I've wanted to write this post for a while, but I held off because I didn't think it would make much sense. There's five major groups of weapons in LotTO. They are:
Two handed weapons (fire-axe & maul)
One handed weapons (longsword, wooden sword, torch)
Martial Arts (unarmed, weighted gloves)
Wands (starter wand, fire wand)
Staves (staff of water, staff of earth)
Before you read any further, take a second & rank those five groups in your head. Is there one group that's your favorite? Why? How about is there one you always ignore? Although it may not be obvious, I'm trying fairly had to balance all five against each other. Now that I've played with them a bit, there's going to be some buffs coming.
So, here's my opinion on the 5 groups. If you're feeling chatty, now's a great time to disagree. =D
1. One handed weapons. Grade: A+ Not too long ago I re-tuned this special attack so that monsters wouldn't be knocked clear on the first hit. That really put these weapons over the top, as now you have a very safe attack that does fantastic damage. These weapons were supposed to have problems with ranged casters & with monsters creeping up behind them. To a minor extent that's true, but it's not nearly the downside I was expecting. Changes: None planned. They're powerful, but I'm okay with that (and I hate nerfs). New one handed weapons may suffer slightly though, as I will likely only apply very minor bonuses. If they still feel too powerful after a round of changes, I may slightly reduce their reach, but I'd rather not go that route yet.
I'll also note that I think this is a large part of why folks say Farah is too powerful. Her default weapon is simply better than anything else out there.
2. Martial Arts. Grade: B+ Martial arts combines good damage with a fair bit of movement. In most cases that movement is a good thing, as it keeps any monsters from creeping up behind you. It also has the best special in the game (arguable perhaps, but it does have the longest invincibility). The downside of martial arts is that it can be downright terrible if the monster is immune to knockback (tentacles) or merely highly resistant (slime boss). More so than any other weapon group, I think this one requires a backup weapon. Other than that drawback though, I think martial arts are quite solid. Changes: None planned, although later weapons will probably get some reach on them.
3. Wands. Grade: B- I hear that wands are terrible. I'll grant that they're not awesome, but I think they're really solid. Wands have the ability to keep mobs offscreen, making them the safest weapon of the bunch. They do very good damage and they bypass damage reduction. Their special attack has the highest DPS of any weapon class out there, making them my boss killer of choice. Their only real drawback is they aren't good when you're surrounded by multiple monsters. The basic attack has a slow fire rate, and the special attack grants almost no invulnerability. I think it's the last part that makes folks dislike wands. If you're about to break a grapple & you're surrounded by multiple monsters, the wand is probably the worst choice for making some space. Changes: I have been playing with how projectiles work. You can now cancel enemy projectile attacks with your own (assuming they touch). That wasn't meant to be a buff honestly, just something I wanted to include. But I'm noticing that it makes wands a tad stronger. The actual planned buff here is that I'm going to extend the minimum range a bit. It's supposed to be the ranged weapon, but for a low spirit character I think the normal sword has a longer reach. I'm also hoping to include some better wands earlier in the game.
4. Two handed weapons. Grade: C Let me back up here. Every weapon has a 'difficulty' assigned to them. So for example, many of you noticed that when K. Fox first equips the weighted gloves, she loses her fifth attack. For the gloves, that last attack requires a body score of 7 for her, and typically she'll have a 5 or a 6 when she first finds them. Similarly, the wooden sword & the longsword both have the same attack chain, but getting the entire attack chain with the longsword requires a much higher body score.
I'm pointing that out because so far I've only introduced two extremely heavy, off-balance two handed weapons. They both have an extremely high difficulty rating. I don't think it's even possible to see the final attack in the chain yet. I'm of the opinion that these weapons are actually great. As soon as y'all see the fourth attack in the animation, I think that this class of weapons will jump up there with the 1 handed weapons. Maybe not quite as good, but definitely viable (Grade A or A-). Changes: None, other than adding some better weapons in this group.
5. Staves. Grade: F Staves are in a rather distant last place right now. Which I find funny, as the special attacks are crazy powerful (imo). I'm pretty sure a fully powered meteor would one-shot the slime boss, just to give you some idea. But their basic attacks are terrible, and the special move has no invulnerability. So, it's really tough to justify using them (other than as a backup weapon for their special). Changes: I'm playing with having the projectile continue after it hits. It makes it sort of a baby AoE attack, as it can hit & push back multiple monsters. What I'm seeing right now may actually be too powerful, but I think I can balance it out. I don't think it will make Farah players jealous, but it will definitely makes casters pause & think which weapon class they want.
So that's my mindset at the moment. Although I don't think it's possible to get them all perfectly balanced, I'd like to be able to grade all five of them as either an A or at least a high B. I'm not there right now, but I think I'm on my way. For whatever reason, this is one of the most enjoyable parts of making the game for me, so don't be shocked if this part comes up again. =)
DirtyC101
Friday, January 6, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Too Soon for Nostalgia?
I've always been really proud of my first game - Kay Fox & the Magic Sword. I had no knowledge of Flash when I started, but I had a one month free trial and a full pile of sprites I could rip from Playshapes' game. And sure enough, I manged to make something playable before the trial ran out. I constantly think back to that & wonder why I can't crank out a new game every single month.
Well, during my downtime I went back & played it. Or tried to anyway. The animations were so bad I quit before I got to the bar. I don't mean Playshapes' artwork, that's outstanding as always. I mean everywhere I animated it. It was just hard to watch. The punch & kick animation are both glitchy, like they're missing half their frames. And for whatever reason I have Kay's head on funny as well - it doesn't sit on her neck correctly. It's bad enough to make me want to go back & re-make the game.
I'm not going to do that of course, I've got my current game to finish. Plus I think it's cool to leave a trail behind & show where I've been. I just think it's amazing how much I've improved in only 2 years. Now if only I could also release a game every month, then I'd really be somewhere... haha.
Anyway, I am in fact working on LotTO again. The color options are done, but buggy. In certain grapples, some body parts revert back to their original color, and I have no idea why. I'll battle it again later, for now I'm simply noting where it happens. Seems to always be hands & feet, which are also the sprites that often change layers & have the most variety. So I have to believe it has something to do with one of those. But everything I've checked so far says that's not the case. I'll keep looking, I'm sure it'll turn out to be something stupid. Not that that's ever happened before... ;P
Update - Turns out the problem was in fact something pretty dumb, and had very little to do with how I'm setting the color. The other thing hands & feet have in common is that they are both used in the unarmed attack. In order to for the code to check if you're hitting something, I had to name both of them in the property menu. Looks like I was sloppy with some copy/paste, as there were multiple body parts with the same name in any given frame of animation. For example, in the picture above both of LeiLei's feet were named 'foothitbox'. Kinda funny that this is the first time it cropped up as a problem, seems like it would have caused other errors before this. Anyway, problem found & fixed, moving on. =)
And lastly, while I was on break there was one more game I played that really deserves your attention. The Legend of Queen Opala II. Much like my game, what's posted is only the first half of the game, but what's there is really good if you like old school RPG's. Fair warning, if you don't like HUGE tits or beastiality, then the porn isn't going to appeal to you. Also, it's heavy on 'game' & light on 'porn' imo. Still, I played through what's there twice, something on the order of 40 hours, so clearly I liked it.
Looking forward to 2012 :)
DirtyC101
Well, during my downtime I went back & played it. Or tried to anyway. The animations were so bad I quit before I got to the bar. I don't mean Playshapes' artwork, that's outstanding as always. I mean everywhere I animated it. It was just hard to watch. The punch & kick animation are both glitchy, like they're missing half their frames. And for whatever reason I have Kay's head on funny as well - it doesn't sit on her neck correctly. It's bad enough to make me want to go back & re-make the game.
(This is the middle frame of animation from the punch. It's supposed to be an elbow smash IIRC, but instead it looks like her arm is cut off)
Anyway, I am in fact working on LotTO again. The color options are done, but buggy. In certain grapples, some body parts revert back to their original color, and I have no idea why. I'll battle it again later, for now I'm simply noting where it happens. Seems to always be hands & feet, which are also the sprites that often change layers & have the most variety. So I have to believe it has something to do with one of those. But everything I've checked so far says that's not the case. I'll keep looking, I'm sure it'll turn out to be something stupid. Not that that's ever happened before... ;P
(New fetish time! Ladies with multi-colored legs!)
Update - Turns out the problem was in fact something pretty dumb, and had very little to do with how I'm setting the color. The other thing hands & feet have in common is that they are both used in the unarmed attack. In order to for the code to check if you're hitting something, I had to name both of them in the property menu. Looks like I was sloppy with some copy/paste, as there were multiple body parts with the same name in any given frame of animation. For example, in the picture above both of LeiLei's feet were named 'foothitbox'. Kinda funny that this is the first time it cropped up as a problem, seems like it would have caused other errors before this. Anyway, problem found & fixed, moving on. =)
And lastly, while I was on break there was one more game I played that really deserves your attention. The Legend of Queen Opala II. Much like my game, what's posted is only the first half of the game, but what's there is really good if you like old school RPG's. Fair warning, if you don't like HUGE tits or beastiality, then the porn isn't going to appeal to you. Also, it's heavy on 'game' & light on 'porn' imo. Still, I played through what's there twice, something on the order of 40 hours, so clearly I liked it.
Looking forward to 2012 :)
DirtyC101
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
December Update
Monthly status update: I have no idea when the next release will be ready. I'm guesstimating spring or summer at the moment.
K, that's out of the way. I haven't worked on the game much at all this month. I've mainly just been enjoying my break, re-reading comments, daydreaming about the game, oh, and actually PLAYING some other porn games. I've found a few I really like too. I'll puts some links at the bottom of this post if you're curious.
On the upside, the new computer is up & running. On paper, it's much faster than the old machine, and in many places it really shines. However, when it comes time to save my work, it takes forever. At this point I have to assume there's a bug somewhere that's causing Adobe to hang, or perhaps the virus scanner is going crazy & scanning every block before it allows a write. Whatever it is, I can see that one processor (or core) is running flat out for minutes at a time, while the rest of the machine sits idle. I guess Adobe needs to multi-thread the save function? Frustrating, because I can literally copy the entire .fla file in 5 seconds, but Adobe takes upwards of 5 minutes to save the thing. What's it doing?
I have been tinkering with something however. Let me attach a picture below. See if you can figure it out. ;P
It's not done yet, but yeah, I'm working on alternate color schemes for each of the characters. Eventually I hope to have a slider bar so you can make your own color combos as well. Learning to code this has been both fun & incredibly frustrating. I'll probably rant about it later. I like the results, but let's just say that Actionscript2 does not handle setting colors well (imo).
This has also served as a nice time to go back & clean up my lines & such. The hero sprites were some of the first things I drew for the game, which means there was a lot of draw-erase-draw-erase going on. It's amazing to me how overly complex some of the curves are because of this. I'll see what looks like a simple curve, but upon close inspection I'll discover it's being defined by 50 points (should be like 3 or 4). So, I've been fixing that too. There's a (small) chance that this will result in a faster game for those of you on older PC's, but mainly this is just about me optimizing where I can. Damn you OCD!!!
OCD: "You know, you should really set her eyebrow color too"
Me: "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU"
So, what have I been playing you ask? Let me start with Dusty's Castle. As far as I know, it's the first game that's ever been finished on the LoK forums, so a big congrats to Gorepete. Gorepete also added a color slider just before the game was done, which pretty much inspired me to try & do my own. So I reckon that's a double thanks I owe him.
The next game I'm playing is all Japanese. The only text I can read says Hikaru Senki, which seems to be what folks are calling it. I call it 'train your Pokemon to be a rapist', which doesn't quite flow off the tongue so well, but leaves little doubt about the gameplay. Anyway, I was shocked at how much fun it was. Game boils down to collecting shit & sexing up enemies. If you're interested, follow this link. Be sure to scroll down & read all the menu translations, as you'll need to know how to equip & swap weapons & such.
And the last link I'm going to post is a game called pretty warrior may cry. Other than the 3D, this is almost exactly what I wanted to do for my next game. So needless to say, playing this was a surreal experience. It was like playing a game plucked from my dreams, described to someone over the phone, who doesn't actually speak English. So yeah, I loved it. No promises you get the same experience. ;)
Til next time
DirtyC101
K, that's out of the way. I haven't worked on the game much at all this month. I've mainly just been enjoying my break, re-reading comments, daydreaming about the game, oh, and actually PLAYING some other porn games. I've found a few I really like too. I'll puts some links at the bottom of this post if you're curious.
On the upside, the new computer is up & running. On paper, it's much faster than the old machine, and in many places it really shines. However, when it comes time to save my work, it takes forever. At this point I have to assume there's a bug somewhere that's causing Adobe to hang, or perhaps the virus scanner is going crazy & scanning every block before it allows a write. Whatever it is, I can see that one processor (or core) is running flat out for minutes at a time, while the rest of the machine sits idle. I guess Adobe needs to multi-thread the save function? Frustrating, because I can literally copy the entire .fla file in 5 seconds, but Adobe takes upwards of 5 minutes to save the thing. What's it doing?
I have been tinkering with something however. Let me attach a picture below. See if you can figure it out. ;P
It's not done yet, but yeah, I'm working on alternate color schemes for each of the characters. Eventually I hope to have a slider bar so you can make your own color combos as well. Learning to code this has been both fun & incredibly frustrating. I'll probably rant about it later. I like the results, but let's just say that Actionscript2 does not handle setting colors well (imo).
This has also served as a nice time to go back & clean up my lines & such. The hero sprites were some of the first things I drew for the game, which means there was a lot of draw-erase-draw-erase going on. It's amazing to me how overly complex some of the curves are because of this. I'll see what looks like a simple curve, but upon close inspection I'll discover it's being defined by 50 points (should be like 3 or 4). So, I've been fixing that too. There's a (small) chance that this will result in a faster game for those of you on older PC's, but mainly this is just about me optimizing where I can. Damn you OCD!!!
OCD: "You know, you should really set her eyebrow color too"
Me: "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU"
So, what have I been playing you ask? Let me start with Dusty's Castle. As far as I know, it's the first game that's ever been finished on the LoK forums, so a big congrats to Gorepete. Gorepete also added a color slider just before the game was done, which pretty much inspired me to try & do my own. So I reckon that's a double thanks I owe him.
The next game I'm playing is all Japanese. The only text I can read says Hikaru Senki, which seems to be what folks are calling it. I call it 'train your Pokemon to be a rapist', which doesn't quite flow off the tongue so well, but leaves little doubt about the gameplay. Anyway, I was shocked at how much fun it was. Game boils down to collecting shit & sexing up enemies. If you're interested, follow this link. Be sure to scroll down & read all the menu translations, as you'll need to know how to equip & swap weapons & such.
And the last link I'm going to post is a game called pretty warrior may cry. Other than the 3D, this is almost exactly what I wanted to do for my next game. So needless to say, playing this was a surreal experience. It was like playing a game plucked from my dreams, described to someone over the phone, who doesn't actually speak English. So yeah, I loved it. No promises you get the same experience. ;)
Til next time
DirtyC101
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Feedback Loop - Part 2
Ok, I said I'd try to sit down & put the rest of my responses together in some coherent manner. Well of course that didn't happen, so here's another splatter of responses in no particular order. ;)
Invincible Escapes: I'm hearing folks ask for some invincibility when escaping from grapples. I'm slightly against this, mainly because some of the weapons already grant invincibility with their S attack. The weapons are balanced around this. So for example the large 2H weapons are kind of slow in their normal attack & have long recoveries, but they also do excellent damage & have fantastic invulnerability with their super move. I even tried to set it up so that there's (usually) time to swap weapons after an escape.
So if you're the type who likes to jump into large groups, I assume you're going to pick a weapon with a good super for escaping from being surrounded. This may be a poor assumption on my part, but I can't quite tell from the comments. I personally think that if you get surrounded by a large group, then you really should be in trouble, so I'm pretty happy with how the mechanics here are working. About the only change I'm considering here is granting more space if you die & use a continue.
Game Speed: On my original computer, the game played at about the right speed when I set it to 20 FPS (frames per second). What I didn't realize was that the game was actually running at ~14 FPS even in empty rooms, because my computer was really slow. When I moved to my gaming PC, suddenly everything was way too fast, as the game was actually running at 20 FPS.
So sometime between the last two releases, I reset the game speed down to 15 FPS, which should put the game at about the right speed on everyone's PC. The problem is a few of you already had nice PCs, and got used to the faster game speed. So now the latest release seems like it's running in slow motion. I think the solution here is I need to find the FPS command & just make a slider to keep everyone happy. In the meanwhile, here's the 0.50 release at both 15 FPS (current speed) & 20 FPS (fast speed):
Current Speed
Fast Speed
If you think the game needs to be even faster (or slower), let me know. Ideally I'll build a slider into the game to let you pick (assuming Flash lets me change this on the fly).
Arrow Respawn Rate: Okay, let's rewind back to the previous release. Originally, your body score moved the grapple bar indicator, and spirit controlled how much damage you did. Although that sounded good on paper, it turned out I didn't like this system for two reasons. The first was that Lei Lei's sex scenes ended way too fast, and the other was that you couldn't watch the animations because you were constantly staring at the arrows.
So I re-tuned the system quite a bit, with the intent of fixing both these problems. Now both body & spirit move the bar, but in different ways. Body still works very similarly, and moves the bar in your favor if your score is higher than your opponent(s). Spirit moves the indicator by controlling how often the arrows appear. So if you want to see the arrows appear quickly, you need to raise your spirit score.
That solved the first problem just fine, but it meant that anyone with a high spirit was still playing the 'watch the arrow' game. So I re-tuned the arrow game a bit as well. Now the time between arrow respawns is longer for everyone, but the jump on the grapple indicator is also much higher when you complete a series. It should play almost exactly the same, the difference is you now have more time to watch the animation. The message I'm hearing is that folks don't like having time to watch the animations. I find that really hard to believe, although perhaps what they mean is that they want to constantly be doing something. I'm more inclined to believe that everyone who is complaining is playing Farah, and don't grasp that the penalty for having a low spirit is long delays between arrow respawns. I can't prove that though, so I'd love to hear some more detailed responses here.
Character balance: Folks think Farah is more powerful than the other two. At this exact second, I'm inclined to agree, although not to the extent I'm hearing. I'd like to balance this back a bit, without nerfing Farah. I may further buff spirit in sex grapples, or I may buff the regeneration rate from spirit. There haven't been a lot of spirit puzzles yet either, which is something I'd like to add. The key here is I don't want to completely lock Farah out of a section of the game.
Leveling system: I'm seeing requests for more RPG elements, mainly a leveling system of some sort. Wasn't planned, but I like the idea a lot. I'll see if I can crowbar something in here, so that there's yet another advantage to defeating monsters. In fairness though, there's very few monsters that can be avoided, it's not like you can run around them if they're in your way. So whatever I do here will be minimal. I absolutely do not want folks to feel like they have to farm monsters for XP before they can progress.
Damn, that's a long post. But I think I hit all the big buttons. If there's something else on your mind, let me know. I promise I read every comment, even if I don't respond to it directly.
DirtyC101
Invincible Escapes: I'm hearing folks ask for some invincibility when escaping from grapples. I'm slightly against this, mainly because some of the weapons already grant invincibility with their S attack. The weapons are balanced around this. So for example the large 2H weapons are kind of slow in their normal attack & have long recoveries, but they also do excellent damage & have fantastic invulnerability with their super move. I even tried to set it up so that there's (usually) time to swap weapons after an escape.
So if you're the type who likes to jump into large groups, I assume you're going to pick a weapon with a good super for escaping from being surrounded. This may be a poor assumption on my part, but I can't quite tell from the comments. I personally think that if you get surrounded by a large group, then you really should be in trouble, so I'm pretty happy with how the mechanics here are working. About the only change I'm considering here is granting more space if you die & use a continue.
Game Speed: On my original computer, the game played at about the right speed when I set it to 20 FPS (frames per second). What I didn't realize was that the game was actually running at ~14 FPS even in empty rooms, because my computer was really slow. When I moved to my gaming PC, suddenly everything was way too fast, as the game was actually running at 20 FPS.
So sometime between the last two releases, I reset the game speed down to 15 FPS, which should put the game at about the right speed on everyone's PC. The problem is a few of you already had nice PCs, and got used to the faster game speed. So now the latest release seems like it's running in slow motion. I think the solution here is I need to find the FPS command & just make a slider to keep everyone happy. In the meanwhile, here's the 0.50 release at both 15 FPS (current speed) & 20 FPS (fast speed):
Current Speed
Fast Speed
If you think the game needs to be even faster (or slower), let me know. Ideally I'll build a slider into the game to let you pick (assuming Flash lets me change this on the fly).
Arrow Respawn Rate: Okay, let's rewind back to the previous release. Originally, your body score moved the grapple bar indicator, and spirit controlled how much damage you did. Although that sounded good on paper, it turned out I didn't like this system for two reasons. The first was that Lei Lei's sex scenes ended way too fast, and the other was that you couldn't watch the animations because you were constantly staring at the arrows.
So I re-tuned the system quite a bit, with the intent of fixing both these problems. Now both body & spirit move the bar, but in different ways. Body still works very similarly, and moves the bar in your favor if your score is higher than your opponent(s). Spirit moves the indicator by controlling how often the arrows appear. So if you want to see the arrows appear quickly, you need to raise your spirit score.
That solved the first problem just fine, but it meant that anyone with a high spirit was still playing the 'watch the arrow' game. So I re-tuned the arrow game a bit as well. Now the time between arrow respawns is longer for everyone, but the jump on the grapple indicator is also much higher when you complete a series. It should play almost exactly the same, the difference is you now have more time to watch the animation. The message I'm hearing is that folks don't like having time to watch the animations. I find that really hard to believe, although perhaps what they mean is that they want to constantly be doing something. I'm more inclined to believe that everyone who is complaining is playing Farah, and don't grasp that the penalty for having a low spirit is long delays between arrow respawns. I can't prove that though, so I'd love to hear some more detailed responses here.
Character balance: Folks think Farah is more powerful than the other two. At this exact second, I'm inclined to agree, although not to the extent I'm hearing. I'd like to balance this back a bit, without nerfing Farah. I may further buff spirit in sex grapples, or I may buff the regeneration rate from spirit. There haven't been a lot of spirit puzzles yet either, which is something I'd like to add. The key here is I don't want to completely lock Farah out of a section of the game.
Leveling system: I'm seeing requests for more RPG elements, mainly a leveling system of some sort. Wasn't planned, but I like the idea a lot. I'll see if I can crowbar something in here, so that there's yet another advantage to defeating monsters. In fairness though, there's very few monsters that can be avoided, it's not like you can run around them if they're in your way. So whatever I do here will be minimal. I absolutely do not want folks to feel like they have to farm monsters for XP before they can progress.
Damn, that's a long post. But I think I hit all the big buttons. If there's something else on your mind, let me know. I promise I read every comment, even if I don't respond to it directly.
DirtyC101
Monday, November 28, 2011
Feedback Loop - part 1
Wow, has it been a week already? Time flies. I'm glad to see so many positive comments, means I'm on the right track. Then again, the simple fact that y'all are here means you like porn games, so there may be some bias in my favor. hahaha.
Anyway, what I want to focus on today is the criticisms. So far they've all been good stuff that I can work with, keep them coming! Let's start with the easy stuff:
Crawling. I put this in on purpose to both change the pace & the setting a bit. Let's face it, my rooms all look & play about the same, so crawling was added to alter the flavor some. Makes the room 'feel' smaller (imo), and also changes the pace. Unfortunately, slow doesn't necessarily mean fun. I'm getting that message loud & clear. I'll tweak this some. I think there's a compromise here that will still keep the atmosphere I want without making people dread another crawling room. I also think I overdid the crawling on the bunny burrows, so I'll simply yank some of that as well.
Exploring the bunny town becomes boring/frustrating. Okay, this is a gigantic "uh-oh" from me. The game is supposed to be about exploration, fighting, & fucking. It sounds like somehow I went wrong with that formula. What I find interesting is that I noticed the same thing when I was building the game. I ended up turning monsters off after a while. At the time, I just figured it was because I was busy testing shit & just wanted to run around. I think the problem is that the monsters are so prevalent that they're seen as more of a nuisance than something interesting.
I think simply yanking them from the 'travel' zones will help tremendously. Or at the minimum, they shouldn't respawn in the overworld zones. This could potentially cause problems, as you need the gear monsters drop to get past the wards, and you probably don't have enough backpack slots until late into Act 2. I may need to force additional spawn in other areas, but I think that's a smaller problem that can be managed.
The other part of this might be that the dunecrawler requires 3 parts, but there's absolutely no hint to where they are. *Spoiler Warning* The first one always spawns in the elf camp (outside or in tents), the second is always in the Southeast corner of the village (lower left), and the third is always in the Northwest. . If the guy in the dunecrawler gave simple direction to the next piece, would it have helped the 'fun' of the game? Example: he says something like "A bunch of Elves stole the regulator I need, I think they ran down that big road to the East."
That reminds me, the village is set-up so that you're walking North-South, and if you take the road you go East-West. If he's giving directions, would it be easier if I flipped those?
Slime Boss Fight. Okay, this was supposed to be an order of magnitude harder than everything else. To be blunt, I want to give y'all some sex scenes, and an easy way to get there is to force the occasional loss. This is why the game has multiple continues, and I have no qualms designing monsters to take them away. ;P (That's a topic by itself, I'll try adress it more in a later post).
I'm hearing the right number of people saying it's hard, so I think I got 'hard' just fine. Again, the problem is that hard doesn't mean fun. In my opinion, the root of the problem is that the fight can only play out in 2 ways. Either he manages to grab you, in which case you get to watch yourself be locked into a slow grab --> clothestear+poison loop, which ultimately kills you with minimal sex. The other option is this run away & attack dance pattern, which, while amusing enough the first few times, gets old around long before he's dead.
So I have some ideas on how to fix this. I think simply reducing his health some while drastically increasing the damage he does to armor would really help liven up the fight. Now instead of a series of armor saves, you'd get to actually struggle in the grapples a bit. He is a boss, so I'm totally down with him completely dominating the hero if he gets his 'tricks' to work. But it needs to be more involving than it is now.
Okay, that's already a long post, and I have plenty more to discuss. I'll try to put my thoughts together a bit better & touch on some more points next week.
DirtyC101
Anyway, what I want to focus on today is the criticisms. So far they've all been good stuff that I can work with, keep them coming! Let's start with the easy stuff:
Crawling. I put this in on purpose to both change the pace & the setting a bit. Let's face it, my rooms all look & play about the same, so crawling was added to alter the flavor some. Makes the room 'feel' smaller (imo), and also changes the pace. Unfortunately, slow doesn't necessarily mean fun. I'm getting that message loud & clear. I'll tweak this some. I think there's a compromise here that will still keep the atmosphere I want without making people dread another crawling room. I also think I overdid the crawling on the bunny burrows, so I'll simply yank some of that as well.
Exploring the bunny town becomes boring/frustrating. Okay, this is a gigantic "uh-oh" from me. The game is supposed to be about exploration, fighting, & fucking. It sounds like somehow I went wrong with that formula. What I find interesting is that I noticed the same thing when I was building the game. I ended up turning monsters off after a while. At the time, I just figured it was because I was busy testing shit & just wanted to run around. I think the problem is that the monsters are so prevalent that they're seen as more of a nuisance than something interesting.
I think simply yanking them from the 'travel' zones will help tremendously. Or at the minimum, they shouldn't respawn in the overworld zones. This could potentially cause problems, as you need the gear monsters drop to get past the wards, and you probably don't have enough backpack slots until late into Act 2. I may need to force additional spawn in other areas, but I think that's a smaller problem that can be managed.
The other part of this might be that the dunecrawler requires 3 parts, but there's absolutely no hint to where they are. *Spoiler Warning* The first one always spawns in the elf camp (outside or in tents), the second is always in the Southeast corner of the village (lower left), and the third is always in the Northwest. . If the guy in the dunecrawler gave simple direction to the next piece, would it have helped the 'fun' of the game? Example: he says something like "A bunch of Elves stole the regulator I need, I think they ran down that big road to the East."
That reminds me, the village is set-up so that you're walking North-South, and if you take the road you go East-West. If he's giving directions, would it be easier if I flipped those?
Slime Boss Fight. Okay, this was supposed to be an order of magnitude harder than everything else. To be blunt, I want to give y'all some sex scenes, and an easy way to get there is to force the occasional loss. This is why the game has multiple continues, and I have no qualms designing monsters to take them away. ;P (That's a topic by itself, I'll try adress it more in a later post).
I'm hearing the right number of people saying it's hard, so I think I got 'hard' just fine. Again, the problem is that hard doesn't mean fun. In my opinion, the root of the problem is that the fight can only play out in 2 ways. Either he manages to grab you, in which case you get to watch yourself be locked into a slow grab --> clothestear+poison loop, which ultimately kills you with minimal sex. The other option is this run away & attack dance pattern, which, while amusing enough the first few times, gets old around long before he's dead.
So I have some ideas on how to fix this. I think simply reducing his health some while drastically increasing the damage he does to armor would really help liven up the fight. Now instead of a series of armor saves, you'd get to actually struggle in the grapples a bit. He is a boss, so I'm totally down with him completely dominating the hero if he gets his 'tricks' to work. But it needs to be more involving than it is now.
Okay, that's already a long post, and I have plenty more to discuss. I'll try to put my thoughts together a bit better & touch on some more points next week.
DirtyC101
Saturday, November 19, 2011
When will the game be posted?
Right now! Check the sidebar, version 0.50 is out. It's incomplete in places, and some of the art is just wireframes, but it is very playable. There's a lot to say, so let me try to be brief.
Re-read the instructions at the start menu. A lot has changed.
R activates run mode, and down arrow activates blocking. While running, your defense is greatly reduced. Vice versa when blocking. Not 100% sure I even want blocking in this game, but given how hard some of the monsters are, it's almost a necessity. (Feedback here would be good)
If you are dominating a 1-on-1 grapple, extra monsters will not be able double team you.
None of the new monsters have double-team grapples (yet).
Just pointing both of these out to try & avoid some confusion.
As always, please feel free to mirror this game on other sites. I have no idea what my limitations are on bandwidth & all, so having the game distributed to multiple locations is probably a good idea.
Lastly, I wanted to point out that now would be a really good time to send me a donation. I think y'all know I've been having computer problems, and the machine I had been using to make this game is now kaput. So, I'm going to be building a new computer for the sole reason of making games. Some folks have already come forward with money (thanks again!), and I figure now's as good a time as any to beg a bit. To be perfectly clear though: I do not NEED money. I'll be buying a new machine with or without donations, so please don't think that you must donate for any reason. Donations would be very appreciated though, so if you enjoy my games, well... now would be a fantastic time to show it. =)
Thanks Everyone!
DirtyC101
Known bugs:
If multiple monsters drop items simultaneously, only one will hit the ground.
If you are grabbed while using a Staff special attack, the power up sound will continue for a while
Being re-grabbed immediately as the first grab is ending will often cause the grapple bar to remain hidden for that grapple
Large items in the foreground can look funny. Their tops will be hidden when in dark rooms, and they will often clip the interface bar at the top of the screen.
The code "TowardTheHorde" says it doesn't work when entered. It actually does, and it works better than it's supposed to (it unlocks both Act 1 & 2 monsters, instead of just Act 1). Since it's a 'good' bug, I'm going to leave it for now. Enjoy. ;)
Re-read the instructions at the start menu. A lot has changed.
R activates run mode, and down arrow activates blocking. While running, your defense is greatly reduced. Vice versa when blocking. Not 100% sure I even want blocking in this game, but given how hard some of the monsters are, it's almost a necessity. (Feedback here would be good)
If you are dominating a 1-on-1 grapple, extra monsters will not be able double team you.
None of the new monsters have double-team grapples (yet).
Just pointing both of these out to try & avoid some confusion.
As always, please feel free to mirror this game on other sites. I have no idea what my limitations are on bandwidth & all, so having the game distributed to multiple locations is probably a good idea.
Lastly, I wanted to point out that now would be a really good time to send me a donation. I think y'all know I've been having computer problems, and the machine I had been using to make this game is now kaput. So, I'm going to be building a new computer for the sole reason of making games. Some folks have already come forward with money (thanks again!), and I figure now's as good a time as any to beg a bit. To be perfectly clear though: I do not NEED money. I'll be buying a new machine with or without donations, so please don't think that you must donate for any reason. Donations would be very appreciated though, so if you enjoy my games, well... now would be a fantastic time to show it. =)
Thanks Everyone!
DirtyC101
Known bugs:
If multiple monsters drop items simultaneously, only one will hit the ground.
If you are grabbed while using a Staff special attack, the power up sound will continue for a while
Being re-grabbed immediately as the first grab is ending will often cause the grapple bar to remain hidden for that grapple
Large items in the foreground can look funny. Their tops will be hidden when in dark rooms, and they will often clip the interface bar at the top of the screen.
The code "TowardTheHorde" says it doesn't work when entered. It actually does, and it works better than it's supposed to (it unlocks both Act 1 & 2 monsters, instead of just Act 1). Since it's a 'good' bug, I'm going to leave it for now. Enjoy. ;)
Saturday, November 5, 2011
November Update
Some of you may remember I took a LONG break this spring due to unforseen computer problems. Well those same problems are back. I managed to recover the source file, so the good news is I haven't lost a thing. The bad news is I think that computer is out of extra lives. Time to build the raft & the bonfire & send it to the great afterlife. Much of it is 9 years old, so I really can't bitch. That's like living to 300 in human years. haha.
For the time being I've re-purposed my gaming rig. So yes, work will be progressing again shortly, and I still plan to have something out by the end of the year. Hopefully before 11:59 on New Years' Eve, but it wouldn't surprise me if I'm working up to the wire.
On better & brighter notes, I'm finally working on the sex animations. Some of them are pretty hot, imo, while others are still off a bit. For example there's a 69 position which doesn't quite line up right. The girls are roughly the same height, but the perspective on one of them is always wrong because they're both drawn from the same angle. Despite being primarily a profile view, there's a slight angle to the view as well. When you flip one of them over, her perspective is now backwards. I can kinda work through that by positioning the girl on top as if she's at a different angle, but it's not perfect. In short, it looks funny. Still hot, but funny. ;)
Hahah, I guess it looks even stranger with her still clothed. But I'm sure y'all know how to fix that by now. Actually, now that I look closely, it looks like K's armor is partially clipping that humans' boob. Need to fix that too.
That's all for now. Fair warning, posts for this month may be scarce. I plan on doubling down on the game to try & get as much done as I can, which means less time for talking about it. :P
DirtyC101
For the time being I've re-purposed my gaming rig. So yes, work will be progressing again shortly, and I still plan to have something out by the end of the year. Hopefully before 11:59 on New Years' Eve, but it wouldn't surprise me if I'm working up to the wire.
On better & brighter notes, I'm finally working on the sex animations. Some of them are pretty hot, imo, while others are still off a bit. For example there's a 69 position which doesn't quite line up right. The girls are roughly the same height, but the perspective on one of them is always wrong because they're both drawn from the same angle. Despite being primarily a profile view, there's a slight angle to the view as well. When you flip one of them over, her perspective is now backwards. I can kinda work through that by positioning the girl on top as if she's at a different angle, but it's not perfect. In short, it looks funny. Still hot, but funny. ;)
Hahah, I guess it looks even stranger with her still clothed. But I'm sure y'all know how to fix that by now. Actually, now that I look closely, it looks like K's armor is partially clipping that humans' boob. Need to fix that too.
That's all for now. Fair warning, posts for this month may be scarce. I plan on doubling down on the game to try & get as much done as I can, which means less time for talking about it. :P
DirtyC101
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