei here:

https://www.patreon.com/cw/u27507852 (18+)https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/1484994 (18+)https://x.com/rai32019 (18+)

TODO list!

- Secret feature: main gameplay loop

- Secret feature: polishing

- Improved Soul drop system

- Improved Shape fight drops

- Improved spell related system

- Improved eaten food check function

- Improved item description system

- Improved "?" menu button system

- Improved Almanach system (visually the same for you, easier to work with for me)

- New Almanach entries system

- New Almanach entries

- New sub quests

- Witch swap related improvements

- More SFX improvements and audio balancing

- Hold a button to keep moving in a direction

- Unique skills for all characters

- Better balancing

- Add some illustrations in game (including some of the ones that have been voted on!)

- Ability to rewatch and skip rank up animations

- More settings (including some accessibility settings)

- Funnee

- Ability to ignore fights if that enemy has been defeated enough times

- Another surprise (actually mostly done already)

- A little bit more story content

- Rework the Sablee ocean dungeon

- Small Biscotti tunnel modifications

- Various small exploration related improvements

- Texture prefetch/ flush improvements (optimization)

- Write new party events

- Add more party events

- Write some rank up events

- Add rank up events

- Draw the remaining demo chibis (Tiger, Hydra, Dragon, Axelle, Saen'Liz)

- Implement the new chibis

- Various smaller improvements

So many tasks taken care of!!! Some small, some big.

The first thing I worked on this month was the spell related improvements. Or more specifically, spell learning! This had been on my mind for a long time and I knew it was going to be a bit of a pain, so I tackled it first! There's quite a bit to unpack there, let's see...Basically, every character can now learn spells and remember them forever. When accessing the Spellcard menu, there is a new button where the old description box used to be. Clicking it shows every spell the currently selected character has mastered instead of the normal inventory, sorted per rank. Mastered spells can be equipped and unequipped at will, at any time!Spell items still exist though, but now, there're essentially a sort of consumable. By equipping a spell item, the item is used and the spell is equipped in an "unmastered" state. In that state, the spell has a small XP gauge below it. Using it in combat will fill that gauge and, once filled, the spell will be learned! Until the spell is mastered, it can't be unequipped however, so you'll have to stick with it until the character does learn it.By the way, learning an alt color spell is easier if the main spell is already known! Additionally, learning a spell of the same color as the character's main color (shown in the top right of the Spellcard) also makes it easier to learn.It's also now impossible to equip several of the same spell, even if they are different colors! It's more interesting that way ^^Without getting into it too much, this was indeed a huge pain to implement...! Inventory related code is very old and has a fair amount of clunkiness to it. In the end, I threw out a bunch of it and redid it more cleanly, which was much easier than working within the ass-y bounds I'd previously set. I'm very very happy with this ^^There were a few reasons for it too, and it was my way of fixing several issues in one go. First of all, it feels a bit weird for Witches to only be able to use a few spell, and only if they have the right items! It just makes more sense to have them actually learn them. Another issue that I'd missed while testing is that by having limited colors per area and no indication of what colors you'll find next, I was forcing the player to either bring along a bunch of spells or to walk back all the way to prepare accordingly. I know the colors and the whole game really, so it was of course no issue for me and I forgot to consider that. Finally, I've received complaints about the inventory being too limited, which is especially not surprising if bringing a bunch of extra spells along! not only will that not be a problem anymore, but this also means that finding a spell while exploring now means that you can equip it, consuming the spell item and freeing an inventory slot!So yeah, very happy with that ^^But that's not all! Since I was working on the inventory, I figured I might as well take care of the food issue. That is, the small food icons on the spell card are really ugly...! I removed them and, next to the mastered spell button I mentioned before is now also a food button. Clicking it shows every type of food the selected character has eaten, and you also get to see their descriptions thanks to that instead of just the little food icons!So yeah, very happy with that ^^But that's not all! Since I was working on the Spellcard, I figured I might as well improve it a bit. The Relic and Trinket slots are now a slightly different color, which makes it easier to parse. The Heartshell icon has been moved where the food icons were, a few things have been cleaned here and there, and the color affinity graph in the middle has been improved! It was really ugly before, it's much cooler now.So yeah, very happy with that ^^But that's not all! Since I was working in close relation to the items, I figured it was finally time I updated the item outlines! I've wanted to do this for a long time. Ingredient items still have the white outline, but Trinkets now have a lime outline, and Relics have an Orange outline! So you'll know what type of item you're getting as soon as you see it ^^

Next was new settings! In particular, difficulty settings. Instead of having a single centralized one, I separated it into 5:

Difficulty (Witch): Affects the damage output of opponent Witches in combat.

Difficulty (Shape NF): Affects the max HP of Shapes and some obstacles in Normal Fights.

Difficulty (Shape SF): Affects the max HP of Shapes in Shape Fights, as well as Shape wave spawn frequency.

Difficulty (Special): Affects the difficulty of special sequences in various ways.

Difficulty (Exploration): Affects the difficulty of various skill based exploration puzzles.

Each one can be set to whatever you'd prefer! Since BEW touches on a lot of different genres, it's good to be able to adjust the difficult of the various facets independently.Also! The "Try again (easier)" option that appears when losing in special sequences, like the Angel sequence, has been replaced by an actual slider.Additionally, a new Borderless window setting has been added! It was asked for some time ago and turned out to be a simple toggle in GM2, so why not! It allows the game to keep running without minimizing if tabbing out of it while in fullscreen ^^

I'm not going to go into too much detail with this next one for now, but the Soul drop system has been improved! I also changed how dropped items look in the result screen. The soul will now be shown if obtained, and every other dropped spins around it! This was actually an important change because with the way dropped items were shown in a vertical line before, the chibi sprite of the defeated Witches could have hidden some of them in the case of mini giantesses...!

Another small but cool change has to do with the Witch swap feature! When Witch swapping, a powerful energy wave now expands from it, covering the whole screen and dealing huge damage to all Shapes! In essence, Witch Swapping is now kind of like screen clearing bombs from classic Shoot'em ups, which makes it a more powerful option as a panic button of sorts ^^

I also improved the way textures are loaded / unloaded by using new GM functions. You probably won't see a lot of change, but it's a slight optimization and will make it easier to add content for me in the future ^^

While exploring, you can now holding the key / mouse button to keep moving in the same direction! A small but very important QoL change.

Also, you might have noticed I crossed out "Ability to ignore fights if that enemy has been defeated enough times". But what I actually did is that, if you've discovered all 6 color affinities of an enemy, they can now be insta SMASHED, even if you're not 10 levels above! You also only need to defeat an enemy 3 times instead of 5 for the almanach entry to be crowned (though you still also need to discover the 6 color affinities of course).I figured it was a nice incentive to figure out color affinities, which will also lead the player to experiment. You might think these two changes would make the game too easy to get through, but I'm actually pretty worried about how long the game will be in its final form... So we'll see, maybe I'll tweak this a bit in the future if it does feel too effortless. Now that I think about it again, maybe I could make it so enemies are only insta SMASHABLE if their almanach entry is crowned, rather than just the color affinities? Maybe lol, just thought of that now.

And, I did the Funnee! It's nothing crazy, but I guess it's kind of like the silly mode I wanted to do but gave up on a while back. I won't say anything else for now though ^^

And I guess I can end this by mentioning a few minor changes and bug fixes! This and some of what I went over above is why it's good to have these "various" tasks in the list :B

Very slightly increased Star Heartpower travel speed

Fixed a bug where projectiles from the Star Heartpower would disappear if shot along the screen's edges

Exploration items couldn't be spun anymore > fixed

During the fight intro where both sides of the UI move towards the center, the right side had artefacts near the bottom left > fixed

Phew, and that's everything so far!There are still some tough tasks ahead for sure, but that's some really good progress. I'm thinking of getting the remaining chibi sprites done next, it might be time! That's Saen'Liz, Axelle, Tiger, Hydra and Dragon. If I have time after that, maybe I could get started on the Sablee ocean dungeon too? Or maybe some more small tasks. We'll see ^^

And now, the poll stuff!

The next illustration poll has begun! The theme this time is [Sick nasty pose]!You can vote in the Discord server if you are a 2$+ patron! Here are the current theme and submissions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Drz4UD09YftgaihcwWq6McqiFTa2l77XJ9oBJ0hfDco

This time's concept art, Dragon!Paca did such a great job with her, my older concept feels a bit goofy looking at it again. Ah well! It did its job.

Thank you for reading! ^^