Hey lads!
I know I'm late with a devlog as always, so belated Happy New Year, lads!
There have been a lot of real-life issues lately, so things are getting delayed again. If you're interested, I invite you to read my personal rant — if not, just skip it as always and go to the next paragraph.
The main problem with writing devlogs is that they (most of the time) take time away from working on the project. I always prefer to work rather than write, but there are moments when I genuinely feel like writing a devlog instead.
I can't split myself, nor can I tell my freelancers "don't contact me for 2 weeks, I'm working on the old UiTC", so whenever any issues arise with UiTC2:R, I have to deal with them. Over the last few days, we've mostly been trying to fix the character model, so I haven't had time to touch anything else or to release the devlog that has been about 90% complete for days already. And you know I can't release the game in such a glitched state, thus delays happen.
Here's the link to the sneakpeak videos.
So, personal rant:
Starting with Christmas, for two weeks we’ve been sick, so my Christmas–New Year’s break turned into hell. Working while being sick is hard, but working while the kids are also sick is a nightmare, so I didn’t do as much lately, nor did I get any rest. Our outdoor temperatures dropped to -15–20C, so suddenly everyone around started getting sick en masse. And they’re supposed to reach -25C and below soon. Personally, I don’t mind it, as I like it cold, but people get sick, cars don’t start, and you can’t even get a kid to kindergarten, so that complicates a lot of stuff.
Also, we moved into the new place before Christmas, but then a pipe broke and flooded the house. While the damage wasn’t that extensive, we’re forced to temporarily stay at my parents’ place while further renovations are done. No idea how long it will take, because nobody currently has time to take care of it, but they promised us January, so we’re still waiting.
Then, project-wise, we’re dealing with some heavy shit on all fronts. My writer is currently sick, we’re remaking the character layering in Spine that I mentioned last month, and now I’m temporarily staying at my parents’ place, so it’s really hard to concentrate and progress is slow for now. I’ve set up my PC, so I keep working, but under these conditions it’s quite problematic (imagine working on an NSFW project in a house full of people walking around). Luckily, most of my January work is technical, but still, all this noise and chaos...
Anyway, despite my current circumstances and multiple problems, the work itself was proceeding smoothly before, and my efficiency has definitely increased lately (better tools, improved workflow, etc.). Soon, the kiddo is returning to kindergarten, the renovation will be over and we can move back (I'm gonna have my secluded room in the basement to work), and then we will have spring (my fave season). So stuff should get back on track soon.
It's been another year!
So, it’s been another year, and I’ve been wondering what to write about — because it’s been another year, right? My first idea was to make a summary of the 2025 work. Since you know how lengthy my devlogs are, and they’re already out there, you can easily scroll through them, check the sneakpeaks, or simply play older versions of UiTC and UiTC2:R for comparison.
Another thought was to write about the project’s story, but I did that last year. And yet people still keep saying that I start and drop projects all the time, while Unaware of the World and Unaware in The City are the same game — same code, same dialogues, same events. The only difference is that in UotW I was a team member, and UiTC is me picking it up on my own and continuing the work where it ended, but with some freelancers.
So I’m sorry, but I have only one project that I picked up and decided to continue after my old team disbanded. UiTC2:R, on the other hand, is a total remake of UiTC, and here I did indeed remake everything from scratch, because UiTC was impossible to work with due to the spaghetti code. Sure, it has some drastic changes, like switching to an isometric view, but UiTC was what I could do and what I had to work with (the leftovers of UotW), while UiTC2:R is what I actually want to do.
So this time I decided — no bonus ranting. There’s a shitload of work ahead, working under the current circumstances is problematic, trying to gather my thoughts is almost impossible, and I want to release something in January. So I’m going to mainly focus on UiTC and UiTC2:R in this devlog.
About UiTC:
For v46 and v47, I won’t be doing typical sex events. For the old UiTC, instead of adding new events (which I believe there are already plenty of), I want to focus on fixing and improving the game, as well as adding some long-demanded features.
As you know, my graphic artist ghosted me almost a year ago, so I can’t do anything art-related, such as clothes, faces, locations, and so on.
I also can’t do anything about X-Ray for the same reasons, so creampie can’t be added without remaking X-Ray with another artist and manually adding it to every existing scene. Maybe one of my artists will be willing to do it one day in the distant future, and maybe I’ll feel like going through all existing events one by one and adding it manually — who knows? But for now, nope, not happening.
Right now, I have a few main goals:
First, I want to let you get your boyfriend, flat, and flatmate back after losing them, as well as add a way to get a flat with the Homeless backstory, so you don’t lose a big chunk of content in different playthroughs. I also need to create proper events so all of this makes sense.
Second, I want to allow working in the brothel and on the RLD streets at the same time, without having to make a permanent choice.
Lastly, I want to add support for multiple languages.
All of this is ridiculously hard — not because it just takes a lot of time, but because making it work, testing it, and fixing what breaks is a constant struggle. I don’t know which features will actually make it into v46, or if some of them will be possible at all. This is the kind of work where it’s impossible to predict how long it will take or how many new issues it will create.
The code is a mess, and since most of my focus is on UiTC2:R, it’s even harder to find my way around the old UiTC. I’m honestly a bit scared to touch these parts, but I’ve still made it my goal to add these changes. The chances of me screwing something up and corrupting your saves are quite high, so v46 will first be released to patrons only. After that, I’ll release it on Steam and itch once I’m sure it works as intended — probably about two weeks later.
Once these changes are done, with translation support being the final step, that will be the point where I fully stop working on the old UiTC and focus on UiTC2:R instead. Supporting multiple languages while adding new content is simply impossible for a solo developer, so there will be no more new content after that point (aside from fixes and small changes, of course). I don’t know if this will happen with v47 or v48, but you will definitely get the last major update for the old UiTC in 2026. Knowing my chaotic nature and my inability to fully let go, there’s a small chance I’ll randomly drop v49 or even v50 if I feel inspired — but please consider this project finished and don’t get your hopes up.
Sorry, but I can’t solo-maintain two big projects. I’m overworking myself, and at this point I feel closer to burning out than to releasing the game. Nobody wants that, because if it happens, you won’t get UiTC2:R, and I won’t have money to make a living.
For v46, I’m setting a hard January deadline, as I also want to release the next UiTC2:R tech demo soon (the last one was in July, yikes). The complex nature of v46 is also adding its own delays.
About UiTC2:R:
Firstly, thanks a lot for your support, lads. As promised, I started looking for a background artist, and hopefully I'll manage to get one by February at the latest. However, I won't be hiring a UI artist, as I don't want yet another person to manage, explain things to, bug-test with, and bounce back and forth with. Because of that, all UI will be generated through code, with a streamlined style shared across all elements. At a much later date, I'll ask one of my artists to provide some fitting UI elements that I can swap in, so I won't have to remake the UI again to fit new art files.
As a side note, I updated Unity to 6.3. My dialogue tool is pretty powerful, but a bit archaic, so I was having issues with Unity 6.2 (and even more in 6.3). Because of that, I had to do some serious reworking, while making sure I did not break anything that could lead to deleting all existing dialogues and scenes. I want to stay up to date and make sure old features do not suddenly break in the future (like they did with the old UiTC), so I am going to stick with the newest Unity editor versions going forward.
I have a lot of unfinished features that I started some time ago and then left for later, dropped, or waited for a better idea for, such as ground loot, crowd control (as in controlling multiple NPCs at once), improved UI, and multiple QoL changes. There are also many bigger and smaller tweaks all over the place. That's why sometimes you'll see me posting multiple big features that were mostly started ages ago and are only now being added, or you won't see me posting anything for a long time because I'm working on something big and time-consuming (I know, pure chaos, but that's how I've always been). These things need to be finished sooner or later, and I know you guys are waiting to finally play the game, so I'm more focused on adding stuff related to the core gameplay loop.
After upgrading and fixing my tools, my workflow has improved greatly. I'm now able to create more advanced scenes in UiTC2:R faster than I could in the old UiTC, so I'm pretty confident that UiTC2:R will become playable in 2026. Not finished, just playable. A full finished release will still take years.
Game development isn't linear. One day I can release a scene because all the required pieces are in place, and another day I might spend the entire time brainstorming and trying to figure out how to pull something off. Sometimes I have to remake a feature from scratch because the original design had too many flaws to work properly in the bigger picture. Other times, one small addition can complicate an entire system. No matter how experienced or skilled you are, there's always something that will give you a headache.
After releasing v46, I'll do my best to release the next UiTC2:R tech demo for my patrons, but looking at the schedule and recent issues, it will be delayed until the first half of February. When I can't work for weeks for whatever reason, the project's progress also halts (aside from freelancer work), so delays are only natural.
After that, I'd like to start bimonthly UiTC2:R updates, intertwined with bimonthly devlogs. So you'd get an update in February, a devlog in March, an update in April, and so on. Monthly updates, with the amount of work involved and my workflow still not being fully streamlined, would be too much pressure. In the old UiTC, updates were mostly about adding new events. Here, it's both SFW and NSFW scenes using new systems (like skill checks, animations, and no black screens), plus completely new features, mini-games, locations, NPCs, UI, clothes, and more.
That said, I'm currently focused on finishing and fixing various systems in UiTC2:R and preparing the next tech demo for release. I also recently achieved a pretty important milestone that will make my scene work much smoother, as I'll have more control and need fewer workarounds (I've been trying to get this working for weeks). So that's some good news.
Anyway, together with Inkwell (the writer), we've already prepared concepts for multiple scenes, so with the April tech demo you'll finally be able to see how the game content starts to take shape, especially with a background artist on board.
Work done since the last devlog:
December is the busiest month of the whole year (Christmas + New Year), but this time you can also add being sick, home renovation, and finally moving to a new place. So there was really not much time to work, while I tried to focus on finishing unfinished features and fixing issues in preparation for the next UiTC2:R tech demo release. Anyway, here we go!
I'm in the middle of updating some very old UI parts so they're generated through code instead of being set up manually. When I first started working on UiTC2:R and was learning the new UI tools, I did everything manually in the editor. But for a while now I've been creating all UI features through code, while mixing code-based and manually made elements was giving me terrible results. So I'm deleting the old UI elements and recreating them from scratch through code, slowly over time, while making everything consistent.
I was getting really annoyed with how the chat bubbles looked, so I had to remake them. I fixed some bugs and added proper window and font scaling, along with a setting that lets you adjust the size yourself. Later I'll add text coloring so you can distinguish important information from the player's or regular street chatter.
Here’s the remade dialogue window: it now resizes based on the visible character portrait and the number of choices, and the font automatically shrinks as the amount of text increases. I also moved dialogue choices to the bottom-right corner so they don't cover the screen. If a choice leads to a special outcome, it will be highlighted in a different color (e.g., mini-games in green for 100% success, red for 0%, etc.).
As for the chat/gossip feature - it's not ready yet. The general idea is that it will let you level up skills, increase NPC disposition, or learn something useful - just another option among the multiple ways in the game.
I also remade the inspect window and made it draggable. I couldn't decide where to position it, so now you get to worry about that, lol. But seriously, I just want to give you modern QoL improvements wherever possible, because the old UiTC was really archaic.
The old UiTC had a simple message log that recorded everything from the dialogue window. Here, it works more or less the same, but now it also includes chat bubbles, stat & item changes, messages, tutorials - basically all text. And because that would clutter the log too much, I added filters as well.
It’s still unfinished and a little buggy, but I won’t be prioritizing it at the moment.
As mentioned, I want my UI style to be consistent between all UI windows. Here’s a quick preview of the new Character Creation window. It still needs some fixes and tweaks, but its core functionality is already done.
Yet another inventory UI remake to make it consistent with the other UI. The inventory logic itself has not changed much, though.
The main point here is the added Cloth Dye feature I mentioned a few months ago. Jewelry cannot be recolored due to technical limitations, but the majority of clothes can.
If you buy or find consumable Dye items (which also serve as a money sink), using them will unlock new presets that you can freely edit in your wardrobe (I am not a sadist). These presets can then be applied to any clothing items you want, and they can even be shared, so if you want all clothes to be black, you only need a single Dye. Editing a Dye will also update all clothes that use it. And yes, they can be used on unique outfits as well, like the nurse or waitress outfits.
It is still an early WIP and fairly rough, since it is a large system, but it already (mostly) works.
One of the main reasons for the recent delays is that we are remaking how the body is layered, connected, and weighted. It is weeks of work (if not more), but it had to be done. After deciding which customization settings will stay and what types of accessories and clothing the game will have, we ran into animation issues that required workarounds, which created extra work and wasted time. Thankfully, we do not have many clothes yet, so doing this later would have been a big no-no. You probably will not see much of a visual difference, but everything will animate and function much better overall.
The problem is that this process is more complicated and time-consuming than we originally anticipated. Long story short, the moment we tried more sophisticated clothing (everything had been tested on naked characters or simple clothes), we could not get any good-looking results. Because of that, making clothes also became too time-consuming to make sense in the long term, especially since I want UiTC2:R to have more clothes and more variety than the old UiTC.
Here you can see 200 (yes, freaking 200!) NPCs constantly spawning, despawning, playing animations, changing clothes, moving, calculating paths and obstacles, popping chat bubbles, and more, all in 4K screen resolution. Tested on an i9-14900K and an RTX 4070, I was seeing 5-15% CPU usage, 10-20% GPU usage, and around 15-25 FPS while recording.
A few important things to note: this is just a quick test, not a real benchmark. You will never see this many NPCs on screen during normal gameplay, as the hard limit I am setting for the game is around 40-50 NPCs per location. I am aware of several performance issues that impact performance, and they will be addressed later in development. There also should not be any major upcoming features that significantly affect performance.
It will be more demanding than the old UiTC for sure, but you will not have any drastic FPS drops or long loading times. You will also have performance settings in the game, so it should run fine even on weaker PCs and phones, so no worries! It is quite ironic, but with 64 bit support and using Unity 6.3, the game will most likely run on a higher number of devices than the old UiTC, lol.
All that said, I have to admit I am pretty proud of our work on optimization.
Here’s the spawn system. Parts of the ground are marked as spawnable areas, and every chair, bench, or other object marked as a "spawn object" also has a chance for an NPC to spawn on it. Some locations allow NPCs to walk in and out as well (like Main Street), while each location uses its own spawn calculations, further affected by in-game time settings (more male thugs at night and in dangerous places, hobos in parks/slums, etc.) - completely changing how each location behaves during the day-night cycle. What’s more, Jane can interact with all NPCs and the majority of objects, either for their specific uses or simply as flavor.
The same system is used for every location, and the entire process has been streamlined, saving me a ton of time and making it easy to use throughout the game. It could use a few more additions, but that’s something for the distant future, once the game is more developed.
As you know, I am pretty persistent, so after updating Unity to 6.3 I gave localization another shot - and voila. It works (at least theoretically). Even better, it should be backward-compatible with the old UiTC (since it is the same dialogue tool at its core), although I do not have time to test that for now.
I tested it thoroughly and optimized it to some extent. Language switching works on the fly, without restarting the game or reloading everything, as it simply swaps text from the appropriate files. That makes it lightweight, fast, and avoids bloating the game by loading or unpacking unused languages (dialogues already load faster than in the old UiTC).
A few important notes: I am talking specifically about my dialogue tool used for all in-game dialogues, not UI elements or other on-screen text, which will require a separate translation system. This also does not mean the game will suddenly be translated. The old UiTC has tens of thousands of dialogue lines, and translating UiTC2:R during its aggressive development phase would be far too time-consuming.
Another issue is how to translate it. Handing .json files to random people is a big no. I will probably try AI translation first, but I am not sure whether any tool will allow NSFW content, or whether it will properly handle large .json files. I would need to write my own tool that extracts dialogues from .json files, syncs and parses them to Google Sheets that I can share with people to edit, and then downloads the translated text and injects it back into .json files, or something like that.
That said, if I manage to port my upgraded dialogue tool and translation system back to the old UiTC (and find a sane way to translate the .json files), I’ll translate the old UiTC into other languages in 2026, most likely prioritizing regions where English proficiency is lower (such as China) and basing the selection on UiTC's Steam sales by region.
You know how sex animations usually have looped facial expressions, right? Instead of assigning the same static, looped facial animations to each sex animation, I decided to animate each facial part separately during sex, based on the character’s current facial expressions from events (enjoyment, shock, stress, etc.). Yeah, it’s a shitload of work, so it won’t be ready for the upcoming tech demo since I’m prioritizing required features, but I wanted to showcase it anyway.
Here's a preview of the one-piece waitress outfit for Kevin's Diner (standard variant) and a new wavy haircut.
I am not going to stall the release of sex content behind a "slow corruption" excuse like many Patreon devs do, so you will still get to see sex content in the early builds (although not with unique NPCs, as those require their storylines to progress first, so they will take a bit longer after being introduced).
There are rumors that UiTC2:R will include non-con scenes. That is false. Here is proof that the man clearly asks for the woman's consent first.
And as a small addition, I know there is a lot of text appearing on screen, so you will be able to turn some of it off to keep things from getting cluttered.
That's all for now. I'll write the next devlog probably around March.
Again - here's the link to the sneakpeak videos.
As a reminder, if you cancelled your Patreon/SubscribeStar pledge, just contact me and I'll give you the download link to UiTC v46 and UiTC2:R once they are released.
Cheers!