Soggy Horror August/September Devlog

Hey all, really sorry about the late devlog. The last month and a half have been insane for me as I have been stuck with a lot of 50-hour work week and I went through an intense 3-week crash course for my primary job during August.

Despite our hectic lives, the team has still been making progress towards Soggy Horror and I made the decision that it's best that I work towards 1.3 to be released this early October with a new cultist that I recently finished and will be teased not too far off from now. The new cultist will be added with Maddie who was in the internal only 1.2 build of the game. The reason 1.2 stayed an internal build was primarily due to a chaotic work schedule and I simply wasn't comfortable with releasing it without a lengthy sit-down session for bug testing and I wanted to do a few more optimizations primarily for game performance.

1.3 also will include a bunch of new props I have been working on the side that really have some nice texture work from my artist collaborators. Some AI improvements have been made too however a lot of system stuff I worked on during the Summer won't be in till the end of the year, stuff like change stations and swim diapers are definitely a thing now and every character has several additional outfits options that will become even more of a thing in future builds.

The October update will now not be the alpha 2 update as I stated previously. Instead, I will be focusing more on polishing maps, models, and art assets as well as working more closely with my sound guy. A lot of this decision was influenced by Unity's new predatory fee system that was pushed by a scummy CEO who used to work for EA. But now that a lot of the initial outrage has subsided I do think that this is the best way forward for everyone despite the pettiness currently going on with Unity's upper management. I will also be adding the 2023 artpack this October and will give it the usual treatment of upgrading it for half a year or so as improvement or new art is created.

Despite some misgivings on the Unity engine, and overall the latest stable version really is a great engine when used by talented devs. Still, their management is absolutely garbage and I currently don't have high hopes for it's future. I want to monitor this shit show while I am focusing on building this year's Halloween build. The worst case will be when I decide to migrate to the excellent Godot engine and get set back at least a year due to all my experience and programming work in Unity. In the more likely case that I decide to stick with Unity, I will make sure none of the predatory nonsense you have likely been hearing about with Unity affects my small player base and I will jump to Alpha 2 which includes a ton of system replacements and upgrades and the rest of the AI improvements that couldn't make it in the Halloween build.