I had originally planned to share the work done on navigating the game world in Story Mode back in December but I hadn't had enough work done by the end of the year. Since then, I've added quite a bit more to the layout for the hotel, which is the area where the prologue will take place and is the first area that players will have access to. I've also been testing out ideas with the Ecchi system and so far those tests have proven to work really well, giving the player much more control over sexual encounters with waifus.

First up: the hotel. The video below shows the way in which players will likely navigate each of the different areas in the game. The prop points I've been working on - combined with the poser system that controls their pose and animations - allows me to set up specific interactions easily depending on the location and circumstance. I've even added some closets in which the player will be able to hide to sneak a peek at waifus at intimate times, at least until they progress further in their relationship with said waifu and can do so freely without risking negative consequences.

The buttons I'm using to begin the events are only there for testing purposes since they give me an easy way to get into a particular event to find any issues and to expand on the dialogue. These dialogue trees are also incredibly short since the system that controls them was featured in a previous devlog. What's new here are the camera rigs; the first which allows the player to navigate the hotel, the second being the event cameras that allow the player to control their view during dialogue events. I've even added the option for extra views to the latter, and am leaning towards these being unlockable rather than always available, likely made available when the player reaches a certain heart level with the target waifu.

Next up: the Ecchi system. It's not a perfect name for the system that controls intimate reactions with characters but I'm going with it anyway. Regardless, I've been testing out some ideas in this area and they've been working well enough that I'm nearly convinced I should commit to them fully. I've added an interaction button at the bottom-right of the screen that gives the player manual control over thrusting. Scrolling the mouse wheel while hovered over this button will increase the speed of automatic thrusting; the player can also interrupt this auto-thrusting by clicking the same button and moving the mouse while holding the button down. This gives the player complete control over the rhythm and pace while also allowing them less interactive and more automated option should they grow tired of jerking their mouse (pun intended). Note that I left the cursor visible during this clip so you can see how the mouse movement directly corresponds to thrust depth and speed; in practice it is not visible at all while manually controlling the animation.

Since these updates are working so well, I'll likely expand on them to include some alternates for each position; there will still be several positions available for each prop, but I may want to adjust the waifu's hips, shoulders, etc a bit as she becomes increasingly aroused and approaches orgasm. I also may want to add some small adjustments to her position randomly to make everything feel a bit more realistic, so these updates have been slated for next month when I'll be taking some time off from my fulltime job to focus on Waifu Island more.

Last but not least, if you've run a Google search for 'Waifu Island' recently, you may have noticed that another developer took my game's name and then spammed the internet with their visual novel that consists of next-to-no content and uses AI-generated art. In fact, they've already abandoned their original game and have been working on 'Waifu Island 2'; rest assured that you'll never see that sort of nonsense from me; I am fully committed to this project and although progress is often slow due to do my day job, it will see an official release in the future. 

I considered just renaming my project but then came to the realization that I have a card up my sleeve that they do not, and said card weighs much more than YouTube links and even store pages when it comes to SEO: I own the dot com. So, I contacted my hosting company to double-check that my game's content wouldn't be a violation of their TOS, and they gave me the green light to publish a website for Waifu Island.  So, I'm currently whipping up a landing page that will contain enough links and text for Google to crawl and bump me back up to the top of searches. I've gotten quite a bit of traffic from people running Google searches on 'Waifu Island' as a result of the title being prominent in most of my RedGIF videos, so it's important to me to put myself back in a position where that can happen. Problem solved, or at least the problem is slated to be solved soon.

Before I go I just want to let you know that I have an update to the game pending and I plan to publish that next week; I'll save the details therein for when it's ready, but it fixes some bugs and also includes a nice QOL update that has removed the thing that I found most frustrating when playtesting.