Star Knightess Aura Release 1.1.0-prerelease-4

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Coming off a super productive week! Let's start off with the update to artworks: I fully integrated the alt earth slutty clothing option and the H-CG variations - so all three alt Earth clothings are now available in the game!

Continuing on the art side, our artist also created the necessary variations for the Maid Job 3 scene, so I was able to integrate that as well. Based on a poll among patrons, a final character design update for a fully corrupted Charlotte (noblewoman/princess style) got queued up next in the art pipeline.

Then, moving on to today's new mechanical feature: New Game Minus (NG-). New Game Minus is the pendant to New Game Plus, except instead of making the game easier, it makes certain aspects of the game more difficult. You can activate them the same way as an NG+ modifier, just visit the Clear Room and you will find them on the left side. Once activated, they will be applied when starting a new game from the clear room.

In order to activate an NG- modifier you will also need Score, same as with an NG+ modifier, and in exchange for the modifier activation, you will receive a Score Bonus Multiplier. This new multiplier replaces the Ending Multiplier which has been removed.

For the NG- modifiers, I tried to add modifiers that would fulfill at least one of the following design goals:

• Vastly change the play experience / Alternate Play Mode

• Enable fine-tuning of the default 5 difficulty levels

• Provide the player with technical support for role-playing

• Provide optional challenges for those who have mastered Nightmare

Not all of these points may be relevant for each individual player, but I hope that for many players there will be one design goal that they can identify with.

As for the concrete NG- Modifiers, I implemented the following ones:

• Ironman - Only one save slot, saving the game causes a return to title and reloading (e.g. during battle) will be considered as Aura ending the day. For those who tried to play a self-imposed Ironman challenge, this should provide at least some level of technical support.

• Hidden Alicia - I am very pleasently surprised I was able to implement this this week. I thought I would at most be able to present a technical proof of concept or be forced to abandon this concept, but I found a nice architecture that allowed me to engineer this mode quite nicely. What this mode is about: You will not be able control Alicia as usual and you won't see her actions in Aura's mind. Instead she will apply mental changes automatically and except for a random sound effect that occurs when she successfully applies a mental change, you will have no clue as to what's going on.
  
  This mode is aimed both at role-players who want a higher level immersion as Aura, and to experience the game in more of a mystery-mode and to those who have problems with the two-player nature of the game and would rather be able to just focus on the Aura-side.
  
  I have tried my best to implement an Alicia strategy that avoids getting locked, but I still need to figure out a good solution for the case where Alicia cannot progress due to some lewd stat being too low (e.g. 20 Lewdness for the Temperance Orb). Since the player cannot see the mental world, they don't know which stat they might be lacking for. For the checks that require Lewd Knowledge, Exhibitionism or Cheating, Alicia will use the Lewd Token Machine in order to generate those stats if necessary.
  
  I was able to perform a full playthrough in this mode but I only recently finished its implementation, so bugs will most likely ensure. In particular since I developed the feature as I went deeper into Aura's mind, so there is a good chance that I might have broken something from the earlier / middle parts I didn't retest.

• Power Drain - Powers up the curse by robbing Aura of more starting stats. Makes the start of the game VERY slow. For those who felt that they progressed too far into the Roya storyline before Alicia managed to get into Chapter 2.

• Potent Corruption - Reduces starting day willpower by 1 additional point for every corruption up to a certain limit (15 or 30 on the second level). For those who want to quicker get into the state where triggering pink scenes becomes easier, or role-players who only want Aura to take lewd actions if she has to.

•  Used Goods - Reduced Sell Value of items when selling them to merchants in a shop OR when feeding your slime with it. For those who somehow found they had too much money and lacked motivation to perform lewd actions. Also doubles as a hard-mode for slime enthusiasts.

While I usually make sure that the game is beatable on the standard difficulties, I have no clue if Nightemare + all modifiers and without any NG+ modifier is "beatable" (whatever that means when Hidden Alicia is turned on and performs mental changes regardless of your will), the balancing here is completely new terrain. :'D Or maybe the modifiers aren't as bad as I think. We will find out!

And then finally, the translation work is progressing as well but still remains mostly on the technical level. We are currently in the process of rewriting the RPGMaker Plugin we used as a basis to use JSON for the translation data so we can connect it better to third-party-tools and process them in scripts.

Aaaaaand that's it for the week! Next week will be purely technical as I will be in the process of remerging our improvements from Star Knightess Aura into our AuraMZ Template Project so I can prep everything for next month's start on the prototype for Liora's game.

Changelog 1.1.0-prerelease-4 (21.03.2025)

• Integrated alternate slutty clothing

• Integrated Maid Job 3 H-CG Variations

• Implement NG- Option: Ironman Mode

• Implement NG- Option: Reduced Sell and Feed Value of Items

• Implement NG- Option: Weak Aura

• Implement NG- Option: Potent Corruption

• Implement NG- Option: Hidden Alicia Mode

• Added Maid tags to Paulina and remove Adventurer tag when she leaves party

• Implemented simple hidden alicia strategy for repeatable mental change usage

• Increased hidden alicia priority of alt clothing for stage 1 and 2 if conditions are fulfilled

• Turned off CTE for prerelease

Balancing

• None

Bugfixes

• Fixed prerelease typos

• Fixed localised compendium enemy races no longer populating matching list

• Fixed null error when translation file is missing race or trait lists

• Fixed new marker having vice label

• Fixed stock text error in costs plugin if UI plugins are disabled

• Fixed shop and bless menu categories using incorrect property reference

• Fixed crashes with CTE and blocking fog when trying to test events in editor

• Fixed missing death tags and conditions to Darry, Barry, and Sophie

• Fixed forced day-start lewd scene not correctly updating stats if last eligible scene did not exceed pink scene threshold #7626

• Fixed Seductive Stance II incorrectly having a DEF decrease description tag

• Fixed compendium check for Paul gender being incorrect

• Fixed Paulina dialogue implying killing Asmodeus even if he lived

• Fixed Aura not turning to face Rose during Infiltrating Cheerleaders scene

• Fixed Summon Slime I learning dialogue not clearly saying it ends the day

• Fixed guards and prisoners for Helping The Accused not disappearing after Demon-cracy ends if it was started but unfinished

• Fixed book interaction in Trademond Adventurer Guild not having direction fix flag

• Fixed Farmer Girl in Riverflow crashing the game if player cheated an Anti-Magic Coating into inventory

• Fixed passability issue in Winterfall

• Fixed being able to mention new shoes to Paulina before she gets them

• Fixed previous Demon-cracy exp increase not being reflected in actual reward from reporting it

• Fixed underwater and freezing debuffs not being removed when using compendium to teleport out of water

• Fixed Alicia Bond minimum lewdness reduction using incorrect variable for its value

• Fixed Verdeaux Brothel tips value using value of variable 817 instead of checking the rank for skill set 817

• Fixed Lorraine dialogue in Nothing But The Truth implying Aura betrayal if you got the evidence about her memories from Roland

• Fixed Dolus being able to gain Tactical Advantage after being paralysed from an incorrect lie

• Fixed Tenacity having no effect in Slay the Demon

• Fixed Remove Collar causing follow-on states to trigger and not be removed

• Fixed Acedia being offered as a teaching option if you already learned it