News Update: Current Status and What We're Up To!

So today we wanted to go over what we've been working on as of late and the current progress towards the update. A big part of our current process has been determining what type of output we'll be able to provide towards our patrons and to set realistic goals towards future content. It also made us look back at the foundations and try to figure out where we can improve on our current build. 

The sprite masks did work for our latest build, but the limitations have really started to show themselves!

One of the biggest things we determined was that our current sprites are built in a way that will cause us issues in the future. What this means is that since we were in the process of learning how to develop with the new tools, we learned a lot of things on how to develop as well as better ways to implement things. With the sprites we originally made them in a sort of mask of sorts, where the eyes, nose, mouth, and eyebrows were all built into a single object rather than individually separated. This naturally created issues where if we ever wanted to adjust one small part of it, we'd have to redraw the entire face. This happened every single time we wanted a new expression. This time we're rebuilding the sprites from the ground up, starting with a proper nude version.

Don't want to show too much just yet, but you can see we separated the arms and facial features for much easier additions in the future!

We originally opted out of making the nude version initially because it was extra time that could be spent towards different backgrounds. This type of issue though will continue to pop up unless we take the time to properly fix it. What this means is every character sprite (Everie, Fae, Player, etc...) will need to be remade and fixed. This will take a bit of time, but the benefits are that we can easily make new expressions and outfits extremely easily without having to redo it all. A good example of this issue is Fae's outfit, where every time she was redrawn the whole outfit had to be changed a bit just to make it look correct. This time it's changed where the nude version starts underneath, with the arms completely separated so posing is a hell of a lot easier. We'll go into more details with this including our aims for future outfits when we get a bit further in process with this month's Art Update.

Diagram we used to determine how we were gonna restructure the sprites

Story wise we've already nailed down all the events we want featured in the Cyberia Update, as well as the addition of a few highly requested features. Since we don't want to go into too much detail with story stuff, let's talk about what we're aiming for:

New Features:

-Ability to replay NSFW scenes
-Gallery for Pinups
-Proper shop for items

Each of these new features will require a fair amount of effort, and we figured now was the time to update the sprites as we're working on fixing stuff. What actually spurred the reworking of the sprites was improving the shop, where what's the point of having a shop if there's nothing to buy? One big thing we wanted to include in the newly improved shop is special items you can buy for each of the characters, which can potentially lead to unique interactions and story moments. A great example of this is lingerie! We're aiming to add purchasable lingerie items for the girls, and they'll potentially give you a sneak peak on what you bought for them if you buy something they love! We have some pretty ambitious stuff planned for the store as well, but that'll be further down the line. To give a small hint: those rooms that are locked on the ship may need filling some day...

We're still hard at work on Cyberia, but we hope you guys are excited for our first content update!

With this update we also want to add a brand new music track, and potentially more sound effects to other parts of the game. Not to go into too much detail, but we're planning at least one new track for Cyberia, so hope you guys are just as hyped as we are for it!

We also wanted to take the time to just say thank you to all our patrons that are making this game possible! Cyber Rift has always been a bit of a passion project, and with the recent reception of the game on places like Newgrounds we've felt incredibly inspired to work our hardest and make the game as good as possible. We'll make sure you guys get the latest news and details on everything we're working on, as well as sneak previews on brand new content once we're ready to show it off. We have no firm date on content just yet, but we're heavily working on new stuff right now. Thanks again to all you guys and we hope to show off some even cooler stuff soon!