Maids & Masters v0.2.1 Release

Development on v0.3 is well underway, with most of the maps for the new areas being basically done. Events are everywhere, NPCs are being built, and things are being reviewed for inclusion. I'm aiming to have the turnaround time on v0.3 be considerably shorter than the first two major releases, and so far I'm on track to hit that goal. Here's hoping nothing implodes on me between now and then.

 

Regarding future releases, v0.4 is going to end up being the Halloween update, and if v0.3 doesn't give me any trouble, I should be able to release v0.4 right on All Hallows Eve. Maybe even a day earlier, so you can enjoy your spooks on spook day. The one downside is that the original plan I had for the Halloween content was much more in-depth and feels like it should be something for higher level content, so most of this release is basically going to just be preview content for what that will look like. That does give me a little more space to explore the season of The Haunt and what that means for the setting, which I'm looking forward to exploring in more detail.

It should also give me a little more space to do what I want with v0.5 (and possibly v0.6) which gives me plenty of space to figure out what to do with v0.7 (or whatever the Holiday release version ends up being). But that's getting a little too lost in future weeds.

 

For more immediate releases, v0.2.1 is now up on the downloads page, and will be up elsewhere in the next day or so.

 

 v0.2.1 doesn't have a ton of changes, but here's the changelog.

Minor map updates (“yellow flower” paths should be easier to follow).
Fixed a bug that allowed entry to the deep wilds before intended.
Added sunshafts to indicate the presence of windows.
Added more interior windows and associated events to interact with.
Added more interactions with various objects.
Updated hints regarding the quest that rewards Trophy 6.
Fixed various shadows.
Other minor map and dialogue updates.

Maids & Masters v0.2 Release

 

I think I've done as much as I can for this release. Time to let everyone get their hands on it. I'll make a v0.2.1 if anyone finds anything to be particularly broken, but I'd like to give it a week or so to make sure I can fix all (or at least most) such problems in the same pass, but hopefully there won't be any problems like that to find. I suppose we'll find out together, won't we?

I think I've also got a good grasp on what I want to do for v0.3, and hopefully it will end up being a little bit smaller section of the game so that I can get that done in time to start working on a timely Halloween update. The trouble with that is that it's coming regardless of the timing, I just want to try to make it a little more timely so it doesn't seem too out of place in the release cycle (as much as I know some people like to mash Halloween and Christmas together).

 

Maids & Masters will be going up elsewhere later today. I think I'd also like to take some time to start sharing the game in more places, so if you think it would do well in a specific community, let me know and I'll look into sharing it there as well.

 

I almost forgot the changelog. Here's that:

Next story release.
- Includes the first stage of Estate repairs, two new characters to recruit (one non-combatant), the first section of the world map, and five new areas to explore.
Optional content - Deep Wilds Hold.
 - Includes new enemies and the game’s first puzzle; Important: this dungeon is intended to be extremely difficult at this stage of the game, but it can be cleared.
Optional content - Uncle’s Estate.
 - Includes a new quest (that awards a trophy), new hidden equipment to find, and many rooms to explore.
Added renders to the magazine in the library.
Rebalanced some skills so that allies cannot evade buffs.
Replaced additional placeholder assets.
Minor enemy rebalance.
Minor accessory rebalance.
Minor sprite updates.
Updated repeatable scenes to prevent the tileset from “flashing” before displaying renders.
Updated some item descriptions and icons.
Updated items that should not be usable to not disappear on attempted use.
Updated some maps and map names to improve accuracy and remove bugs.
Updated some dialog and added some sound effects.
Added empty transparent text boxes so renders can be viewed without obstruction.
Added conditional branches to reclaim lost items that shouldn’t have been consumable.
Added debug instances to reclaim items if they were obtained and lost (debug feature needs to be turned on for this).
Removed a variable increase instance that placed the player in an elevated game phase before intended.
Reduced default home screen volume.
Added/updated README.txt
Added/updated Credits.txt

Maids & Masters (& A v0.2 Bonus Update)

 Just wanted to give a little bonus update for those of you who check the blog.

Development for v0.2 has wrapped, and playtesting is underway. I'm trying to be a bit more thorough about hunting bugs and other things that are either leftover broken bits or new things that don't work exactly as intended, so this round of playtesting is probably going to take a little longer to get through than previous rounds. 

You can still expect to see v0.2 within the next week at most. Hopefully within the next day or two, but that depends on how much I find that needs fixing.

Maids & Masters (& The Approach of v0.2)

 I'm doing this a bit later than I intended, but on the bright side, that's kind of a good thing.

After the issues of last week, this week has gone pretty smoothly. Development on v0.2 is very nearly done, with only about half of one quest and a character introduction to complete. I've already started playtesting specific segments and nothing seems irreparably broken so far. That really just leaves another day or two of dev time and a few days to playtest and bugfix. It might end up being a little longer than a week before the build is ready for release, but not by a lot.

The shop, which will be the post-game preview for v0.2, is proving to be considerably more complicated than I had initially anticipated due to RPG Maker not having certain options by default, and the scripts to implement those options being harder to use than the other plug-and-play scripts that I'm using to add other features. I'll still be able to work with it, and hopefully the finished product will look like it was all planned from the start, but the waters are a little muddier than I want them to be.

With that in mind, I'll be looking for more feedback than usual for the shop in particular once v0.2 releases. There are a few configurations for it that I could change around and try new things, but I don't want to throw a web of choice trees at you and hope you catch on. The actual shop window is much more self-explanatory, and I would greatly prefer using it as opposed to setting up the alternative. But that's why I want feedback. If the current version ends up being too confusing or convoluted, I can give the alternate version a go. Even though it wouldn't use the shop window, it might streamline the gameplay angle. Though it would be harder to program.

But that's for later. We can talk about that more after v0.2 is out.

Right now I'm in the middle of writing out how you recruit your fourth party member. This was originally going to be a considerably shorter nice and quick in-and-out (Clockwork-Orange-inspired pun intended) where you just grab your new character and leave, but that felt like a missed opportunity. With the uncle's Estate being completely optional (and likely going to stay completely optional for the entirety of the game), that put any opportunity to interact with a friendly Master much further down the road than I really wanted it to be. So this section of the game will now also feature an introduction to how Masters tend to treat each other when they aren't at odds, as well as a number of player choices that will hopefully make things feel more like you as the player are guiding events, rather than just following them.

This does mean that this section of the game will be longer than I had originally intended. I see that as a positive, even if it does mean a longer development period, because I had some concerns about this section of the game being too short if you chose to skip certain parts. I will admit that if you aren't the sort of person who wants to get to know fictional characters and do some reading when you open up an RPG, this game probably isn't for you. But in fairness, as much as I enjoyed Mass Effect, I never once opened the in-game codex to learn more about the planets and races. I understand not wanting a game to give you homework in order to have fun. So I still want you to be able to experience the story I'm presenting through your own lens in a way that is still enjoyable. I don't want to punish you for finding certain aspects of the game (such as combat or longer, more tedious quests) unenjoyable when you otherwise do like the rest of the game. I think finding that balance is worth taking the extra development time.

The other trick I'm going to try to pull off is a bit more seasonal, and puts me on something of a time limit. The game world does have seasons, but doing this "early access/release in chunks" style of development means those seasons should roughly line up with the seasons in real life. This creates an issue where that part of the game should happen early on, but by the nature of what it is, it definitely shouldn't be one of the first things you encounter. I already know what I want to do for the "Halloween" update, so most of that content is pre-planned, but given the current cadence of my work it may be November by the time I'm ready to begin working on it. Which further means that any "Christmas/winter" content might not be ready to roll out until spring is already approaching. I have a couple ideas of how I might be able to handle this, but it's definitely a barrier I'll have to overcome, especially since this project wasn't initially planned to have a development span of multiple years.

I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the mean time, wish me luck, and stay cultured, my friends.

Maids & Masters (& My Poor Crushed Soul)

This week went by way too fast for my liking.

Anyway, I'm gonna share the bad news first. I lost a few days of dev time to technical issues. First my computer crashed and lost a handful of maps and events, then an old cloud save ate my new data which lost a handful of sprite sheets. I'll spare you the details, mostly because losing all that work crumpled up my soul like a used tissue that I then had to fish back out and uncrumple in order to keep working, but I'm on the other side of it now. That work has been recovered and work on other things has continued. This does unfortunately mean that I'm looking at being closer to two weeks out until the next release, but that's it for the bad news.

The good news is that everything else is still coming along nicely. The maps for all the new content are complete, and they've all been filled with static events. The big thing that needs doing now is populating those maps with NPCs, then it's onto the smaller stuff, like finding a good place to put Trophy 6.

I still need to wrap up a few more art assets for the NPCs, but as they're variations on assets I've already put together that shouldn't take more than another day of work (so long as random crashes or cloud-save betrayals don't happen). It's just two sprites and the associated faces, then that's done.

The last step is putting the quests together, and playtesting and bugfixing everything. That phase will hopefully only take a few days, as I'd like to think I'm getting better at making this thing and will by extension have fewer bugs to find and squash. A lot of the problems the first version (and many in v0.1.1) were fairly dumb mistakes on my part, and I've taken steps to try to prevent those problems pre-emptively.

Not a lot to say otherwise. Losing two days of work and then spending a day recovering from that slowed things down, but this last week wasn't a complete wash. It just means you can expect to see v0.2 in closer to two weeks from now instead of one.

In the mean time, stay cultured, my friends.

Maids & Masters (& New Renders For Old Magazines)

The busts vs portaits poll is now officially closed. Final tally for votes is 16 in favor of doing custom busts (including feedback from outside F95) and 4 votes in favor of doing RTP edits. So the majority of custom characters will be using the busts that are currently in the game. Though it is worth noting that there will still be other characters in the game that won't use these busts and will still use an edit or variant of RTP assets, these characters will mostly be NPCs and antagonists, not player party characters. I apologize in advance if the difference is bothersome.

I spent the entire weekend doing art and the past two days building out new maps, so there's lots of new space to explore and interact with, as well as plenty of that cultured content. I don't want to spoil anything, but for those of you who went poking around in the library and found the issue of Stay Clean Quarterly in there, you might be happy to know that it will contain renders in v0.2. It will also no longer be the only magazine of it's kind, though the other issue will be elsewhere in the game world.

This section of the game is so far proving to be surprisingly technical, so it might end up being a little light on actual story content. The good news on that front is that the optional content is almost completely finished, and is more or less ready to enter playtesting, so if v0.2 does end up being light on story there will still be plenty to do and explore. The other bit of silver lining is that the release will come sooner rather than later, which means less waiting.

I've also been chewing on how to construct future content. Not having a traditional fantasy setting means it's harder to justify traditional fantasy game style dungeons, but I knew that from the outset. The answer to this problem was originally only going to be Holds, but it's hard to put in a lot of those without ruining the game economy. So the "dungeons" of the game will also include Estates, which v0.2 will give you two examples of. These two Estates won't be dungeons to fight your way through, but they should serve to give you an idea of what to expect and they'll have plenty to find in their own right.

There's also a lot of mechanical work being done right now. I've added two new sets of armor which need to be balanced out (which you can find a piece of if you're nosy enough), a slew of new states that need to be tested, and the shop needs to be set up. Since the shop is going to be somewhat non-standard, it's going to take a lot of math and background work in order to get ready, but it should go pretty smoothly once it gets rolling. I hope.

I've also got a Readme included with the game now. I've gotten a few questions and comments about controlling the BGM volume and changing the screen size, and you can do both within the game without messing with any of your computer's other settings (as well as volume levels for BGS and SFX). The Readme will point out how to do those things and where to find the relevant options within the game.

But once all the maps are done and filled with events, the work on the quests should go pretty quickly. So far things are fairly squarely on schedule, so v0.2 is still on track to be ready in another 2-3 weeks.