AW v1-26-0

Hey everyone, time for another release.

It's been another crazy month. Besty took vacation, it seems like everybody got sick (I'm sick with a never-ending cold as I write this), tax preparation (holy shit), and more. I tried to take a vacation, but had a blizzard instead so ended up mostly working on AW.

One thing I did a lot of this month was play testing, which is a lot like playing except that it isn't fun. Whenever I found things that didn't work right, or weren't as intended, or could just use some improvement, I tried to fix them. My work from last month also led to me finding several things that weren't working as intended, so I had to fix and test those too. I even ended up doing some statistical analysis of some of my more math-math-math simulation code as a result.

I want to get back to working on Hucows, but I think it's also important to make the base game better. Next month I'm going to plan on a more balanced approach, unlike this month, which was pretty random in terms of jumping from one thing to the next. (Not that we don't have hucow stuff this month, we've got some of that too.) We also added some cool stuff too. I hadn't noticed, but it turns out the day the game starts after the prolog (April 6th, 2042) is Easter. Technically, it'd be the next week because easter is decided by the timing of the full moon after the equinox... but I figured that'd just confuse people. Anyway, I also added a short little Easter thing for that day.

I also wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who supports AW. When I was collecting all the information for taxes this year, I found that we spent a little shy of $75K on labor costs in 2023. By labor I mean the expected things like code cats and artists, and not my own earnings (which is the bit that's left after everything else gets paid). Anyway, looking at that always makes me appreciate you all for making this possible.

Now, let's get on with all the changes.

Changes

Words: 3,546,135 (24,304,824 characters)

Codes: 186,996 lines of TypeScript

Note: there were several changes since the 1.25 release, some of which are new content. These are covered in the 1.25.1 and 1.25.4 change logs. Also, in case you missed it, we're trying out a new build: [mobile] that has most of the resources packaged inside it to allow play on a mobile device.

Fixed the Besty sex toy bug that could cause removing an insertable to fail part way and leave the insertable toy's effects active.
A whole bunch of card game stuff that was supposed to be in the 1.25 release is now actually in this release. The content got excluded thanks to git fuckery.

condom functionality
fixes, balance
proper scene ending

Additional work on some code changes to make the [mobile] build a little more friendly at startup, and reduce some loading times (particularly when going to the new game page).
Several fixes to the shit code that is Airell's Surrogacy Center.

System should now take into account additional wombs when determining whether you are ovulating.
Descriptions have been clarified so that what you can do (or are waiting for) is more clear.
Better message announcing potential to be inseminated.
Fixes to multiple shitcode things that didn't work.

Fixed up the giving birth scene.

removed/fixed some more retarded Airell shit.
NPC lovers will no longer get pissed if some of your babies aren't theirs, depending on the baby and if you have at least one that DOES belong to the NPC.
Better options and descriptions for choices when starting the birth scene.
Better text for actually traveling to the hospital.
More possibilities for birth outcomes ~ really need to write the orgasm medication for birth that Airell ignored, and spruce up his text in general...

Fixed an issue with the catcode patching system, which allows minor fixes to be provided in a small patch file.
Added information for several arousal sources that weren't previously recorded in the arousal status log on the character status screen.
Dev tool added (elite build), spawns Julie and sets her as your girlfriend, regardless of horsecock status and the like. Dating her without a cock is not advised though.
Expanded methods for determining exposure, and more detailed information on the character status screen.

Exposure for top and bottom now ranges from:

Partly Exposed: Covered, but brief exposure is possible from common clothing malfunctions. Also, covered, but fabric is somewhat sheer allowing a partial view of naughty bits. Finally, skirts short enough that bending over will reveal everything.
Mostly Exposed: Covered, but frequent exposure is an expected result of normal motion of the clothes. Also, covered, but fabric is transparent enough that nothing is really hidden. Finally, skirts that your parts are revealed with a low enough viewing angle (someone who isn't standing nearby, a nano or micro skirt, it is assumed you wear it just low enough to hide things from people standing nearby).
Naked: basically there is nothing you're wearing that could cover your exposure. Unlike with lewd clothing that could possibly hide exposure if needed, this is just not wearing anything.

Exposure levels are color-coded in the character status, indicating bad (prudish, illegal or close-to illegal) and good exposure levels.
Makes it more obvious that removing clothes from the character menu (taking them off), changes your exposure.
Fixed an issue where certain aspects of exposure weren't being determined properly, leading to potentially incorrect results in certain circumstances.

Fixed some issues that could come up if the clothing you were currently wearing was destroyed from wear and tear.
Further changes to the character status menu, improving the information and layout of the items there.

Now fits better and is more organized/useful for characters who are futas, have advanced fertility knowledge, or some combination.
Now more useful information about pregnancy is displayed.
More useful information about wombs and your overall fertility items.
the "Risk Level" given to the player now displays the highest level of risk if there is more than one womb (such as with twin womb mutation)
Additional wombs have a popup link (if there are any) with the same information given for the normal wombs.
Risk level is now color coded according to the character's sexual preferences. (so a pregnancy kink character will now see "ovulating" as green instead of red, for example) this is also for the info in the normal view status sidebar.

Reduced the amount of time it takes to browse for clothing in clothing stores, and improved how the shopping time is handled in general.
Expanded the range of menstrual cycle lengths. Characters with lower fertility can now have cycle durations longer than 28 days.

Cycle lengths now more balanced across fertility levels.

Fixed some issues with how the short cycle mutation worked, and balanced its effects.

additional code for handling ovulation randomization during shorter cycles, and some other minor effects this mutation caused.
fertility systems now use a new effective cycle value, which takes into account special effects (such as the cycle mutation) without altering the base cycle duration in case those effects end. Allows potential future medications or being able to lose the short cycle mutation.

Some adjustments to the character menu body portrait images and code, particularly for the horsecock and tentaballs and their combos.
New transformative "Maturex" added to the game.

There is a standard and hucow variant of this treatment.
Standard version can be obtained at the Proliferant medical clinic in the medical district.
causes breast growth, increase in hip size, increase in ass size, and potential increase in height.

Effects are dependent on the existing development of the character, characters with smaller attributes will gain more, but it can increase a couple values 1 step past what is available at character creation.

lasts 7 days, and is rather safe (in terms of strictly negative effects).

Does include several potential side effects (listed in the description) such as nipple enlargement. The player will get 0 or more of these in a random fashion with many potential combos. (0 to 3 range, 1&2 most common)
Possible changes: nipple enlargement, areola enlargement, areola puffiness, libido increase, vaginal wetness increase, fertility increase, labia enlargement, clit enlargement. Some effects are more likely than others.

New ad and scene for it being administered.
Hucow version is signed up for in the barn area, and administered at the Dairy.

Causes more breast growth than standard version, but growth is still dependent on starting size, so it's best to use this earlier in your "career".
Can increase hip size to 8 if the character didn't achieve this during the Treatment.

Kinda had an idea about making the character act like a teenager and think dumb shit while this one was in effect but... found it hard to do in practice from a storytelling perspective.

Overhaul of all the fertility cycle tracking code, which drives various effects.

switched timekeeping method to more reliable minutes-based calculation.
now keep track of the number of cycles on each womb
improves accuracy over fuzzier numbers, improving some simulation items.

More "Waste Time on Phone"

"Read Something" button info popup improved and now more useful.
New "Twister" game ad for a new version of the classic game.
Several pregnancy-themed ads from Appletree.
Something else I forgot.
Some general improvements to the layout and some text.

Some new images for "looking around" in the downtown map.
Time for zygote implantation adjusted.

Timeframe now spans from 4 to 6 days, with lower fertility characters taking longer.
NPCs now implant after 2 days.

Total overhaul of ovulation and multiple ovulation calculations & code.

Seriously, did some statistical analysis on the outputs in order to get the desired functionality. Basically, a lot of the code here has been redone.

Much smoother curves of impact from enhanced fertility factors or drugs/boosts.
Generally safer for more casual players.
Acts in a way that is more natural/realistic compared to how it was before. Based on the same medical data, but better handling of extremes/progression (including low fertility characters) that weren't really accounted for in the initial code.
Players aiming for a brood-mother playstyle will see the strategy for achieving larger pregnancies is now different. Rather than huge single ovulations, these players will instead take advantage of multiple ovulations and mutation benefits to build up to a larger pregnancy. This is incidentally less risky, but can also provide some more interesting play as you try to get or avoid getting more zygotes.

Includes changes to how spasm ovaries adds additional egg releases, now better tied to fertility factors.
Update of sperm and fertilization code during ovulation process.
Can now have some eggs not be fertilized depending on available sperm.
Some scaling now occurs based on numbers of previous ovulations for that womb during that cycle, tying multiple ovulations into the same process.

Changed how the vaginal wash (shower) works for fluids for more realistic results. Note that washing yourself in the shower isn't the same as using a douche.

This kind of cleaning will get rid of cum in your vulva and the shallow portion of the vagina only.

Added quick clean menu setup, to allow area specific body cleaning during situations where it's relevant (such as a restroom or when using wet wipes)

New code to clean specific places, with effects based on what you're cleaning.
Can clean cum off your tits, or wipe smellier areas to improve cleanliness, and more, rather than just remove your makeup.
Fun gif of pussy wiping to go along with the descriptive text.
Can be used at home in the bathroom (rather than a full shower) or at a public restroom (currently only in the downtown park community center)

Changed how Garglier face wipes work.

Now uses the quick clean menu to allow this sort of cleaning anywhere.
Previously only let you remove makeup / clean your face, so now they are much more useful.
Made the description of the wipes better in the store, and expanded it in the inventory alluding to the wipes popularity for... off-brand uses.

Public bathroom added to the community center in the downtown park.

Provides a platform for generic restrooms and the things you'd use a restroom for, such as cleaning up or getting a snack via gloryhole.
Standard unisex bathroom without any special dance club related things.
Note (currently no actual gloryhole activities, only some description of the lights and such to go with the setting)

Some minor improvements to community center area.
Added a fun video to the do laundry popup that alternates with the previous gif.

Of course, the person is dressed in Appletree fashion.

Enhanced the corporate campus (downtown) location 'look around' popup to be more informative, and mesh better with the Gene Therapy chapter 3 story pickup.

In addition to text, it also includes an image message from Progenerate.

Drew proper horsecock for the body portrait.
Made the breast size popup images scale better with the larger sized breasts.
"Shared fluid spaces" expanded.

Shared fluid spaces are areas such as the vagina or rectum where semen in particular is simulated. Each womb is individually simulated, with a connection to these shared spaces.
Shared spaces added to support all the other potential womb locations (throat, nipples/milk ducts, etc.)

New SkeetScan device can be purchased from the pharmacy downtown.

Has a whole scene attached to using it, which must be done at home (it isn't portable).
It is used in the same way as the Tummy Hugger (from the character -> actions tab)
Provides a display of sperm information similar to the cheat fertility sperm info, with reduced accuracy and lower functionality.

+/- 20% accuracy
Doesn't distinguish between owners or sources, groups it together
No other advanced information included, just an amount of cum and where.

Improvement to the Tummy Hugger pregnancy scanner item.

Better layout
More accurate information that takes multiple wombs into account rather than ignoring them for things like the "StorkTracker" birth estimates.
New text and such depending on the circumstances.
Clearer information about womb burst fetus limits... but not too clear.

Spasm Ovaries mutation balanced

Better calculation when determining if an ovulation is caused or enhanced.
50% less crazy.

If you have a ton of wombs though, you're still going to see that notification a lot...

Now added the potential for high fertility characters without the mutation to have a orgasm-induced ovulation.

The odds of this occurring are dramatically reduced.
This is only possible during certain phases of the character's cycle.
Phase range and specific odds vary based on fertility.
Unlike with the mutation, where the character is aware of their ovaries, the player is not notified about any ovulations/enhanced ovulations from this effect.

Added cheat to the fertility cheat menu that allows you to remove a womb.

Only works on numbered "bonus wombs", not primary or mutation twin wombs.

Improved cheat fertility info display.
Went over every single place where a sex scene can be initiated. Standardized the code to start the scene, and made sure it works.

I found a single event in an interact window with a random npc, where a particularly slutty character could start having sex with them. This seems to be the source of the bug that couldn't be reproduced, and thus has continued to frustrate us.

Also demonstrates the value of accurate/detailed reports. We never got a report that actually included the needed info to get to the bottom of this (commonly some red herring misinformation though. I'm looking at you, Viking 😂).
As might be expected, this was basically some more Airell sabotage. At least he's off working on his own game now.

Holy shit about time: Better game save/load options.

Instead of having to delete a save slot before saving to it again (and going through the closing and reopening of the menu SugarCube makes necessary), you can now just directly save over the existing save.
Each slot except for the autosave slot now has both a save and load button. (load is grey and disabled on empty slots).
I made major changes a while back to how SC handles saves to make it faster and less annoying, and can't believe I didn't do this at the same time. Not being able to overwrite always annoyed me...

Will probably get some complaints in the future that there's no confirmation before overwriting... but I really don't want to add another thing to click. :P

Whole new chunk of code and work on CSS and game structure, along with changing portions of SugarCube, to allow dynamic UI rescaling!

Currently affects the main passage display (left-side status bar, top location bar), new game page, some aspects of the loading and start pages.

Also made some improvements to the UI card setup used for character creation and other areas, to make it more usable at smaller resolutions. And a few other items, but this isn't actually rescaling.

Makes the UI fit the page and look fairly nice regardless of your screen shape.
Should make playing on a mobile device more friendly as well, but the main thing is getting a nice look regardless of what monitor/resolution/window shape you're using. This makes the game look a lot better on smaller (like 720p) or bigger (like 1440p etc) monitors without using the browser zoom that also impacts text size and can reduce readability of the main text.
This was much more of a pain in the ass than I expected when I first started.
Looks a lot better without odd empty space on bigger displays, lol
You can make the UI look overly small if you use strange shapes for your browser window, but the UI remains functional even in these cases.

In general, it's recommended to keep the same general aspect ratio as a maximized browser window, just for the nicest experience.

Several fixes for parser calls (particularly ones Airell didn't bother to make correctly) and some tweaks for better behavior/function.
A whole bunch of minor fixes that I recorded simply as "So much shit".
Fixes to the shake and pop gloryhole for shit Airell added in.

Removed idiotic references to paying a woman when fucking her as a futa.
Dramatically reduced the odds a woman would stop having sex and blueball you.
Made it so that giving the stranger a creampie would actually be reflected in the fertility system.

Added new code to use a nearby random npc meeting certain criteria when having random sex with an NPC. This allows you to impregnate npcs, or have a baby daddy somewhere out there instead of "unknown". This has only been applied to some of the comparatively rare scenes where there isn't a designated NPC partner.
reworked the exhibition event to be a lot more lore accurate and fun, and expanded the range of variations beyond three unchanging strings.

Made it so that the event becomes significantly less common after the public decency ordinance is repealed, and full nudity is no longer illegal.

Improved the plump labia display
Added 44 new paper doll images, focusing primarily on hyperfuta variations and items that didn't have a "lewd" version. Also made edits to multiple existing images towards that goal as well.

Altered the standard microskirt version to make it more clear that the pink triangle is an easy-access zipper.

The sexy version of the microskirt has an even more obvious fast-open pull zipper.

New nanoskirt version
several tweaks to paperdoll code for better behavior
new microkini swim bottom image

New code for initializing npc fertility cycles at the start of the game, to avoid overly-synchronized periods.
Review and update of all the ancillary fertility functions that haven't been touched in ages.
Further upgrades to sperm simulation, improved cluster merge functionality, better swimming, new code for making it to the fallopian tubes.

much better system handling which womb/s the sperm swim into.
having a bunch of wombs that aren't pregnant will 'divide the load', and reduce the available sperm for fertilization in any given womb...
Significant upgrade to code for sperm making it through the cervix.

New thing that keeps track of game days.
More/better random slut names.
New cheat: no story mode.

Allows you to play the game basically in the "after completing the story" mode.
No Lily requirements, machine building, or other nonsense.
Does make the game easier for the female story character without all the lab work, giving you more free time.
You'll see the option when a new button pops up on the end-of-prolog screen saying "Or Not..."

Entirely new sperm aging process.

Like ovulation, new math and all that jazz.
Takes it from "this works for average sperm in an average woman" to "works with all the possible combos". (sperm tended to live way too long once you started increasing fertility)
Half life alone also wasn't sufficient because of the balance between sperm all being dead by their max lifespan, and sperm dying off too quick because too many half-lives just didn't work.

Now have a mixed system where there is a max age calculated using relevant fertility factors in a proper relationship, and rate of death is also calculated based on the factors related to that. One or the other will kill all the sperm.

Results are a lot more realistic in my testing.

Players going for a non-pregnancy-focused game will find sperm behavior more forgiving/realistic in terms of the potential for an accidental pregnancy.

Fixed a bug where working at progenerate would train your cooking skill instead of your communication skill, lol.
A bunch of code to help successfully load corrupted saves into a playable state.

Honestly, the best course is not to let your browser go crazy with your game data, but shit happens. Remember: save before you stop playing.
A lot of things are validated now, with some recovery when issues are found. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

Usually, when a corrupt/incomplete thing is found, it's either set to a default value or deleted depending on what it is.

Was able to successfully load and play a save with data corruption shared on our Mantis bug tracker (at www.aw-wiki.com).

A big part of this was clothes, which because of the way they are all procedurally generated and then stored, and commonly referenced by reference link rather than direct access, seems to make them a target for RAM hungry browsers.

some tweaks to clothing generators.
lot or really annoying clothing stuff. total pain in the ass, finding and preventing obscure errors that could happen in just the right situation.

fixed an issue where custom clothing being destroyed could result in resolvable errors if the character was wearing them. (remove the clothes that no longer exists to resolve). Added a lot more code to make sure this doesn't happen.
Fixed some errors that could arise from creating invalid custom clothing.
created validation for clothes to recover when the player tries to load a corrupted save.

More BestyKot popup tutorial images are now one-time view until you reset your tutorials record. some work, school, dating, probably something else too.
Amount of money earned from giving birth decreased somewhat, weekly money from having kids nerfed a good amount.
Happy Easter event that appears on the first day of the game after the prolog. Just a fun thing with a very Appletree flavor, and three images.
When worn clothes are destroyed due to wear and tear, there is now a notify message to alert the player.
Whatever else I did, honestly. there's a lot of minor things.

KotKode

Hucow job content:

3 new events with branching choices with some new characters as well as old citizens of Appletree. (18000+ chars)

Design and grammar fixes in the character creation and prologue menus and passages.
Starting info screens unification and prettification.
NPC made more alive. This is a part of the upcoming NPC behavioral expansion to make them less static and more interesting to interact with.

If NPC has an addiction it will progress with some chance making them more and more addicted over time.
Small chance of getting a new drug or alcohol addiction every week.

Fixed old local storage info restoration function. Now the game should load old achievements correctly. (Thaum note: ... maybe)

Known Issues

When working at Progenerate, if you use cheats to add extra wombs or amp up your fertility, or complete the sacred knowledge ep2 before you start working there, job events will be a little off or out-of-order. No errors or anything, but the changes to fertility can affect the timing of events.
BESTY Card Game!

Second thought sometimes deals fewer cards than takes from the hand. Because recursive functions are hard.
Not done yet doesn't always prolong the game after the orgasm. No idea why, will investigate it. If you have any info on that please notify me on Discord!
Futa PC cumming in while being in the "Sex" position can be listed as cumming inside NPC while being a passive partner. Need to expand the system more to take this into account.
The size of the cards went bigger because of the general interface stretching hack Thaum applied. I have noticed it too late to fix it reliably so will fix it next month.