Nooooooo, a dev update again?! 😫 But it’s been so long since the last release…

Yeah, I know—I know… Everyone’s waiting for something new to play. Believe me—I’m just as eager as you’re 😅 So, today I wanted to kick off this post by giving you more insights into what we’re working on and why it’s taking so long.

Deluded is not an easy game to make. It consists of complex systems and a complicated storyline. Just to give you an idea, last time I checked—our game had a whopping number of 247 character attributes! 😱 But that’s not something to brag about—and is not the point.

The point is, for the project as complex as Deluded we intentionally chose a pretty restrictive roadmap approach where each major update focuses on developing a single large gameplay system. And this comes with consequences such as less frequent updates.

Why’s that? You see, adding a new system is not as simple as just tossing in some new lines of code. It also means reworking a lot of older systems so they stay compatible. During this process we basically rewrite large chunks of the game’s logic, always breaking and fixing something until it finally works as intended. And there you should see where this lack of game updates comes from—we just can’t release something mid-dev with broken or half-baked game systems. Because we know how frustrating it’s gonna be for players to crawl through a pile of bugs and crashes, assuming the game is even gonna launch at all. 😅

But let’s imagine we just changed our way of development. We could pump out new content—scenes, clothes etc every month or so. And later, because we slapped this content onto unfinished systems and had a shaky game foundation, boom! We’d end up with a technical debt bigger than your mom’s…. khm. Well… and now we have no choice but to do the whole game refactor, rewrite a shitload of code, delay content updates, disable content that doesn’t work anymore, etc… while you, our fans, get disappointed and lose interest in the game, we ourselves lose motivation and… You see where I’m going. And all of this because of what? Because we didn’t bother to implement all the fundamentals from the get-go.

How many games do you know that have fallen into the same trap and never recovered?

We say fuck that, we’d rather be upfront with you—there’s stuff that needs to be done in order for the whole game not to fall apart. Because I believe that’s not what you want. Because Deluded deserves better. Think of it as if we’re doing the “rework” before the need for rework becomes imperative.

Currently we’re still working on the NPC schedule system—or, to be precise, the final NPC movement subsystem. According to our lead devs, it's the last most complicated one in the game. That means the rest of the mechanics are either easier to build or are already partially implemented (e.g. we already did some work on the character customization, the radial menu and the privacy system mechanics). Once that’s wrapped up, we do hope to push out more frequent updates—but, of course, I can’t promise anything concrete.

But what we’re sure about is that you—yes, YOU—our devoted supporters, who continue to stick around, are the best in the world. The enormous amount of trust you put in us is priceless, and we continue to work on this game every damn day to make up for it.

So, yeah, to repeat myself—Deluded is not an easy game to make. It’s ambitious and it promises a lot, some may even say too much. But we wouldn’t want it any other way. Because otherwise it won’t be the game of our dreams. Of your dreams. It won’t be the game YOU want to see from us. It won’t be the game you’re supporting us for.

But don’t worry. Good news is, we’ve optimized our processes in a way that the development of systems/mechanics and content go in parallel. No time wasted—which means, get ready to be buried under a big pile of new content 😊

Speaking of which…

Content

• We finished making the final parts of the new gloor scene and are now polishing it, adding SFX and missing decals
• The writer started working on another gloor scene that’ll take place in a fantasy setting and feature a shrink flavor

New building

• Made a new hangar/warehouse building for the open world

Character customization

We continue working on adding attributes and functions for character customization. This time, we made some backend attributes for:

• Whip marks
• Bruise marks
• Tan
• Nails
  • Shape
  • Nail polish (color or art)
  • Nail polish wear level
• Nip∗∗es
  • Areola radius
  • Areola color
• Legs
  • Thigh size
  • Calf size
• Cl∗t size
• Pubic hair color
• Pu∗∗y color (light or dark)
• A∗∗s color (light or dark)
• Eyelashes
  • Length
  • Color
• Brows color
• Elf ears
• Lips size
• Lipstick
  • Softness (gradient between colors)
  • Glitter level
  • Metallic level
  • Imperfection level
  • Shape
• 17 predefined places for tattoos

As for their visual representation, we’ve only made them for legs and cl∗t so far. You can also check out the visual we made for nip∗∗es and nails in the previous dev update.

All these attributes will be available for testing via the cheats menu, but not all of them will have functionality or visuals yet, because those are planned for the v0.5.

We’re also adding pills scattered across some open world locations (and available in the cheats menu) for adjusting those attributes—like Calf width pills, Freckles fade pills, Lips size pills, and 10 more types of pills.

Open world

Updated the Lindcliff town plan, adjusting its level design to make the town more complex but still easy to navigate for the player early on. We made sure to allow the players to gradually explore the town without making the experience too overwhelming. For example, we added some secret and hard-to-access paths, but also places with some basic survival options.

Added and mapped out buildings like church, motel, gas station, abandoned houses, residential houses and others. Currently working on attaching activities to them.

In terms of architecture, we’re aiming to make Lindcliff a blend of rural, industrial and occasionally medieval styles.

The Silver mine (aka the Prison) is also in active development, and we’ve implemented the following activities:

• Playing rock-paper-scissors with inmates
• Retrieving daily items from the cart
• Growing mushrooms (quest)
• Finding hidden escape routes

Mechanics

• Added logic for gloor fog-polluted zones, being inside which will negatively affect your Energy
• Added the logic to check if the place you slept in was comfortable. This may affect your sleep performance
• Running now removes excessive dirt from the body—but only down to 75 points
• Gloor flavors tags:
  • Just like the items and the clothes, the gloor vials (the drug you can ingest and watch h-scenes) will also have tags to indicate the flavors they feature. For example, when hovering over a gloor vial in your inventory, you might see tags like “hardcore”, “feet”, “latex”, “chastity”, etc, so you know what to expect beforehand 😉

New character

The camping location will feature a new side character: Macy.

Clothes

Imported the models of all new clothes into the game and here’s what they look like:

That’s all for this month’s dev update! Thanks again to our dear supporters and I’m wishing you all a happy and productive summer. 😉

Best regards,
kufe7

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