Bat girl reveal + Devlog #108 + Monstergirl poll #35 is on! (Patreon)

At long last, a new character! Bat girl! ^^
Drawn by me this time. I'm very, very happy with how she turned out! Her modifiers were "Covering chest with wings (burlesque fan style)", "Slosh" (= bouncing boobs), and "Strained straps / strap gap"
This particular monstergirl was a lot of work. Figuring out the the design was pretty tough, in particular because Covering her chest with her wings didn't work at all with the bouncing boobs mod, especially at higher ranks. It also hid most of her design, which I thought was a shame. In the end, I decided to have two version, one with the wing in front and another with the wing behind. Note that only the first 3 ranks have this wing in front form! The rest only has the wing behind her position.
As you can imagine, the wing patterns were a massive pain, but I liked them too much not to do them. In the end, I think she's one of the best monstergirls so far!
I ended up using burlesque as an overall theme, rather than just a pose, and I feel like her bat features blend perfectly with it. I also made her pretty monster-y!
So yeah! I hope you like her ^^

Here are all the monstergirl ranks:

Rank 1

Rank 2

Rank 3

Rank 4

Rank 5

I started the month by working on the code. My main goals this time were optimizing the save system and making it so saves can be transferred from one computer to another, and improving the audio system in various ways.
I was as surprised as I was happy when the save system only took a day to take care of! The audio system was quite a bit of work however. it took a bit over 10 days, but I now have a lot of control over BGMs, can play several BGMs at once easily, BGM functions have been optimized (a lot of what I used until now was pretty ugly, especially in cutscenes), special audio effects have been added and applied in certain situations, some duplicate tracks have been removed (e.g. Pirate battle theme was in the game twice, once with the intro and once without. I can now easily start a track past the intro instead). Ambient tracks have been added in some parts of the game (Waves in Sablee! There'll be more ambient tracks in the future). Other minors improvements have been made here and there.

Additionally, I made it so pressing escape in exploration mode now gives you the option to go back to the title screen instead of quitting the game. Pressing escape in the title screen or in the file select screen closes the game!
It turns out the system I had in place to open the quit game menu while in exploration before was complete shite, as it made it extremely easy to break the game. It basically does what pressing middle click in debug mode does, which is forcefully giving you back control over your actions, so you can move when you shouldn't be able to for example. So you can leave during a conversation, or during a special animation like the ruin doors opening in the forest. Or, you can leave while leaving! Move in a direction, press escape, leave the quit game menu, and move in a direction again while the characters weren't done traveling and you'll see some weird double rooms at best, or crash the game at worst. This is now!

I also fixed / improved all sorts of minor things, here is a complete list of changes:

Improved the save system. Saves are now more optimized and can be transferred from one PC to another!

Fixed a bug that would cause a crash if the party only had 1 active character when the third story character joins the party

Slightly adjusted BGM audio levels

Fully revamped the BGM system.

Room loading has been improved and is now more efficient!

Some minor optimization here and there

Slightly improved some menu tips

Improved Shop and Storage menus Drag & Drop hitbox

Fixed area effects not updating instantly depending on the room transition. Area effects are special effects consistent across several rooms, such as the water surface in the ocean, the mist in the forest, this kind of thing.

Improved some transitions to better hide loading times

Improved the SFX system! This one was as easy as I expected, but also extremely boring. Glad it's taken care of though, it's a lot cleaner and future proof now

Pressing escape in exploration mode now gives you the option to go back to the title screen instead of quitting the game.

Pressing escape in the title screen or in the file select screen closes the game. A small graphic has been added to indicate this.

Fixed the return to Title screen menu.

Shape names are now displayed correctly in the Almanach.

All of that took a bit over half the month, and the rest was spent drawing Bat girl. As happy as I am with her, drawing her really drove home the fact that drawing characters by myself is a terrible idea overall. It just takes too long!
Getting Bee and Helm to help was great, and hiring more artists to help me is without a doubt the way to go. I also have to commission more music and SFX. I need to spend some real time doing this, so I've decided that March will be, for the most part, dedicated to commissioning audio and graphic assets. Typing ref docs, prepping designs, finding ref tracks/SFX, and of course communicating all that.
I'll probably have some down time here and there which will be spent drawing the Mimic chibis, adding her in the game as a Traveler, and updating Traveler related systems. But since I don't know how much of that I'll be able to achieve, I won't be uploading a new build in April. I'm just going to do whatever I can for now, and the next build will be in May!

Ad now, the Monstergirl 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 server 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!

And that's all for now! There's always more to do, but things are moving, so I'm happy ^^