Imp redesign reveal + Devlog #105 + Monstergirl poll #32 is on! (Patreon)

Whoa! Imp!
Do you notice anything different? ^^
Imp is now the first BEW character to be drawn by someone other than me. And that someone is none other than Bulumblebee!
Imp was redesigned when I drew her chibi sprites and was very much in need of a new full sprite. I don't think things could have turned out better than they did! Bee was an absolute joy to work with ^^
I hope you like her!

Here are all the monstergirl ranks:

Rank 1

Rank 2

Rank 3

Rank 4

Rank 5

If you don't already follow Bee on Twitter, I recommend you do (18+)! ^^
https://twitter.com/bulumblebee (18+)

He also has a Patreon, so by all means, please check it out!
https://www.patreon.com/bulumblebee (+18)

Back to the Imp, you might also have noticed the new background! This is what I'll be using for character reveals from now on. I'll also eventually go back and update the old ones, since I also need to add that black border around each characters which I mentioned a few devlogs ago. Two birds with one stone, more or less :B
Imp turned out to be a great choice as a commissioned character since her design was already there and the old sprite could be used as reference.
I'm planning to hire a few more artists, and once things start fall into place I'll start getting to work on the new monstergirls. So expect a few more redesigns at first, and then the plan would be to reveal new monstergirls at a higher rate than the polls, and to alternate between pre demo and post demo poll monstergirls. I should also mention that I won't necessarily reveal them in order! And in case you're wondering, some of them will still be drawn by me, but hiring professional artists will not only guarantee a better qualiy than I can provide, but it also saves me a lot of time and allows me to focus on coding, among other things!

Speaking of, I've been busy. I just posted a new build, and a lot of stuff has been improved. Here is a big list of changes:

Rose now has wind blade by default

Smashing the save circle has been disabled

The save circle's music rhythm has been improved

Swap swipe can now be used as a deathblow

absorbed/nullified spells can't kill the enemy anymore

Destroying a mushroom in a fight resets the combo timer

Dying in the Biscotti tunnels cannot send you outside of Biscotti anymore while Biscotti is ocked down.

New skeleton type without feet for slime girland mud elemental

Skeletons categories are now always listed in order

fast movement can now be deactivated normaly

Yoyo's infinite charged attack has been removed

Yoyo freeze has been fixed (occurs when unleaashing a charged attack on a Centipede Shape)

Shell and Insect Heartpowers now work normally when a fight is started with them

Added autoclick in exploration mode

C won't change cursor mode anymore if the note is open

Replaced the smash cursor's x target by a yellow dithered shadow, much easier to see

Smash's area of effect has been increased slightly and improved

Added smash priority system (hit detection could fail in some rare cases, notably in mush smash)

Some kururin puzzles' initial laser position have been improved

Kururin puzzle double loop can't be bypassed anymore

Auria shmup minigame circle appearance has been updated

Enter key opens the inventory

Escape key allows to leave menus

Empty note opens in a room without note if the player moves away from a room with a note fast enough > Fixed!

Improved combo spells > instead of being refreshed at 110 combos, they will be refreshed from wherever the combo was used. If a combo spell is used at 56, 66 combo will spawn the 10 combo spell, 76 will spawn the 20 combo spell, and so on

Some spells (especially damage/heal over time debuffs/buffs) now deal instant damage (no delay before the health gauge updates)

Level can't be decreased if above what the character's rank normally allows

If you remove the last chosen girl from your party then go into a boss fight, the game crashes > Fixed!

fixed Phinia's mouth and a bug that prevented the correct face to be displayed in the inventory menu unless leaving it and reopening it

Added Fei symbols to mushrooms

Added Fei symbol to spell description (inventory, shop, storage, alchemy. Almanach later)

Oyon color is now shown in the bottom left of the exploration UI

Zap spell added to an obvious forest chest

T base level increased to 7

Added a warning in the prebattle screen that shows which spells will be unusable depending on available colors

Prefight back arrow button moved to the top left

Added a Shape card at the Yellow Seal to spawn Shape fights

M now insta wins shape fights in debug mode

Added an info sign to explain Menu '?' button

Added an info sign to explain combo drops

Added an info sign to explain taking notes

Added an info sign to explain Shape fight gauges

Added an info sign to explain character swap

Added an info sign to explain area fei

Added an info sign to explain My turn

Added an info sign to explain Combometer

Added an info sign to explain overworld autoclick

Added an info sign to explain Shape combo damage

Improved menu explanations

Angel player KO heart hit animation isn't offset correctly > fixed

Spin attack has been added to the Yoyo Heartpower (move a bit in the direction pointed by the cursor + 1 frame yoyo close range attack like sonic without a shield in sonic 3).

Holding left click allows to release right click and keep the Yoyo attack going that way, in which case spin attack is now triggered with left click, and vice versa. There is a short cooldown on spin attacks. Yoyo is probably the most technical Heartpower now.

Insect Heartpower > the fly and spider now have HP and will disappear if they hit too many Shapes.

Switching a character doesn't set HP to 0 anymore if HP is negative

Improved the Constellation puzzle to better hint at the solution

Fixed the Tril constellation

Night Dome : added a Star radar, text for the Star box, and fixed Star box waves animation when loading a game.

Added a short safe delay if the lasers are out of bounds in the kururin puzzle

Added symbols to the forest's spin pyramids

Added dialogue to the forest's spin pyramids

Liv now comments on skeleton category

Notes don't show up empty anymore if moving from a room with a note to a room without one too fast

Middle click on an empty character slot in character selection crash > fixed

Level decreases if revived at a level above the rank limit and finishing a fight > fixed

Zombie Sad graphics are fixed

Tea set description improved

Item order in almanach now makes sense

Recipe order in almanach now makes sense

Long names cover XP gauge on spellcard (e.g. Citronelle) > Fixed

Items can be stored past the normal limit > Fixed

Fixed closed door graphics in Night dome

Biscotti tunnels monster nerf > Cast speed slightly reduced for all monsters

Auria hidden bricks are easier to notice

Night dome big gears are fixed

mushroom blocks now take 2 clicks to destroy, give 1 fei of the corresponding color, and do a little dance

The Disrupt recipe has been replaced by the Mushili recipe. It was actually always meant to be that way, but I messed up the item number...

So yeah, bunch of stuff is in the new build!
You should still be able to transfer your save, but the Mushili recipe might not be available if you've already picked up the Disrupt recipe.

Now, for some weird good/bad news. I was a bit surprised to see how inconsistent reports regarding difficulty were. Of course, skill is a factor, but it was still odd to see that a challenge that some could finish on their first try would prove completely impossible for others, sometimes even despite balance changes. As it turns out, something I didn't realize when switching development to my new PC from my old laptop is that the game was actually running at 45 FPS for me. It used to run at 60 on my old laptop, but as it got older and the game became more demanding, it eventually became unable to keep a steady 60 FPS, which in turn tricked me into thinking that the 45 FPS game I was looking at was running at 60 FPS. And sadly, I never realized that until now...
And so, a lot of the attack patterns and animation such as the Angel sequence, mush smash, enemy casting and summoning and more which I implemented on my new PC ended up being tuned to match a 45 FPS game.
I won't get into the whys of the 45 FPS bug, it's something GameMaker related that can happen especially on Windows 10 and maybe 11. As it turns out, I'm fairly certain it's something many (but not all!) of the BEW players were affected by.
The good news is that an extension by skyfloogle can easily fix this problem. I've tested it, and worked perfectly!
The bad news is that most people got to experience the game at 45 FPS instead of 60, and the ones who did by luck get the game to run at 60 FPS got a much more difficult experience than what was planned.
It does explain the inconsistent difficulty reports, but my first priority will now be to rework every single timing related value, which is going to be a pain in the ass... I wish I would somehow have noticed this before, but well, here we are. At least I know what to do now!
Thank you very much to Nate and Cooki for reporting this issue ^^

I also did a bunch of other things this month, like reworking the patreon and uploading the new girls' ranks, updating the discord server a bit, this kind of stuff.
So! The plan is now to fix that 45 FPS bug and its consequences. I'll still have a few other bugs to fix and things to implement after that, the memory leak to figure out, and I'll also need to rebalance everything at some point. There is more of course, but this is what's on my mind at the moment!

Finally in case you missed it, Valkyrie and her modifiers are now set in stone! And now, here is the usual poll stuff:

The next monstergirl poll has begun! You can now vote for the monstergirl you want to be included in BE Witches in the Discord if you are a 2$+ patron!

The poll will be active until the 12th of this month. After this, you will be able to change your submitted modifier until the 15th. Finally, the two rounds of the modifier poll will take one week each afterwards.

Monstergirl poll rules

Poll submissions

Also, now is a good time to submit a monstergirl and/or modifiers if you haven't already as a patron! If you can't think of anything to submit, here is a list of ideas you can choose from. You'll need to join the server to submit anything!

That's all for now!!!
See you! :B