Greetings PaperDemons! In the interest of transparency, every quarter I post a developer update to keep you informed on bug fixes, feature releases, and upcoming development plans. This blog post includes changes since the last developer update in January.

We have had 6 releases since the last update. Our current release is v21.1.0.

🌟 New Features

🧍‍♀️ Character Database

The most exciting new feature is the introduction of our Character Database for partnered Art RPGs. Players of Dracostryx and PaperDemon Art RPG will soon start to see their character imports appear on PaperDemon and be able to easily see character status, character items, and artwork of the character. Having the data in a database will also allow us to introduce more automations in the future.

Here's a look at what it can do:

• Characters can be added/edited by admin staff members designated by the Art RPG

• A character sheet will display data about the character including who the current owner is and visual ancestry information.

• Players can see all of the characters owned by them or someone else by viewing their profile and clicking the “Characters” tab.

• Players and admins can browse and search the character archive.

• All artwork associated with that character will appear on the character sheet.

• Players have a special “Player Notes” section where you can add nicknames, biography, and more about your character. The owner of the character will have access to editing this information.

• Items can be transferred to the Character's inventory and the owner of the character will receive a notification of item changes.

• Players and game admins can see a complete history of who changed what and why with the character.

• The Character sheet also tracks a history of the image of the character in-case the import needs to go through changes (such as caused by genetic modifications or character updates)

See one of our player's characters as an example.

Dracostryx characters are still being populated. As of this writing, only 286 of the roughly 13K characters have been added. There's a lot so it will be a while before these are fully populated.

For those playing the PDARPG, all PDARPG characters should be imported within the next 2 weeks. Expect to see your portal badges attached to your characters soon. You'll receive a notification once the badges are transferred.

👗 UI Improvements

🛌 The Inn

We've renamed our “Members Portal” to “The Inn”. Naming it a “portal” was confusing since we also have “portals” in the PaperDemon Art RPG and these two portals are two entirely different things. We've also made this link more obvious in the user menu.

New players to the PaperDemon Art RPG often get confused about where to go next after registering their character. So we've introduced a new walkthrough written by Shyftlock that appears in the Inn to guide new players through the process of completing the apprenticeship challenges.

The Challenge list in the Inn has also had some major UI improvements. Often players were confused after collecting their XP, the challenge would appear as if it was never completed. This was because the interface was resetting in case you wanted to complete it again but this created too much confusion and generated a lot of help inquiries.

We've now changed it to show these recurring/ongoing challenges in a “complete” state and also show you any artwork associated with those completed challenges. It also shows you artwork that you have not yet completed XP for.

The partnered games you're currently playing now appear in the left hand column of the Inn so that you have easier access to finding characters, items, and more information from these games. If you don't see a game you're an active member in, then you'll need to join their group from the Art RPG directory.

📃 Queue Improvements

Our partnered Art RPGs now can benefit from pre-filled form templates and queue information.

When players go to add their artwork to an ARPG queue, it will now automatically put the form template directly into the text box along with a link for more information about that queue, saving players time from having to find the form and saving admins time from having to deal with missing information or wrong queue submissions. It also will prevent submitting to closed queues.

🌠 Other notable improvements

• You'll now be notified when items are transferred to your item bank.

• We've introduced an email list where players can email when they have questions. Information on this is available at The Inn.

• Misc bug fixes with item system.

• We had several reports of a “Proxy Error” appearing and the site not loading intermitently. We're pretty sure this is fixed now but please report it to us if it comes up again.

See the Changelog at the end of this article for a complete list of bug fixes.

📢 Community updates

We've made some changes to some of our site filters and galleries.

🐾 New filterable galleries

The following galleries have been added and enabled as filters.

• Feet

• Inflation

• Abuse and Torture

If you don't want to see this type of content, please adjust your filter settings.

🔞 Galleries renamed

WARNING: this section contains mature terminology! Please skip ahead to “What's Coming” if you're not an adult.

We've had a lot of feedback about the naming of some of our galleries and have made some updates. Terms like “Yaoi” and “Yuri” are fetishized terms that were from our olden days and our influence as an anime art community. The names have been updated to be clearer, more inclusive, and follow standard naming used in other communities.

Manga Studio Gallery ▶ Clip Studio Paint

Female/Female - Yuri ▶ WomenLovingWomen

Male/Male - Yaoi ▶ MenLovingMen

Male/Female - Hetero ▶ MenLovingWomen

Yiffy ▶ AnthroPorn

Zoophilia (aka bestiality) ▶ FeralLove

We also had a request to rename the Rape gallery to NonCon but not everyone knows the NonCon name. We had a discussion on it in the discord adults channel but opinions are fairly split on this. We've opted to leave it as-is for now.

🏁 What's coming

🎲 Art RPG Content

We've got lots more content lined up including the launch of our first item sale and launch of our premium currency. We've got new challenges and game mechanics in the works for release soon including crafting and a character development challenge where you can pick from a long list of prompts.

🌟 Site Features/Improvements

We'll be continuing with our 2021 development plans. The main task to handle this quarter is an overhaul of our tagging and art submission system.

We've also gotten some feedback that our ARPG queue system has some issues when a submission is added to multiple queues, it's only visible in one queue at a time. So we're going to work on fixing that as well as making the queues visible to everyone so you can see your status/place in line.

That's all! Thank you for reading this far! Now here's the changelog for you techy nuts who want to see more.

📒 Changelog

975059ef (tag: v21.1.0) 🐛 fix (game-items) fix broken player inventory and player item transfers

39f28ef3 🍱 assets (landing) add sample player characters

39b83e12 (tag: v21.0.0) 🐛 fix (game-characters) display admin who made change in changelog

7ebd4439 🐛 fix (game-characters) refresh lineage cache of descendants when updated

df5e1759 ✅ test (game-challenge) fix failed test

8accad00 👗 ui (flags) hide pm box until admin selects recipient

b0571673 👗 ui (game-challenge) make completion state of a challenge clearer

fca84ca6 🐛 fix (game-challenges) complete state tracking issues with challenges

32719f48 🔨 refactor (flags) move queue definitions to a database table

fcf2f501 🐛 fix (email) fix bug with email template site_url missing var

ccebe8de ⭐ feat (game-items) support notifications for character item transfers

6cf55a12 🍱 assets (images) add new logos, icons and add to email header/footer

de4da501 ⭐ feat (game-characters) admin transfer items to/from characters

1dd85b22 🐛 fix (game-items) fix broken transaction page

592943b5 (tag: v20.1.0) ⭐ feat (game-characters) make tag id clear for character tagging

b8057cc8 ⭐ feat (game-characters) display characters on player profile

6fb0c476 🐛 fix (game-characters) view bug with character table list view

296177be ⭐ feat (game-characters) add create character form

0b6843b7 ✅ test (portal) fix failed test for footer notices component

889b5719 🐛 fix (game-characters) history errors with new characters

b1f42988 🍱 assets (game) display current amount of xp in xp bar

67832e71 🍱 assets (game) add player-help email to the inn

17aab3e8 🍱 assets (game) improve user access to game groups

d8c6fbb8 (tag: v20.0.0) ✅ test (tests) remove final scope from jasmine test

e30df7b2 🐛 fix (game-characters) checkbox state in gameData wasn't loading/saving

7a341049 ⭐ feat (game-characters) add a data field to track if character received packing allowance.

44f06cae 👗 ui (nav) Rename members portal to the inn in legacy ui

4f912561 🐛 fix (forums) pagination on topic if trailing slash missing

e83287cd 👗 ui (comics) make choosing mature setting for comic clearer

d9bcc4aa 🍱 assets (app) campaign link for adhd artist podcast

1fe9509c 🐛 fix (app) pass query parameters in js redirects

ed9fd7ea 🐛 fix (game-characters) save owner of character

0c51f6c3 ⭐ feat (game-character) display change log on character page

2990ef6a 🐛 fix (app) disable promo in SSR mode to fix proxy error

625a1822 👗 ui (game) link to new getting started wiki

8ba5d577 👗 ui (game-items) display person who initiated transaction

45f2294b 🐛 fix (game-items) fix bug with notes display on transaction receipt

cdf28ec6 🍱 assets (news) SEO set art rpg in meta keywords

b9fddfe9 ⭐ feat (notifications) view art rpg notifications

3c1a1ef0 ⭐ feat (user-settings) allow user to adjust game notice frequency

fc689d66 ⭐ feat (game-items) email game notifications

ae5ff511 ⭐ feat (game-items) add notification when mod transfers items

4836b5b5 ⭐ feat (game-characters) list items on character sheet

dbce5953 🔨 refactor (game-items) move item list to reusable component

a1309bf3 🔨 refactor (game-characters) track points as a primary field

b924829d ⭐ feat (game-characters) edit characters ui

fdb51b38 🐛 fix (game-characters) lineage display issues

ae5b7f18 🐛 fix (game-characters) api save manual lineage and return on save

d845633b 🐛 fix (forums) user log link breaks if multipage

93a25fa9 (tag: v19.1.0) 👗 ui (game-characters) hide link to character admin

c863f737 🔨 refactor (ssr app) fix proxy error by moving services to root

cd8e0708 🐛 fix (profile) broken link to profile from a blog post comment

9e0652a2 🍱 assets (newsletter) mailchimp newsletter subscription form

8b6a36bd 🐛 fix (game-characters) fix styles for uneven ancestry tree

984153bb ⭐ feat (game-characters) lineage and character data child components

566a5c13 ⭐ feat (game-characters) pass schema with character api

507cfd30 ⭐ feat (game-characters) edit player notes and admin notes

4980b28d 🔨 refactor (game-characters) split editing game data from admin notes

c2f4a738 👗 ui (game-characters) view character

c08b135f 🐛 fix (game-characters) api fixes

d0a42d27 👗 ui (game-characters) list characters ui, import csv

e31e0235 ⭐ feat (game-characters) turn on api

3226c6bb 🐛 fix (game-items) console error when viewing item

e05da2f1 (tag: v19.0.0) 🐛 fix (game-items) purchasing selling trading checkboxes don't save correctly

23a0dd8a 🐛 fix (game-items) prevent duplicate transactions from browser mishaps

1e2a8c48 ⭐ feat (game-characters) POST api for adding/editing characters

7e9a4b03 🍱 assets (art) use better wording for referring to mature

dec285e4 🐛 fix (game-items) restrict POST to members only

3e2d7167 ⭐ feat (game-characters) track date created and last edited

95354562 🐛 fix (game-items) display correct time that item was added

dc32f061 👽 compat (php) some fixes for php7.4 support

d3668ea9 🍱 assets (content) point to marketing page from arpg directory and article footer

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