0.3 progress

 Survey results and an update on 0.3:

 

I apologize for the sudden vanishing act, some unfortunate stuff came up IRL and it ate up 99% of my time. That's not to say the update is not still coming along though, I have made a good amount of progress... The thing holding back its release is likely going to be the enemy animations currently. Most of the new areas are done and I'm pretty much just struggling to make the animations for the enemies right now. There are still a few other things I can work on in the meantime and it does give me the chance to add some extra flair to the game while I wait, at the very least. I quite like how both of the new areas coming out are shaping up to be, and they both have some interesting gimmicks in my opinion.

I admittedly have gone through a bit of development hell... And I was struggling to get some of the systems ingame to work the way I want them to. I believe I've overcome that hurdle though and now the update can move along pretty smoothly from here. As I said, at this point I'm primarily just waiting on new enemy animations. Unfortunately, the progress on those is a bit further behind than I would like, but that's because I was trying... VERY hard... To make a certain type of enemy work. I won't say why, but the situation I was trying to create for this enemy was not kind to the ai. I've spent like 4-5 days just trying to make it even work at all, but I think I finally got it. So now, theoretically the rest of the enemies should not be too hard to make from here in comparison. There is one other enemy that I have planned which is intended to have a certain gimmick and that could be a bit difficult to make, but the rest should be relatively easy. There is still a bit more I need to work on with the new areas of course, but they're almost done. I have a few other things planned in addition to those as well, so I would estimate, AT LEAST... 2-3 weeks until the release is ready with all things considered. No promises.

 

Anyways, I've been very quiet lately because I wanted to spend what little time I had for this project with just... Working on the game. I don't want to leave people in the dark though, so refer to the above. Additionally, lets go over some of the survey results together:

 This is the question I was the most excited about seeing the results for. Animals in general are the most popular (I approve of this), followed by insects and actual monsters. Everything else got relatively left in the dust, which I am a little surprised about. So... What do I take from these results? Well, I wanted to gauge what people like the most about what COULD be in this game, and avoid what people like less. Of course, this game has been planned from the start to be about the types of enemies you never see with a male protagonist. So the primary focus will remain on exactly what won the poll, and I will try to create an even spread of the popular choices. That's not to say other enemies can't make an appearance either... In fact, 2 humanoid monsters already exist, and HUMANS, the LEAST POPULAR choice, are going to have to appear sooner or later for narrative reasons. I may be able to mix that with furries as well, I really just need a few sapient opponents lol. There will likely be a few of every type of enemy here sprinkled throughout the game in some way when all is said and done, but it's clear what I should focus on. I also regret not asking if people would be interested in plant-type enemies as well, I would like to implement those in the game as well. All in all though, I am happy to see the weirder stuff come out on top because that's what this game is ABOUT!!!

 

I was actually expecting more pushback on the difficulty based on feedback given directly to me so far. Regardless, the next update will make the game a little easier, but I don't want to budge super hard on difficulty. Even so, I ALSO want the game to actually be enjoyable, so if I must sacrifice some difficulty for that then I will. The difficulty changes are already complete for the next update, and I think it will be a lot more bearable compared to 0.2. 

 

 

 

I'm glad most people seem to like the animations as it is, because I personally am dissatisfied with a lot of what's ingame. I've gone over this a few times already, but some early game enemies are getting reworked now that I have a better workflow going. I WANTED to do all of them for the next update, but I am likely going to settle on half in 0.3, and the other half in 0.4 to speed the next release along.

 

 

 

 

I don't have much to say on this, but I do want to make future areas more engaging going forward. I perhaps could've worded this better, because what I really meant was "Would you rather have more endless forest mazes, or areas that have more interesting gimmicks?" I feel some people may have interpreted this question as "Would you prefer if maps were made even more annoying?" When that wasn't what I really meant. More effort is going into map design for the newer areas, and they will hopefully be more interesting than just walking around and running into enemies.

There will likely be more non-NSFW things being added to this game simply to improve world-building and offer a break from battling 24/7.

 

 

Good :)

 

 

Also good :) It may have been a bit early to ask a question like this, but I was curious if people simply liked the premise that's been established more than anything. More to come on this as the game gets updated of course... 

 

 

Anyways, that's all from me. Thank you for all the feedback! I just wanted to offer an update on the progress of things and explain my absence a little bit. I apologize that the update is taking longer than last time, but I need to make sure it's good. I'm hoping 0.3 will establish a proper baseline for this game and polish it up. I think the game feels much more refined with the progress made so far, and am excited to share it. 

V0.2!

 

Version 0.2 is done!

 

Whew... The original update had a lot more bugs/issues than I was expecting when I released it. But thanks to the feedback, I believe all of those issues have been fixed. I am very thankful for everyone giving me their inputs on the game, and I definitely hear peoples frustrations with the difficulty. This update might actually be slightly harder... But I will tone the difficulty down a little bit going forward, and nerf existing areas as needed. My intention is not to make it a super grindy experience, but I also want the player to actually lose sometimes. So I will make it easier, but not TOO much. Please give me your feedback on the difficulty of this update.

 

I'm going to talk a lot, so before I do that, here are two links you may be interested in: 

  

 A feedback form that I would REALLY appreciate you filling out. This will help determine development of the game, so please, tell me how you feel about it: 

 

Click to fill out the feedback form 

 

And the download link for the game update:

 

Click to download the update 

 

  

Now then... The update, in a nutshell:

-Lots of adjustments and bugfixes
-New cave area with 5 new enemies.
-A new city area is accessible after the cave. It is somewhat broken because I'm adding the planned content kind of sporadically, feel free to explore it if you make it there. You'll need to do so anyways to progress further.
-Another area found in the city that has 5 MORE new enemies. I'm quite proud with how most enemies in this area turned out, I think I am getting a nice workflow going that seems to generate higher quality animations.

-The way that armor, sanity, and exhaustion damage gets calculated has been changed around a bit. Let me know if it seems like too much or too little please. I am having a hard time finding the sweet spot for this. Overall, sanity and exhaustion depletion should be a bit faster now and hopefully comes across as more of a threat. 

 

    I did say that the update would have 11 enemies, but I decided to hold off on making the last enemy because I think it will serve a different purpose later... Sorry!

    I'm afraid that because of some skill adjustments I've made, your old save may be a little broken. It should still be playable, but your skills might be messed up. I'm including a save file that leaves off where the game ended in the previous update, with all job points available and at an appropriate level, so you can start from that file if you wish.

 

I ended up writing down some of the changes I made so I wouldn't lose track of what still did and didn't need fixed... So here, you can see most of the changes that were made to the game:

 

-Forest bird animation should no longer sometimes disappear mid-fight
-Stunning enemies has been fixed to no longer permanently stun them. It was kind of broken.
-Removed one of the warding stones. There was only supposed to be two but I ended up extending one of the areas and moved the item, without removing the original chest location. Oops.
-An enemy that was supposed to appear in the original version now actually appears instead of the battle ending instantly.
-Enemies animation should no longer flicker when they are stunned.
-Base TP generation has been reduced slightly.
-Mana cost of bind has been lowered.
-Draining strike has been buffed a little bit, but given a longer cooldown. Overall, it's still a stronger skill now.
-Berserk slash has been nerfed a little bit.
-Removed self inflicted attack, it's really just making unnecessary skill bloat. If you want to lose a battle, there is still the surrender option.
-Last stand now actually gives you an attack buff
-Evasion actually works now.
-Explosive arrow actually works now, and it's quite strong.
-Passive states you've learned should no longer display their icon in battle. It just clutters the battle HUD.
-Wet state for enemies was not working as intended before (It's supposed to give them a chance to attack twice). Works now.
-The leaves in a certain area are supposed to cause the player to make noise and raise suspicion. However, stepping on the leaves triggered them more than once because of a movement plugin I'm using. Should be fixed now.
-A certain enemy attack should no longer display "0" on the screen for no reason when it is used.
-Added a shop plugin that better displays the stats of the equipment you're buying.
-Some quest rewards were adjusted a little, and are made more apparent upon completion of a quest now.
-Defeat scenes are now skippable.
-MP regeneration (skill) has been removed, and instead been replaced with an attack up buff skill that costs TP.
-MP and TP costs of various skills have been adjusted.
-Big deer now has its own proper game over scene (along with every other new enemy added in this version)
-I've tried to make the early game slightly easier by adding some more resources to the forest areas. Crafting some supplies should be a little easier to do now.
-Instead of having to buy a survival knowledge book from the store at the start of the game to be able to craft, you will start the game already knowing how to craft these items. As such, shops also no longer sell this book. This should also make early game money a little less restrictive on the player. 

 

 Lastly, some rambling. I am considering redoing some of the early game enemy animations for 2 reasons:

1. You may have noticed that the movie resolution for some of the animals does not cover the whole screen. This is because when I started, I didn't even take the rpgmaker program resolution into account when making the initial animations. Animations from the cave forward will never have this issue again, but the only real fix for this is redoing the original animations from scratch. I can't make them encompass the whole screen without either cropping a portion of the animation or stretching them out and making them look weird. And I really, really hate these kinds of inconsistencies. The only exception to this is probably the rabbit, because I like the rabbit animation enough to ignore the issue lol.

2. I am unsatisfied with the quality of a few of the animations.

    If I did redo some of the animals, I would probably just upload the old animations somewhere like pixiv so they can still be seen if you liked the old animations. Of course, I have not gone through with this yet, but expect that some of the animals animations may get redone in the future. Probably in the next update. This also offers an opportunity to create more enemy variety than just purely animals at the start of the game, so if you would prefer to see that then please give me feedback on what animals you might want to see replaced (and what you'd want them replaced with), because otherwise I'm not going to bother and every enemy will remain the same, just with new animations. I'm curious though - would people rather see more realistic/non-sapient depictions of beasts that highlights these features, or more cartoony/stylized depictions that give them a more 'cutesy' look? Or both?

 

 I know this post is a ton of information already, but here's some of what you can likely expect to be coming in the next update:

-Two additional areas, it will probably become apparent on what exactly those are if you play through this release.

-A new mechanic will be added across the board for all enemies that I've been planning since the start... But have also been putting off since the start. It will sometimes make battles a little harder.

-As mentioned earlier, some existing enemies are probably going to get some new animations.

 

 

And... That's all for now! Please let me know what you think! And please tell me if something is broken!