Upcoming Demo: Love/Loss's Systems

Despite using Maids & Masters to do as much as possible with RPG Maker's core engine, it's impossible for me to include everything that the engine is capable of in a single game. In my ongoing journey to experiment and improve as a game developer, Love/Loss will include a handful of systems that I haven't used before.

The first I mentioned last week: you'll be able to choose the gender of the main character. Love/Loss is written with a female protagonist in mind, so the main game may not have the choice to play as a male character, but the demo is small enough in scope that it's easy to insert all of the appropriate changes; mostly in the form of new renders. Both of the main characters - the protagonist and the fiancee - are also player-named, which means I have to write dialogue around the fact that the name could be longer or shorter than the default name. Not really a challenge from a writing perspective, but it does affect some formatting within the game's script that I haven't had to think about before.

The second is New Game +. Love/Loss is based on media that has the character like Love/Loss's protagonist be very stoic and say very little, but (to me, at least) these characters always seemed to have more going on in their head than they ever said out loud. Love/Loss's New Game + will remove the protagonist's internal monologue, which I think provides a new perspective to the scenes. This feature requires a little more attention to detail in how dialogue is constructed, but will almost certainly be present in the full game, as it's relatively easy to work with. New Game + also gives me the opportunity to include a couple things in the demo to let you experiment with the next two systems using features that won't be present in the main game. 

 

As an extra note: It should go without saying, but New Game + saves won't carry over to the main game if/when Love/Loss becomes a full game. Though unless I switch engines, I'll do my best to have normal saves from the demo carry over to the main game.

Next is the Affinity system. If you've played any of the Tales series of games, you're going to be familiar with this general idea. The more you use a certain element, the more your Affinity for that element grows. This growth comes with an incremental increase to your abilities associated with that element, as well as unlocking new ways to manifest your Affinities at certain thresholds, giving you more options in combat.

The last is the upgrade system. While normal leveling still exists and you can raise your Affinities through combat, you also have the option of spending your experience to raise your stats and Affinities. This is also how you'll unlock new Affinities after the choice to pick your first element. My initial intention was to only allow you to spend your current experience; the amount between your current level and your next level. However, the engine's back end only recognizes your maximum experience. This means that spending too much will cause your current level to drop. While I could figure out a way to check your level, how much experience would keep you in your current level, and prevent you from spending enough to level down, there's an intended metaphor within this system that I feel this level down consequence really helps drive home.

I've got the demo into it's final playtesting phase, so all that's really left to do is to create any necessary male MC renders (I'm not redoing all of them; sorry, but it is just a demo), make sure all the triggers are correct for that version, and decide how many bonus scenes I want to include and get all of those rendered out. I want to give my character preview post a chance to go public before I finalize the character's default names, so right now I think we'll set the release date for this demo as Friday the 12th. 

As a reminder, this demo will only be available to my Patrons, so if you're interested in Love/Loss, please consider supporting me.

Maids & Masters v0.7 Public Release

The latest Maids & Masters release, v0.7, is now available to the public. 

I have, true to my word, been taking most of the past week to decompress and relax. The work that I have gotten done has been on the demo for Love/Loss, the first of a handful of demos I'm looking at releasing over the coming months. The only things I have left to do for the demo are creating the remaining renders and implementing them into the game, so it should be ready in another week or two at the rate I'm going. Once that's done, it's on to work on v0.7.1.

 

If you're interested in Love/Loss, either scroll down or click here to read about it. As a reminder, the demo will be available exclusively to my Patrons, so if it's something you're interested in playing, please consider supporting me on Patreon.

If you just want the download links, they're over on the downloads page.

If it's the changelog you're after, you can find it a few posts down, and/or by clicking here.

Upcoming Demo: Love/Loss's Setting and Main Character

Since it's fairly close to done and the first thing besides MnM I'll be releasing, let's talk about Love/Loss.

Love/Loss is an urban fantasy romance story about finding hope in the wake of tragedy. The setting isn't too dissimilar from what you'd expect from typical urban fantasy, with a magic system (as well as a number of plot points) inspired by an anime called Loveless.

I won't get too deep into the magic system here since there's a book in-game for the curious to read, but the general idea is that people are able to draw magical power from interpersonal relationships. For the average person, this might make you stronger, smarter, or tougher. For some people, you might be able to light a campfire without tools or charge your phone without plugging it in. If you're lucky, you might be able to fight fires, handle power lines, or otherwise save lives with your bare hands. The truly extraordinary, literally one in a million, are geniuses, war heroes, and modern day wizards, capable of truly miraculous feats.

This is referred to in-setting as a Pairing. Pairings describe in general terms the sort of relationship you draw your power from. Rather than "romantic relationships" or "platonic relationships," examples of these Pairings are Single Paired (where you gain magic from a single, mutual, monogamous relationship), Open Paired (where you gain magic from fleeting, momentary relationships), and True Paired (only gaining magic from nurturing a relationship with your soulmate). These relationships are generally romantic, but can be platonic, familial, or purely sexual; it varies from person to person. There are six types of Pairings in total, along with hybrid Pairings and a handful of unrecognized theoretical Pairings.

 

The main character is a woman who, along with her fiancee, left everything behind to try to build something for themselves in a new city, away from the judgement and stigma of their homes. She is True Paired, her relationship with her one true love allowing her to manifest the elements of fire, ice, and lightning in fantastically destructive ways. 

The story begins several months following a car accident that took the main character's fiancee from her, with a chance encounter revealing one impossible truth after the next, calling into question everything she thought she knew about herself.

If you're not interested in the lesbian relationship, the demo does include an option to play as a male main character, and if I do carry this forward into the main game, there will be alternate renders and scenes to accommodate this option. But that's a full release that's rather far off into the future. For now, look forward to this demo becoming available exclusively to my Patrons sometime in August.

Maids & Masters v0.7 Release

It's release day!

Insomnia got me good today, so hopefully my sleep deprived brain didn't miss anything important, but I'm totally out of things I can think to do and I've got no more notes left, so there shouldn't be anything game-breaking. If there is, I'm sure someone will let me know.

I tried my best to get some post-game stuff in here, so there should still be stuff to do after the "end of version" dev outro. As a hint for that - do Big Dick's before you finish Lalita, then go back to Big Dick's. Especially if you missed the Ratslayer trophy. This is something I've been looking forward to implementing, and that's an area dedicated to allowing you to obtain otherwise missable trophies, but it's more than that. If you've already got the trophy in question, you can do the event anyway, which will improve your reputation (a variable that'll be important in Act 2), but the event will play out totally differently. I spent way longer than I probably should've getting this bit working right, but I love the way it turned out. It should be worth a laugh or two, if nothing else.

So... Yeah. That's Act 1 basically done. There's some interlude stuff to do - I talk about it in the dev outro in-game - but as excited as I am to keep plugging away at Maids & Masters, complete my first solo project, and get it into your hands... I'm just as excited to stop making myself work 70 hour weeks just to get paid in packing peanuts. I love my supporters, I really do - yes, all 4 of you - but if the insomnia wasn't evidence enough, I work way too damn hard.

But enough about that. You'll hear plenty about my plans for this "down time" in the coming weeks. For now, I'm going to get you your changelog, get these uploads finished, get the download links to my Patrons, and sleep.

v0.7
Next story release
- Includes 5 new areas to explore, consisting of more than 40 new maps, more than 100 new renders, 2 new trophies, and introducing 7 new Maids - including 2 new party members.
Added an extra check to ensure the truce is active in situations where it may have been missed.
Added more pick-up sound effects to collectible objects that didn’t already have them.
Added fast travel to Ventire that unlocks after obtaining the relevant trophy.
Added puzzle reset checks to the Amaira Hold to prevent potential bugs in other areas.
Added an alternate end to the Ventire water side quest to allow completion after Trophy 10.
Added Puzzle Reset to Homing Stone teleports to prevent possible bugs.
Added a missing screen tint when using Bianca to teleport during the Amaira Estate section.
Fixed a bug that would cause the Amaira fog to remain even if disabled during negotiations.
Fixed a bugged encounter that could cause a “divide by 0” error leading to a game crash.
Fixed a bug that would send the player to the wrong instance of the Love Shack’s yard.
Fixed a bug that displayed Quinn’s name when inviting Teely to the Love Shack.
Fixed a bug that prevented one of the Griselda Anal repeat renders to not erase correctly.
Fixed a bug that allowed the Mother’s Blessing trophy to be collected multiple times.
Fixed a bug that would cause a freeze while recruiting Teely if revisiting her while missing items.
Updated render positions of Griselda’s Anal scene so the repeat version matches the original.
Updated Rat Swams/Extermination to have roughly 10% less attack and HP, and lower evade.
Updated the text presented when the Homing Stone is available but cannot be used to teleport.
Updated the affection check-in room to accommodate the new characters.
Updated the Love Shack invite room to accommodate the new characters.
Updated the priestess in Augalamh to provide more specific directions to Hachtlamh.
Updated the README walkthrough to also provide more specific directions to Hachtlamh.
Various minor dialogue, item description, map, and event updates.

Maids & Masters (& v0.7's Home Stretch)

We are officially in the final testing and bug-fixing phase of the update. I'm very glad I chose to take my time getting here, because woah buddy is some of this complicated.

There's a bit of conversation that I don't expect people will want to select, but the choice is there, so it needs to work properly. It does function, but there's a loooooooot of context you end up missing out on, so that needed to be reworked more than I anticipated.

I'm also taking advantage of some new mechanics that I'm planning on making heavier use of in Act 2, so I need to make sure it works correctly now. Everything works as it should in the first fight, but they're set up slightly differently in the second fight, which of course means absolutely everything broke and I need to figure out what went wrong and potentially completely rework the fight.

 

Not to mention the other new systems and mechanics that are present in the new characters. Most of that has been tested and fixed and tested again to the point where it shouldn't be an issue anymore, but I'm still new to a lot of this, so it's been a lot of work to get it all functioning the way I want it to function. Plus all the one-off stuff that I used previously and wanted to bring back for this update so you're getting a little bit of the whole rest of the game in this one update. Hopefully that'll help make this feel like a culmination of events instead of just "the next step."

Getting all of that working should take me roughly two days, though, which still leaves a few days to comb through to find and fix any other bugs I haven't run into yet. Hopefully the end product is less buggy than some of my other initial releases, because as I've mentioned elsewhere, bugfix updates are going to be monthly until next year while I give myself some time to rest. I'll make an exception for any bugs that end up being totally game-breaking, but that shouldn't be necessary with all this extra testing.

I'll see ya'll this weekend for the changelog!

Maids & Masters (& A v0.7 Release Date)

The larger piece of optional content: Done. The smaller optional content: Done. The story for v0.7: Two scenes remaining. After that second scene is done, it's just the wrap-up bits of the update that will set up the down time coming in-game. But I'm going to set the release date for the weekend following this one. So expect July 22nd to be the day the update goes out to my Patrons.

If I rushed things, I might be able to get v0.7 done in a week or even for this weekend, but it would be just that - rushed. The optional content for this update could use a little more polish. It all works the way it's supposed to, but it'll definitely benefit from the extra attention. Then there's the playtesting. I really don't want this release to get to people and be a buggy mess. That'll probably happen anyway, but I want to at least try.

In other news, the render count has officially passed 100. In fact, it passed 130. More than 20% of the game's total renders will be present in v0.7 alone, and there's still more to come in the v0.7.x updates. Once I get to the Love Shack content, that will likely be well over another hundred renders.

As a bit of an extra teaser, the most recently finished bit of content is the end of the new Hold. This map is, to put it bluntly, weird. It's like nothing else in the game, there's a good chance I won't use anything like it in the future, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Maids & Masters (& v0.7 & Some Positivity For Once)

I've been pretty open - maybe even a little too open - about how rough things have been lately. That's not going to change, because this is my blog and I'm going to do what I like with it, but I do recognize that I've been more negative than I really want to be.

So I think it's time for some friggin positivity.

First, v0.7. The main story is about... 85-90% done. I originally wasn't entirely sure where I wanted to take this portion of the story; I only really knew how I wanted it to end. It took me a bit of meandering and redesigning, but I'm happy with where the story has ended up. I'm trying to incorporate a little bit of everything so it feels like you're using everything you've learned before now with the stakes set higher and more clearly than they have been in the past. I don't know how well that feeling will come through for people who aren't me, but I'm pretty satisfied with how things have been turning out.

I've also tried to make a point of including more renders. If you're the sort of person that wants more visual novel than game, several sections in this part of the story feel more like a visual novel than an RPG. There are a lot of renders in v0.7. For comparison, the first update of the game originally included 36 renders. I haven't even started on the repeatable scene renders for most characters, and I'm already up to 79 renders. I fully expect this update to have well over 100 by the time it's done, which would mean roughly 15% of the game's total renders come from this update alone.

If you're more into the RPG parts, there's still a new segment of the wilds with a Hold that will open during the v0.7.x updates, a new dungeon within the Deep Wilds that leads to one of the previously unused landmarks, new types of puzzles that I haven't included in the game before now, new enemy types, new mid-boss style encounters that use new combat mechanics, two new combat characters to join your party that also use those new combat mechanics, and more that I'm probably not remembering off the top of my head.

I'm still not close enough to done that I'm comfortable setting a release date, but based on my current progress, my previous estimate was more or less accurate. It's certainly been a journey getting here, but I'm excited to get this into your hands. This update will have a bit more "clean-up" to do than v0.6 did, so I won't just hit the finale and call it an update, and there's still some work to do with the side-content, but if I can keep this pace I should have a release date next week.

Maids & Masters (& Progress on v0.7 & Jinxing it Anyway)

After trying to avoid jinxing myself and making things fall through, the development I was most looking forward to of those that I had alluded to last week has fallen through. It's more than a little disappointing, but that's kind of the way life has gone for me recently. 

The good news is that v0.7 is coming along. It's been a bit more of a grind than I'd like it to be, but progress itself has been good. The intro is completely done, and the story is somewhere between a third and half done. Of the two bits of optional content for the update, the smaller of the two is complete, and the larger of the two is a little over half done. 

Speaking of things I sort of mentioned last week, I want to talk about working on demos for other solo projects. Believe me, I absolutely love what I do, and I very much want to finish Maids & Masters before moving entirely onto a new project; however... It really has become something of a grind recently. It's been nearly a year (...holy shit, it's been nearly a year...) since I started working on Maids & Masters, and have worked on basically nothing but Maids & Masters. I am a part of other teams working on other projects, but my day-to-day work generally goes into MnM.

Yesterday, as I had other plans made for the day and didn't want to get dug into typical work, I decided to start playing around with a demo concept, and I got more lost in working on that than I have working on anything else for months. This demo went from what was a single map and a handful of placeholder assets to nearly three quarters of the way done, which I think reaffirms something I said in an earlier post; I need to take a break from MnM. 

 

This break will come in the form of demos for other ideas I have. These demos will be made available exclusively to my Patrons. Once MnM is done, I'll hold a supporter-only vote to see which of these demos becomes the next project I work on.

But that's for the future. v0.7 is still my next release. I will still do bugfix and post-game releases for v0.7 to complete things like the new side content and the love shack, but expect these releases to come closer to monthly rather than bi-weekly. Once v0.7 is out, the next major update - v0.8 - won't be until the Halloween update in October. After that, the next update will be the second Freeze update - v0.9 - in December. Work on MnM Act 2 will start in 2023, after I've had the chance to make some of these demos and let myself relax some of these creative muscles.

Maids & Masters (& Returning to v0.7)

It feels good to get back into the swing of things.

All the new art assets for v0.7 are done, not counting all the renders for the new character scenes. This is always the biggest hurdle for me when I start work on a new major update. I don't hate it, but I'm a writer, not an artist. Doing the art stuff almost always leads to more frustration and burnout than any other part of the job.

Past that, I'm hoping to get the rest of the introduction done tonight. Then I have some attention to give to the optional Estate for the update - where you'll be able to earn trophies you might have missed elsewhere in the game. There are a lot of sub-systems I'm still trying to figure out for this section, so it likely will only provide a second chance at Ratslayer when v0.7 first releases, but more will be added as I make v0.7.x updates.

Then it's just, y'know, the rest of the update.

At risk of incurring the curse of delays that come with projecting release dates, I'm hoping this will take me 3-4 weeks to get done, so something like a mid-July release. The reason I'm saying this now is that I'm hoping to have some pretty exciting new developments when it comes to the work I do here. I don't want to jinx a second thing, so I won't talk about those developments until after they're well and truly underway, but hopefully some of the posts coming in the next 3-4 weeks will be about something besides Maids & Masters.

Maids & Masters (& A Lack of Progress on v0.7)

As much as I hate to say it, this is going up a day late and I don't have much else to say about the project. Real life drama has slowed development to a crawl, largely because it's left me without the mental energy to be able to work. I'm doing my best to move past it and get back to work as normal, but it hasn't been easy.

I do have a good idea of where I want the story to go for v0.7, and nearly all of the art assets are done (aside from the new characters' scenes), so once I pick up some momentum, things will hopefully go relatively quickly.

I truly despise letting my work fall behind like this. I greatly appreciate the support I get from all of you, even if it's just reading this, or looking at my Patreon page, or posting feedback on F95. I see you, and I thank you. If you're looking forward to the rest of this story, know that I'm just as excited to tell it.

However, I think I need to switch into some different creative gears. I've run into a plateau in terms of building financial support, which has made upgrading my software more difficult than I'd have liked. This recent drama has been the closest to a day off that I've taken in nearly a year. A year's worth of work weeks where working 40 hours that week was taking it slow. I love the work that I do, but working as hard as I have for as little as I'm getting is not easy, and these past weeks have forced me to confront that.

Maids & Masters is still a priority for me. I intend to release v0.7 and follow it up with any necessary bugfix releases, as well as some post-game stuff that I've been looking forward to putting in the game for a long time. It will likely be the next thing I release, excluding any work I need to do on TLotG. That said, I have so, so many other ideas banging around in my head, and if things work out the way I want, I should have a few months between v0.7 releasing and the releases I have planned for v0.8 and v0.9. 

All that to say that MnM isn't going on hold, and I'm not taking a hiatus. What I'm probably going to do is switch my focus to demos for other project ideas. These demos will only be available to my Patrons, and will serve as the minimum viable product to let you see what these projects are intended to be. Once development on MnM has concluded, I'll hold a poll on which demo should be turned into my next project.

If I can find the motivation to get back to work on MnM, the first of those demos will likely be out sometime in August, with a second potentially coming out in September or October. If I manage a second, I might have a third for November or December. Those aren't hard dates, just general projections, but I'm sitting on a lot of different ideas. It all comes down to how well I'm able to execute on them.

But one thing at a time. First, I need to get back to getting v0.7 into your hands.

Maids & Masters v0.6.4 Public Release

Development on v0.7 has begun, but most of what needs doing right now is the art assets. Maps are mostly done, and about half of the introductory bit is done, but past that there's not a whole lot to say. The last week has mostly been sprite sheets and face sets. 

 

Anyway, it's been a week, so the latest build is now open to the public.

It's in the previous post, but for the sake of completeness, here's a link to the changelog.

Download links are updated on the Downloads page. I've still got some real life things to deal with, so F95 will get the new version once I get around to it; probably in a day or two.