Novus
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Left Hand Magic - Build 34
🕑 Added 2025-11-01 09:17:04 +0000 UTCWhew! Sorry about the brief delay, folks! I seriously underestimated how much time testing was going to eat up this go around. The code involving adding the Friends with Benefits and Just Friends route splits for Arianna was complex enough to cause some difficult-to-track-down bugs, which ate up a lot of time unexpectedly. The build is here now, though!
As for what's in this build? More than you might expect. The obvious nit is the finishing up of the Harem Route with the Council Meeting, aftermath, and Epilogue. That, however, is actually the smaller section of the content. One of the things I pride myself on as a developer is always providing every last thing that I promised. At one point, after a lot of people requested alternate options for Arianna, I agreed to at least include alternative paths for Week 6 and the Epilouge. Until now, the 'Friends with Benefits' path was pretty much just a minor tweak on her main route, and the 'Just Friends' route hadn't been implemented.
That is no longer the case.
Now, if you reach Week 6 under the right conditions (For once I'm going to have to actually update the guide! But the basics are use your safeword a couple of times to avoid male interaction.), Arianna pulls you aside. This was always the case, but now both the Friends with Benefits option and Just Friends options lead to significantly divergent content. Three entirely new scenes with single animations, along with some differing interaction with various characters and divergent Epilogues. This means that Arianna's Route actually now has three possible 'Endings.' Though the 'main' route ending is still considered the one you stay in a relationship with her.
Now, aside from that, I've also begun the process of some major overhauls to the early content. Due to the Sound Project issues, I didn't get as far as I'd hoped, but the first two weeks of the game have had additional post-processing done to almost all of the stills to improve them. In a few cases (mostly in Talia's Route), some content has been outright re-rendered to fix a mistake I made with her horns early on. They were always supposed to be black, but early on I hadn't realized I needed to change the transparency layer on the horns graft object to get it to render that way. As a result, in some of her earlier stills and animations the horns were brown instead of the proper black. I even replaced one of her Event 1 animations, and almost squeezed in replacement of the second as well (it ended up having an error last minute, sadly) to correct that with the animation side as well.
Additional changes include touchups of a lot of the game's sprites, and a few other bits and bobs. There's still work to be done, originally I had intended to spend half of November grinding through a lot of additional polish work. In particular, I want to overhaul the relationship menu, cheats system, and credits page. I also need to work on post-processing for the animations in the early weeks. I would have done that at the same time as the still renders, except that the Sound Project needs to be done first. The way the sound is being redone, the sound is part of the video files that makes up the animations. This can actually be seen in the new batch of additions, as all the animations that are new to this build already have the sound improvements. (Note: Character voices might sound different because of that).
If I'd fixed up the animations without doing the sound at the same time, I'd have made more work for myself by needing to go back over them again later. So, I held off to make the improvements as I work on the Sound Overhaul Project. This means the stills and animations have some lighting/saturation/contrast mismatches currently, which will go away in the final release.
Anyway! Onward to the Links!
Extra Special Note: The game is now very close to it's final form, at least code wise. PLEASE report any bugs you run into!
Windows/Linux
Mac
Build 34 Release Notes
Harem Route is how finished.
Arianna's Route now has full development of Friends with Benefits and Just Friends Alternate Routes.
Multiple Animation Overhauls/Replacements
Early Game Still Render Overhauls
Bug Fixed and Type Corrections
Gallery Updates
Credits Updates
Comments
Novus
Could be a good time ;-). Of course, you can also check the guide update I'm about to post. The Arianna variant routes aren't HUGE divergences, but they contain a few unique scenes. Four animations, three of which are available in both variants routes, one which is only in the Just Friends route. Along with slightly different epilogues, of course.
Merlin
I am pretty sure I should start a new game with this update. I would not want to miss anything ๐.
