Drawing is hard...

So one of the many things I've been putting off is drawing the heros at anything other than a side view.  I think we already covered that drawing isn't my strong suit, although whenever I try I feel like I at least learn something.  Regardless, the entire game plays from a side view, so there hasn't been a push to draw more.  This week I started working on the double-team grapples, and realized that a second view/perspective with them facing the screen a bit more would really help.  The first several attemps turned out pretty bad, and in hindsight I wish I had screencapped a few of them to show my progress as I went.  What I have now isn't super-awesome, but it no longer jumps out to me as being flat out wrong either. 

I suspect redrawing the feet at a deeper angle would help a lot.  I also think her torso might need to be a bit longer, as the spacing from her breasts to her belly-button looks too small to me.  I can tell the angles on the torso aren't lining up right, and I'm hoping that's because I'm re-using too much from the side view.  Ah well, more stuff to learn.  hehe.  If one of you has some pointers or a some good references for me, now'd be a good time to post them.

-DirtyC101

Story & Update

I spent a large amount of time this weekend working on the game, and I'm glad to say I made a ton of progress.  All the critical features are now done, so I shouldn't have any problem posting a playable demo in April.  That doesn't mean I'm happy with it yet, but the game now 'works' for lack of a better term.  I think I'm going to set the release date on tax day (April 15th for those of you not in America).  Let's face it, there's not much else to celebrate that day, so figured I'd bring a small bit of joy to everyone in my own way.  hahaha.  There's still lots of smaller features & just general polish I'd like to add, so we'll see how many of those I can include before then.

I want to talk a bit about the story, or more precisely, the back story.  One of the things that rather bothered me about Krystal / K. Fox is that they have personal spaceships, and yet they're running around fighting with their bare hands.  You'd think they'd have something a little more high-tech for weapons.  Some sort of energy weapon or blaster, plus maybe a vibro-knife or a chainsword.

So why aren't they carrying them?

There's a lot of potential explanations here, but in the end I went with the old MacGuffin - they end up on a planet where energy weapons don't work.  I can't even count how many times Star Trek has pulled that one out.  The planet is one of medieval fantasy and is of course inhabited with plenty of bad guys, but also other potential heroes.  So at the character selection screen, you'll have your choice between a rescuer sent to search for a missing spaceship, or a local inhabitant who is trying to figure out what that giant meteor was last night.  I'm hoping it makes for an interesting mix of both sci-fi & fantasy.  We'll see how well it goes together.

-DirtyC101

Sex & Games

Browsing Slashdot, & saw a link to this article:

Why_videogames_havent_grown_up_yet

It's a small piece about how mainstream video games handle sex & sexual relations  (short version: poorly).  It's one of my biggest pet peeves with larger games - either they ignore sex completely, or they bumble around with 'how much skin can we show & still get an M rating?'  Now make no mistake, I have no problem with pin-up quality heroines.  My beef is that the games are clearly trying to sell on sex, but fall short of actually including any.  If you're going to put a brothel in a game, there had better be an actual sex option.

In fairness, selling sex while somehow remaining in the 'not porn' camp is nothing new.  Movies dance this line with every R release.  And somehow they avoid seeming like a preteen's porn fantasy.  Why can't video games rise to the same bar?  I don't know - but it's one of those things that bother me constantly. 

Back to my porn games (which also handle sex poorly, but in the opposite way), Kidan asked me about the stats in my next game.  My goal with this game was to have each character actually play differently.  The warrior should be strong, but perhaps not great with brains or sexual technique.  The wizard should be really bright & should have powerful magic attacks, but probably have low health.   So, I grabbed my old RPG books & started notating which stats I'd want to use.  I was on the dangerous path of building a full RPG, but then I realized that this is supposed to be a porn game.  It's supposed to be light & quick to pick up.  So, I looked at everything I wanted to happen in the game, and I started combining stats together.  I ended up with:

Body
Spirit

And that's it.  I managed to crowbar any action I needed under these two stats.  Body consists of everything a fighter would need (Strength, Stamina, Reflexes), and Spirit is everything else.  Think of it as a combination of both Intelligence & Charisma - it's everything a wizard would need, plus some charm & sexual abilities.  Originally Intelligence & Charisma were separate, but they just aren't used enough in the game.  This made the Body stat far superior.  So for game balance I ended up combining the two.  Which in theory means the wizard is also the best with sexual attacks.  It doesn't quite work out that way, as she doesn't have the strength to maintain an advantage in most grapples, but it does make for interesting play.  Anyway, I made a short list of things each stat affects, I'll copy it below.

BODY:
Damage & skill with physical weapons
Grapple strength (shifts advantage bar)
Maximum health
Force open doors, climb ropes
Resist poisons

SPIRIT:
Damage & skill with magic attacks
Grapple damage
Health regeneration rate
Solve logic puzzles
Charm / Coerce certain NPCs

 That's a long post, so I'll go ahead & wrap up.  For those of you who are curious about where K. Fox plays into this, I'll simply say she's somewhere in between.  I have her set up as a Monk or martial artist, which requires both stats to some extent.

-DirtyC101

March Update

So let's jump right to it - I'm trying to package up most of the first act into a playable Beta.  Ideally I'd like to have that done by the end of this month.  Don't get too excited though, my original plan was to be done with the whole game by the end of February, so clearly I'm not too good at setting realistic timetables.

I flipped back & forth on having a playable demo at all.  Most demos not only suck, but they suck the life out of the final game as well.  But, I'm reaching the point where all the code is done, and now'd be a good time to check it.  The game isn't 'large' per se, but it is big enough that I don't think I'd catch every possible combination on my own.  So, opening it up to the masses just seems like the right thing to do. 

So that's the 'plan'.  Amazing, eh?  Yup, I'm a schemer.  Those of you who just want to play the demo, come back around the beginning of April.  There's going to be more talking by me before then, so don't be shocked when the next few posts don't contain the game.  I definitely want to make at least one post about the story, esp since I won't have any of the character intros done.  And there's been some 'funny code stories' as well I'd like to share, if you believe in such a thing.

Worked on the first mini-boss today, so let's end with a shot of her just so I can show a picture.  ;)

-DirtyC101