First, a quick update on the release of v0.18.1: I'm chewing through bug reports right now and a much improved version will be going up this time tomorrow.
Now onto a new feature I have been working on! When I started developing Lab Rats 2 I spent a lot of time on the programming side of things and relied on the core Renpy story flow elements to display things to the player. This was adequate early on, but as more options have been added to the game it has become clunky. To fix this I have been working on a new menu system.
Shown...
2019-07-10 08:44:22 +0000 UTC
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v0.18.1 is Live! Get it Here!
UPDATE: v0.18.2 has been released to improve the stability of the new version. It fixes many of the errors and crashes reported in v0.18.1.
PC: Lab Rats 2 v0.18.2-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.18.2-Mac
Android: 2019-07-08 07:35:13 +0000 UTC
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All of the bugs that have poked their head up in v0.18.0 (so far) have been squashed, so I've been using my spare time tonight to do some experimentation. In particular I am looking into a different method for rendering out the images used for clothing and character bodies to see what extra image processing options it would give me.
First, a lightning quick primer on 3D graphics. When displaying a 3D object there are three main types of light that need to be considered: diffuse, specular, and ambient. Diffuse light is highly scattered,...
2019-07-05 07:05:08 +0000 UTC
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Bug fixing for the recently released v0.18.0 is already underway, with a dozen minor bugs already squashed. One issue in particular had been simmering in the back of my head: when using outfit patterns there was a slightly transparent line visible between the two sections. This was particularly visible when both pattern section colours were the same. An example can be seen in the left image.
I noticed this issue when I first implemented the pattern system, but I had other more important features to refine and I decided it was good enou...
2019-07-03 08:11:17 +0000 UTC
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Lab Rats 2 v0.18.0 is live! Get it here!
PC: Lab Rats 2 v0.18.0-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.18.0-Mac
Android: Lab Rats 2 v0.18.0-Android
LR2 v0.18.0 is ready for it's week of bug testing before it...
2019-07-01 08:12:00 +0000 UTC
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The patron release of v0.18.0 is scheduled for early morning July 1st, which means I only have a couple more days to hammer out some last minute work and do some much needed testing. I'm pushing to finish up some new dialogue, sluttiness modifiers, and stat changes related to two new details that are being added: pre-existing character relationships and condoms during sex.
In v0.18 girls will sometimes already be in a relationship when you meet them/hire them. Girls may be: Single, Girlfriend, Fiancée, or Married. Girls that are in re...
2019-06-28 07:44:25 +0000 UTC
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People who play Lab Rats 2 on Android will be happy to know I have tracked down and (hopefully) a bug that was preventing the import of character outfits from the .xml wardrobe files. The problem was related to file path names and file permissions, and now that it's fixed characters should properly populate their wardrobes with outfits. Other than that development has been chugging along pretty smoothly, with most of my time spent writing content for Alexia's introduction or working on rendering improvements.
2019-06-24 07:22:12 +0000 UTC
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For the last couple of days my computer has been rerendering all of the body images used in LR2 to eliminate the gaps seen in some positions between a girls chin and their body. While that was rendering I worked on a bunch of individually small tasks that should add up to a noticeable improvement in quality. These tasks have included: adding more personal information to a girls bio, showing exactly how much research, production, etc. the player generated when taking a business work action, and adding new dialogue lines when you stop having s...
2019-06-20 07:35:42 +0000 UTC
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I've been tackling some render quality issues yesterday and today, and I have some success to report! The particular issue I was trying to fix was the black/grey line visible between a girls neck and torso. This line was an artifact of the layering used to combined different facial types and body types. In theory the bottom edge of the facial render should have blended nicely with the body render below it, but a grey edge always appeared and made the transition obvious.
When I manually edited the images it was easy to blend the two ima...
2019-06-14 04:42:36 +0000 UTC
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Lab Rat 2 v0.17.1 is live and available to everyone! You can find the download links here!
Lab Rats 2 v0.17.1
LR2 v0.17.1 marks the beginning of phase two of development. Phase two is focused on introducing new characters, writing story arcs for these characters, and generating new content for existing systems. To kick this off this update introduces two new family members: Rebecca and Gabrielle, your aunt and cousin. When ...
2019-06-11 04:26:40 +0000 UTC
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This is going to be a slightly unusual release today. There was scheduled Patreon maintenance last night that I didn't plan for and I'm on a bit of a time crunch today, so I'll be releasing the links to v0.17.1 right now and I'll do a nice update summery and a few reddit posts on Monday.
PC: Lab Rats 2 v0.17.1-PC
Mac: 2019-06-07 13:55:24 +0000 UTC
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The title says it all on this one. The release of LR2 v0.17.1 is going to be bumped forward one day (so roughly 24 hours after this post goes live). I have some commitments on the weekend that have bled into Friday night, which means my choices were release a day early or three days late. I figured more time with the new version couldn't be a bad thing!
Bug fixing and improvements for v0.17 have been continuing apace. Some clothing rendering improvements and additions have finished up and are in the game, mostly fixing some clothing cl...
2019-06-06 06:00:21 +0000 UTC
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The links on the release page here have been updated. Major bugs preventing all sex scenes and several of the new character events from progressing have been fixed.
I need to apologize for the state that the recent Lab Rats 2 update was pushed out in. There is a basic level of functionality that you should expect, even for an early bug testing version, that I did not meet. I won't make any excuses, I should have been more organized and thoro...
2019-06-02 06:57:34 +0000 UTC
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Lab Rats 2 v0.17.0 is finished and ready for it's week of bug testing! Get it here!
PC: Lab Rats 2 v0.17.0a-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.17.0a-Mac
Android: Lab Rats 2 v0.17.0a-Android
2019-06-01 08:04:13 +0000 UTC
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Just a couple days now until the release of v0.17.1 to patrons for bug testing. I'm finishing up the writing that I've done and moving on to testing to make sure all of the new events trigger and that the new characters are working properly. All of my recent writing work has been focused on your new aunt and cousin characters (Rebecca and Gabrielle). Your new relatives are the first set of characters to receive a more personal, detailed set of events that I hope will make them feel more unique and likeable. I'm putting particular emphasis on...
2019-05-29 04:41:14 +0000 UTC
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Lab Rats 1 started development in the middle of November, which happened to be National Novel Writing Month. The concept of NaNoWriMo is to, as you might have worked out, write a novel in the span of a month. A novel ends up being very loosely defined as 50,000 words, which means maintaining a pace of a little under 2000 words a day. Early in LR1 development I was hitting NaNoWriMo writing rates or better for narration and dialogue. The sheer pace of writing built up a moment...
2019-05-24 06:21:30 +0000 UTC
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I meant to get this post up last night, but a cold I've been fighting off for a few days finally caught up with me and knocked me out like a light. I've recovered though and I'm back at it, writing new event dialogue/descriptions for v0.17. I'm just about finished the intro section for your aunt and cousin and have all of the behind-the-scenes code for them finished up (wardrobes, home locations, unique personality dialogue, etc.). With all that tech-administration done I'll be able to chug through a bunch of the storyline content I want to ...
2019-05-19 05:04:06 +0000 UTC
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I have been looking at my rendering setup and experimenting to figure out what can be improved. I am zeroing in on some issues with the way both faces and emotions are rendered and hope to have some fixes set up for tomorrow. If that goes well I will re-render all of the existing faces/emotions and have them included in v0.17. At the same time I will be rendering some new outfit patterns as I continue to widen the number of outfit designs supported.
On the storyline front I have begun to define character objects in game, create new hom...
2019-05-14 05:09:08 +0000 UTC
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This post is just a super quick update letting you know what I've been working on the last couple of days. Most of my work has been done tracking down bugs in the recent public build and planning out more of the key character storylines. Once the rough draft of each character's story arc is finished I'll start writing up the individual events.
Completing all of the stories is going to be a multi-update process and each character will be interdependent to some degree with other characters. I will be making incremental additions to chara...
2019-05-10 06:53:32 +0000 UTC
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Lab Rats 2 v0.16.1 is finished! Grab it here!
Linux and Windows: Lab Rats 2 v0.16.1-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.16.1-Mac
Android: Lab Rats 2 0.16.1-Android
Lab ...
2019-05-08 07:18:26 +0000 UTC
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Here is the link to the LR2 Storyline flowchart! This will contain spoilers and is highly subject to change.
Lab Rats 2 Storyline Flowchart
Use the comments here to discuss any storyline points or to make suggestions!
2019-05-04 09:55:04 +0000 UTC
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A bunch of things to report on tonight!
First up, bug fixing for v0.16.0 is going well. So far nothing completely game breaking has turned up and none of the fixes have taken too much time. I was able to do a little refactoring while bug hunting as well, so some ugly clothing pattern related functions are now much prettier.
Third and finally, I have been working on the Lab Rats 2 character storylines. I am trying out a new flowchart design that is working well so far. So far I have Mom and Lily's main blocked out pretty completel...
2019-05-04 09:44:49 +0000 UTC
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Lab Rats 2 v0.16.0 is finished! Grab it here!
Linux and Windows: Lab Rats 2 v0.16.0-PC
Mac: Lab Rats 2 v0.16.0-Mac
Android: Lab Rats 2 0.16.0-Android
Lab Rats 2 v0.16 is re...
2019-05-01 06:58:41 +0000 UTC
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The release of v0.16 in a couple of days will include a couple of improvements to the way Lab Rats 2 works. The update will give me the ability to flexibly handle how characters refer to you/are referred to and to create lightweight outfit variants that are made up of multiple colours. v0.16 will also be the end of major technical updates and the beginning of phase 2 of development. Phase 2 will focus on introducing new, unique characters and producing detailed storyline content for each of them to tie the game together.
These unique, ...
2019-04-27 08:32:52 +0000 UTC
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With the coming addition of patterns the outfit creator was in need of an update. Patterns are clothing variants that use the same underlying texture but can be recoloured or masked in different locations. The new outfit creation screen lets you see the different patterns available for an outfit, toggle between them, and set either the main colour or the pattern colour.
v0.16.0 will have a small collection of patterns, which I am currently rendering, included to bug test the system. More will be included for v0.16.1 and I expect the nu...
2019-04-25 09:48:58 +0000 UTC
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I've taken the proof of concept workflow I talked about last night and integrated it with both my rendering automation and the outfit display code in Lab Rats 2. I was able to generate a pattern for the normal tshirt, in this case to show off how it can be used to create text/graphics on an item. I also had the epiphany that as long as two pieces of clothing share the same topology, like shirts that all hug close to the skin, then patterns can be shared between them. I'll have to do a little more work to get that set up, but it should mean I...
2019-04-21 10:34:43 +0000 UTC
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The character title work is all done and implemented throughout LR2. The changes will be nice for writing new dialogue and scenes, and as an added bonus all menus throughout the game can now make use of the formatted names for characters. It's making the popup window that's normally in the bottom right look pretty slick for relatively little work.
With that done I've been able to move onto some other work. I just have a quick progress update on it tonight because I'm hoping to have a bunch of demo pictures and full technical explanatio...
2019-04-20 10:16:57 +0000 UTC
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With my crusade against loading times complete I've been able to move onto other, more interesting tasks. In particular I've improving the way characters in Lab Rats 2 refer to each other. Previously characters had a first and last name and those were always used during sections of dialogue. Internally the script file looked something like:
the_person.name "Hello [mc.name], how are you doing today?"
For some events I wanted you to refer to a character in a specific way, for example saying "your mother" instead of "Jennifer". Th...
2019-04-16 08:33:18 +0000 UTC
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I normally like to space out my Patreon posts by two or three days, but I felt like the post I put up yesterday deserved some closure. If you didn't get a chance to read through that post the tl;dr is that I'm hunting for the cause of the roughly minute and a half delay when starting up Lab Rats 2. After a lot of documentation, searching, and a few false starts I was starting to lose hope that I could figure out an elegent solution.
Well I h...
2019-04-12 07:26:39 +0000 UTC
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Following the release of v0.15.1 I've received a few reports that the game is proving to be very slow to load on some machines. Particularly strange are reports that starting the game from the generated build is painfully slow but starting it from the Ren'py launcher is silky smooth. I've noticed on my own machine that it can take a minute or so to launch the game or reinitialize it when testing, so I decided it was time to nail down this problem and solve it once and for all. If only it ended up being that easy.
The first step to solv...
2019-04-11 07:46:46 +0000 UTC
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