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