Redemption Harem - Reworking Hunting for v0.2

Getting hunting fully implemented was surprisingly difficult. I had all the mechanics functioning on an individual test animal in time for the Patreon and Subscribestar post last Friday, but when I tried to get things copied into the existing animals, some were fleeing the moment I stepped into the map, some would stand completely still if another animal was triggered to flee, and all animals would respawn immediately on re-entering the map rather than disappearing until the next day. A few wouldn't even correctly despawn after fleeing.

 

It took all weekend, but all of that is fixed now. The reason some were fleeing immediately was due to a scripting issue that kept their self-switches activated, so all animals were reworked to have a fail-safe layer that turns those switches off. That didn't work at first because there was a coding issue that was operating the self-switch of other events, and that code has been updated to refer to "this map, this event" rather than specifying the map and event in question. With that (and some investigating that led to the fail-safe being implemented), multiple animals finally behaved the way they were supposed to, so all that was needed was to rework their drop tables to take your hunter level into account, then copy/paste the new reworked animals to replace the old ones.

I still need to do some testing to make sure I'm not missing something else that I haven't encountered, but reworking the code does mean I'm now able to do things like cause groups of animals to flee if you scare one of them. That's not a mechanic I intend to use often, but it's nice to have it as an option.

 

Hunting and farming were the two big new mechanics for v0.2 that were missing from v0.1, so from here on out, it's mostly new content. I say "mostly" because there are some additions to old content I need to make still.

For starters, Nadua doesn't really have her degrade or euphoria events. I think they can be triggered (I haven't tested it yet), but nothing happens, so those scenes need to be rendered and written. Related to that, since consent is important, I want to put in a choice for the player to either go along with the "attack" or literally fight them off, similar to how you get that option now if a captured character degrades to the point where they're "too far gone" and you have to fight them, but it's now your choice if you actually want to kill them. 

Off the back of that, I want to rework training a bit so you have the option of Sparring in addition to "Training." As is, you can spar with Nadua and you can "Train" with Asgina, but you can't "Train" with Nadua (you can replay the scene and restore her Condition if you haven't done your daily training yet, but she doesn't get stats from it) and you can't spar with Asgina. Sparring with Nadua is also just a fade to black and a random number roll. While I want to keep that as a "basic drills" type of option so you can skip having to actually fight, I'm also thinking through how to eventually let you teach your party members each other's skills, and sparring manually will likely play a role in that.

The basics of that idea right now are still pretty early in the idea phase, so I don't want to get too in-depth here just yet. For now, all you need to know about training updates is that you'll still have a "skip - fade to black" option, a manual option where different outcomes (such as knocking out your sparring partner vs "capturing" them vs losing the fight) will have different effects that you should have at least some control over, and the "training" option to replay a scene that will have a different effect from sparring if you haven't trained yet that day and no effect if you've already trained and are just replaying the scene for your own enjoyment.

Redemption Harem - Starting Development on v0.2

Development on v0.2 has actually been underway since the moment v0.1 was deployed, but who's counting?

 

Most of that time has been spent rebalancing things a bit - the Tie Down skill now upgrades the existing Bound state and only does damage if the target isn't Bound at all instead of being a damaging skill with a higher chance of Binding the target, for starters. That means you won't accidentally kill some of the weaker enemies after needing to use another damaging skill to get them Bound in the first place, and you won't need to spam that skill after spending eight turns Guarding in order to actually capture things.

Tie Down is also cheaper now that its use case is narrower, and you now get roughly double the TP from successfully parrying enemy attacks (even if you miss the parry and only guard). All together, these changes should make capturing enemies considerably less tedious without making an impromptu shibari session the most effective way to fight tougher enemies. 

 

Also, as a follow-up to the farming post from last Friday on Patreon and Subscribestar, I was able to get the farming system completely set up over the weekend and have been testing it to make sure I didn't miss a variable somewhere. I can't test every possible combination, as there are 16 plots and 8 available crops, and if my math is right, there are almost 13,000 of them. 

This is why I so deeply appreciate those of you who report any bugs you find.

I haven't found any bugs in it yet, though. If you read the post on Patreon/Substar, I was able to get everything set up as described there; you can plant whatever, and while it'll take longer to grow by default to offset the larger yield, you can water crops to speed up growth. 

The only potential issue is that I've been kicking around the idea of a weather system in my head to go along with the day/night system, and with how the garden is set up, I can't think of a way to make the crops count as automatically watered if it's raining. It won't be that hard to do the mechanical effect of watering the crops if it happens to be raining, but stopping you from watering them anyway to get double the effect is a bit trickier. That's a problem for the future, though; I'm still not totally sure I want to bother with a weather system anyway, since other than rain auto-watering your crops, there may not be any mechanical effect to it. And if I put the work into making a weather system, I'll want there to be some kind of mechanical effect, even if it's just characters being indoors when they're normally outside.

 

The actual next mechanic I'm working on is the Hunting system, which will be the first profession you have to find out in the world. Doing that won't be anything intense, you just won't start the game with it.

If you want to know more about that, go click one of the Patreon and/or Substar links and keep an eye out there. Depending on how much trouble it gives me, I might need to talk about something else while I work the kinks out of it, but I'm hoping to get far enough along to be able to tell you how those mechanics will work this Friday.

Redemption Harem - Following Up on v0.1

Redemption Harem's v0.1 release seems to have gone well enough. Better than Maids & Masters did, but given that MnM was my first game when no one knew who I was, that's not much of a comparison to make. The real measure will be the public release when v0.2 goes into early access and the general public gets their hands on it. I would say I'm trying to not let my expectations get too high, but I don't really know what to expect. I know it won't be a disaster, but I doubt it'll be an explosive success either, so I'm not really giving it much thought.

 

That said, I am looking forward to v0.2 already. At least one bug snuck past me and into the v0.1 build that's already been identified and fixed, and there's another that I need to investigate to see if it didn't get fixed properly, but they're both minor annoyances more than something completely game-breaking.

There's also a few balance changes I want to make already. Capturing enemies in combat - particularly non-boss enemies - is harder than it needs to be. Part of that I think I'll address by updating the Tie Down skill you can learn through the training dummy so it force-upgrades the enemies Bound status rather than simply having a higher chance of applying the state, but I might end up going in a different direction with it. 

 

I may also put some SP regeneration on the parry system so you can use techniques more often, because - especially when you're trying to capture an enemy - the optimal strategy is to sit there and Guard repeatedly to get your SP near max, then use the next 2-3 turns dumping it into your capture skills. That's... boring, frankly, and not what I want that gameplay loop to feel like. At least against the random encounter enemies, I want the capture mechanic to feel more like taking advantage of an opportunity that's presented itself rather than the "I'm actively being attacked by this wild animal, let me stand here and make faces at it for a minute or two before I do something about it" that it currently feels like. The parry system is supposed to avoid that feeling, so putting some SP gain in it might solve this other issue. I'll need to test it out to see how that actually feels, though. There might be a completely different solution that will work better that just isn't presenting itself to me right now.

 

I'm still very happy with the game overall, though. The day/night system feels right - sitting in the fortress doing prep work takes a day or two to fully finish, which means it's also a great way to fill time when you've hit the "come back tomorrow" points in quests. The survival mechanics feel a smidge harsh, but at least to me, aren't so harsh that it becomes a pain in the ass, it just pushes you out of the fortress to forage for supplies and explore (which is exactly what the survival mechanics are meant to do). The economy balance is in a much better place compared to the demo, and while you can theoretically do things infinitely and break the economy, it kinda sucks the fun out of it. While I was playtesting, I only really wanted to go looking for fights when there was a specific enemy that dropped a thing I needed for crafting, and it only took a few minutes for me to run into the type of enemy I needed to find and capture them to get the thing I needed. It's still a little rough around the edges, but it all fits together very nicely.

Of course all of that will smooth out even more as the game progresses and you gain access to more things and level them up, like farming giving you more food as you unlock plots and the Hunter profession giving you more loot as it gains levels for capturing enemies.

Plus the ability to hunt animals that you find outside of combat. I want that to be part of the v0.2, but I'm still working out exactly how I want that to work mechanically, which means it'll probably be the reason v0.2 still isn't out at the end of September. It's a mechanic I really want to be part of the game, though, so I'll have to figure it out sooner or later.

 

Anyway, v0.1 early access is out right now, and you can get it on Patreon, Subscribestar, and itch! 

Redemption Harem - Testing v0.1

There was one last system I needed to rework before v0.1 was completely ready, and it's taken all weekend to rework properly, but I'm currently in the process of testing it and now it too is one of the many things that's working out fantastically. I still have a little bit of rendering to do before everything that was in the demo is done for v0.1 (mostly because reworking this system took a fair bit more time than I expected it to), but that should all be done today, leaving the rest of the week for polish and bug hunting.

That's right! Nothing when horribly wrong and v0.1 is still set to release into early access this Friday,  August 21st. If you want to get your mitts on it, Patreon and Subscribestar are the best places to do that. It'll be going up on itch as well over the weekend, but since I need to create some new assets for the new early access page, set up the lifetime key that the Supporter tier gets, and will likely be taking the time to redo some assets for my other pages while I'm at it, and doing all that will take me more than a few minutes.

Everything should get uploaded same-day after this week, though. Launching a new title into early access just takes a little extra work. 

 

The same should apply to v0.2 and onward - one of the biggest reasons I'm releasing v0.1 three weeks after I wanted to is because I've been building all these new systems, but now that they're built, I'll be able to put all that effort into new content.

Though with that said, there are a few things in the demo that won't be in v0.1 right away. For starters, now that I have access to the profession system, hunting and farming will tie into and rely on that. Since I moved to a zero-xp system, those can also be extra progression systems. With them also not being strictly necessary for progression, that kinda turns into a cascading effect that allows me to use them to reward you for engaging with the game, which I feel is much more interesting than the more straightforward (but also kinda boring, a little game-breaking, and sometimes frustrating) way they were implemented in the demo. Not being able to hunt the deer yet means I need to implement an alternate way to complete Nadua's hunt quest, but that's fairly simple by comparison.

All of that in turn means I'm not completely done developing new systems, but developing one or two new systems alongside new content will be a lot less work than needing to rework basically everything the game does from scratch, so v0.2 onward will hopefully still not take me nearly two months to make and I can get closer to the monthly updates I want to aim for (even though my Patrons are amazing patient people who have so far unanimously voted to let updates take as long as they need).

Anyway, that feels like enough rambling for this week. Go get acquainted with one of the links above so you're ready for v0.1!

Redemption Harem - v0.1 Release Date

It feels both a little overdue and like I'm still missing something, but I'm finally far enough along with v0.1 that I think I'm comfortable giving it a release date. It'll go into testing this Friday for V.I.P.s and Producers on Patreon and Subscribestar this Friday, August 14th. v0.1 will then release into early access the following week on Friday, July 21st.

Since it's been a while since the last time I've had an update release into early access, if you're not familiar with how I do that, I do rolling early access. That means that v0.1 will stay in early access until v0.2 goes into early access, then v0.1 will be available for free for everybody.

The same applies to itch.io, where there'll be an early access page available for purchase that'll get you lifetime early access that'll go up, and the existing demo page will have the most recent public build. And like I did with Maids & Masters, I'll offer a lifetime support key for Redemption Harem that can be redeemed through itch.

 

With all that said, the only meaningful development news is that the parry system has been implemented and not only works exactly how I wanted it to, but is fairly easy to adjust. The current assets are probably going to end up placeholders so I can make something a little flashier and/or prettier even if it ends up being slightly less intuitive. Everything else is just the time-consuming fiddly bits, like finding typos and making sure all the quest log and journal updates appear correctly, and updating item and skill descriptions so the formatting matches, etc. etc.

I'm extremely happy with it as is though, so let's talk about that a bit. It gives combat exactly the sort of skill element I wanted it to have so that you can "dark souls" your way through combat without any upgrades if you get good at it, making all the exploration and crafting upgrades optional, but still extremely useful. While I want the perfect parry to be generous enough that you feel like a combat genius hitting it fairly often, it being too easy trivializes things and can have the opposite effect when you hit it even when it feels like you shouldn't. 

I feel like I've hit that sweet spot, because combat is still dangerous, especially since food items can backfire (there's an Overfull debuff you get by over-eating) and other forms of healing are much more restrictive. Aside from the perfect parry window, there's a "guard" window where you'll get a temporary guard state to take half damage, and between those there's a "perfect block" window where you'll prevent closer to 20% of the damage. This little misses result in taking chip damage, so instead of being mauled by wolves, you're able to power through (thanks entirely to how good at the game you are), but going through 3-5 of those fights can still result in a game over if you're out of healing items. Unless, of course, you're really good at the game and parry everything that dares approach you into the dirt where they belong.

At least to me, that feels great. It encourages preparing ahead of time, such as buying camping supplies so you can stop to rest in the middle of the area (I literally got to the "tutorial camp" and thought to myself "dang, I should've bought supplies so I could heal"), or buying up materials to craft healing items, or taking things in parts so you can forage for stuff to sell or craft with. In those situations where you haven't, or you under-prepared, or you had a fight go wrong early on but you're too far in to just back out, then you lock in and turn into the patron saint of parrying - it's exactly what I wanted out of the system.

The new time system makes this work even better, as now it's actually possible for you to go into the first map, grab everything you can see, then back out to sell what you don't need or call that good enough and spend the rest of the day researching, or whatever else you feel like doing to properly prepare before committing to diving three maps deep into random encounters.

It's hard to put into words how great it feels to have everything fit together so nicely in the early play tests, especially since it's taken so long for me to get everything implemented the way I want to implement it. But I have, and everything works, and I've barely had to compromise anything, and... it's so nice. I really hope those of you who get your hands on it are as happy with it as I am.

Redemption Harem - Finally Out of the Fortress

After almost exactly a month of development, I've finally gotten past the first 15 minutes of the game and out of the fortress. That doesn't sound like much of an accomplishment, but in reality, it means that all of the core systems that aren't part of combat and exploration are done. That doesn't leave a lot of work left to do, and v0.1 is getting very close.

I'd like to say the v0.1 test build will be coming on Patreon on Subscribestar this Friday, but that feels like tempting fate. 

 

While there is very little left (basically all I have to do for the game to be playable is finish adding in the quests), as tends to be the case with a thing as complex as game development, every few steps forward leads me to a new problem that helps me empathize with Sisyphus. 

The most recent example of this is how exploration is handled. I wanted a way to visualize how much of the map you've explored, both as a means of displaying the gathered information so it's easier to reference and to incentivize you to explore areas. It gives me more ways to reward you as well as something easier to design around, as the natural gamer instinct when you're given an incomplete map is to try and fill it in.

The plugin I found to do that flat out doesn't work. The code was obscured by the person who made it, so I can't attempt to fix it myself, and the error being thrown is a code issue.

I spent today redesigning the map exploration checks to make sure I could implement another solution, but the other solution I have is very fiddly and requires me to make a ton of custom assets, and may delay v0.1's release another week or two while I figure it out unless I cut it so v0.1 can release sooner. The feature is probably still worth taking the time to implement, but I already feel like v0.1 has taken me too long to finish and I still haven't gotten to trying to implement a parry system to combat. Which, based on what I've been able to find so far, is not going to be a simple process either.

 

That's really all that's left, though. There are still a few events that need name boxes added, I need to finish adding the quest logs where they need to go, and I still need to make sure the capture system will work the way I want it to and get that fully implemented, but adding name boxes and quest log updates is a few hours of work at most, and the capture system shouldn't take more than a day. If I'm able to get parrying to work the way I want it to quickly and easily, that's just two days of work, and Friday is technically three days away. If things don't cooperate and I run into other issues it might take a week to get set anyway, but we don't need to spend more time on that.

I might be missing a few other things that will need my attention before v0.1 officially ships into early access, but that's what the testing period is for. It still feels like too much of a long shot to say that testing period will actually start this Friday, but we're very close.

Redemption Harem - Significant Progress on v0.1

Although I haven't managed to escape the first 15 minutes of the game in terms of what's ready to ship quite yet, progress is still being made, and lots of it.

Last week I mentioned one of the hangups was the professions tab not correctly listing known recipes. Since then, I ran into another hangup that prevented professions from gaining levels and experience. Fixing the second issue also fixed the first issue, so now you'll be able to view your learned recipes from the Professions tab like I originally intended.

I ran into a similar issue while troubleshooting auto-discovery for your Journal entries. While I still need to do custom entries for the People tab, I've gotten the Bestiary and Conditions tab (which hold all the information for enemies and the game's states respectively) working as intended, but with the addition of custom notes, so you get all the lore I'd otherwise not be able to include with raw enemy stats.

I also mentioned the research system, which is now complete and partially tested, and that worked exactly the way I wanted it to, which is a welcome change of pace from some of the hair loss I experienced over getting some of the other mechanics working. There's still a little building out I need to do, especially for cooking, but it's nice to have development (mostly) going smoothly again.

 

The remaining major mechanics are the things I'm not confident will go quickly, because they're reliant on plugins I've never used before and/or may require me to implement a more complicated solution.

The first is a map system. The plugin I found claims to be able to create maps that show you how much of an area you've explored, which will work as a great alternative to the way I currently provide exploration rewards. Everything except a visible map is already implemented in the demo, but visualizing it is a major quality of life change that would make finding and getting exploration rewards so much more intuitive. The trouble being that I'm not sure how easy it'll be to implement or if it'll work at all, so this may require some retooling or may not even make it into the game.

The second is parrying. If you've played Expedition 33, you're already familiar with the general idea (and if you haven't, you really should, it's a phenomenal game). In short, if you "perfect parry" you'll counter-attack, with the next step down being a perfect block, and the next step down being a partial block, ending with you taking full damage if you miss entirely. This is something that I feel the new direction requires, so if I'm not able to use a plugin to make the process easier, I'll have to explore methods on doing it the hard way, and doing it the hard way is likely to be rather time consuming.

 

That's just the big mechanics, though. There's still lots of little things that need attention, like making sure name boxes exist, balancing combat according to how the parry system works, entering all the quests and making sure those entries are fully readable since the scroll on those boxes won't work, trying to balance out the economy so you aren't able to completely break it but you also aren't constantly struggling to avoid starvation, and probably at least half a dozen other things I can't name off the top of my head.

Those smaller things will generally go pretty quickly once they're identified, though, and won't have a meaningful impact on overall gameplay even if they're enough to notice (like missing name boxes). 

Progress is coming along pretty nicely, but I'm still very much in a space where I can't say exactly how much longer development is going to take before we actually hit v0.1. Since we're at the end of the month, I'll be putting up a poll to help me understand how you want development of v0.2 onward to function. The TL;DR on that is finding out if you want monthly updates no matter what, or if you're okay with a "it's done when it's done" approach. If you have an opinion about that, head over to Patreon or Subscribestar and consider supporting me if you aren't already. That poll will be going up this Friday.

Redemption Harem - Still Developing v0.1

I was hoping to have made more progress by now, but having a clearer vision for all the mechanics I want in Redemption Harem than I did for Maids & Masters means there's a lot more to do to get the game to a playable state, and all of those things take time to implement, even if the implementation is relatively smooth.

And while the vast majority of things have gone pretty smoothly,  there have been a few hiccups.

 

The first was with the crafting system. I wanted the "recipes" tab to show you your professions info as well as your learned recipes, if that wasn't obvious by the name. Something in the plugin is apparently broken, and regardless of whether you start the game with a recipe known or you learn it later on, it doesn't appear in the tab the way it should. I haven't been able to find any documentation about getting it working, nor have I been able to troubleshoot the issue to find a fix, so I've had to remove that. You'll still be able to see the information about the professions, but you won't be able to see your learned recipes unless you're in the middle of crafting them.

Next is the auto-discovery for your Journal. I know how to do it all manually, so if I can't get it working, it's not a big deal, but I really want you to be able to learn about enemies either by encountering them or by researching them, and the auto-discovery will save me a lot of work on that front. I haven't gotten as far as working on combat yet, so I haven't been encountering enemies yet anyway, but it's supposed to work for party members as well, and so far all it's done is stay empty and erroneously claim I have 100% of entries unlocked. So I have to figure that out still.

More recently, I ran into trouble with the video player plugin. It's the same one I used for Maids & Masters, but when I first started to add the re-rendered animations, the video refused to play despite the commands being correct. This I was able to troubleshoot to get working as intended, but it still made what would otherwise be copying and pasting a few lines of script into place take an entire day to get working.

There's also the quest log, which is supposed to allow for scrolling text. It does scroll, but I'm having an issue where it will "bounce" back to the top as soon as it tries to scroll anywhere, leaving the window to think it scrolled properly when you're still looking at the same text. I can work around this if I have to and just reduce text until it all fits on screen, but the preferred option is to get it working, which means I need to learn some javascript and do a bit of coding to get it working the way it should.

And this is all for the first 15 minutes of the game.

 

That might sound like a lot of negativity, but I want to assure you that's just because it's taken up a lot of time, and development is generally going really well. The crafting system, for example, worked almost perfectly on the first try and gives me a lot of options for future implementation. The visual style took way less time to reach than I was worried it would, and editing the videos for Asgina to make her properly transparent was significantly easier than I was anticipating. You'll have to be a supporter to see the images, but since the test build is unlikely to be ready this Friday, I'll be putting up a preview for that on Patreon and Subscribestar. 

Another thing I was really apprehensive about but ended up working perfectly is the Condition system. I wanted to have each character's Condition be easy to view, especially if they're in your party, but I didn't have an easy way to display it without added a new custom menu screen. As a separate issue, using a zero-XP system means I needed to get rid of the level display in the menu, since that would be useless at best or cause confusion at worst. A happy coincidence is that I'm able to rename what "level" is called in the back end, so I simply renamed it to "condition." Now you can see your party's condition in the menu and I don't have to figure out how to rip that out of the menu. That was also an extremely easy transition to make; I was worried moving that number up and down would undo your earned stat boosts, but thanks to setting it up the way I did, that also worked perfectly on the first try. It does put a few limits on what I can do, since your condition now can't go below 1 or above 99, but I want to implement mechanics where getting below 10 or above 90 can have consequences anyway, so that all works out with relatively little friction.

There are lots of other little changes that I've been able to make, too, like updating the visuals for the text box (which is a small change, but it's something you'll be looking at for the entire game, so I'm happy it worked out), and adding name boxes (another relatively simple change, but one that's time consuming to implement). Name boxes do present another issue, as the plugin I use to let you hide the text box doesn't also hide the name box, so if I want to have that happen, I need to learn more code to get that working, which will take even more time, but my point is that development is going very well despite the amount of time it's taking to make it all happen. 

Redemption Harem - Continuing Development on v0.1

I've reached a point where I'm comfortable enough with the crafting system that I'm ready to move on to building out the other systems and getting v0.1 to a minimum viable product for a test build. Which means instead of having over one hundred things to do for a single system, I've got just 3-5 things to do for what feels like one hundred systems.

 

Obviously that's not quite accurate. I'm sure I could interpret things generously enough to say the game has at least one hundred unique systems in it, but my point is that there's still a lot left to do. The quest system gave me a bit of grief, largely because the system I was using for Maids & Masters required an extra compatibility layer that I'd prefer to avoid using for Redemption Harem. I found a few plugins that would've had more features, but they all - either in whole or in part - didn't work, and required me to do more work to achieve the same effect as the more basic plugin I'm ending up using. While the compatibility layer method would grant me access to a lot of things that would make life a little simpler, it also creates other problems, such as making a mobile build impossible, and I'd like to try and make that happen for RH since I couldn't for MnM.

 

I did eventually find a new quest log system that works and is easy enough to use, but it isn't quite as robust as the one in MnM, so I can't do things like script calls to determine what steps of the quest have been completed. That means I need to rely on other variables and switches to track that information, not only so the game knows what to do as you progress, but so I can put things in place that allow the rest of the game to change and how to change as you go. If I can figure out enough about how the plugin functions, I may be able to do script calls to determine if a quest has been completed or started or not, but that's kind of superfluous if I need to use variables and switches to track progression anyway. It's not the worst thing ever, but it does limit me in some ways unless I can find a workaround - which I think I have, but I haven't had the chance to test it yet, because the quest log is just one of the half-dozen things I needed to do in order to start testing the introduction sequence of the game.

 

Development is chugging right along, though. I'm hoping I'll get far enough in the minimum viable product to be able to start working on combat so I can talk about how progression and fighting will go for the Patreon/Subscribestar post on Friday, but that still feels pretty far off, so I might end up talking about the more general improvements that are being made relative to the demo. Which is a lot, given how old the demo is.

Redemption Harem - Starting Development on v0.1

I have to admit, it feels very good to be back on actual game development. I should really be running from rooftop to rooftop yelling about Maids & Masters being finished and an official strategy guide being available, but I've always been terrible about promotion.
(but if you could yell from your own rooftop or even just tell a friend that'd be super cool of you)

I also sadly don't have a convenient blog title meme within reach for posting about RH like I did with overusing ampersands with Maids & Masters, but oh well. Maybe something will present itself with time.

 

As for how development is actually going - pretty slow, though pretty well. The demo for RH didn't rely on any plugins to exist, so all of the systems that did exist and can be made simpler using plugins need to be transferred to plugins, the quality of life plugins (like input rebinds and the ability to hide the text box) also need to be added, and the systems I wasn't able to implement without plugins for the demo (most notably the Journal and Jobs (this game's encyclopedia and quest log)) need to be set up and added.

 

Getting all of that done will make the game much easier to play, as accessing information will be much easier and the UI for things like crafting will be vastly improved, but it also gives me opportunities to do things like require you to learn recipes for crafting, create "improved" recipes so you can possibly recover some items when you fail to craft things, and all sorts of other little things that you might not even think about while you're playing the game.

These are all good things, but it requires me to go in and set up all of it. Setting it up takes time. A lot of time. Just getting the alchemy recipes transferred has taken me all weekend, and I'm still not done with it yet, nor have I properly started on cooking, smithing, tailoring, any of the other crafting skills that are hinted at but not used in the demo, or made any decisions about turning things like farming or gathering into skills. I feel like I want to, at least for gathering, since that would give me a bit more control over how easy or difficult it is to get the items you need to craft things, which would in turn make it easier to balance the game's difficulty and economy, but my point is that all of that's still several steps down the road in this process.

 

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned anything about combat, or the day/night system, or adding new content yet, either. That's because I haven't been able to get anywhere near those systems yet. Though you can definitely rest assured I'll be blabbering about those as soon as I start working on them; I do have ideas, and hopefully what I have in mind will be fun and intuitive, because I really like the ideas. I just have to get that far first.

There's also things like redoing character designs a bit and using all my significantly improved skills to do things like replace the animations in the game with proper video, but if you want to know more (and maybe see) about that, that'll mostly be happening over on Patreon and Subscribestar.

Maids & Masters (& Redemption Harem's Release Date & An Away Post)

Work on v0.8 - this year's Haunt update - is well underway, but things might get a little weird (and not in the spooky fun way) for it. I do have most of the maps done, and the introduction to the story is about half done already, but things are going to be pretty tight on getting it out to everyone before the end of the spooky season.

 

I want to try to get the update out to my supporters early enough in the month that it'll go free to the public in time for Halloween weekend, but I'll be out of town for the next 10 days or so for family. As far as this relates to Redemption Harem's release, I've already taken steps to make sure I can get that out to everyone this Friday. Final testing is more or less complete, and I'll be able to do more testing while I'm gone. The hard part will be fixing any bugs that are found before the build goes out to everyone.

There is one thing I wasn't quite able to figure out for this demo - I meant to have curses in the game (debuffs and the majority of withcraft used by enemies) degrade your party members as an extra drawback to bringing them with you, but as it stands, I barely got injections working on someone besides the MC, and with me being gone and needing to get to work on the Halloween update, I just don't have the time. I think it's okay for the sake of the demo, though; it lets you experiment with the rest of the systems with reduced consequences.

As far as all of this relates to Maids & Masters - things will hopefully work out and I'll be able to hit my intended release date. If I don't, things will end up being pushed back a week. If you support me on Patreon or purchase the update through Itch, you'll still get it well before Halloween. 

Being gone for this long also means there won't be a blog post next week. Redemption Harem still releases on Friday, and I'll still be online in a few places, so if you support me, you shouldn't even notice I'm gone. Then I'll be back and it'll be time to dig into this next update, get that finished, and start working on my next demo project. I've got at least two more coming; potentially a third and a fourth depending on what I can get to work.

Upcoming Demo: Redemption Harem's Redemption System

Redemption Harem is in the final testing phase, which means this last system is in a state that is more or less final.

There are three main parts to this system: the hunt, redemption, and condition maintenance.

The hunt is when you're out in the field doing your job as a monster hunter. You'll have to fight through a hunt area, managing your supplies and health while you look for the target of your hunt. At this stage, things aren't all that different from a standard RPG quest as you move through the different stages of the hunt.

The redemption step takes place immediately following the conclusion of the hunt. The basement of Erlosung fortress has 7 cells you can hold monsters in for this purpose, and if you don't have a free cell when you complete the hunt, that last step will reset and you'll need to redo the last step of the hunt another day. Once captured, the monster's Condition variable is set, and it's up to you to maintain it. At first, this is done through food, but each monster will have special tasks or conditions to meet before you can move on to the next step. In general, you must raise their Condition variable above a certain amount, then allow it to fall below a certain amount, without ever letting their Condition get too high or too low. Either means failing the Redemption process, and the only mercy left to show is to end your captive's life.

The final condition maintenance step is only for characters who join the fortress. Similar to the redemption step, the idea is to keep each monster's Condition variable from getting too high or too low. However, the stakes are much lower. Rather than needing to kill anyone who exceeds or falls below their threshold, they will "attack" you in the night, and you'll automatically lose that day to managing their needs. If this happens, their Condition will also regulate, giving you a few days as a buffer to get them into a better condition (and to help prevent a cascading issue after recruiting a larger number of characters, where you are constantly attacked until you starve to death).

For those that join you, the maintenance is considerably easier to manage, but there are a much wider variety of factors that can influence it. For example, in most situations your party members will leave your party at the end of the day. When this happens, their Condition will be affected. Whether this effect raises or lowers their Condition and how much their Condition is affected varies based on the character. Another example is the group meals you can make for your entire fortress. Some characters might not care what the food is, and will only react based on whether they enjoyed the company of the rest of the fortress. Some might be picky eaters, and have a minimal change or negative change if the meal isn't to their liking. Others might see the meal as an indulgence that brings out their monstrous side, and can have a much larger affect on their Condition compared to the other characters.

The maintenance is mostly there for flavor, though. It doesn't affect gameplay aside from preventing you from adding a character to your party if they're too close to one of their thresholds. There's no difference in stats, and other than the "attacks" that can happen if those thresholds are crossed, the system is fairly low-impact.

With all of that out of the way, I also have some news for MnM: v0.7.2 should be out to Patrons this weekend. This second interlude update will open up another new Hold, the Estate customization system, a material storage system to accommodate some events that I'm hoping to implement in Act 2, the pregnancy system, and (if I can manage it in time) the overdue Service scenes for the new characters. Look forward to more information coming this Friday!

Upcoming Demo: Redemption Harem's Crafting Systems

The redemption system is entering it's testing phase, but things are still moving around, so we'll leave that for last and give myself time to get those details hammered out.

The crafting systems make this demo one of the most complicated things I've ever made. There are 5 different crafting systems - Blodwerk, Cooking, Sewing, Smithing, and Lapidary. Each of these use skill variables that you raise by using the skill, which helps avoid losing materials to failure and makes perfect successes more likely.

Lapidary - a fancy word for gem cutting - isn't implemented in the demo, and will be unique in that it doesn't have its own skill level. Instead, it will use a combination of your other skills based on what you're trying to make, whether it's a piece of gear for one of your characters to equip or something else entirely.

The Blodwerk skill is a type of alchemy unique to Redeemers. It combines traditional alchemy - processing humours into reagents, and reagents into usable items - with witchcraft that uses the blood of the Redeemer to hasten the process. In addition to reagents and healing items, your Blodwerk skill will allow you to craft Injections. Injections provide buffs that bolster a specific part of a Redeemer's body, rendering them immune to a certain status effect, often providing additional effects (both positive and negative). How many injections you can have active is limited by the main character's body, but making good use of these injections can make a huge difference in battle and allow you to play the game in unique ways.

Cooking is what it sounds like. Redemption Harem features a hunger system, which, on its own, only means you have to keep the main character fed in order to avoid starvation. Once starvation begins, resting will no longer restore his health, and he will lose health with each passing day. Cooking allows you to make food to bring with you, which act as weaker healing items, as well as making meals for your fortress, affecting the Condition of the characters that join you. What you cook can have different effects on different characters, and have a positive or negative effect on their Condition. More on this next week.

Sewing and Smithing are again just what they sound like. The world of Redemption Harem is not a rich place, so any gear you want - whether it's for you, or any of the other characters in the fortress - you'll need to make for yourself. Sewing focuses on making the necessary goods (thread, needles, fabric, leather) and then using those goods to make armor and weapons out of that fabric or leather. Smithing is the same, but with metal, and is vital to the Redeemer combat style. Rather than using a shield, Redeemers prefer to keep knives in their off hand, ready to be thrown to create an opening. Through Blodwerk, these knives can be coated in poisons, giving a passive bonus while equipped and changing the secondary effects of the Knife Throw skill. However, once thrown, a knife is gone - you'll need to forge more if you want to make the most of the technique.

 

While not a skill to be raised, the fortress does also contain a farm, which can be used to manage the need to either hunt or purchase food to keep the characters in the fortress fed and stable. Don't forget - these aren't rescued victims. They're monsters. You don't want to live in the same building as a hungry monster, do you?

 

These systems are also all affected by Redemption Harem's day/night cycle. While you can cook a meal at any time of day, once you have, you won't be able to cook anything else (including the more easily prepared consumables) until the next day.  The other skills are also time consuming; crafting an injection, planting or harvesting a crop, smithing a weapon, or sewing armor together is an all-day process. Keeping everyone in your fortress happy, keeping yourself alive, and being prepared for hunts will take a level of planning in order for you to be successful.

Upcoming Demo: Redemption Harem's Combat

As mentioned last week, Redemption Harem has a pretty big focus on combat. As a writer, my focus is always on making sure everything supports the story, but if Love/Loss is basically a visual novel with RPG elements, Redemption Harem is on the other end of the spectrum, being more gameplay than anything else.

So this week, I'm gonna dig into the way the combat system works.

The basics of it is that it's still RPG Maker combat, but rather than the purely turn-based system that Maids & Masters and Love/Loss use, Redemption Harem uses MZ's side view battles, as well as using the in-built Time Progress (Wait) system and random encounter zones. What this means visually is that you get to see your party's character sprites and some additional animations during combat. Systematically, Agility plays a bigger role; faster combatants get turns in combat more quickly. The (Wait) part means that time stops while you're entering commands, so you don't need to worry about enemies attacking you while you're thinking about what is the best move to make. The random encounters will be familiar to RPG veterans - rather than seeing enemies on the map, you'll come into combat at random while you're walking in areas where combat can occur, both on the world map and in hunt areas. Further, where you're walking can affect what you encounter, with some enemies only appearing in hunt areas or on the world map.

The way the party system is used will also be very different from my other projects. You can bring up to three other characters with you, but there are potential consequences to doing so. You'll need to balance bringing characters with you to make combat and gathering resources easier against the condition of those characters. 

 

Combat may also have different goals based on the context of what is happening. A lot of the random encounters will be with animals. These animals care more about their survival, and will run from combat if they're wounded or feel they're outmatched. They can be a great source of crafting materials and trade goods, but allowing animals to flee can mean taking damage without getting any experience or loot. Spirits are more aggressive and won't flee, but fighting them (especially at night) can be more dangerous than the rewards are worth. Especially when you're on a hunt, it may be worth fleeing from combat yourself in order to preserve your resources (though fleeing too often will lead to not leveling up enough to win more difficult fights). 

 

Story fights come in two flavors - fights that can't be fled from, and fights where the goal is to capture your opponent rather than kill them. There might be some overlap in this fights depending on the situation, but for the sake of the demo, they're two different things. Fights that can't be fled from are pretty straightforward - either you kill your opponent, or your opponent kills you. Fights where you're intended to capture your opponent allow you to end combat by inflicting the Capture status on your enemy. Killing your enemy is still possible in these fights, but this can result in failed quests and permanently removed characters.

I would've liked to talk more about the core day/night and condition systems this week, but truth be told, those systems are still being developed and changing as a result of that development. If those systems get complete, I'll talk about them next week, otherwise I'll go over the crafting systems.

Upcoming Demo: Redemption Harem's Setting and Battle Systems

I'm kinda behind on getting this out, but that's what I get for trying to work ahead to avoid life being hectic. Anyway, the next demo (side note, I'm learning a bit of photoshop, so some art assets should improve).

 

I'm not 100% sold on the title for this one, but it's descriptive, so it'll have to do for now. Redemption Harem is a dark fantasy RPG inspired by the Witcher and Native American (and to a lesser extent, Germanic) folklore where you capture monster girls and teach them how to be human again.

 

You play as Eckhard, a (renamable) Redeemer - a type of monster hunter that sees monsters for the humans they once were and focuses on curing them of their monstrous afflictions rather than killing them. You arrive at the fortress you call home home after spending several years in a kingdom to the west to find the fortress devoid of life. It's up to you to ply your trade as a hunter, master the Redeemer art of Blodwerk, grow the skills necessary to maintain your own well-being while caring for those you capture, and discover what happened in your absence.

In an effort to continue learning how best to use RPG Maker, I'm again doing some things very differently from how they're done in MnM while still being different from Love/Loss. I'm also trying to avoid using scripts for these demos, so some of these systems aren't going to work quite how I want them to due to system limitations (I can get the scripting right, but the events just don't run in a gameplay test), but the core idea will still be there. 

Firstly, the most apparent change from my other projects is the battle system. Redemption Harem has a much heavier focus on combat, so there are a number of things I'm trying to do to make combat feel the way I want it to feel while still being, you know, fun. The biggest change is that this will be the first of my projects to use RPG Maker's Side View battles, as well as the first to use the built-in ATB(Wait) system. This makes the Agility stat a much more important component in combat, and will open up new ways for you to approach how you hunt these monsters.

Next up is Redeemer Injections. These are the core of the crafting system. The idea with them is that you'll research what sort of monster you're hunting, preempt what this monster might try to do to you, and use Blodwerk - a type of alchemy unique to Redeemers - to create injections that will render you immune to the monster's abilities. These are used outside of combat as a preventative measure, much like you'd use things in the Witcher prior to a fight rather than in the middle of it. Each Injection will make you immune to a certain status effect as well as having an advantage and disadvantage. For example, one makes you immune to blind and massively increases your hit rate, but makes you slightly more vulnerable to fire damage. There's also a cap on how many of these you can use, so you can't just shove yourself full of Blodwerk and hope for the best.

The last thing I'll cover right now is the capture system. This is the biggest thing that won't work as intended for the sake of the demo. I've got this working great for single targets already, but as soon as there's more than one enemy on the field, it starts to break down. My original intention was to let you use the Capture status effect on regular enemies (instead of just the story hunts) so you could increase the amount of item drops you'd get from the enemy compared to just killing it. While the system does work, there's enough jank that you end up taking 1-2 turns while all enemies are captured, which leads to confusion as to whether or not you should do anything. The other option leads to combat massively slowing down while other enemies still exist, and the enemy you captured would just break out of the Capture status. There might be a script-free version of this that works, but I don't want this demo to take three months to make because one sub-system doesn't want to behave. This is still going to be a central mechanic, however. The core gameplay loop of the story - capturing monster girls to redeem - doesn't work without it. It will just be restricted to that specific use for the sake of the demo.

This post is way long, so I'm gonna go ahead and call it here. There's plenty more for me to talk about in terms of systems, so expect more of that next week.