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January Progress Update!
🕑 Added 2017-01-01 17:10:14 +0000 UTCHappy New Year!
This past month has been the first solid month for actual game content progress since I launched my optimization operation back in October. By the 10th or so I was back in the saddle with the new rig fully operational! I'm happy to start the new year with a small preview of V0.06 content, including a new enemy preview that I’ve been working on for the past week! The rest of the team has also accomplished a lot, and we have new content for the reward downloads to boot, so read on for details!
Introduction to V0.06, New Artwork Prints
I gave the new workstation its first real trial by fire by making an animated story scene to act as the transition to the new area (it's a pretty big file, so give it time to display!). This is the player's introduction to the urban dystopia that the majority of the game will be centered around, and therefore I obviously wanted to attempt something special. This idea has been in my head for a long time now (those of you that have been around the project awhile may recall when TK and I created the motorcycle). In order to make it happen I added support for animations to my render manager software, and I’m happy to say it’s working great!
In addition, I made the detailed single frame version shown above (apologies to the IC crowd who saw this last week!), which is now available as an artwork print design for the $40 and $50 tiers (there is also a version that contains the logo at the bottom).
New Enemy Preview
There will be multiple new enemy types in V0.06, and I just finished the preview for the first yesterday! Check ‘em out below!
Police – Version 1
As is suggested, I’m considering the possibility of having multiple versions with different skills / H attacks. I also painted up a quick photobash of a concept for a shotgun that I’d like to make for them to use, at least during story scenes. While I have a few ideas, please let me know if you have any ideas for H attacks! I’m open to suggestions!
Audio Guy (AKA New Guy’s) Progress
Audio Guy has been hard at work not thinking of a pseudonym, but thankfully he’s been churning out lots of great audio content for use in the game, including 12 new soundtrack demos and an impressive 46 new or improved sound effects to use or replace current ones with.
Up till now I've only made custom sound effects when I can't find one in the RPG Maker library (some of those include the gunshots and heavy machinery sounds throughout the Access Tunnels map). So, as it stands, the menu user interface sounds and a lot of others are either relatively low quality or just generic as hell and don't fit the tone of the game at all. Expect that to change soon! I have a pretty long list of stuff for him to work on (including promotional stuff since that’s part of his talent pool), but at some point I plan to have him start working on something the game really needs: H audio sounds!
New Soundtrack Demos Added to Downloads!
Now that we have someone working almost exclusively on audio, a lot of content is being generated. With all these awesome ideas, I thought it'd be a neat thing to add a 'Demos' set to the $15 reward tier in addition to the official soundtrack. This way patrons at that tier can not only grab the latest soundtrack, but also hear the evolution of new tracks as they are being produced as well as ideas that don't make it into the final game.
A couple weeks ago we added 7 new demo tracks to the soundtrack download page, and I just added 5 more today!
APL’s Coding Progress
It’s been a really good month for programming progress! If you remember last month we left off with AltairPL having just created a prototype of synchronous battle actions (characters/enemies performing actions at the same time). He used that as a starting point to branch out from to tackle the rest of the battle engine overhaul.
Here’s APL’s list of his major accomplishments this month starting with the most recent!
- Almost finished revamping backend code for the hold system – still a few bugs related to struggling remaining.
- Improved enemy spawning, meaning we should have much more flexibility over when enemies can spawn in battle (basically, we have future plans for doing more detailed and interesting things similar to our little demonstration with the elevator battle at the end of V0.05).
- Created a draft design for expanding the options menu (since it's running out of room) and integrated his work from the battle overhaul into possible new options.
- Finished implementing things like simultaneous battle actions and variable active time battle speeds (and related variables are now easily configurable for testing/balancing through an .ini file instead of spread randomly across the engine).
- Added the option of using Manual Struggle with battle Wait modes. Manual Struggle will now behave kind of like Escape does in Wait modes, meaning time will flow normally while it's active.
- Developed a rough design for a tool I can use for in-game animation previewing when creating animations. The idea would allow me to directly render animation previews from Daz Studio to a folder that the game would read, so within just a few clicks I could see the animation in game and test various sprite framerates to see how it would best look. Currently to do this I would have to make a spritesheet and set up a unique test case in game (as I've done with every single enemy animation up to this point).
- One of our previous overhauls broke RPG Maker’s default shop system. Unfortunately APL hasn’t had time to code a dedicated shop scene from scratch, so he’s fixed the vanilla one with some minor improvements for use in V0.06.
- Finished basic handling of battle actions -- still more to do, but will be finished as he goes.
- Finished overhaul of battle time flow. The old system was working, but it wasn’t as versatile as we would’ve liked and had some potential flaws that may cause us problems sooner or later. The new iteration is much simpler, much more universal, and will allow even more intricate customization of battle timings
- The results of actions will now be processed in realtime. Beforehand, variables dealing with stats and what not weren't updated until the results were *displayed*. This is obviously a major flaw for an active time system and has created bugs in the past.
- Created a prototype for the enemy targeting widget. It's been planned for a while to have the target of an enemy skill displayed above the enemy while a skill is charging, thus allowing the player the chance to use strategy to defend against the attack as opposed to having to guess which character would be the victim. Keep in mind the visual representation is just a placeholder graphic, but check out the following screens for an example: Single Target Example, Multi-Target Example.
TK’s Map Artwork Progress
TK has been knee deep in V0.06 work all month. When not fulfilling my random character design related prop creation tasks, he has the huge task of coming up with and making compatible shit tons of quality city assets to use for map building. Early last month we posted a moodboard for the Inner Circle to give an idea of the vibe we are going for with the V0.06 area. As you can see, it’s inspired largely by an aesthetic similar to the urban environments seen in things like Blade Runner, Akira, and Ghost in the Shell. Since then he’s put together a really big set of base assets to use, and we have a whole lot more that still need to be broken down. EDIT: Here's a *really* big image of the entire 3D tileset he's put together . Zoom in :D.
We have a pretty unique task here as I haven’t been able to come up with a good parallel of a retro styled RPG that features a (somewhat) realistically themed cyberpunk city as a location (let me know if you can think of anything we can reference!). The best I can think of is Final Fantasy 7, but since that used 3D characters we have some additional design challenges due to our relatively fixed/stylized camera perspectives. One of my goals therefore for this month is to get TK’s version of Maya set up again on the new computer, and he and I are going to go on an unhinged week-long (or as long as it takes!) map creation binge where we simply create and experiment with as many ideas as possible. We’ll take what comes out of it and will very likely have a much stronger grasp on how to fit my story ideas together as well as what is and what isn’t possible.
What to Expect in V0.06
From the above you can figure out a lot, but I figured as a closing I’d make a clear non-inclusive list of things you can expect in V0.06!
- A “town” type area, including shops
- An urban hostile area with new enemies
- Humanoid enemies (and obviously new H attacks)
- At the very least, the improvements shown off thus far on the battle engine
- At least one animated H story scene
- The revamp of the Access Tunnels maps
- Improved sound effects
- New music
There’s quite a bit of other stuff related to gameplay on the agenda, but I’m holding off on details for now. I’m not ready to set a date for V0.06 yet, but the great thing about the new campaign format is that we won’t have to wait for the beginning of a new month to make the release. Since the new format is so flexible, a preliminary release to show off some of the new content is also not out of the question, especially since I know you guys have been incredibly patient as I took a good while with improving the development side of things. I really want to thank you guys for that! Trust me when I say we’re already seeing the benefits of that work!
Thanks again for your continued support!
Comments
Drew
I don't think the game can work like that. Lust is tied mechanically to armor damage. Anything that reduces lust also needs to repair armor, and "fix status effects" the way an ARIS does. If Lust is ever tied to health via some fancy armor core, it'd need to heal too. That's basically an Inn effect, which is why we have so little access to it. I think instead we can expect more control over the impact or accumulation of Lust, if anything.
Really excited for this update, my only complaint is that there should be a way to get rid of or reduce lust beside using the Aris machine. There are many enemies that will keep spamming the same H-attack all over again and it's not fun at all trying to deal with those when your struggle does close to nothing with your lust so high. I think it's ok that character gains lust quickly but if there's no way to get rid of it then it's a problem. It's also dull to backtrack to the Aris machine just to get rid of lust. My suggestion is to add a remedy/potion item that can get rid of lust or give the characters a skill that costs SP that will submit the character to the H-finisher (Call it climax or something) but will significantly reduce lust after the H-finisher is executed.
Fredinator
I still think skills should not be tied to the armor. What about a skill-core you find along with the armor that can be equipped? That way you could use the skills you want along with the armor you want. For example I want to use neons heal ability with her blue armor but I can't :-(
The new enemy is really promising and I really hope that H-attack described on previous comments will come true : I can't wait to see restrain (with handcuffs) and double team on Neon or Malise. A little personal suggestion : a double team with one policeman holding Malise or Neon (or handcuffed on a previous attack) and a (forced) kiss from the other policeman, when she is lust sick...
A more specific idea: Four stage H-Attack. 1 is Cuff. 2 is Frisk (groping + fingering). 3 is Detain (pushing them down). 4 is Incapacitate (choking + fucking OR choking on cock until pass out)
Anything that exaggerates actual police stuff will make a great H-Attack. Some kind of sexually aggressive detainment protocol makes a lot of sense. The handcuffs suggestion is brilliant, and having those handcuffs stay on past the H-Attack sounds really cool.
There's a lot of good suggestions above for the police already, i just wanted to ad that fhe first thing I thought when i saw them is that their suits look like they are pretty hard to take off (especially when there are two angry/lust sick chicks shooting at you). They will have to use whaever is strapped to their belt once they have a character restrained. If a second police then joins in on the same character he could take the time to uzip while is colleage keeps her restrained
Love the new stuff, and some of the suggestions above. Blade Runner and Equilibrium are good sources for visual inspiration -- either a dirty, grimy techno punk or that kind of oppressively clean. The animation looks good, but with how fast those light posts are whipping past, I nearly got motion sick looking at it full-screen. For the police H-attacks, I love the idea of anything highly restrained -- using batons, cuffs, zipties, or tasers are obvious contemporary tools, but more futuristic SF ideas might serve well too: say, a kind of smart-bolas, that can wrap up a target, or sound cannon to stun our heroines. Love the stuff you guys are doing! I know I'll love what comes next!
Completely agree with a dominating theme for the officers. I was thinking a standing 69 or using that baton as a butt plug, bonus points if it's a shock baton.
TK made a bigger render of his tileset (way bigger) since the last one was just a viewport screenshot that lacked details. This one is like 10,000 x 16,000, so you may have to give it a second when zooming in for the details to render. <a href="http://i.imgur.com/BjEazHP.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://i.imgur.com/BjEazHP.jpg</a>
Mav
Anything "Shadowrun" is a good place for dystopian aesthetic as well. They recently released some pc games which may be good for inspiration. Pictures of the old pen and paper game may be good for mood wall stuff. As for police h-attacks, I think you'd have to get creative here, depending on the circumstances of what the police are up to in the game. I can't imagine normal officers being up for h-attacks other than handcuffing and tasing. If I assume they are evil/corrupt/dystopian, then the obvious choices would be restraint, or domination. Maybe the move is "assume the position", sort of pushing the girls face down/ass up. If they are stripped on the bottom, you could go from there. Or even commanding them to get down on their knees, but I'd imagine they'd have to have lust sickness to even listen to them without struggle. Just a few thoughts.
Having multiple H attackers (or restraints, which as currently planned may operate similarly to an H attacker) is something we've been planning for awhile :D. Part of AltairPL's job with the battle engine overhaul is to make accommodations for future ideas such as that one that haven't had their foundations laid yet. I wouldn't consider it backtracking since we plan to add additional H attacks for enemies, and it's likely that higher level versions of previous enemies will show up in different parts of the game.
I think it would be pretty rad if enemies could stack H-attacks on one character, like for instance a vororaptor (sorry if I butchered it, going off of my terrible memory) starts an H-attack on Malise, and while it's still happening a 2nd one can also start one on her, so that she's getting double teamed. Obviously thats a ton of work and back-tracking, but maybe for future enemies?
Police brutality: Only this time you kinda want it. :P
