Kendra, HardLife, and other news...

I was checking Kendra's 4th wall XP this morning (it had been almost 6 months since I last updated it) and discovered she's a LOT further along than I thought. Instead of chapter 08 still being at level 5, she has enough experience to level for the next several chapters, up to level 9 at chapter 11 (counting for XP gained for chapters 8-10). This is very exciting news for her, and it means I need to get those chapters written soon. (I think going forward, I'll hold off writing her chapters until she is ready to level, so she can keep the 1 level per chapter pace)

HardLife - I'm finishing up some descriptions and branches for the car encounter and will have an updated version tonight. I have exciting news about a couple of small changes/additions to combat encounters...

First, the Feed/Drain beta ability has been extended to include height and muscle-tone in addition to the stat drain. It ACTUALLY drains now, so your target's stats do go down, and you can now watch them shrink and yourself grow during the fight. It is also now REPEATABLE. You can keep draining them until they have nothing left to give (dead, or stats of ~1 and height of only 1")

And, to prevent a pesky thing like death from interfering with your feeding, you can now HEAL them (also a beta ability). You heal them by expending your FOCUS to channel the Primal Essence through yourself and into them. The result is a significant drain on your focus, but a recovery of your overall Qi as the energies pass through you, and a significant amount of Qi  recovered by your target...

IF ALL GOES AS INTENDED...

Of course, you can't channel that much RAW PRIMAL POWER without an occasional side-effect/consequence...

There is a 34% chance of unleashing a SERGE of PRIMAL ENERGY through you into them...

The results are quite spectacular, and sometimes messy.

I mentioned a Sacred Spring on the map in a few discussions here and on deviantArt...

I disclosed a little spoiler in that the spring will be protected by a monastery, that uses the waters (greatly diluted, of course) as an elixir of eternal life... and the conspiracy surrounding that organization. 

In particular, their HIGHEST LAW forbids any woman from entering the spring or partaking of the healing waters...

Yeah... there's a reason they're so afraid of it. ;p

So, when a serge occurs, one of two things happens... either your target can't handle the raw power, in which case they pretty much explode from severe hypertonia, or, their body CAN handle the power and quickly evolves/mutates to obscene levels of strength and size.

In either case, since the serge passed through you, the residual energies cause you to grow as well.

If your opponent is killed during the fight, this serge is powerful enough to bring them back... it will also bring them to a more vigorous state, bringing their age down (or up) by several years, toward the 19-24 range of being fully grown, but as yet unafflicted by the ravages of time. It will also cause their height to increase slightly, based on the number of years changed, as well as the level of the serge (determined by your caliber).

Anyone under 19 will gain height equal to the triangular stack of the years (1+2+3...); anyone over 24 will have their age reduced by 10% and gain a height equal to the triangular base/unstack of the years (+4 for 10 years, +3 for 6 years, etc)

As you become obscenely powerful and use this, you will make others like yourself... (but remember, you get 1/2 your caliber in the serge boost, and they get your full caliber... if you aren't careful, they can serge past you and become a real threat)

Car--Double-Parked encounter --- the lifting and throwing mechanics are complete, I just need a few more descriptions for throwing distances (they are already gauged out from as short as dropping it back on yourself, to out past the Oort Cloud... well, the rental WAS from Enterprise ;p )

We aren't yet tracking the statistics of where the vehicles "land", and we don't yet have all of the interesting sub-targets available in our system to play a game of intra-stellar darts (maybe that will be added in v0.4 with the competition system?), but based on sheer distance, you can still throw to the moon or sun (you just have to chuck it past the respective L1 point and gravity will take over from there -- by the way, sorry Clint, you were WAY OFF in Space Cowboys... I know the girl was talking to CHILDREN visiting the NASA center, but that doesn't change the facts.... 1/2 way doesn't even begin to cut it... the L1 point is 5/6th the way to the moon... sorry, Tommy Lee Jones never made it to the moon and the missiles fell back to Earth and irradiated the atmosphere... wow... bummer. Oh well, it was still fun to watch. The L1 point for the Sun is, proportionately, much much closer, as you only have to throw it about 1% before the Sun's gravity takes over- which is still, by the way, almost 4x the distance to the moon.).

After the Sun, there's a whole lot of nothing until you reach Oort... so basically, from 1-49 AU there are no new targets added yet (this is the range where most of the planets and moons fall, so this is what we will expand on/focus on adding to this encounter in the future). At 50 AU you hit the inner-edge of Oort, and at 200 AU you cross the outer edge and finally go extra-solar. (that's roughly 3.2 lightyears out, which is right next-door to Proxima and Alpha Centauri. Of course, it will take it a while to get there... (though not as long as a NASA probe ;p -- especially since throwing that far means you don't need a gravity assist for speed)

Hmm... you could go into business... call yourself CASA, make your clients feel at home as you hurl them into space. ;p You wouldn't even need billions of dollars... unless you wanted to buy insurance, of course.

Lisa is strong enough, at the beginning, to pick up and throw any vehicle in the lot. Of course, lacking the implementation of her super-strength power, she can only throw the lighter ones about 100 feet, and the heavier ones about 100 inches. (which often results in them still landing on her and doing a fair bit of damage)

Throw distance is calculated as 1/2 your height times the number of reps you could press the vehicle overhead at present. (which is randomized to a scale of roughly 10%-300% potential)

I'm working on the damage system for the vehicles now, and should have this encounter rounded out soon.

The UI/meter for displaying power/skill/training levels has been implemented, and even though there are no powers yet, I am using this to indicate muscle-tone in a manner which I think is much more intuitive than the raw numbers alone.

This has been extended to your betas/slaves, you can now check their muscle-tone as well, and they use the info-card layout, similar to the store.

To better accommodate the much higher chance of absurd levels of height (which we have had descriptions for some time on, you Kaiju, you), the in-game metrics now automatically scale unit size for lengths and weights.

Body proportions with height gains now change, you become thinner/more elongated rather than keeping your original scale. (when height doubles, other dimensions increase by 1.75x instead of 2.00x) This results in much more realistic weights and dimensions for people under 4 feet and over 7 feet in height. There will likely be things(powers/items/etc.) added later than allow you to scale proportionately if you desire to do so.

Death is now harder to achieve... well, that is to say, you can no longer will a fight to continue after you are knocked out, and you now have ample warning before starving to death. You die when your base-weight drops below your base-height. (wt<1.0 pounds per inch) The warnings start when your weight drops below 2.0 pounds per inch, and consist of 11 levels of weight status starting with "thin" and getting more severe from there. If you see the status "weak from starvation", then stop and fucking eat something, cause death is not far off! xD

The gym has been zoned off, the incomplete areas are currently "closed for repairs", but Katie won't tell us exactly what happened. Considering the fact that the equipment has no upper strength limit, it must have been something pretty serious. ;p

In other news, I'm getting a little burned out/antsy from focusing only on the one project, and would like to work on a couple of side projects (like  Kendra Chapter 08 and Last Legend), but there is still so much I want to add to HardLife before putting it down for a week or two. So, I probably won't take a break at least until v0.3 is out (maybe even v0.4).

What do you guys think, should we try to keep up the breakneck pace of developing this game from v0.3-0.5, or do you want to see some other content coming out too?

Also, how do you guys want to be credited in game? Is there a particular handle/screen-name you want me to use? (send me a note here on patreon and let me know)