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.