vrengames

What I'm Looking for in New Crises

While the re-rendering of Lab Rat's image library continues (70% complete as of this minute) I'm writing out some new crises for the game, as well as expanding on existing ones. Like the random events of the first Lab Rats, these crisis events give the player a chance to see their corruption efforts in action as well as give them interesting choices to make.

Every crisis event has a few things I want it to accomplish:

1) Force an interesting decision. An interesting decision is one that ...

Streamlining Menus and Screens

First, an update on the current rendering progress of v0.4: 47% of all images have been rendered. I have also tweaked my render settings, so there should be an increase in the rendering speed of the remaining images.

I've spent the last few nights working on streamlining a number of menus and screens in Lab Rats 2. The most apparent change will be the addition of greyed out options for common actions that cannot be taken right now (either because nobody is around, there isn't enough time, ect....

v0.4 Progress Update - Rendering Continues

A few nights ago I began the rendering process for v0.4 (slowed down slightly by a false start; an incorrect setting ended the rendering an hour in instead of running all night). The process is now 30% complete, with another 5 or 6 days of rendering to go before the entire image library is complete. Once the high quality images are finished I expect I will be able to very quickly get the patron testing version posted. My best guess is that it will be available on the 22nd or 23rd, but this is su...

Musing on the Role of Sugestability

The most important stat in LR2 right now is Suggestability. This stat governs how much of an affect your actions (or the actions of other people in your lab/in the world) will have on the core personality stats of a character (obedience and sluttiness). With a suggestability of 0 a character's personality is fixed; with a suggestability of 100 they experience the full effect of events.

I've been thinking a lot about whether or not suggestability is actually doing what I wanted it to in the gam...

LR2 v0.4 High Quality Rendering Begins

Whew, I've had a crazy couple of days keeping up with some non Lab Rats work, but it's all finished now and I've been able to sit down and get the test low quality renders moved over into the game. These images came with a big overhaul for the format I'm using to store images. The most important change is that hair styles are now the same type of object as clothing, which means they can be coloured to any colour I set instead of being limited to a small subset that I specifically render.  2018-04-13 09:11:50 +0000 UTC View Post

v0.4 Progress: Adding sex position images.

Hey everyone, I'm here with a quick update on what I'm working on for Lab Rats 2. My test batch of low quality renders finished tonight (actually it finished a few nights ago, but some images were not being generated correctly and had to be redone). The next step is to get them integrated with LR2 and make sure everything is layering as I expect it to.

While I'm working on that code I'm going to keep my computer rendering new sex position image sets. Missionary is rendering right now, after wh...

v0.3.3 Release - Linux, Mac, and Android Support

I've resolved the issues with the Linux, Mac, and android versions of Lab Rats 2 v0.3, now released as v0.3.3!

PC (Windows or Linux): Lab Rats 2 v0.3.3-PC 

Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.3.3-mac 

Android: 2018-04-06 08:34:40 +0000 UTC View Post

LR2 Progress Report

Just a quick update to let you all know what I've been working on. Tonight I finished going through all of the individual pieces of clothing in LR2 and checking them for clipping issues. For items that did have clipping problems (tops mainly, nipples and shoulders were the worst offenders) I tweaked their settings until the clipping was resolved. In most cases this was done by adding a very minor displacement value to the clothing item, separating it from the character model by a small amount wh...

Render Automation 2.0

I've spent the last two nights rewriting the automation scripts I created to render all the different permutations of body types, breast sizes, clothing types, and character positions. The first version of the script had grown with each update of the game to accommodate new rendering requirements and had started to become unwieldy and hard to maintain. My new version is able to provide me with a much more accurate time estimate for rendering time remaining as well as being flexible and open to f...

Updating Rendering Assets

Over the past few days I've been working my way through the different body shapes, skin textures, breast shapes/sizes, and facial types in Lab Rats 2 and updating them. Major recent changes I've made include:

* Differences in body types are now more pronounced. Curvy body type now has a thinner waist, larger butt, and in general is more shapely than before. Thin body type has a smaller butt and more well proportioned frame. Standard body type tweaked to look generally better.

* Skin text...

v0.4 Work Begins!

I've begun work on v0.4 over the last few days. This update cycle is going to focus on updating and improving the 3D renders used in Lab Rats. Last night I went through every clothing item that is currently being rendered for the game and converted them to greyscale. This will mean that almost every item in the game will work with the dynamic colour system of v0.3. The outfit creator will need some modifications to list out clothing items and all of their colour variations in a reasonable way. 2018-03-26 06:51:45 +0000 UTC View Post

Lab Rats 1 Asset Release and LR2 Bug Fix Release!

Two major things to announce tonight! First, I have released a bug fixed version of v0.3.1 that should solve a number of common crashes. You can find the download links on my Patreon home page. I have included a change that may fix the Mac and Linux version, testing would be appreciated. The android version is still on hold while I try and troubleshoot a crash with the Ren'py android build.

Second, I'm releasing a pack of assets that match the characters for Lab Rats 1! Grab them here: 2018-03-24 09:14:18 +0000 UTC View Post

v0.3.1 is Live! Get it Here!

Due to a change in how Ren'py generates it's distributions, PC (Windows + Linux) and Mac versions are now packaged separately.

Get the PC version here: Lab Rats v0.3.1-PC 

Get the Mac version here: Lab Rats v0.3.1-mac 

I am having some issues with the an...

Prototyping Week Results

I normally dedicate week between the patron release and the public release of a new Lab Rats version to prototyping and testing new ideas for the game. For me this last week has been filled with bug fixing anything reported to me (a big thank you to everyone who left a comment with crash traces or a description of a bug they found!) and implementing some UI improvements that have constantly been pushed to the back of my to-do queue until now. Here's a quick rundown of the changes that will be co...

v0.4 - What are the Goals?

The central goal of v0.3 was to bring large changes and additions to Lab Rats 2. Now that that's done, I want to lay out a rough sketch of my goals for v0.4. In general, the central goal will be to improve the quality and quantity of 3d renders in LR2. Here are some specific things that I will be looking to do, in no particular order:

* Rerender all current simple clothing (ie. only one colour) in greyscale to make it compatible with the new dynamic colouring system that was added in 0.3.

v0.3.0 Patron Release!

v0.3.0 is live! Due to an update with Ren'py, PC (windows and Linux) versions are now a separate from Mac versions:

Download the PC version here: Lab Rats 2 v0.3.0-PC 

Download the Mac version here: Lab Rats 2 v0.3.0-Mac 

The android release will be dela...

Balancing Lab Rats 2

Lab Rats 2 v0.3.0 will be released March 13th to patrons, which means I've only got a couple of days left to make any changes or additions. Now that most of the new content is in (Mainly random events and business policies) I can take a good look at the game as a whole and start to balance the different serum traits.

The following is me working through the math of serum value. Skip to the end for a tl;dr.

Balancing the business side of the game is going to be my main goal. The first ste...

v0.3.0 Release Date Announcement!

Lab Rats 2 v0.3.0 will be released to $5 patrons on Tuesday March 13th for bug testing!

The v0.3 update cycle has focused on refining and expanding the gameplay of Lab Rats 2. The main additions have been the new "crisis" system, which are random events that the player must resolve, and business policies which unlock new abilities for your company by spending cash. A number of policies and crises have been added already, and I'll be looking to add more before release.

In addition to the ...

Dynamic Clothing Colour in LR2

During my last prototyping week I looked at a very interesting library for Ren'py that let me run shaders on images. A "Shader" is basically a simple program designed to be run on a GPU. There were a number of different effects I showed off to patrons, and tonight I've implemented the first and most immediately useful of them: dynamically coloured clothing.

Prior to today, all of the clothing items in Lab Rats 2 were rendered as you seem them in Daz Studio. That meant that if I wanted the same...

v0.3 Update - Corporate Uniforms

Note: February patron reward surveys will be sent out in two days (March 3rd), to give Patreon enough time to finish processing all the payments.

I'm chugging away at v0.3, and tonight I finished up the initial version of one of the features I was most looking forward to for Lab Rats 2 - the ability to define uniforms for your employees. Uniforms are set on the division level, so you can have all of your production employees wearing something different than the marketing girls. Going forward s...

v0.3 Work Begins - The Crisis System

With v0.2.1 out in the wild I'm turning my attention to the next update cycle. v0.3 is focused on expanding the game mechanics of LR2, pulling together all of the different sub-systems that have been put in place so far to make it into an actual game. The first major addition that is being put in place is what I've dubbed the crisis system.

Crises are random events that can trigger at the end of each turn. These crises require player input to resolve them, and can have a wide variety of effect...

v0.2.1 Release!

Lab Rats 2 v0.2.1 is ready for release! Get it here: Lab Rats 2 v0.2.1 

I haven't had the time to work on the android version; it may be unstable or unplayable. If you still want to give it a try, you can find it here: Lab Rats v0.2.1-android 

v0.2.1 is finish...

LR2 Prototyping - Shader Coloured Clothing

It's the last night of prototyping week, and I've got another gif to show off my results. The effects you're seeing are using the same shader library as the animation demo from a few days ago, but instead of manipulating pixel positions to simulate movement they're manipulating pixel colour. The standard white tank top that is currently in LR2 can then be shifted to any colour desired, using the greyscale image to control lightness/darkness.

Implementing this in LR2 would reduce my workload - ...

Lab Rats 2 Animation Prototyping

It's the time between the patron bugtesting release and the general public release of v0.2.1, which means I've had some time to step away from the main LR2 project and do some experimental prototyping. I've got something very exciting to show you all today, a first look at an animation technique that may work very well with the style of Lab Rats 2.

The gif above is showing off some experimentation with shader based animation. A shader is fed the character images and manipulates the image. In t...

Lab Rats 2 v0.2.0 Release!

Lab Rats 2 v0.2.0 is ready for the release!

Get it here: Lab Rats 2 v0.2.0 

Get the android version here (untested): Lab Rats 2 v0.2.0-android 

This update to Lab Rats 2 brings in a massive overhaul of the UI of the game. Almost all of the old UI element...

24 Hour Release Delay

Hey everyone, just a very quick update tonight to let you know that there was a last minute change to my schedule and that I will not be able to build and upload v0.2.0 tonight. The release will take place tomorrow night (Feb 17th), with the public release of v0.2.1 a week after (Feb 24th). Thank you for your patience.

Finalizing v0.2.0 Work

v0.2.0 will be available to $5 and up patrons tomorrow night, which only leaves me a little bit of time to hammer out the last few features I want to get done. I've just finished the first iteration of the end of day screen, which provides a quick overview of key business stats. Of particular use is the "Production Potential" and "Supplies Purchased" stats that are now visible. If you have a higher production potential than your purchasing rate, you've got a bottleneck that will need to be resol...

v0.2 Release Date and Punch List

In construction a punch list is a list of relatively minor tasks that all have to be finished up before the project is complete. I'm working through my own punch list now for v0.2 and knocking out all of the relatively minor tasks that need to be finished. Here's a look at the things that I'll be working on over the next couple of days:

1) A current serum effects page for other characters. This will let you check what serums a girl is currently affected by and how long it will last.

2) B...

UI Update Sneak Peek

The focus of the v0.2 update cycle is UI improvements, and I've got a few screenshots showing off the progress that has been made so far to share with you all. First, we have a new main menu screen, completely replacing the default Ren'py one.

Next, the travel map has been reskinned with new hexagonal buttons to keep with the theme of the rest of the game. The players current position is now marked with a green tinted and slightly larger hex, which should make it more obvious at a glance where...

Lab Rats 2 Roadmap

Work on v0.2 is chugging along, and I hope to have an official release date up for it in a couple of days. In the mean time I wanted to take a look at what the future of LR2 will look like in terms of development milestones.

v0.2.0 - This update will focus on UI improvements throughout the game, bringing a new main menu and interface to the game. A central goal of this update is to ensure the player has access to all of the information they need to make informed decisions in the game. This inc...