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.  =)