mdqp
patreon
Weekly dev blog: ramblings and more
🕑 Added 2017-03-27 08:46:24 +0000 UTC So the polls are over, and the jobs/random events/drunk events choice won, so that will be the focus until the release.For most of the week, I worked on Rahib: the new area map is 90% done, I need one more room and then it's time to add NPCs. Since I'll focus on random events, I might have to keep the area closed, as it might not get finished, but we'll see. I also re-worked the slime girl quest: now you can fail to deal with her (so the quest results fork, giving different effects with different factions), you get a new sex scene after the first one, the slime girl has different graphics, more personality (you'll get what I mean if you re-do the quest), and so on. I am considering allowing players to take her back home, eventually, but for now she chills out in the forest all the time, as usual. I probably need more content for this (possibly another sex scene, and proper interactions if you are a member of the involved factions), but if I don't extend rahib, it's not an urgent change (one of the factions is the League of merchants, which resides in Rahib).
We are going to get some new art for the slime girl sex scene, though: Since I realized the gangbang scene in the bath house might be done AFTER this month's release, I tried to see if I couldn't find someone else to do some artwork, and I found someone which has a good chance of becoming my go to artist from now on: Redjet, has a a style I really like, is Italian like me (which is a big benefit when discussing details and when it comes to timezones delays in conversations), is willing to do one drawing per month, and he is honestly not too expensive either. You can see his patreon page or his deviantart profile. I will be posting any lineart and updates on both commissioned works as soon as I get them, so you'll get something to look forward to!
Back to last week, I also spent some time trying to figure out a way to balance healing items (I discussed this with people before), I think I found the appropriate script, so I just need to play around with it, and hopefully it's going to be fine. I decided to use a system similar to TOTDC, where after you accumulate a certain amount, the protagonist won't buy them anymore (since they are more than enough), but if you find more in chests and for free, she'll take them. This is just to avoid the cheap approach of always going around with 99 elixirs, never having to worry about any enemy, even when you are obviously behind the curve (while not penalizing people who save their items for when they actually need them).
I am sure I might have done something else, but I can't remember it right now.
Now, I need to ask you guys a few questions, about all sorts of stuff: First, let's talk about the interface of the game, since it's probably one of the worst elements so far. You probably played the game much more than I did, so you might have ideas and suggestions on quality of life improvements.
For example, I was considering adding a map to the quest log, with quest markers on cities/areas. The map would be a modified version of the "general map", so it would be useless at the city level, but maybe players would like it.
Another thing I never addressed was the personal info page, which is still very rough currently, so players might want that to change, or maybe the mouse click should register in menus even when the cursor isn't on the highlighted choice (which is good in menus, but bad in dialogues, where you might click the wrong choice). To be honest, what I would have liked in the game was a cursor which appears only when using spells, which you can move the same way you move your protagonist (using the arrow keys, for example) without the screen moving, so you can only target what's on the screen at the moment, without needing a mouse/keyboard hybrid input, but I'd need to seriously put a lot of time into studying scripts, to be able to do that.
Maybe you can think of other annoyances the game has. Share them with me, so I can try to come up with a solution (I might be unable to, or the tradeoff might not be worthwhile, but maybe I am missing something obvious, so do let me know).
Another thing I wanted to hear opinions on are tiers and goals (I think I might have brought this up before, too). Reaching the second goal might not be an impossible task, after all, and I wonder what might possibly be a good stretch goal beyond "bigger and better". Same deal with the tiers, I had someone suggest a very nice idea for another tier, which for 100$ would give the donor the possibility to suggest a new NPC, and the money would go toward the new art and the time invested into adding it into the game, but I shied away from this suggestion so far because, as you might have noticed, I had a hard time securing artists (hopefully this isn't going to be a problem anymore, but you get what I mean).
Is there something people would want? It might not even necessarily be a new tier, maybe it could be added to already existing ones (so long as they don't demand a lot of extra work).
Anyway, I just had a lot of thoughts swirling in my head for a while, so I decided to dump them on you, instead. :^
See you next week! ^_^
