People, stop fighting, angels are crying

We can be better - love is the answer!

New monster: Angel

She's here at last! Meet the divine beauty:

For those of you who have had the pleasure / misfortune of being familiar with a game titled MtG, I will say that our angel is Orzhov. For everyone else, I will simply say that she loves money xD. Probably not the most obvious conclusion, but it's not like we're here to stay in bounds! In short, for enough money, Angel will agree to just about anything. But if you're poor - alas....

A few additional hints that may be helpful to you:

1. Angels have a thing against goblins. If you've managed to turn into one, you might want to hold off on going to the skies.
2. Angel is basically Supergirl. Consider this: she can fly (of course she can, she has wings), she's nearly invulnerable, and she can even shoot lasers out of her eyes (well, almost, it's more like she's emitting concentrated heat, but it looks very similar).
3. Angel's behaviour may remind someone of a cat that first bites your hand and then licks it: Angel can be very harsh in her caress, but don't be afraid - if she hurts you too badly, she herself will heal you afterwards.
4. In general, despite their mercantile nature, Angels are rather merciful creatures. So, if you piss them off foolishly, they won't kill you, they'll leave you to reflect on your behaviour and fly away. But be warned that it would be unwise to expect such generosity twice.

New animations

Added new battle animations, on top of the existing "claw slashing" (because it didn't work for some types of monsters - the Cowgirl doesn't even have claws!)

Now, if you are hit by a Cowgirl or Bunny, you will see dust clouds instead of the standard animation. Also, a unique animation has been created for Angel:

I have to admit, I had to work up a sweat with it xD. I'll allow myself a little lyrical digression, as this story perfectly demonstrates how developers find adventures on their arse. 

So, the task before us is to draw "lasers" that move from Angel's eyes to one of the four areas she can attack (head, torso, arms or legs). We know the coordinates of the centre of each of the body parts, both of Angel and of the player character (taking into account possible polymorphs). That is, we can easily display the movement of lasers along a line like this:

But Angel isn't a Cyclops, she has two eyes! And it needs two lines. Well, no problem, let's try to move the line a couple of pixels to the left/right, we'll get what we need, it's not hard, right?

Wrong.

Well, I mean, it took me about half an hour and a couple of sheets of paper with formulas to realise that it's wrong. At first I thought it was no big deal. But in the end I had to give up and resort to googling how parallel translation is done. Fortunately, I found the result quickly:

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/2593627/i-have-a-line-i-want-to-move-th...

It's true what they say: if you have a problem, chances are someone else had it before you. It is great that this someone has already solved it for me five years ago! It's a pity that I have already forgotten everything I was taught in uni on vector algebra and couldn't solve the problem myself. So, kids, learn your maths! Or don't, StackExchange isn't going anywhere. Probably.

In general, what I wanted to say is that for such a seemingly simple task as drawing a couple of rays, sometimes you have to sweat (come on, vector algebra, for this, really? ffs). Maybe if I used some more advanced engine it would be easier, but we'll never know (by "never" I mean "at least a couple of years until I learn to use more advanced engines").

New mechanic: dream shards

I want to give you, the players, the feeling that you're accomplishing something; that you're getting something (besides invaluable life experience) even if you lose in a run. At the same time, I don't want to implement a full-blown (i.e. gameplay-affecting) meta-progression. So what do I do? What can I give you if not new classes, skills and weapons?

The answer is simple: new sexy scenes! So, how the new mechanic works:

• when you "defeat" the girls, they leave behind, in addition to their loot (if they had any), a certain number of small blue crystals - dream shards, which you can collect;
• when you finish a run, you get some additional shards for the items and gold you collected; after that, all the shards you have are sent to the vault (the further you get, the more shards you receive);
• the shards in the vault are preserved between runs;
• you can spend shards in the gallery to buy new images, which will then appear in the game.

Example:

Initially, there are two images available for Catgirl. The first is shown when she attacks you (for example, if she saw you fighting with someone). The second is shown when you pet her and she returns the favour (sucking you off). Now, after accumulating 500 dream shards, you can unlock the third image; it will show up when you and Catgirl have sex (if the image is not unlocked, you will only see a text message in the console on the side).

Please note: while shards may conjure up certain associations, they are not "premium currency". The only way to get them is to play the game. That's my promise.

In the future, there will be more ways to unlock additional images in the game (for example, instead of "buying" a catgirl image with shards, you can get one by banging a total of 100 catgirls over the course of your adventures). Also, in addition to single images, you'll be able to unlock full scenes (with very detailed descriptions and voiceovers)! It's all in the plans for now, but I'll be experimenting to give you the best experience!

New version

With the implementation of Angel, there are now at least two monster girls in each of the five locations (and even as many as three in the grassland) - or eleven girls total! Thus, I have reached my goal for the initial release (the final version will have five kinds of girls in each location, but for version 1.0 I had only intended two). This truly momentous event had to be celebrated somehow, so I'm upping the secondary version of the game to three - behold, NetShag v0.3.31! Sounds solid, doesn't it? You can feel the progress right away. There's more to come!

Speaking of which: I'm planning to take a bit of time away from the coding itself and focus on the "theoretical" underpinnings of the game. Specifically, I want to plan more items and abilities for the player, think about balance, progression speed - in short, think about the game "as a whole" so that it feels more like a game and not just a set of random encounters. Of course, I'm not going to completely abandon coding. Rather, I'll try to revisit the mobile UI issue - since it's not possible to determine the "true" resolution on certain devices, and some players see a stub about not being able to display the UI, even though it would actually be possible to display it. I'll try to fix this. 

I'll see you around, Dreamwalker!