Several weeks ago, we sat down and planned out some short term content goals for the game. We set a target date of Dec 15 to release a number of new things, including enhancing existing content. More on our short term goals and a formal announcement of what we are releasing will come in the next few days!

One of the user stories we set up was this:

As a player,
I want the characters to be more lifelike
So they feel like they are really in the room with me.

Acceptance Criteria:
When I interact with the Goddess, her eyes meet mine and they move realistically.

When the Goddess speaks with me, her lips move in sync with what she is saying.

In fact, we’ve actually had this goal all along, but as mentioned in our last post, we are slowly adding layers of improvements over time. This particular improvement jumped our list of features in large part from the consistent feedback from fans and reviewers checking out the game.

Deviant did a bunch of research on different programs and decided to go with LipSync Pro by Rogo Digital. He chose this tool because it supports both blend shapes and bone animations, and has a lot of extra support for gestures and emotions.

Eventually, we’d like to investigate Oculus Lipsync for Unity, because it provides real-time lip sync, which will make it easy for players to use when we release moddable tools, but not as much customization. We decided to go for the more robust tool for our own content, but will be looking to make it easy for you to mod in the future, should you want to create your own custom fantasies!

We are hard at work on our next module, Dominatrix Simulator: Learning the Ropes, and on making improvements to Dominatrix Simulator: Threshold!

Two things worth saying a little about right now is how we are iterating the game’s development and what we have been doing to accelerate content development.

Iterating Game Development - Our Approach

We are building the game in modules so that we can roll out self-contained scenes faster than would normally happen in the game development life cycle. Each module is conceived of in its entirety but is not released in its fully polished final form. This means we can get raw content out quickly while still doing polishing on the back end - like a spiraling wave of lewd perfection.

Raw content for a module has several core elements: a Mistress (or two), a script with subtitles, the game mechanics that support the script, and an environment.

At the most basic level, with those things in place, players can play through the game and enjoy some delicious submission while being able to give us feedback on what will make the game even better. Because we are ambitious and want this game to be more than playable, but in fact gorgeous and immersive, we will be adding layers of improvement over these core elements as we continue to evolve the game. In fact, think of our approach as a way for you to watch game development unfold in real-time.

Let me give you an example. We chose to release Dominatrix Simulator: Threshold as a more fully complete module than just raw content in order to showcase what the game would ultimately be. The initial layers we added to the core content included voice-over, music, ambient sounds, and ambient poses. Later, we added more layers by putting in post-production lighting, a pose assistant, and a way for you to know if your “yes” or “no” response was being recognized. We will continue adding layers such as lip sync, animations, and a custom environment.

Building and releasing the game in this way may make it feel like it will never be finished, but there is a method to our madness! Our goal is to keep producing content as long as we are being funded to do so and we don’t want to be unable to deliver something after you have supported us! So, we will always focus on the core content first, get that out, then polish and improve it over time. If we can do both before releasing content, we will, but we won’t hold core content back if it’s ready to go!

More on upcoming content and a RELEASE DATE when I post again in a few days!

Faster Content Creation

And on the subject of Patron funding!

Support for the project has risen dramatically in the last couple of months thanks to visibility on Steam and the broad range of places people can find us online (eg, Reddit, Milovana, VRPorn, GameVirt, etc),

Thanks to the backing of our amazing Patrons and the willingness of so many fans to get involved, we now have a small team of people helping us produce content, providing feedback, or volunteering their time on the game’s development. We are grateful for each and every one of them! This means we are moving through our content production pipeline so much faster! We are still getting into a rhythm as a group, but you can expect to see a lot more content in the near future!

OUR TEAM

Deviant Dev - Lead programmer, lead designer
Devilish Domina - Producer, writer, voice actor, game designer
Sacb0y - Concept art, character modeling, custom shaders
Just Jeff - Concept art, character modeling, rigging, animation
Maxxiiee - Environment art
Fervid - Environment art
ACEmat - Writing
JP - Production assistant, quality assurance
Grizzly - In-game fan art

If you want to volunteer to help, we welcome fan involvement! Message us here or on Discord to see what you can do!

We have re-engineered the way the game recognizes your "yes" and "no" head movements to reduce accidental answers and improve responsiveness. Not only will the head nods and shakes be more reliable now, but we've included visual feedback when an answer is about to be given, and confirmation after it's made. Just like the audio feedback, you can toggle this visual feedback on and off in the menu.

We hope this will help those where were having trouble with the game tricking them into answering "No" when they very much wanted to say "Yes".

So say "Yes" to us and give the game another go! And please let us know if you still run into yes / no gameplay issues!

Enjoy!

In response to player feedback, we've implemented an options menu that will allow you to customize your play experiences and get past poses when you get stuck:

• toggle on / off - subtitles
  
• toggle on / off - player voice
  
• toggle on / off - yes/no gesture
  
• recenter view
  
• restart game
  
• adjust graphics quality
  
• choose response to dialogue

The additional benefit of this is that they game will be much more keyboard / mouse friendly for those wanting to play through a desktop simulator! We will eventually optimize for desktop, but we want to get more content in first!

In addition to the menu, we've implemented some visual effects post processing and an improved shader.

Finally - the pose recognition should be much more user-friendly! We've modified one of the poses so you won't lose controller tracking anymore.

Let us know what you think of these changes and know that more content is coming soon!

Check out the infamous Shades encountering our seductive Goddess as he tries VR for the first time and shares what he thinks of her!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TC46kK7yiI

Dominatrix Simulator is not just a game with a single Mistress or a single experience. This game is designed to bring you a house full of Mistresses, all with their own style, flare, and kinky preferences for you to submit to!

Dominatrix Simulator: Threshold introduces you to the first, and ultimate Mistress, the Goddess. But you aren't worthy of her, so you must be sent on to be instructred, trained, and groomed by the women filling her house.

The next release will be Dominatrix Simulator: Learning the Ropes. The content will be rolled out in stages, rather than waiting for one big release at the end. This way, we can show you progress, use feedback to improve the game, and get content out as fast as we can create it. So, when we say 'release' we mean that we already have the characters, the story, and the game mechanics fleshed out for Dominatrix Simulator: Learning the Ropes, so when all of those ideas are full realized, the release will be complete.

Then we will move on to the next release phase with new content, characters, scenes, story, and features.

We hope you enjoy going on this journey with us as we flesh out this world of immersive submission and look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas as we do!

Stay tuned for more updates on what is coming!

In case you are interested in taking a closer look at the Goddess, our artist Sacb0y has posted her here on Sketchfab!

https://sketchfab.com/models/142bc2b099fc4a31b77b54110c02ee54

We're really excited to be on this platform to share with an amazing community of gamers what we've been working on! This early release version of our game is about three weeks old now and, after a brief hiatus to recoup from the mad dash to get it ready to share, we're back on deck working on a number of things, some of which will be shared in an updated release within a few weeks.


Responsiveness of the pose tracker improved to respond to a wider area

Resolution of the floor in the bechambers improved


Deviant is building a player menu to allow you to adjust options such as subtitles and the yes/no gesture plus a list of explicit choices available so anyone can play, including players unable to get into poses and players using the mouse and keyboard

We’re designing a system that will allow you to be reviewed for your performance and appropriately rewarded or punished for the good and bad marks you’ve earned respectively


We’ve hired an environmental artist to make higher quality, custom environments within the same genre and atmosphere

The design for Mistress Yuki-Onna and her nemesis, Nega Yuki, are with our artist Sacb0y to model

The design for a 3rd Mistress, Headmistress [name TBD], is being fleshed out

The outline for our new script is drafted

We’re putting out feelers for an animator who works in the adult genre using Blender (hit us up if you know anyone!)