Maids & Masters (& A v0.7.1 Release Date)

As a quick update - Patreon tiers have been updated. The existing tiers are now limited, and the interim tiers are now available. Again, if you're already a Patron, nothing has changed for you. If you aren't a Patron, I'd be grateful if you took a look at the new tiers and considered supporting me.

Onto the update!

v0.7.1 will go out to my Patrons this Friday, 8/26. The update, as I mentioned last week, is mostly background work, so there isn't a ton of new stuff to interact with, but each of these interlude updates will still have a small event to them. v0.7.1 will also include the first of the two new Holds to find and explore. The main piece, the customization system, will be included, but only the garden will have options available to customize for now.

The customization systems are mostly done, but they won't be fully available this update. Estate customization will be available in v0.7.2, though. The groundwork is done, but with more than 40 variables included in these systems, I want to take more time to experiment and test how best to interact with the system while minimizing the chance that something breaks. There's also Auda's shop to figure out. If I'm going to be adding new items to the list of things you can purchase so I can track everything that way, there's a bunch of organizational work that I need to do first, which I don't have time to do before release day. If there's a better way of doing things, I haven't found it yet. Either way, it needs more time in the oven.

Adding new assets to the customization system will actually be really easy, based on what I've experimented with so far. The main points of contention are collision and making them all available to the player in a way that makes sense. Once I've got those figured out, the rest will be relatively easy.

I'm also still plugging away at the future releases behind the scenes, so if all goes well, that will get most of the way done and you'll be hearing the first news about my next demo project next week.

Maids & Masters (& v0.7.1 & Patreon)

We need to talk about Patreon.

First things first, if you're already a Patron, don't worry; nothing is changing for you. You'll still get the same benefits you're currently getting.

If you're not a Patron, and you enjoy my work and have been considering supporting me, now might be a good time to take a look at my Patreon and consider supporting me.

I don't want to get too deep into things, but I feel context is important. I'm currently in a situation where I can work on my creative endeavors full time without needing to worry about bills getting paid. The reason I've been working as hard as I have is because I know this situation won't last forever, so I'm trying to accomplish what takes most creators 5-10 years as quickly as possible. The reason I need to make some changes is that the first signs of my personal situation changing have arisen. In a perfect world, I could continue as I have been indefinitely, but we all know the world is far from perfect. This is why the demos I'm releasing are exclusive to my Patrons. This is why there are more changes coming.

If you aren't a Patron, the most noticeable change will be in my release cadence. Starting with v0.7.1, all of my releases for Maids & Masters will become available to the general public two weeks after being released to my Patrons. With the start of Act 2, all of my releases will go public a month later. If you're a Patron, you'll get releases the same way you always have; announcements and download links will go up on Patreon and Discord the day things are ready.

The change that my Patrons might notice is the tiers. I already reworked some of the benefits for the various tiers - more to better explain what the benefits are than actually changing them - but the two lowest tiers are going to become limited. Again, if you're already a Patron, nothing changes for you. If you aren't a Patron, this means you might miss out on the current tier pricing.

There are reasons besides money for these changes, but I have a policy of being as open and honest as possible - the money is a deciding factor. I really wish the money didn't matter, but it does, and I have to make some choices regarding money or I won't be able to do what I'm currently doing anymore.

Anyway. Enough of that. On to v0.7.1.

Most of v0.7.1 is setting up the customization system. Most of it will be locked off until v0.7.2, mostly for the sake of time, but the garden is already working beautifully and the rest is definitely coming. The Love Shack may need to get pushed off a little longer, or get partial implementation, just because it's so many renders. Some of these renders are already done, and some of the scenes are already mostly written out, but currently none of that lines up. It's a lot of work for a side thing that is relatively hidden and may not be found by everyone, so it's the easiest thing to de-prioritize and implement over time.

The content for the non-seasonal interlude updates is going to be relatively minimal, but that's mostly only compared to my full story releases. There are still two new Holds coming, both of which are already built, and other little things here and there to keep things fresh. Plus, I've been looking forward to this coming Haunt update since I first started working on Maids & Masters. It's a bit different, to be certain, but I think it's a ton of fun. 

 

The current plan is to get enough of the background stuff (maps, npcs, enemies, etc.) done in between the updates for v0.7.1 and v0.7.2 so that I can release the Haunt update two weeks before Halloween so that it goes public Halloween weekend. That does tighten up my dev time a bit, so it's not a sure thing, but it's not like I want to leave you non-Patrons in the dust without a second thought.

Speaking of, one last thing to mention before I call this post done: I've finally got an itch.io page set up. It's currently only the Arrival demo there, but v0.7.1 will be going there once it releases to the public, and more will be coming as I figure out how to use everything itch.io offers. So if you can't or won't support me on Patreon for reasons that are your own, take a look at my itch.io page for an alternative.

Love/Loss Demo Released!

Just a short update for your Friday to say that the demo for Love/Loss has officially released to my Patrons.

If you want some tragic romance and magical lesbians, you can download the demo through my Patreon.

If you don't want magical lesbians (for whatever reason, I won't judge (unless the reason is bigoted, then I'll judge very harshly)) but you do want urban fantasy tragic romance, the demo does include the option to play as a male protagonist as well. It also includes a New Game + mode.

This demo will not be releasing to the public, so if you aren't one of my Patrons, maybe you should be. I'd be glad to have you.

Upcoming Demo: Love/Loss's Elements and Release Date

With Love/Loss's imminent release, there's one last thing I want to cover - the elements. There will be in-game information later on, but it's not really covered anywhere in the demo or the included README otherwise. 

The array of elements isn't anything outlandish - Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, Earth, Water, Light, and Dark. What I wanted to do differently is tie status effects directly to the different elements; one positive and one negative for each. Combat is meant to be fast and infrequent in Love/Loss, so all of these states fall off at the end of combat. Each positive state also prevents that element's negative state from applying; Rage prevents burn, Reflect prevents Freeze, and so on.

Fire has Burn and Rage. Burn works exactly like you'd expect poison to - it does a percentage of damage every round for a few rounds of combat. Rage is a bit of a double-edged sword; it forces the character to auto-battle, attacking enemies at random, which is generally a bad thing. What makes it a buff is that it makes you attack twice per round, with a small chance of attacking a third time, and your attacks do fire damage, increased according to your fire Affinity. While you lose control of your character, Rage does allow you to do a great deal of damage without spending the MP that your spells otherwise require.

Ice has Freeze and Reflect. Freeze replaces the stun state, preventing a character from taking action for a few rounds. It's been modified so that the state has a chance of being removed when the frozen target takes damage, but it also reduces the target's evade rate (both physical and magical) and agility to 0, and applies a multiplier to any physical damage taken. Reflect works how you'd expect it to if you're familiar with RPGs; while it's active, you reflect any magic cast at you back at the caster.

Lightning has Shock and Charged. Shock is a lighter version of paralyze; like Freeze, it reduces evade rates to 0, but unlike Freeze, it doesn't provide a damage multiplier, and can't be removed by damage. Charged provides MP regeneration, and slightly increases all of your evasion rates. 

 

Wind has Breathless and Mistral. Breathless replaces silence, and works exactly how you'd expect it to; you can't cast spells while it's active. Mistral makes your TP regenerate while it's active, and you count as having Guard active while it lasts.

 

Earth has Knockout and Stonewall. Knockout replaces sleep; the target cannot act, and their evade rates, defense (physical and magical), and agility are reduced to 0. Knockout is removed if the target takes any damage, which is balanced out by Knockout lasting longer than other states. Stonewall functions largely like Protect; it substitutes you in for damage when a party member is attacked. Additionally, it reduces all damage taken (by different amounts, depending on the damage type).

Water has Soak and Flow. Soak is a status ailment that reduces fire damage and the chance of being burned, but amplifies most other damage types and the success rate of other status effects. It is also removed if another status effect is applied to the target. Flow replaces Counter; whenever you're attacked, the attack is nullified and you attack the target in return, like Reflect for physical attacks.

Light has Daze and Immortal. Daze replaces confusion, causing the target to fight automatically and treating all combatants as enemies, including their allies. Immortal does what it sounds like; as long as it's active, your hit points cannot be reduced to 0.

Dark has Blind and Conceal. Blind is mostly unchanged; it reduces the targets hit rate and critical rate, and reduces their counter attack rate to 0. Conceal is a boosted version of Hide; your target rate (the chance enemies attack you over another party member) is reduced to 0. Further, your evasion rates are greatly increased, meaning many attacks won't hit you if you end up being attacked anyway.

The demo for Love/Loss comes out this Friday, 8/12, exclusively to my Patrons. This will probably be the last time I talk about Love/Loss until it enters full development, so if you want to see Love/Loss be more than a demo, please visit my Support page here or consider supporting me on Patreon.

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.