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Lab Rats 2 v0.9.1 Release

Lab Rats 2 v0.9.1 is live and available to everyone! Get it here!

PC (Windows and Linux): Lab Rats 2 v0.9.1-PC 

Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.9.1-Mac 

Android: 2018-09-27 06:54:17 +0000 UTC View Post

It's Alive! HA HA HAAAA!

I feel the need to put this down in writing: the code I wrote today was not good code. I wrote in my last update that I was just about ready to abandon the shader based approach to animation, but that I had one Hail Mary left to try out. Now I feel like Frankenstein, standing over his monster as he twitches in unholy life. It's alive, and it works!

First, a refresher on what I was trying to do. Ren'py removes a great deal of control over the images shown on the screen from the programmer in ex...

Bug Fixing and Prototyping!

With the release of v0.9.0 I have been hard at work tracking down and crushing bugs, but I've also found some time to play around with new features and effects that may make their way into Lab Rats 2 in the future.

The first thing I worked on was tweaking the clothing designer and adding a transparency selection option - there are now three different levels of transparency levels you can pick from. I would like to link these different levels to some sort of in game event or purchase, but that ...

v0.9.0 Crash Patch

There were a few major crash bugs that showed up in v0.9.0 since it was posted last night. I tracked down all of the crashes reported, fixed them, and uploaded the fixed version of v0.9.0 in it's place. You can find the download links here. Thank you to everyone who left a quick comment detailing what went wrong and how, it make the bug hunting go much quicker!

Here's a quick list of the major bugs that were fixed:<...

Lab Rats 2 v0.9.0 Release

v0.9.0 is live for $5 patrons, get it here!

PC(Windows + Linux): Lab Rats 2 v0.9.0-PC 

Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.9.0-Mac 

Android: Lab Rats 2 v0.9.0-Andro...

v0.9.0 Release Date and New Character Poses

I was away for the weekend, which gave me a chance to leave my computer rendering out a brand new character pose that will be added in v0.9. The pose is another general standing pose, and will be part of my effort to make characters seem a little more lively and active when you're talking to them. Right now each character has a default standing pose that is used any time they aren't being drawn in a sex pose. I am planning on chancing that so that characters cycle through a few different standin...

Clothing Designer Redesign!

When the I first added dynamic colouring for clothing into Lab Rats 2 I put together a quick menu of eight preset colours that the player could select from. At the time I intended to expand it to allow for any colour the user wanted, but my focus ended up getting pulled away to other parts of the game before I could get it implemented. Tonight I decided to fix that and give the player full colour control access for clothing.

There have actually been a ton of improvements and changes in the clo...

Clothing Display Improvements

Tonight I was able to leverage the improvements I made to the clothing display code a few nights ago and fix some long standing visual bugs/strangeness!

Clothing images are all made in Daz 3D, rendering each piece of clothing in greyscale to allow for recolouring later. Previously this image was taken, given a very simple recolour, and drawn to the screen. If the render did not turn out well my only choice was to either change settings and rerender (a 24+ hour task) or live with the imperfecti...

Performance Gains and Code Refactoring

Good news to everyone who was running into general slowdowns and unresponsiveness in Lab Rats 2! Yesterday and today I focused on refactoring two major sections of old code and have had great success with it. TL;DR: you will see a 5 fold performance gain and future work with drawing characters will be easier for me. But I like writing about programming, so stick around if you want to know more about the details.

The first rewrite was for the section of code that actually tells Ren'py to show a...

Improving Display Code and other Additions

Over the last two days I have added a set of six new goals, two for each goal category. Next up I plan to take a look at business policies and expand the number of options available as well as review the existing policies to make sure they are still working as intended.

But before I get to that I am going to take a night to look at the core code used to display characters. Currently each image for a character (their body, face, hair, and then each clothing item) is displayed as a separate Ren'...

v.9 Writing Progress

Work on v0.9 has been going well the last few days. Two brand new crises have been added to the game, both quite large and with multiple paths depending on employee corruption. Additionally the old broken AC crisis has been reworked to make use of new code support for characters randomly stripping. Two new hair style have been rendered and added to the game and I am experimenting with some new hair colours as well.

Next up I will be putting some time into expanding the list of character goals....

LR 2 Development Roadmap Update

The last development roadmap went out just after the completion of v0.5.1 (If you're curious what was in it you can find it here). We've pushed up to the edge of what was described then, which means it's time to lay out some more milestones and do some planning for the future of Lab Rats 2.

v0.9 - Content Update: At this point there are a number of robust features in the game that could really use some mo...

LR2 v0.8.1 Hotfix Script

Update: The hotfix for v0.8.1 has been applied and is now included in the main download version of the game. You can find those download links here.

So v0.8.1 is out and has a major bug in the turn processing code, resulting in a crash every time the time in game is advanced. I've corrected the error (a single incorrect character) and will be hunting down a few bugs...

Lab Rats 2 v0.8.1 is Live!

Download it here!

PC (Windows and Linux): Lab Rats 2 v0.8.1-PC 

Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.8.1-Mac 

Android: 2018-08-28 06:40:39 +0000 UTC View Post

v0.8 Bug Fixing Continues

v0.8.0 is out in the field and getting a thorough shakedown by patrons right now - it's clear that I was a little tired when I wrote some sections of code. I've fixed up a couple of bugs related to the last level of serum research, it should both display it's requirements properly now as well as allow you to progress when you have characters meeting the requirements. A crash that occurred when assigning clothing to someone directly has also been fixed.

Normally I use this week between patron a...

Lab Rats 2 v0.8.0 is Live!

Get it here!

PC (Windows and Linux): Lab Rats 2 v0.8.0-PC 

Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.8.0-Mac 

Android:<...

v0.8 Release Date

Work has been underway for v0.8 for a number of weeks now and most of the major goals for the update have been completed. Stephanie as a character has been introduced, along with the new head researcher role and the first bit of storyline content for the game. Stephanie has been used to define a new character type, as well as having a few completely unique lines to reference Lab Rats 1. On the rendering side of things I have added a new facial style and a few new character poses. The new charact...

Goals System and Character Sheet Update

The last couple of days I have been working on the new character goals system. That system provides the main character with experience to spend on their stats, which meant the character sheet needed an update to make it A) interactive and B) more attractive. The character sheet was also the obvious place to put the full goal progress and descriptions (I am thinking about adding small goal progress bars on the main UI as well).

I'm happy to say the code behind the goal system is some of the mos...

Adding a Leveling System

A character advancement system is arguably one of the most important parts of an RPG. Skyrim, for example, has hundreds of different character styles you can try before you become a stealth archer. I've held off on adding any sort of leveling system to LR2 because so many of the game mechanics weren't finalised, but I think the game is at a state where it is ready to have something added.

First, a quick discussion about what I wanted to avoid in a leveling system. A system based purely on spen...

More Writing Progress!

Work continues on writing content for v0.8 with the head researcher role storyline events finished off. There are three distinct events that you can trigger, each of which requires increasing corruption of your head researcher and eventually all of your staff in general. Now that the basic events are written I have started customising the events based on different personalities. While the general arc of the events will remain the same each personality will put a different spin on why they are do...

Game Design: Choice and False Choice

I'm writing up some unique events for the Head Researcher role that will be introduced in v0.8, and some of these events include important choices for the player to make. This got me thinking about the different kinds of choices that are presented to players in games in general, so here's a post talking about them and their uses.

Allowing meaningful choices is a tricky thing to handle in a video game. On one extreme end you allow no choice at all and the game is nothing more than a procedural ...

New Serum Trait Tooltip and Serum Design UI

A couple of nights ago I reworked the serum trait tooltips and the serum design UI to be a little more well laid out and informative. Serum traits now have three major pieces of information: Their positive features, negative features, and their fluff text.

The serum design screen has also been modified. To accommodate the larger list of serum traits that will be coming in the future all of the menus now properly include scroll bars. Traits are also now sorted so that exclusive traits are group...

Menu Cleanup and Getting Back to Writing

Lab Rats 2 is finally at a state where I'm able to start writing some nice, large chunks of content to add into it. Shifting back into content writing mode is taking some getting use to. When I'm working on the logical, software side of the game it is usually a good idea to think an idea through before trying to implement anything. Writing new content favours lots and lots of writing, then trimming out or changing anything that doesn't work. With a little hard work I'm hoping to get back up to L...

Adding Roles - v0.8 Progress Update

One of the main goals for v0.8 is the addition of "roles" - specialised, semi-unique tags that characters can have that unlock new responsibilities, effects, and dialogue. Over the last two days I have been working on adding the first of many roles to the game: Head Researcher.

The head researcher role will do a few different things. First, it acts as a gate to several key serum traits. Special interactions that require progressively higher sluttiness and obedience unlock higher tiers as she g...

Release: Lab Rats 2 v0.7.1

v0.7.1 is finished! Get it here:

PC (Windows and Linux): Lab Rats 2 v0.7.1-PC 

Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.7.1-Mac 

Android: Lab Rats 2 v0.7.1-Android&n...

Minor Release Delay for v0.7.1

Hey everyone, some quick news about the release of v0.7.1. Due to a last minute change to my schedule I will not be able to have the public update uploaded and posted today. It will instead be posted tomorrow, the night of Wednesday 24th.

The good news is that the bug hunting for the version has been going well. A couple of crashes have been eliminated and a bug with how status effects from serums are applied has been fixed. The framework for "roles" inside of LR2 has been added as well, openi...

The Importance of Refactoring

Last night I sat down and did one of the least interesting but most important things you can do in software development - I refactored a section of code. Since I like writing little essays about the different tasks involved in the development of Lab Rats I thought I would write about what refactoring is and why it's so important (and so often overlooked).

So, what is refactoring? Refactoring the process of taking a section of code and rewriting it so that it preforms the exact same task in a m...

Bugfixing and Prototyping Week

v0.7 is now out for the standard week of patron bug testing, which as usually means it's time for prototyping week! In addition to fixing up bugs that are found in the new version of the game I will be testing out new features for future development as well as adding new content that is unlikely to affect the stability of the game.

If you check the most recent development roadmap here you'll see that the ...

Lab Rats 2 v0.7.0 is Live and Available to Patrons!

v0.7.0 is live! Get it here!

PC(Windows and Linux): Lab Rats 2 v0.7.0-PC 

Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.7.0-Mac 

Android: Lab Rats 2 v0.7.0-Android <...

Lab Rats 2 v0.7.0 Release Date

After a few more days of work I'm almost done with everything on my list of things to do to call v0.7.0 finished, which means I can announce it's release date! v0.7.0 will be released in two days on the night of Tuesday July 17th! The two major additions to the game will be a reworked clothing/uniform system and a large number of new clothing items, including support for accessories like rings, bracelets, and more.

Tonight I also implemented some changes to how serum can be given out over the ...