Star Knightess Aura 0.38.0-prerelease-2

ITCH | MEGA | ITCH-DELUXE | MEGA-DELUXE

The year is going towards the end, but we still have a bit more content to go before it's over! This week I focused back on the Maid Academy. I was hoping I could get the first 3 trainings done but only ended up finishing 2, in exchange there are even more bugfixes that didn't end up on the public build :'D

As for the Maid Training lewd scenes, they are a bit different from the "normal" lewd scenes. I liked the real world scenes where Alicia makes Aura repeat some things she says and these scenes kind of have a similar vibe but with a maid theme. In a way, the scenes turned out to be more similar to the early lewd scenes of the game, like the Hermann dinner, that focus more on making Aura say some things but with a bit more reactivity - Maid Training 1 for example has some variations based on the progress on the Influence Value corruption and Maid Training 2 on Seductive Stance. 

Furthermore, there is a new passive that Aura gains from performing trainings! The Obedient Maid passive affects Aura's willpower when doing any kind of checks (be it lewd or vice) from "influential" characters. Examples for them are Roland, Hermann, Rosemond, etc. On the other hand, non-influential characters become easier to resist for Aura (e.g. Hermit, random guards, etc.). The effect itself is pretty weak, but gets enhanced by progressing through the mental world and corrupting the Hardworking Orb into Influential Orbs. Finally, the maid training at Arwin's also gives this passive but I didn't make it retroactive as I didn't want to add a migration rule if it's not really necessary. Maybe I will sneak it in when we have to do one to fix an important bug.

Then on the questing side, Trihan has finished the quest Nothing But The Truth, as usual, I have not yet had time to play it yet as it literally just now finished. :'D So there isn't much to write here as I still need to experience it myself. With this, all the Roland quests are done, just need to handle now the case that Roland's popularity gets fully dumped before the Reverse Summoning Ritual in which case Aura will be able to kill him.

Then we have a couple of minor technical improvements. On the music side, if you start a battle as a surprise attack or if you get ambushed a different BGM will now play. I just kind of picked something decent I had available here, so not sure yet about the BGMs themselves, but this should kind of help in the future to not always hear 1 BGM during battle while communication some useful information and not requiring the number of BGMs to increase unreasonably (e.g. having per area BGMs or something like that). 

Then the second technical improvement has been submitted by a returning contributor, Gaurav, who wanted to have an easier time with saving all the time. In the options, you can now configure yourself when you want the Autosave to trigger. By default it happens on any map change, but you can also have it trigger after winning a battle (so if you are the type to always save after a battle, it should reduce some clicks :'D). On the flip-side, if you wanted less auto-saves you can also turn them off in this menu and only have it autosave during day start or whatever you like.

Alright, that's it for the week! Next week then I plan to work on the dungeon side of the Maid Academy. I haven't yet received any maps from our mapper sooo might switch the plans a bit up. As usual, the complete changelog including the changes from the patch release can be found below.

Changelog 0.38.0-prerelease-2 (08.12.2023)

• Added lewd scene Maid Training 1 
• Added lewd scene Maid Training 2 
• Implemented quest Nothing But The Truth Trial Segment 
• Implement passive Obedient Maid x X 
• Implemented plugin for conditional (battle) bgm 
• Configured rules to play different BGMs when being ambushed or doing an ambush 
• Moved Injustice Hate 2 to trigger cheating on george 3 
• Added pom-poms to pixel sprites during Cheerleading Game scenes 
• Implemented Autosave Options Submenu (Thanks to Gaurav)

Balancing

• Increased blessed water effectiveness in Story/Explorer difficulties (Thanks to Gaurav)

Bugfixes

• Fixed typos 
• Fixed missing sex variable increases in Cheerleading Game 3 
• Fixed incorrect recollection variable for Wanting To Be A Model 4 
• Fixed James base form not getting skill to use corrupted humanitas rune 
• Fixed possibility to softlock by inserting injustice hate 2 removal before Popularity III 
• Fixed Wanting To Be a Model 2 triggering in Chapter 2 
• Fixed incompatibility of save menu plugin with encryption 
• Fixed conditional bgms not being protected 
• Fixed incorrect direction variable name in checkEventTriggerThere 
• Fixed richard bond vice boost not working sometimes 
• Fixed George Bond resetting on a day multiple of 5 regardless of when last cheating action was
• Fixed Liquify Weapon Coating not getting removed at end of day
• Fixed off-by-one in Party Girl passive
• Fixed meta data for save slot 1 not loading when opening save menu with it as the last save
• Fixed chase events being able to start battle when Aura is above or below them
• Fixed Advanced Techniques For Blocking Magic using Basic Theory of Magic as a prerequisite instead of Is It Possible To Block Magic?
• Fixed missing NPC dialogue in Library Labyrinth of Happiness
• Fixed recollection tint getting removed Aura first sex memory if adult content is off
• Fixed george first date memory removal mental change getting skipped if progressing quickly on the richard storyline
• Fixed chase event passability edit breaking on touch events located on impassable tiles
• Fixed incorrect difficulty text in mental world on Explorer when corruption is below max