December Update

It has been a while since the last update, and there's been a lot of things happening though not as much as I'd hoped on the game.

I've had a few bad weeks with computer failures, a sickness that knocked me out for over a week and other bits and pieces, development has been sporadic. On top of that, the work I've been doing to earn a living has had more higher paid work available than usual, so I've been knuckling down to get as much out of it before it inevitably dies off later this month.

Anyway, here's some words from Moonbat on what he's been working on:

We are currently on the early development of slimes, making concepts of their appearance, behaviour and placement. Slimes aren't very smart, so their AI will be more simple, also helping with the game’s performance. 

At this point we have planned 4 types of them: 

• Round/classic/ceiling slime: a slime that resembles a round blob, they will inhabit most areas and will have different aspects and features depending on their environment. These will be found in ceiling on dungeons, but can also be found wandering open spaces. When they are on ceiling they will detect anything that is too loud/fast and fall in front, if not on top of the loud creature, often starting an animation. When they are on the ground, they will have an animation to grab the player/creature when adjacent. These slimes are slow, generally attracted to sound and are often camouflaged. They may or may not become puddles to be even more sneaky! 
• Cube slime: a lot like their rounder cousins they will grab anything adjacent to them, but there is a catch, they will move and grab the same way, by flipping. These slimes move around flipping on their sides, as if moving a box by pushing an edge and it landing on another face, so, they grab by falling on you. By such, they have a more noticeable movement and because they are often bigger, they may pose a different type of obstacle. 
• Wall slime: A wall made if slime, it is as sentient as a slime can be, these don't really move around, but can still grab you with tendrils or you touching it. These will have more telegraphed attacks, making it easier to deal with them and giving the player the chance to dodge their attempts at getting more personal. 
• Spike/shooter slime: these special slimes that can perceive player from further away, they throw projectiles that might have different effects on creatures depending on the variation of shooter slime. These will still grab, but they generally prefer dealing with creatures from a distance. 

 Some variations of slime: crystal, rock, grass, mud, desire, water, oil. 

 Possible effects: pheromones/aphrodisiac, slow, soapy/oiled, stunned/paralyzed, hypno/charm, acid All slimes will have animations with the player and other entities. 

Though the animations will be linked more to their type rather than their variation. At this time, I'm figuring out their perceptions and some of their behaviors. As for their appearance, here are some images of how are they looking!

In the meantime, I've been working on new character models supplied by Zealot. We've got Male and female variants for both wolves and canids. Right now, the wolves use the same models as other enemies, so you can never tell who is a wolf. There will be a clear distinction between them once these guys are in.

I've been working to get the enemies all replaced with them, but unfortunately the sheer number of interaction animations means it's essentially starting from scratch with animation. So, the current intent is to replace the NPCs for the next release. This means that we can test and set up the generation systems to get the models working properly without risking the main gameplay. I've also added in a skinning system that can be used to set up characters so if they are named, they will always get the same species, skin, hair colour and eye colour. This also means in the near future that we can set up Subscriber skins for top tier members or donors that can be activated by adding their username in the character creator...

The NPCs are nearly done with only a little bit left to set up, and I'm hoping to get a new NPC based quest running in Pineridge if I can get it animated in time.