Hey everyone! It's been an intense period for Neon Angora since our last update. We upgraded the engine, taught NPCs how to keep secrets, rebuilt combat from scratch, and squashed a ton of bugs under the hood. Let's break it all down.

🗣️ NPCs know things now... but won't tell everything

NPCs in Neon Angora talk using a local AI model running 100% on your hardware with no internet connection required. With Whisper Mode (v0.1), we added memory and secret systems to them:

• Club Secrets: Hidden weapons, combat scrolls (Kung Fu, Karate, Muay Thai), a safe key, and a dancer who wants to escape. Each secret is known only to specific employees. (Currently, weapons are actively usable.)

• Knowledge shuffles every playthrough: Which NPC knows what changes every game. You need to find the right person and ask the right questions.

• Real unlocks: When an NPC actually reveals a secret to you, the item spawns in the world. If they don't spill it, nothing unlocks.

• No hallucinated directions: Uninformed NPCs won't make up fake places anymore—they will simply tell you they don't know.

• Menu knowledge: Questions like "What should I eat?" or "How much is whisky?" are answered accurately using real menu items and prices.

💬 Speech Bubbles

NPC responses no longer appear in a top-screen box; they now pop up in speech bubbles right next to the speaking character's head.

🥊 Revamped Combat System

• Melee combat rebuilt: Press F to enter combat mode—Left Click to punch, Right Click to kick, hold and release G for a charged heavy attack.

• Chain strikes together to execute combos.

• Every hit triggers target reaction animations, impact FX, camera shake, and a brief hit-stop freeze.

• Weapon combat added.

• Simple inventory system and ground item pickup added.

🕺 Animation & Movement

• All characters migrated to a new Motion Matching movement system for far more natural locomotion.

• Ctrl to toggle walk/run, Shift to sprint are working again.

• The torso now follows mouse aiming smoothly without delay—no more awkward spine twisting when turning around with weapons.

• Dancers maintain their unique catwalk strolls without rushing.

• Dancers now transition between different dance routines instead of looping a single animation.

🧭 NPC AI & Pathfinding

• NPCs intersecting paths no longer get stuck on each other—they smoothly navigate around one another.

⚙️ Menus & UI

• Cleaned up and redesigned menu interfaces.

🧠 Under the Hood

• Ported the game to Unreal Engine 5.8.

• Upgraded the AI backend (llama.cpp).

• Fixed an issue where the AI silently fell back to CPU processing on some machines, slowing NPC responses.

• Fixed intermittent crashes during AI model loading.

• Fixed crashes when changing maps while an NPC was generating a response.