Drawing December

My game update:   Wasn't planning to resume work until January, but ended up missing it too much to stay away.  Still not in with both feet, so don't go thinking I'm going to have the next release ready early.  Hell, I don't even have a release date in mind yet.

I've been mainly drawing, or trying to remember how to anyway haha.  Each of the characters has a "final" outfit they can unlock in act 3, so I thought that would be a good place to start.  The wizard & warrior outfits are fairly obvious (imo), but I wasn't sure what to give the space marshal.  There's nothing that would really fit the role in a fantasy world & not cover too much skin.  I briefly considered giving her a ninja costume or a wild west duster / trenchcoat.  Then I realized I had skipped the fantasy staple of the chainmail bikini.

Drawing chainmail has proven harder than I thought.  I originally tried drawing each link, but the links ended up being so large that it no longer looks like chainmail.  Sexy perhaps, but not the direction I wanted.  So next I played around with making a rough outline & filling in various hints of detail.  This helps make it look more like chainmail from a distance, and it's probably easier on processing power too.  I still don't think it looks quite right, but it's getting closer.  My complaint now is that it could be mistaken for something frilly or lacy at first glance.  Metal is highly reflective, and I'm not quite conveying that yet.  I think more dark & light detail will help, but my first few attempts ended up looking busy without actually conveying the metal links.  So not entirely sure what I need to do.   I'll play with some more.

Around the Interwebs: 

It looks like some folks have made a World of Warcraft sex game.  Link here.  I haven't played the demo yet, as it doesn't run on my computer.  From what I can tell, they ripped the character models from WoW, added them to a different game engine, and created some sexual poses.  I have to confess, I'm intrigued.  Here's hoping the final product is better than "go kill 10 rats".  =D

And lastly.  ONE MILLION HITS??!??!?!  Don't think I didn't notice that.  Pretty sure I'm supposed to commemorate with some sort of present, but seeing as how I'm just now starting on the game again, I don't really have anything new to offer.  I'd post some fan art, but no one has sent me any.  And it would probably be better than what I can draw, so let's not go that route.  heheheh.  Seriously, thanks to everyone for dropping by.  It's downright awesome to know I'm not the only deviant out there.  <3

DirtyC101

November's Post - Not a rapist.

Okay, so let's start with my game.  No progress, nor was I expecting any.  Could/should get started as soon as the end of the year, so expect some more filler for the next month or so.



Around the interwebs this month there were 2 games that caught my interest.

The first is called Youth Ward, and the demo can be found for free here on Newgrounds.  Let me say straight up that the porn isn't very good.  I was really caught by the story/setting though.  I'm the 'stable' one of all my friends, so I've never had the 'privilege' of being  in a mental house as a patient.  I've visited plenty though, and I'd bet this is pretty much spot on.  So, highly recommend you go play the demo, especially if you know anyone mentally unstable & want to get a glimpse of life on the other side of that door.  Can't recommend it as a buyer, but at only $4, you might consider buying it just to support the artist.  Think of it as a nice donation.

The second game that caught my eye this month is a demo from Toffi.  He's been on a break for a long time, so I was delighted to see him start posting again.  You can find the latest demo on his blog here.  The first two levels kinda left me limp, but this new demon girl boss is damn good.  Toffi has made some of my all time favorite porn games, so I'm just tickled all over to see him back again.   Here's hoping for more in the future.  =)



And now for the meat of this post.

I come back to this question time & time again, & now's a good time as any to pose it.  I'm of the opinion that in order for a game to be a game, it has to have some manner of challenge.  It's a bit trickier to provide a challenge in a sex game though.  The players (presumably) want to see sex.  It's a game, so it makes sense to provide porn as a reward.  The easiest way to do this would be involve gameplay vs  members of the opposite sex.  And as the reward for winning, you get to have your way with them.  Which sounds kind of fun, right up until you take a step back & go - hey, that's called rape.  I don't want to be a rapist.

Consensual sex would of course be best, but if it's consensual then where's the game exactly?  There needs to be a challenge somewhere.  In my racing game, the race was the challenge, and the sex was offered up as a potential reward.  Note the difference between offered rewards & taken rewards.  If the 'dialogue' had been written differently, so that the player was the one offering cars in for sex, the game would have taken on a much darker tone.

In order to avoid this problem, we end up with all manner of befuddled porn games.  In my mind, Illusion is the king of screwy with the sexy.  In "You can't escape the Heroines", the path to porn is to actually lose a fist fight with the girls, so that they will then try & jump you to 'seal your powers'.  Yeah, talk about going around your ass to get to your elbow.  But the more I think about it, it's really hard to provide a challenging game with a sex reward and have the player not come off  as the bad guy.  (There are a few games where the player is the bad guy of course, but let's assume we want to be heros).

We can dodge a lot of these problems by making the hero female & making the computer control the bad guys.  Now we can make the bad guys rapists as well.  They were already bad guys anyway, now we just have one more reason to fight them.   So we get our challenges & we get our sex & we get to be the good guy (girl).  The problem is that in most cases, the sex is provided as a reward for losing, not for winning.  If the player wants to see porn, they have to lose on purpose.  That's opposite the usual goal of playing in the first place.  The player is getting rewarded for sucking at the game.

Oddly, one of the better solutions I've found has been with modded games.  I think I like this because the porn (usually) has nothing to do with the main gameplay at all.  The porn is never there as a quest reward.  About the closest I've ever seen is a whorehouse that required in game money, so in theory your questing pays off with sex, but that's a very loose association in my mind.  Come to think of it, that isn't a bad solution for adding porn to all manner of games.  A brothel on the side means that you can spend your cash however you like, and if the player wants some jollies as well, hey, we just added an easy cash sink.  Perhaps this is why brothels appear in so many role playing games, despite no actual sex?

This is a tough nut to crack, which is why we see so many strange variants on sex games out there.  I'm not planning on fixing it anytime soon, that's for sure.  But it is something my thoughts drift back to constantly.  So I'm ending the post this month with a question to all of you.  If you could make any sex game you wanted, what would it be?  How would the mechanics work?  Would the sex be the main game, a mini-game, or something on the side?  Try to keep your posts short & keep it general, I'm not looking to read dissertations nor am I trying to steal ideas or anything here.  I just think there must be a better way to make fun porn games.

Til next time,
DirtyC101

October's Post - Fallout 3 mods

No real "update" this month, so I'll just call this a "post" instead.  I think I've mentioned before that my other hobbies are mainly spring & fall hobbies.  They're in full swing right now, so I haven't done much with the game other than daydream a bit.  I wouldn't expect any real posts about the game until the end of this year, but I've kinda got in the habit of posting monthly, so figured I'd chat it up for a sec.

Since this is a blog about porn games, let me start this one off with one of my biggest pet peeves.  Video games that have brothels, where you can go to NOT have sex.  I don't know why games feel the need to include prostitutes when there clearly isn't going to be a follow through.  I can't think of the last game that included guns but didn't let you shoot them.  But for some reason, there's a slew of games that feel the need to paint a bright arrow in the sky pointing towards sex, only to stop short with an aborted cut scene (at best).

So where am I going with this you may ask?  Well, I'm not the only person who feels this way.   As proof, I point to the stack of nudity & sex mods for these very same games.  Most of them are crap, but every so often there's a gem.  I had heard really good things about sexout, and figured I'd take it for a spin.

Unfortunately, I didn't get very far.  Turns out sexout isn't for Fallout 3, it's actually for Fallout 3 New Vegas.  (Guess which one I don't own).  So after a few nights of frustration puzzling out that sexout was for the wrong game, I decided to see what sex mods were out there for plain Fallout 3.  Surprisingly, I didn't find all that much.  Err, well, I didn't find much that still worked anyway.  Plenty of dead links & outdated mods.  But that's another story.  Of the ones I found that still worked, the best was "Animated Prostitution - Work in Progress".  As you might guess from the name, it could use a lot of work.  When it does work though, it's not bad:

If you're interested, you can find it on Nexus mods, but you do need to register.  Search is 'funny', so you may need to search for JoshNZ instead of by the mod name.

You will also need to install the Fallout Script Extender or FoSE.  My limited understanding is that this is a game launcher with some of the piracy checks disabled, which you need since Fallout thinks sex mods are fucking with the security settings... somehow?  Whatever.

Anyway, the mod itself is a mix of fucking amazing mixed with broken shit.  It fixes the "Here's our brothel, but your sex is in another castle" problem.  It also has some really smart options integrated into the game, such as the ability to bring a playmate back to your home.  There's even some skills checks (speech) and the possibility of xp rewards depending on how you go about getting your groove on.  Needless to say, I was really impressed with how well the mod fits with the rest of the game.

Sadly, the actual sex is bad.  Eyes stare off into space, the camera is always in the wrong spot, animations are stiff, and the couple rarely line up correctly with each other - even had a few times where one fell through the floor or appeared on the wrong side of a wall.  Oh, & no voices either.  I'll take still images with good voice work over silent animations any day.  (In fairness, there's a separate mod to add some moaning, but it also appears to be outdated / broken.)

Despite all my bitching, it was a fun dive to try & get this all together.  What can I say, porn is a great motivator.  It does make me seriously consider trying to build a sex mod of my own someday.  Not for Fallout 3, but maybe next time I find a game I actually like a lot.  Fortunately for y'all, I don't think RailRoad Tycoon 2 would really benefit from a sex mod.  =D

Til next time
DirtyC101

0.60 Release

The next release is out now.  Like right now.  Like "the link is in the sidebar" right now.

What are you waiting for?  Stop reading, go play it!


Okay, that's out of the way.  Hey again everyone.  Release 0.60 is now out.  Phew!  As I've been saying all year, 2012 has proven to be, well, let's be nice and just say that I've been really busy.  As a result, there's just not THAT much new content in this release.  I've added a lot of polish to the second act, including double teams for the monsters, some nice color & class change options, lots of new gear, and my own spin on gallery mode.  That sounds like a lot (and it is), but the game still ends at the same spot as before.  If you were hoping to explore more of the world, I apologize.  That's going to have to wait until I get to Act 3.

There's always some bugs when I release a game, so I'm going to leave this post up for at least a month, probably more.  When you do find one, please post it below.  If it's really game breaking, I'll see if I can get it patched, but otherwise expect this version to float for a while.

I'm purposely allowing y'all to choose any race/class combo in this release.  I have NOT tested to make sure they are all viable however.  It's very likely that there's some combination of race/class that will not be able to complete the game with a 100% rating.  (When you find it, let me know).

If you get stuck for some reason, also check the "FAQ" link located right below the link to the game.  I'll probably update that today or tomorrow with a list of the usual problem spots.

That's all for now.  Hope ya enjoy it.  =)
DirtyC101




Known Bugs:
-Going through a door with an attack button pressed will hang the game.  Pressing S sometimes helps

-Occasionally the start of a double team grapple will erase the arrow signs, but the game still thinks they are there.  Either try guessing very slowly, or hold the S key to escape the grab.

-Getting re-grabbed immediately as a grab is ending can cause some funny business.  Usually just throws off the color of the grapple bar, but can cause bigger problems too.

-Getting grabbed while channeling a staff special attack will cause the sound to continue looping (possibly fixed as of yesterday).

Additional bugs found as of Sept. 4th:
-Warrior K. Fox and Space Marshal Farah cannot complete Act 1.  At 6 body/4 spirit, they can't get into the crew quarters nor can they create a combination pipe.  For now, I suggest using the codes SlimeTime or OffTheBoat to teleport past this problem.

-The hitbox for the human male's attack is visible.  Not sure why, but I'll add it to the 'needs fixing' list.


Game update Sept 10th.  
So I was thinking... it's going to be another couple of forevers until the next release.  It shouldn't take but a few minutes to fix a door so that Warrior K Fox / Space Marshal Farah can play through the whole game, why don't I knock that out real quick.  And while I'm in there, I can fix that hitbox on the human male weapon.  And the color on the hero's leg in that one grab... and maybe add in that tentacle gallery....

So yeah, I managed to turn 5 minutes worth of work into a weekends' project.  But it's done.  Check the link, game has in fact been updated.  Nothing earth shattering, but still some nice fixes all around.

Oh, and several of you have mentioned that the human throne doesn't seem to do anything if you sit on it.  That's correct, it's just there to be a chair & block the way to the back room.  The elf throne does have a hidden animation however.

Sept 18th.
Just got a note from Google stating that the site where I store the game is being changed.  Something about Google Docs becoming Google Drive?  Anyway, if the link to the game breaks, don't sweat it, I'll get it fixed.  As always, feel free to mirror the game about the interwebs as well, if you're in a position to do so.

August Update

Next game release: summer-ish

I'm sure y'all want to hear that the next release is right around the corner.  From my perspective it is, but I doubt that's comforting right this second.  And I'm going to be busy three of the next four weekends, which means I'm not going to get a lot done in August.  Rest assured, I'm working as fast as time allows.  Game will be released soon.  It just won't feel that way.

Human boss is done, and I think he's about right.  Looks good enough, animations are hot (imo), and there's just a dash of plot/story thrown at ya as well.  More importantly, there's tons of new gear in his tent now.  It is without a doubt the best gear-up spot in the game, especially if you play a warrior.  I suspect folks will be making multiple trips back there to grab gear & play with the different weapons.  If anything, I'm worried I may have made it too good, making it the mandatory 'go here first' of the village.  I guess that's somewhat balanced by the fact that you can't carry enough of it, and the items for the third backpack slot are scattered everywhere but there.  haha.

So now I'm up to the final boss of this act, and I'm sad to say she really doesn't look 'right' to me:

Course it might help if I drew her hands.  Pfft.  Hands.  Who needs 'em, right?  =D  Seriously, there's something I don't like about her face, but I can't quite place it.  I think her forehead might be jutting out too far, or maybe her ears are too small, or maybe I don't have enough detail around the eyes.  Actually, I think her eyes might be placed too high, but moving them lower really makes the forehead look too large.  So not really sure what to do there, but I'll keep piddling with it.

She's supposed to be older.  Not wheelchair old, more like cougar old, so I bumped up the breast size a bit & thinned down the arms & legs.  In hindsight, not sure that was the right direction, as the skinny legs make her look more decrepit than elderly.  Probably should have added some boob sag too, but that's just not sexy so I skipped it.  So we have an anorexic, perky female.  Which isn't bad at all, but it doesn't convey 'older' imo.

Not sold on the color scheme either.  Originally she was grey on grey.  Didn't like that so much, and it's one of Lei-Lei's alternate colors as well.   Tried silver too, but that turned out more 'funny grey' than silver.  And white is downright too bright.  So I settled on off-green for now.  It still  doesn't quite click for me, although it may be because I kept the eyes bright purple.

Anyway, that's the update.  I'd chat more, but some folks want me to actually 'work' on the game.  =D
DirtyC101

Does my foot look too big?

Bonus points for you if you even noticed her foot in the first ten seconds.  =P  For this position I needed to draw new feet for the hero.  I suck at drawing hands & feet, and it turns out drawing crossed legs is a total bitch on top of that.  So I'm cheating slightly by drawing one foot in a straight on view.  It looks too big to me now, but I've been staring at it for a couple of hours now, figured I'd post it here.  Plus, I've found that pausing & coming back to it again later seems to help me.

Side story:  Human boss is a good bit taller than his tribesmen.  And he picks the hero up for his animations.  Turns out this puts a good chunk of the action off-screen, as we only see him from the neck down.  I've fixed it by panning the camera down during the initial grab animation, but that looks really strange the first time you see it.  Guess it's not as strange as having the camera focused chest downward though.  hahah.

DirtyC101

July Update

Next Game Release: Summer-ish

So the only big things left to do are animate the human boss & final boss. So it would make sense that I'd be working hard on that. Naturally, that's not the case. Instead, I've been working on:

Yeah, I think one person commented that the game wasn't as hard as he was expecting. So clearly it made sense to work on that. lol. No really, I've actually been working on Horde mode a bunch. Rather than flood the screen with mobs, I wanted to try increasing their difficulty. Once I had that piece of code, it seemed like it wouldn't be too hard to incorporate it back into story mode as well. Turns out I was wrong on that part, so when the next release comes out, I'll be asking y'all to specifically look for spots where this is broken. heh.

And for those of you who wanted an invulnerability code... well, okay, this isn't it. But I also added the code "Softer", which will reduce the game difficulty. I think you'll find it's getting pretty close. Just don't go overboard with it, or the mobs will just flop over in seconds regardless of how you set the grapple duration.

In related news, I've been going through the tutorials over at http://www.codecademy.com/. My 'formal' programming training stops at loops & if/else statements. So much of "object oriented programming" is just lost on me. I'm slowly fixing that. They don't have Actionscript specifically, but Javascript has been close enough so far. It's also been inspiring me to write slightly better code, so I've been going back & revamping large chunks to use functions, rather than having the same code copy/pasted into 10 different spots. Yeah, I'm sure that will break something too. The great thing about programming - it punishes you for doing it 'right'. =D

DirtyC101

(Edit - For some reason like 1/3 of the text keeps getting hi-lighted in white.  I also think I'm seeing individual words in the wrong font.  Think I've fixed it, but damn, WTF?)

Art - Human Boss

Short post.  I'm done drawing the human boss, & wanted to post him here for feedback before I start animating.  For that matter, I haven't settled on his sex animations either, so if there's a pose anyone really wants, now's a good time to request it.

Still not quite happy with his lower jaw/lip.  It's not bad, but it's more blank than anything.  Was hoping to give him just the hint of a scowl.  Also the axe handle was originally supposed to be regular brown wood.  I often draw in bright colors to make it easier to see as I go.  In this case I liked the blue so much I decided to keep it.  So I guess he's swinging a cobalt axe?  Or it's a smurf-killer.

DirtyC101

June Update

Next Game Release: Summer-ish

So ya may have noticed it's now June.  That means summer is finally here.  So in theory my game could be released any day now...  I'll spoil that for you, probably not going to be this month.  But now that summer has started, the 90 day counter has started for real.  Time to really get to work.  I'll see if I can step it up a bit & have something out before summer's gone.  (And now I've gone & jinxed myself.  He comes 90 days of emergency house repairs, overtime at work, & RL drama.)

So been drawing the human boss.  And like every time I draw, it takes me forever to get into it. I'm just not motivated to draw the same way I am with programming.  There's this 'dread' phase I have to get over before I can get into it.  Once I get past that, it's really kind of fun.  It's a shame, cuz I bet if I ever could get into drawing and keep at it, I could get decent.  As it is, seems like I forget everything between my drawing phases.

Anyway, I got stuck drawing hair for awhile, & thought I'd capture the process.  The leftmost one was my final pass on the first night.  When I was zoomed in, it looked great, but as soon as I stepped back again I could see that it was much too small.  It's like it's painted on his head, rather than flowing loose.  So the next several I simply kept saying 'make it bigger'.  The second one looks weird cuz it's too square at the back.  The next one is better, but it's too shallow at the top.  The top would be fine if his hair was pulled back tight like in a pony tail or something, but it's not so it looks wrong.  Maybe if he was looking into the wind or something?

To me, it looks like his jaw moves in each picture.  It's not, nothing changed but the hair.  But I think this is why I have so much trouble drawing some days.  I change one thing, and that makes me want to change another thing, then another... and pretty soon I have something totally different than where I started.  Not always a bad thing mind you.

Fairly happy with the hair on the right now.  It fits the size of his head, & kind of has an untamed look to it.  The rearmost line is too smooth though, but when I try to put some wavy in it, it all falls apart again.  So smooth line for now. haha

-DirtyC101

Earning Rewards

This post isn't terribly porn related.  As an apology, here's a link to Project Nemesis, which is a fantastic, FREE, webcomic with plenty of porn.  Comic reaches greatness around about the fifth or sixth one, so give it a chance if the first few don't excite.

Much like everyone else, I've been playing Diablo 3 this week.  Not as much as I'd like, but that's how it goes sometimes.  And much like everyone else, there's a lot I don't like.  (There's a lot I like too, don't fret!).  I want to focus on one tiny aspect today: the Identify scroll.  There isn't one.  Normal magic items are automatically identified, and higher level ones are identified by simply right-clicking on them.  To me, this is unrewarding.  It's fast, but there's no thrill to obtaining magic items.

Now, contrast this to Torchlight.  In Torchlight, there are identify scrolls (just like in Diablo 2).  You have to carry a stack of them around, and if you want to identify a magic item you have to find & click on your scrolls, then find & click on the item.  But you can also learn the Identify spell, at which point the process boils down to right-clicking on the item.  In case you missed it, it's the exact same mechanic I just described with Diablo 3.  But in Torchlight it feels like a reward, while in Diablo 3, it feels tedious.

So why is that?

I'm going to hypothesize that it's because in one game I had to put up with crap for a bit, and then I 'earned', the right to bypass this system.  Do you remember how awesome it was when you rescued Deckard in Diablo 2?  It wasn't terribly hard, nor did it take terribly long, but man, it felt great once ya finally had him unlocked.  Felt like ya actually accomplished something.

Now, what if the game had instead started with Deckard already standing in town casting free 'identify all' spells?  I'm going to bet folks would bitch about what a pain in the ass it was to walk back to town to identify, instead of rejoicing in how much nicer it got once Dekcard handled all the busywork.

So, tying this back to my game, remember in the last post how I was saying I wanted players to have to earn the separate classes?  The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that's the right choice.  That said, next release I'll open up the classes for fun & for testing, cuz I think it needs to be checked.  And hey, it's been like 6+ months since my last release, figure I better throw a few nice bones out there.  hahaah.

Til Next Time
DirtyC101

May Update

Next Release: Summer-ish

I've already bemoaned plenty of times how I never seem to have time to work on the game.  I've also been having a lot of trouble waking up on time lately.  So as an attempt to kill 2 birds with 1 stone, I've changed my morning routine.  Now the first thing I do every morning is work on the game for 30 minutes.  It's something fun enough to get me out of bed, so I don't hit the snooze button for an hour.  Of course, by the time I wake up enough to think straight and get Adobe booted, it seems like my half hour is over.  But I've been doing this for a few weeks now, and I'm making (slow) progress.  All the double team animations are complete, and some of the later ones are pretty cool.  I'm going to hold off on the spoilers for now, but I think you're going to really like them.  =D

So with the double team animations complete, I'm trying to wrap up the last of Act 2.  There's still a bit to go.  The two boss fights are the biggest holdouts, but at the moment I'm working on... I'm not sure what you call it.  Detail?  Polish?  I'm working on an optional sex scene that triggers in one of the backgrounds.  So drawing the backgrounds, making the items, and then animating this particular event.  (Given this is a sex game, I reckon that's more like a mandatory scene.  hahaha).  Anyway, had a bit of a setback this week, as once the original items were drawn I realized I didn't like them & went in a different direction.  Still, progress is progressing.

And the last thing I want to touch on today is a question from a few posts back:

"As a final note, when the next version comes out, could you make it so that completing whatever content is there counts as 'completing' the game in terms of unlocking character/class combinations? I'm just itching for my boxing bunny~<3"

Now, this is something I had completely forgotten about.  Well, forgotten is the wrong word, I knew I wanted to implement this once the game was done.  But the idea of having it tested before the final release had never occurred to me.  And it really needs to be tested too, as I'm positive there's going to be some combination of race / class that gets stuck.  Maybe the bunnykin warrior isn't actually strong enough to open the necessary door, or the human wizard isn't smart enough to find the necessary magic MacGuffin.  So opening this up for testing is a great idea.  What I don't like is there's no way to put that cat back in the bag, so to speak.  I can turn it off again of course, but once you've played with it, I think having to unlock it again would come across as tedious, not fun.

I could set it up as an obvious code just for testing (something like "ThisCodeDoesn'tWorkLater").  Or I could release some full releases where the unusual combos were the only options available (IE:  In this month's release, you can only play as wizards).  But I'm not really digging either of those options.  So I'm seriously considering just making them all unlocked from the top.  I rather liked having them only available as unlockable rewards for beating the game though, so I'm a bit torn here.  I'll have to think about it some more.  It just so happens that I want to re-do the character select screen anyway, as it doesn't have a color selector built into it, so I'm going to be retouching this anyway.  Now might be a good time to turn it all on & be done with it.

Til next time
DirtyC101

Where have all the good Horde Modes gone?

Back when I started this project, the game was going to focus on Horde mode.  There was going to be a little story to make the 'how to play' tutorial interesting, but that was about it.  The game has shifted direction almost completely since then.  Aside from adding in a monster (de-)selector tool, there hasn't been an update to Horde mode in ages.

So consider myself surprised when I found myself thinking about Horde mode all day today.  I'd like to make it more interesting, but I haven't settled on how I'm going to change it.  In Beta on the Beach, there's defined fixed waves to fight through.  I ditched that a while ago so that monsters could spawn continuously.  Now I'm not so sure that was a good move.  Having waves of monsters gives a natural pause, and more importantly it gives a score (sort of) that can be used to compare how well you did.  It would also provide a good place for me to drop power-ups on the player if I decide to add that.

So anyway, I'm picturing something more along the lines of stages, where you fight your way through slightly different combinations of monsters on each level.  Backgrounds change say maybe every 5 waves or so?  So wave one might be 10 zombies on the ship, wave two might be a mix of 12 zombies & tentacles, wave three might add some pirates... you get the idea.  I like the idea of trying to make Horde mode roughly equivalent in play value to story mode.  Well, maybe not in the initial play through, but perhaps in replay value.

The other reason this is on my mind is I'm starting to work on my version of a gallery mode.  Again, Horde mode was supposed to kind of fill that void, but once it was all set up, I can see that it just doesn't cut it. (In my defense, turning the grapple duration to really slow & turning certain monsters off isn't a half-bad gallery either).  Regardless, by adding in a real gallery I'm actually taking value away from Horde mode.  Okay, maybe that's a stretch.  hahah.  But I feel like this area needs some work, so I'll probably revamp it.  Someday... hahah.

Anyway, that's where my thoughts are today.  Comment away!
DirtyC101

More pose suggestions

Okay, I'm almost done with the double team animations.  No really!  Okay, I'm stuck on the last one.  I actually don't have a plan for how to combine the male bunnykin & female bunnykin as a double team.  There's no canon for combining flying carpets and tentacle flowers.  (Or at least, none that I know of anyway. haha).

I'm sure it can be done, but the more I think about it, I'd almost rather not go that route.  I'm imagining either flying carpets with horrible flower patterns on them, or worse, flower petals made from carpets. So I'm backing away from that route.   Okay, I could probably use the carpet to hold the hero down while the flower does the tentacle thing, but I'm just not feeling it (and there's already plenty of both in the male/male and female/female combos).

The bunnykin are mages.  When we let magic on the table it really opens up the possibilities for unusual or erotic poses.  So this is one of the few chances I have to do something really out there.  At first I was going to have them combine their magics & summon up an elemental, but elementals usually aren't that hot (yes, fire elemental joke here).  Then I was thinking more along the lines of having them summon a sex dungeon horse (is there a shorter name for that?) or maybe a strap-down bed.  But I'm not too keen on implying the bunykin are into that level of kink (that's for some other characters hehe).  More importantly, sex dungeons aren't terribly magical which is what I'm trying to hit here.

So thought I'd ask the collective here for ideas.  Once we put some magic in the mix, is there a new pose you'd want to try that isn't normally possible?  FWIW, I was envisioning the male as having the ability to animate non-living items, while the female is more like a druid & can control plants & earth critters.  But that's completely optional.  If you want them floating around with magic portals allowing some funny positions, well, now's your chance to convince me.  =)  Hm.. actually, that last one doesn't sound so bad.

DirtyC101

April Update

Next Release: summer-ish

From what I understand, Kyrieru lost his job recently.  Rather than jump back in the rat race, he's going to try making porn games for a living.  As someone who enjoys playing porn games, I want to encourage this.  =)  So, his first game is completed.  It's called Kurovadis.  The demo is free, and the game is only five bucks.  You can check it out here: kyrieru.blogspot.com

Probably best to keep Kurovadis discussion on his boards, but FWIW I liked it.  While most porn games are mainly porn with no game, this is closer to the opposite.  Sure, there's porn too, but the focus is on the game here.  I guess you could fap to it if you tried hard enough though.  lol.


Okay, onto my game.  Still progressing, but the pace is mind-numbing slow.  I'm about halfway through the double team animations now.  There's not really much to discuss there though, so I'm going to break my usual habit & talk about something that might not even make it into the game:

Take a quick head count in case you missed it.  Foursomes.  Or call them triple teams, either way works.  This is a fantastic example of feature creep.  It's something I hadn't considered originally, but once someone suggested it, I thought it would be a good idea.  

Don't get too excited though.  I don't have any code in yet to support this, and at the pace I'm going this will be months out.  In my defense, this may not actually work once I try to put it into the game, so don't be shocked if it's not there in the next release.  Could end up being more of a social interaction than a fight for all I know. hehe.  

-DirtyC101

Pssst!

This picture made me laugh, so thought I'd share.  The bunny kid isn't supposed to be in the background when this animation happens, but this was the background I ended up with when I started animating today (always seems random, which is kind of neat).  I just like the way the expression on his face totally works with what's going on in the foreground.  heh  Hell, even the "Psst! Over Here!" works, although to a lesser degree.  =)

For added fun, feel free to make up your own words for the kid.  So far, the best I have is "That's not where that goes!"
-DirtyC101

March Update!

Breaking News: I'm not dead.  =D

Next Release: Summer-ish?

Hey again everyone!  As usual, sorry for the sparse posts.  I am getting back into working on the game, but so far my time has been pretty scattered.  It just blows my mind how I can blink & another weeks slips by without me touching the keyboard.  I'm still stretched pretty thin, but I'm at least getting some time in.  I'll take slow progress over no progress.  (Okay, I'd rather have rapid progress, but I'll take what I can atm).

On the good side, I have had a lot of time to think about the game.  And I've finally got the core story/background/gameplay nailed down for Act 3.  Well, maybe nailed down is a bit strong, but I've got a concept anyway.  For the longest time, I couldn't really figure out what I wanted to do.  It was literally: "wander around in the desert & fight monsters til the game ends".  Not exactly the most exciting storyboard.  So now I've got something in mind, I just need to finish... well, everything.  hehe.  I try not to think of it like that though, or it really will take me forever.  =)

Anyway, thanks for sticking around during the dry times.  More posts coming, I just don't know when. heh.
DirtyC101

Oh, and someone requested kissing as one of the poses.  Here's some proof that I really do listen.  I'm just also really forgetful.  =)

February Update

Next Release: Summer-ish

Hey all,

Sorry for the sparse posts.  I haven't been working on the game much this last month.  My other hobbies have suddenly become more interesting than porn. (Seriously, how often does that happen?)  Don't fret, I expect to be getting back to coding again shortly, but in the meanwhile I'm happy to ride out my other interests for a bit.

Although I haven't done much with the game, I'm pretty excited about what little I have done.  Almost all the comments/problems from the last few months have been addressed to some degree.  I'm not promising y'all will agree with my changes, but I think in every case the result is better than before.  So, that's pretty cool.  Crawling has in fact been greatly reduced, the bunny village is little less annoying to travel around, and there's even a few bonus goodies hidden away now (be sure to go back & visit old levels in the next release).

I'm starting to work on the double team animations now.  I'm not 100% sure I'm happy with them though.  One of the things I really wanted was for the original single monster grab to influence the double team position.  So for example, a single human male grab would combine with another human male/female like so:

This sounds okay & all, but it also means that the animations are a bit repetitive.  In this case, the original male's animation barely changes at all, and the actual difference between the 2nd male/female isn't really all that big either.  Of course, I'm showing one of the worst examples so far, and I'm cherry picking from the four grapple positions...  Still, not sure this is going to give me the variety I want.

On the other hand, this is also much faster to animate, as I don't have to change the animations nearly so much either.... So not entirely a bad thing.   hahah!

Anyway, that's where I've been for the month.  Hopefully I'll have more to post soon!
DirtyC101

Where'd I go?

Just a quick note to everyone.  Yes, the site was down.  No, I don't know why.  Google sent me an e-mail demanding a cell phone number.  Once I entered it, the site returned.  Sadly, that's all the information I have.  I don't know if there was a complaint against the site, or if I triggered some sort of alarm on their end, or if this is some sort of preliminary SOPA/PIPA defense they're rolling out.  (Maybe one of the admins there is just such a huge fan that they wanted my phone number?  lol).

Whatever it is, site's back up.  I'm grateful that the fix was so easy, but damn it'd be nice to know WHY it was gone in the first place.  Something I'd like to avoid in the future.

DirtyC101

Save Me!

I suspect most of you recognize the two scenes above.  From a play standpoint, they're almost identical.  They're both 'run up & save them' mini-quests.  And perhaps you were wondering why I'd put the exact same content in twice?  Anyone?  No?  Okay, well, let's pretend you said yes anyway, cuz this post gets really boring otherwise.  ;P

Fair warning, this isn't directly about code, but it is definitely about the magic behind the curtain.  If that's not your thing, ya might wanna stop now.

The main code allows for two different things that can interact with the character - monsters & items.  Monsters are fairly straightforward, they're the things attacking you.  Items represent almost everything else.  If you hit spacebar to interact with it, it's an item.  So that means most doors, cabinets, quest NPCs, weapons or clothing on the ground, etc.

There's some rules (okay a lot of rules) in the code to handle each.  And between the two, I can usually make everything happen that I need.

The time when I have trouble is when I need both monsters & items at the same time, and they interact conditionally with each other.  Take the rescue events above.  There's a monster (or monsters) and an item (the girl), and you need to be able to interact with her after she's saved, but until then she needs to stay unselectable.

When I originally set up the LeiLei rescue, I had the item (LeiLei) drive the event.  Once you get within a certain range, the monster is 'released' so to speak.  At first I was really happy with this.  But on later playthroughs, I noticed that it was possible to get just outside the trigger range, and swing a reach weapon right through the monster's sprite.  The monster should be hit by this & react, but because it's all slaved to the item, instead he just stands there & the attack passes through him harmlessly.

That's the kind of bug I'd like to avoid.  Operative word however is like.  It's not game breaking, it doesn't lock the game or force you to start over.  It just doesn't work 'right'.  We see the weapon pass right through him, and whatever immersion we had in the game is broken.

So to answer my earlier question, the reason I did the exact same event again with K. Fox is because I wanted to see if I could do better.  This time around, the monster closest to the PC is driving the event.  Again, if you get too close he'll turn around & attack.  But now you can also hit him from range & surprise him.  This also caused all manner of problems if you can imagine.  The code wants to walk monsters towards the player, so I had to find a way to turn that off, but just for these two.  Then it wants to throw attacks at the player, had to disable that too.  Then it wants to grab the player if you get too close, but I have to tell it to release the animation with K first.  Oh, and if you jump him, then I have to release not just him but also his buddy & K Fox, so that combat works as it should.  Oh, and then K has to know if the monsters are dead or alive, so that you aren't accidentally talking to her while fighting.  I was re-re-re-writing the code for this right up until the game was posted.  I kept finding bugs I never thought of (like if you one shot them with the meteor, or if you run up & try to join the grapple).

This is the one area where I was sure I'd get a bug complaint.  There's just too many variables at play.  Although everything seemed ok, I was sure there was going to be some combination of distance-attack-player that I wasn't considering which would break the game.  I haven't heard any though, so perhaps I got them all after all?  That's sort of comforting of course, but not what I was expecting either.  hah.

Anyway, this event was a large part of the reason why I released the 0.50 beta.  There's other reasons too of course, but this is one of the prime examples where there were just too many permutations for me to test them all.  And now that it's working, I'll probably never use it again (hahah).  Okay, not entirely true.  There won't shouldn't be another 'rescue' event, but the same code tricks can be used in other areas as well.

And yes, Farah will make an appearance in Act 3.  Just not in a 'help, save me' quick event.  =D

DirtyC101

Weapons

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

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.

(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