Dawnfall's Combat and Mechanics Part 3

I dunno if it's just because I'm excited to get this demo made, but something has me back to working at the pace I was at when I first started on Maids & Masters, and that means it's going to be big. The second mission is built and being tested as I'm writing this, and while my original goal was to have the first 2 or 3 missions done, it's looking like I might be able to get a whole lot more than that done. 

 

Where most of my demos are roughly the size of Arrival in that they take 20-30 minutes to get through, maybe 45-60 minutes if you really scrounge around looking for secrets, Dawnfall's demo is roughly 15 minutes just for the tutorial, which mostly revolves around giving you the main character as he would be at the end of the game and telling you how to absolutely wreck shop with overpowered units. For reference, my personal save is roughly 40 minutes after the first mission, and that's with me skipping some of the dialogue. The addition of all these extra missions should bring the demo well over an hour in length, and that's if you beeline the missions as quickly as possible.

So, for this last post (at least for now), I'll go over the system that I haven't quite figured out how to represent visually yet - the companionship system. 

Like I mentioned last week, if you're familiar with Fire Emblem, this won't be anything new to you. The idea is that if units are close to each other when they act, they gain companionship points. The closer together they are when they act, the faster they earn points. Unlike an affection system that largely only focuses on the main character's relationship with the individual love interests, each pair of characters has their own companionship score. This system means each character can have unique relationship growth with each other character that progresses naturally within the game. This plus the camp lets you see as much or as little of each individual character as you want. All of this works perfectly behind the scenes, but there's no way for you to check progress, and I want you to be able to see both character relationships and weapon mastery while at camp.

The camp is also set up to let you continue on with missions or stop to go through character events at whatever pace you like. If you want to stop in between each mission to see if any new events opened up by poking your head into everyone's tents, lighting a campfire, and taking the time to talk with everyone - you can. If you want to go straight back to the mission map to get to the next battle, you can. I've set this up so every character has a fixed progression for their non-story events, so you'll never have to worry about missing a character's events because you progressed too far in the story or progressed more with one character than the other. This might get a little messy when the game gets bigger as I try to maintain continuity between individual character events and group character events, but that isn't a concern for the demo.

Right now the only obstacle is getting all of that information into a screen so you can see it. I've tried a few things, like expanded status screens that let me add custom variables, as well as things similar to the Estate Info screens in Maids & Masters, but while my attempts so far have technically met the requirements of communicating the information I want to communicate, I'm not happy enough with any of them to call the system complete just yet. Since the companionship system won't have any real impact on the demo, the visual representation may not be present if I don't manage a breakthrough by the end of the week, but like I said up top, this demo is going to have plenty of content for you to enjoy.

If you want to get your hands on the demo, it's going out to Patrons this Friday, June 28th. It'll be available to all tiers right away, so if this sounds like something you'd be interested in, I'd appreciate it if you considered going to my Patreon page and supporting me.

Dawnfall's Combat and Mechanics Part 2

I have finally managed to get my productivity back to where I want it to be. Some things are a little different from what I laid out in my last post, but the important thing is that the core gameplay of the necessary database work is done, the demo's core gameplay is working, and the skill system is working and fully implemented. I still have some assets to make/fix and the companionship system to get working, but I'm now confident enough in my progress to say I'll have a working test build up on Patreon for VIPs on Friday, and the demo should be ready for release to all Patrons on the following Friday, June 28. That does mean the demo is going to be my monthly release, which puts me a bit behind schedule, but things are the closest to normal than they've been this year. It's a good feeling.

Anyway, on to changes from last week. The big thing is the core gameplay. I can now actually test how everything works in a live game environment, which was my biggest hurdle before now. I'm still working on equipment switching, but for now, changing equipment is a free action, but can only be done before movement. I kinda want it to take your turn, but I haven't figured out how to make that happen yet, so I might just seal everything except your weapon so you can't change literally everything every turn and still act normally. For the sake of balancing things out (and stopping combat from taking way longer than it should), I dropped the baseline for max HP down to 10 so it's in line with all the other stats. Other stats haven't changed, and the formulas haven't changed, and testing so far has been pretty good. Enemy max HP came down along with player unit max HP, so you're still only needing to hit these early enemies 1-3 times to down one. Combat should feel reasonably quick and both dealing and taking damage should feel meaningful. Balance is definitely going to be a concern, but it always is, so that's not particularly new. Overall, I'm pretty happy with where everything ended up, even if I still want to tweak a few things here and there.

That also means that - aside from making new enemy types - all the math is basically done. I'll be eagerly awaiting feedback when it comes to how fast skills are learned, because I'm impatient and have a lot of things to test so I've been manually setting these variables for myself, but I'm also really happy with how the system worked out. 

 

The main thing that I'm really excited about but only barely mentioned last week is the weapon skill system. The basics are that each weapon has a skill associated with it, and "mastering" that weapon will permanently teach you the skill. Each character has their own set of variables that track both their affinity for each type of weapon as well as each individual weapon. I couldn't find a clean way to have that affect damage, but high weapon category affinity will affect how quickly a unit learns skills. For example, once a unit swings any sword 20 times, that unit now learns all sword skills twice as fast. If the character has a negative preference (e.g., the knight has trouble learning magic), it stops there, but if there's no preference, it can go up to 30 and they'll learn sword skills three times as fast. If they have a positive preference, they can learn sword skills up to 4 times as fast. The same applies to spells and spell books, with the exception that spell books have four spells you can learn from them instead of a single skill.

 

I've even figured out some other modifiers to further make characters feel more unique, in that - on average - you'll need to get 30 affinity with a weapon to learn its skill. If a character should learn a particular skill particularly quickly or slowly, that number might go as low as 20 or as high as 40. The unit's weapon affinity can drastically change the number of times a weapon needs to be swung in order to learn the skill in question. In some cases, a weapon category might have a negative preference except with a specific weapon, so that unit using a certain sword might lead to a better understanding of all swords.

 

To use the earlier knight example, her book affinity caps at 20 because she has a hard time learning magic. That also means she learns spells slowly, so even at maximum affinity, you'll need to use the spell book 15 times to learn the first spell, and a total of 60 times to master that magic. Conversely, she learns weapon skills much more quickly, taking roughly 8 attacks at maximum affinity to learn a new spear skill. 

 

Where this gets really fun is hidden skills. For a completely different example, each character has an "unarmed" skill that you can only raise by unequipping your weapon and punching things. Once you do that enough, rather than learning one specific "super punch" skill, each character has a unique skill they can learn. Aside from an unarmed skill, I can do this in any number of ways on top of having it be character-specific. The knight might learn a skill that no one else gets once she's mastered all the polearms, the mage might learn a spell no one else learns once she's learned certain spells from two or more elements, the paladin might learn a new skill once the knight knows a certain skill and the mage knows a certain spell and he gets the idea to combine the two, so if he learns both, he gets a new hidden skill. I can even hide unlocks within unlocks, so unlocking certain hidden skills on two characters might unlock a companion scene back at camp that leads to both characters learning a combination skill - it's a fun system to play with from a design standpoint.

I want every unit to be able to equip everything, so the major differences between units will be in base stats and how quickly units learn certain skills. That does present it's own problems (because what's stopping you from giving everyone bows and books and super heavy armor and trading movement for defense?), so that might change in the future (or if I get extra spicy, maybe make equipping different weapon and armor types unlock as part of the skill system), but I don't have enough of the game built to know whether those changes are a good idea yet. Same goes for the speed of learning skills and spells; I don't have enough game to know if it happens too quickly or if where it's set is just right.

Right now my main focus is testing all these skills and spells to make sure they function as intended and getting this proximity-based companionship system working (if you've played Fire Emblem games, you know what this is about) and seeing if I can find a plugin that'll let me display all these extra stats so you're not lost on how a unit is progressing with their skills (and where their relationships with the other units stand). That's probably what next week's post will be about, and then you'll be able to get your hands on the demo to see it all for yourself (as long as you're a Patron).

Dawnfall's Combat and Mechanics

I have been significantly less productive than I'd have liked over the past week due to some real life issues, but this demo is still creeping closer to something I can actually release. Part of the reason for the crawl is the sheer amount of math I've needed to do in order to get the game balance to where I want it to be.

Unlike all of my other projects that largely leave RPG Maker's base math alone, I want Dawnfall to be closer to the games that inspired it - Fire Emblem and Advance Wars. That means the numbers are going to be much smaller and - hopefully - more predictable. For example, right now I'm having characters start with around 20 HP, with 10 being the average on a stat. When you level up (to a max of 20), those stats might be 40 HP with 20 being the average stat. These will all adjust up and down depending on the unit type - mages will have lower HP, Attack, and Defense, but higher Magic Attack and Magic Defense. Knights will be the opposite; higher HP, Attack, and Defense, but lower Magic Attack and Magic Defense. I also want to keep enemies more or less in line with this, because I kinda hate games that have enemy stats and player stats be vastly different from each other. This should also help with tactics; identifying which unit is what type so you know who to charge and fight and who to stand back and sling spells at.

For actual combat, I also want to simplify damage formulas so the difficulty of combat comes from the strategic skill of the player, rather than sheer numbers. Obviously, there will be some maps that will be "easy" or "hard" based on the number and/or type of enemies, but that sort of parameter will mostly come later in the game, once the characters have mostly been assembled and the story is in full swing, and that won't be at the start of the game, so it won't be in the demo. Which is just as well, because I need to figure out the more granular bits first anyway.

 

The trouble with the more granular bits right now is making sure gameplay is still satisfying. If the damage formula is simplified to "Attack - Defense = Damage" and both characters have 10 in all their stats, that results in zero damage. You'll have equipment to work with, so let's say the basic sword gives you 4 more attack. Well, if I want enemies to function off of the same baseline as the player characters, the enemy should get bonuses from wearing armor, and now we're right back to "14-14=0." I've mostly made up my mind about weapons having a point or two higher attack than what the equivalent armor provides (in math terms, "14-13=1" - hooray, a point of damage!), but since I can't use the built-in battle tester to test things quite the same way as I can for projects that use the default combat system, I need to do math to figure out how many times I want you to need to attack a given type of enemy. Using the baseline of 20 health as an example, you'd be attacking an enemy 20 times to down them one HP at a time. That's hardly my idea of a good time, so obviously there's still some tweaking that needs doing.

The short term solution is that early enemies will have below-baseline stats. For example, they'll be magic users focused on status effects, so they won't do damage directly to your units and they'll have lower than average HP and Defense. That makes sense, and now you're doing 4 damage and you only need to do it 3 times to deplete their 12 HP. With three starting units, that's maybe a little rough, but easily manageable. Other enemies might be built as fodder, so they'll have half of the baseline stats before applying modifiers for unit types; 10 base HP, 5 base Defense. A back-line unit like this might only have 4 Defense and 8 HP after modifiers, so they go down in one hit. Even a front-line fodder unit might only have 6 Defense and 12 HP, so you only need to hit them twice, and you might one-shot a few of them if you get a lucky critical hit. That feels like a much better starting point. Of course, that still leaves later enemies a bit unresolved, but the stat increases from levels should mostly cover that. Not to mention any learned skills or a potential weapon affinity system.

This, plus the decision to make all attacks do a minimum of one damage, took me nearly a full week to work out and test as best I could without having a battle map built in the demo yet. There's still a lot I need to figure out, like whether I want you to be able to switch weapons on the fly or have you be stuck with whatever you decide at the start of the battle (or compromise and make switching weapons a "skill" that takes up your action), and whether or not I want to include (and how to include) an affinity system, where a character can (maybe) learn skills faster and (possibly) do more damage if you have them focus on swords or lances or a certain type of magic instead of bouncing around to learn all the skills (which I still want to be possible, because I'm absolutely the sort of person that wants to bounce around and learn all the skills). I might split it up so you have "sword affinity" as well as affinity for each individual weapon (currently, individual weapon affinity is how you learn skills), but working all those variables into the damage formula and having the formula properly update based on the current character is complicated.

 

And all this really just scratches the surface. There's still how extra stats affect skill damage, how "hybrid skills" behave (like swinging a sword but targeting Magic Defense), how Agility factors in (if it's high enough, your character will act twice on a single attack), area of effect attacks (I don't care how big the room is, I said "I cast fireball"), damage types and resistances (nothing likes being on fire, so should everything take extra damage from fire magic, or is that imbalanced?), and how status effects should work, and how many weapon types I should make, and exactly how the skill system works, and on and on. All of this and more before I can even start to put an encounter together.

I'm really hoping what life has me going through right now will pass sooner rather than later, because I'm still genuinely excited about getting this demo put together, but I only have so much time and energy.

And hey, if you made it this far, maybe consider checking out my Patreon? I'm mostly doing lore posts for Maids & Masters while I get this demo figured out, but if you liked reading this, you'll probably like reading those. And once I have it figured out, the demo will be going up there for all tiers before it goes public a month or so later.

Next Demo - Light Eternal: Dawnfall

Lore posts got voted for on Patreon, so if you want way too much detail on specific things, head over there and give the most recent post a read. The first one was on the importance of names and how they're handed down between Masters. This Friday's post will probably be another one while I wrap up my client work. Speaking of, all my client work is written, but I'm still waiting to hear back from both of them. I may have some edits or subsequent drafts to get done, but the majority of the time I spend on work from here on out will be on the next demo.

This is the first time I'm posting about it here, and it's been a while since I posted about it on Patreon, so here's the logo.

Like I mentioned on Patreon, this is a special project to me, because it was the first thing I tried to pitch to someone else to get started on trying to become a full time game developer and writer (before ultimately starting on MnM since I had the tools to do so). The elevator pitch is something like this:

We've won. The dragons have been slain. The darkness has been beaten back. The man aspiring to godhood behind an army of daemons is dead, and his soul banished to a plane beyond resurrection. The daemons themselves have been routed and are in full retreat, only stopping to fight when they're attacked.

And yet the war rages on. The paladin leading the Army of Dawn, chosen and blessed by the holy goddess, continues to fuel the hatred and zealotry of her army, hunting what remains of the daemons almost for sport.

It's unbearable watching her devolve like this. Her blessings remain, so the goddess must think this course the righteous one, but after such a grueling campaign, you long for peace. You've tried talking her down before, but she's never listened. It might cost you your own blessings and leave you with a stain of dishonor, but parting ways might be the best course of action.

That's more or less the prologue of the game. I want a little more than that to be playable, because this will be a turn based strategy game. That's the big thing that's kept me from making this game on my own; all I know right now is RPG Maker, and while the engine is a very powerful tool, it does have its limitations. Lucky for me, a new plugin set was released not that long ago, enabling me to take all my knowledge of RPGM and apply it to this strategy game I've wanted to make for years.

The trick is that, as a strategy game, there's a ton of work that needs to be done on the back end before I can even think about writing out the story and building out battle maps. I've gotten most of it done in between getting other updates out, but it still isn't quite to the point where I can launch the game and test the first battle. I think I've got the math more or less where I want it, but I can't be sure until I get everything else done and can test it in the live game environment.

There's definitely a lot to cover besides the premise for the story, so expect to get more about the project until the demo is ready to launch.

May 2024 General Update

Before I get into anything else, I have a poll on my Patreon that's available for everyone to vote in. Since some of these coming weeks are going to be a little slow news-wise while I do my best to avoid spoilers in between getting all this work done, I figured I could hold a poll to see what kind of content you want to see from me. There aren't very many votes in the poll right now, and I even made it multiple choice, so if you're at all interested in seeing content from me that isn't just "still working on it, see you next week," get over there and vote. There haven't been many votes on the poll yet, and it's free.

With that shameless self-promotion out of the way (though I really do want you to go over there and vote), the actual news for the last week is, like I anticipated it would be, pretty slow. I've largely been focused on getting client work done, and I'm still a little under half way done with that. The details on that work aren't really mine to share, but I can say I'm hoping to get one thing done today, and the other thing done over the rest of the week. Hopefully sooner rather than later, because a developer friend asked for some help with proofreading and editing, so I've got his game to go through as well.

Once the client work is done, I want to get started in earnest on Dawnfall. I haven't been able to do much of anything with it while I've been working on my client work. I want to think it's fairly close to finished on the back end (minus filling out the rest of the equipment options; but that won't be especially relevant for the demo) and I'll be able to actually test the game opening soon. Once I've got things set in a way that proves functional, the rest of the demo should be fairly easy to make. The biggest hurdle is having the time and energy to make it.

Precious Kouhai has, for now, been pushed onto the back burner. The monthly release for June is likely to just be the Dawnfall demo, and any work I put into something besides client work and Dawnfall is going to be the affection quests for Maids & Masters. For Maids & Masters, I'm still watching for bug reports, so if you find any, feel free to reach out to me so I can get them fixed. Some of the more recent reports were things that have been in the game for quite a while, so I'm glad to get them fixed. Keep those bug reports coming. Or, if you can't find any bugs, leave me a like or a review or whatever the platform you found me on lets you do. Positivity like that is what keeps me going.

Maids & Masters (& Looking Forward to v0.15.2)

With v0.15.1 out, it's time to get to work on affection quests. That leaves development - or, more accurately, development news - in a little bit of a weird spot. While I could talk through all the different quests and my plans for them, that would kinda defeat the purpose of putting it all in the game so you could play through it. What I'll probably do is go to more general updates and and find other things to post about to fill the time between now and when v0.15.2 actually comes out.

Part of the reason for this is that I'm not sure how long all of these affection quests are going to take to make. I do have most of them planned out, but there are still a bunch that I either need to redesign because certain maps aren't in the game yet or that I need to design in the first place. As a general statement, the quests will cover the personal stories of the Maids in ways that the main story would otherwise not have room to explain or explore. There's also a few rewards for completing those quests that might take a while to fully implement, because they include things like Estate customization items.

I also have a few things besides v0.15.2 to work on. Dawnfall will probably be the next thing I release, but being as mechanically complicated as it is, I haven't even gotten it to a point where I can start testing the combat in earnest, much less putting the stretch of story together that I want to create for the demo. I also have some client work to get done, which is likely going to take a week or two to get through. I should also take some time for myself, because the way things have been going lately, work has felt a lot more forced than it ever has before, and I don't want that to affect the quality of my work. Especially when I want to stay committed to monthly releases.

 

Between all of those things, news is probably going to be a little slow. I still want to post weekly, so I'll find something to talk about, but it might be things I haven't done or have done infrequently before, like lore posts for Maids & Masters. The same thing applies to Patreon - I fully intend to keep up weekly posts, but it might be things like opinion polls instead of news. Maybe more behind-the-scenes stuff for Dawnfall or some sneak peeks at affection quest renders. I'll have to take it week by week.

Maids & Masters v0.15.1 Release

It's time for a big ol' love shack update. A few other things got updated as well (along with a change I've been going back and forth on for a while), but nothing too major. Details are in the change log:

v0.15.1
Added color coding to Orders being issued by Masters.
Added a hidden Unique Recipe to the Beckett Estate.
Added love shack content for Vicky, June, Chloe, Setri, Caitlainn, and Celine.
Added a way to obtain Trophy 26 after completing the Beckett Estate.
Fixed a bug that caused a door in the Stebbing Estate to go from the 2nd floor to the 1st floor.
Fixed a number of bugs where skills meant only for combat were usable outside of combat.
Fixed a bug that may cause combat with a rat to trigger when importing a save from Arrival.
Fixed a bug that could cause Emily’s arrival event to not trigger when teleporting home.
Fixed a bug that caused June and Chloe to appear in the war room before being recruited.
Fixed a bug that prevented Mysterious Murder from being added to the task list.
Fixed a bug that could cause the Bancroft dinner event to restart during questioning.
Fixed a bug that caused the first animation in Katrina’s third scene to not play correctly.
Fixed a bug that may cause Vendra’s fireside images to not correctly display her pregnancy.
Updated the age gate question to be more clear about why the README is important.
Updated XP values for boss enemies to be higher.
Updated the nameplate outside the empty room to update when the room is no longer empty.
Updated some of Summer’s face portraits to better match what she’s saying.
Updated the Trophy Codex to use a variable that won’t affect static random events.
Updated Heavy Strike to have the same cost as its counterpart, Warded Strike.
Updated Love Shack interactions to give two affection points instead of one.
Removed the “end of version” message that was mistakenly left in from v0.14.
Various other minor dialogue and event updates.

Maids & Masters (& A Release Date For v0.15.1)

I've already announced this to my Patrons, but after some consideration, I've decided to break up v0.15.1 into two different updates. v0.15.1 will have all of the love shack content, which is six (technically seven) characters worth of fireside chats and bonus scenes. The reason it's only technically seven is that the seventh character will have her love shack content completed in the update, but she isn't available to recruit until v0.16. 

 

That means all the affection quests will be waiting for v0.15.2, which should be an amount of content similar to the Freeze updates. There might be a few quests that will need to wait for v0.16 or another side content update, but in the long run, I'm planning on having each Maid having three affection quests. I'm hoping I'll be able to find room to fit in everything I want to fit in without needing to delay content much.

On that note, because v0.15.1 will largely just be the love shack content plus a few other smaller updates, the release is more or less ready to go. There are still a few things I need to polish up or find a good way to include, but that won't take much work to get sorted out. That means release day for v0.15.1 will be this Friday, May 17.

If you're interested a little more than early access, there's also a poll on Patreon where you can vote for which image will be used to promote the update and serve as the cover image on itch. You can see the options and cast your vote right here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/maids-masters-v0-104016097

Shilling For My Fellow Devs - The Second r/GoodAdultGaming Bundle

While I'm still plugging away at the love shack content for v0.15.1, here's a bundle of adult games (that includes the early access version of Precious Kouhai) celebrating 1000 members of the r/GoodAdultGaming subreddit, which is run by a developer friend of mine.

The bundle is paid, but in addition to supporting a bunch of small indie devs, you're getting the paid versions of all the games that have them plus a few extras, bringing the total value of the bundle closer to $100 for your money.

Get it before it's gone: https://itch.io/b/2434/the-2nd-rgoodadultgaming-bundle

Maids & Masters (& Starting On v0.15.1)

It's still slow going getting back to working on MnM. Aside from doing a bit more work on the new demo (which you can read a little about over on Patreon) over the weekend, and something I may as well call burnout, I had some outside work come up, so I wasn't able to get much done. I was able to get some work done, but I also had RPG Maker crash on me for the first time in probably over a year and ended up losing some work. Not enough to lose everything, but enough to kill any momentum I might've built up. Since that means I can't really talk about what I've completed, I'll just talk about what I intend to complete for the v0.15.1 update.

There are two main things I want to add, plus a third smaller bit that I've been meaning to add but haven't been able to convince myself is enough of a priority. Love shack content, affection quests, and cult investigation extras.

For the love shack, there's six (technically seven) new characters I need to add. For the new Maids, there's Vicky, June, and Clover, plus the newer mothers, Setri, Caitlainn, and Celine. If you're wondering who Setri is and where you find her content, go back to Cumhaill and check Phoebe's old house. Her content has actually been in the game for a while, but I need to rework how you're able to access it a little. Due to how the Grow works in Act 2, you can't actually go inside Phoebe's old house, which means you can't progress with Setri very far even though she's available. As for that seventh character, she isn't in the game to recruit yet, but she will be in v0.16, so I want to get her love shack content done before I run into the same "it's side content and this update needs to be released" loop that's lead to none of this being done before now. So far, only Vicky's first conversation is done, with her second conversation being about half done due to the crash. I should be able to get at least the fireside chats done for Friday, but my goal is to convince myself to hunker down and get both the chats and the scenes done for the first test build this Friday.

The affection quests are something else I've been wanting to add and haven't due to wanting to keep up a release schedule and these quests being side content. If you're the sort of person that's thinking "why not just delay the release?" right now - I appreciate you, never change - but keeping a release schedule is vital to growth, and I've been growing in reverse for the past 5 months. I wrote about that in my previous post here on the blog if you want to know more. I have most of these quests written out, so all that's really left is to implement them, but that's 20 (21 if you count the optional Maid coming in v0.16) side quests that I need to implement, which is a major update's worth of content by itself. Even if I keep these quests fairly simple and stick to existing maps, it's probably going to take me 2-3 weeks to get all of these done.

The cult investigation extras are something I really should have put in the game from the start of Act 2, in hindsight. The cult investigation is something that I originally intended to end with the first half of Act 2, but now that I've reached that point in the story and took the time to experience the story so far as a player, that feels, in a word, incomplete. The problem with extending the investigation is that there are only four actions you can take to move to the "meeting" portion of those events, and there will be closer to seven segments by the time I've actually finished that part of the story. So, I want to add things you can do to get time to pass without actually "investigating" anything. This will probably just end up being bonus scenes with Griselda, Evdokia, and Willow (maybe also June and Chloe), but that will at least create enough extra content to get through the story without repeating anything (and give me the opportunity to add a trophy for not being an irredeemable hornball and repeating the scenes instead of doing the investigation).

All told, this is probably going to take me around 6 weeks to develop, especially with this funk I've been in lately bringing my productivity down. I'm hoping to find some momentum and get it all done faster than that, but it's a fairly large update. I may even split it into v0.15.1 and v0.15.2 and have the affection quests be their own update so I have something to release for May. It all depends on how things play out between now and then.

Following Up On Precious Kouhai v0.2

It's been... a weekend. I really don't want to turn this into a "venting" post, because this is a development blog and not a personal one, but Patrons tend to support the creator rather than the project and motivation has been low, so it only seems fair to make information about myself available when it affects development.

To actually follow up on the release of Precious Kouhai v0.2, it's been okay. I'm not sure if it's due to another algorithm change on itch or if something else is happening, but traffic suddenly cut in half a few days before v0.2 went into early access. One day I was holding an average of 200 views per day - something I've never even gotten close to with Maids & Masters - and the next it was half that, barely breaking 100 views per day. Following the release, views did increase back to roughly 200 per day and has stayed there over the weekend, but this is still a little strange. Everything else I've seen, both in my personal metrics and in analytics shared by other developers, shows a spike when an update releases with a gradual taper off to normal. Instead, things just sort of returned to what normal was before the drop. The same goes for the other things itch tracks, like downloads and browser plays (though browser plays in particular are still a little below normal).

At this point, you might be wondering why this matters, and why I care. That subject is actually fairly complicated, but I'll try to give a basic breakdown.

Putting aside that it's demoralizing to see the numbers go down, analytics like this are how developers like me gauge public perception. I'm still a very small dev, so I can't go to social media and look for a hashtag and see what people are saying. No one goes out of their way to ask me about my work. I can search the internet for myself or my projects, but that usually only leads to websites that host my work without my permission (which is why I have in-game options to find me; these websites rarely modify files, they just upload). When views drop like they recently have for Precious Kouhai, and like they have more than once in the past for Maids & Masters, it usually indicates something is wrong. However, because I have so little to go off of, outside of obvious changes like itch announcing a change in their algorithm, I can rarely tell what is wrong or what I can or should do about it. That's a big reason feedback is so important to me; you can tell me what's wrong, sometimes before it even gets as far as being a problem. It's a huge help.

These numbers can also be used to help me figure out if I'm succeeding or failing. Metrics like click-through rate give me a percentage of people who see my game and decide to click on it. That number is normally fairly low, around 3-5%. For Precious Kouhai, that number has fallen to 1.3%. It being that low is bad because that's how I get new Patrons. Someone clicks on my game, then they click through to Patreon, then they decide to become a Patron. Doing a bit of math, this means roughly 20,000 people see the thumbnail for Precious Kouhai every day. 200 people decide to click on it. Only 2 people end up on my Patreon page. Add in Maids & Masters, this blog, and so on, and that becomes 3-5. This lines up with the analytics Patreon gives me - on average, I get roughly 4 page visits per day, excluding Patrons. According to Patreon, it usually takes 3-5 visits for someone to decide to become a Patron. That means I need to get the attention of those four people 2-4 more times. Assuming they don't check the page more than once every update, that means it takes 3-5 updates (or, since I do monthly updates, 3-5 months) for me to gain just four new Patrons. Trying to grow as a small, solo developer is a slow, arduous process.

This is where I've lost a lot of motivation recently. Maids & Masters should, in theory, be bringing those one or two new Patrons with every update. I have gained one or two new Patrons every month, but nearly all of these new Patrons have cancelled their pledge within a few days of joining. Sometimes that new Patron isn't new at all, and it's one person joining to get the new update before canceling again. I understand doing it, and I still appreciate the support, but put plainly, it sucks seeing that cancel notification. Precious Kouhai seems to have brought in a few new Patrons, but the same problem exists. There's also the issue of new Patrons almost exclusively subscribing to the lowest tier possible, so even with those that stick around, my monthly income has been on a steady decline for the past 5 months even as my total of paid Patrons rises.

 

That loss of motivation makes it challenging to return back to work on Maids & Masters. If I'm seeing support decline like this, it makes me wonder if the project is worth the time and effort it will take to complete. I still want to complete it, but the combination of Precious Kouhai completely outstripping Maids & Masters in terms of performance and seeing my monthly income drop makes me re-evaluate what the best path forward is. For the time being, I've been taking some time to learn Godot (which is a very long-term thing; don't expect me to make any demos in that until at least after Maids & Masters is complete) and work a bit on the tactical RPG demo I mentioned a few weeks ago as a way to stay productive while still taking a bit of a break. 

 

Though to be clear, work is not ending on Maids & Masters. I still plan on having the first test build for v0.15.1 ready for next week so VIP Patrons can test out the new love shack content. 

I'm just dragging my feet a little. I'm also doing my best not to rush what's left of the second act and skip to the end so I can start working on something with more mass appeal. So, if you're here for Maids & Masters, don't worry - I'm not giving up on it.

Ultimately, my hope is that some of the recent changes I made on Patreon - adding annual subscriptions, making use of the community feature, etc. - will help keep some new Patrons around. There are only so many ways I can add value without pay-walling things, so hopefully that's enough. Seeing this happen has also really made me appreciate my long term Patrons. Some of you are generous beyond words, and I really am eternally grateful for the part you play in my attempts to chase down my dream of making games and writing stories for a living. It genuinely frustrates me that so much of this process comes down to money, because the only thing I want money for is keeping my bills paid so I can keep doing this. Those of you that stick around, even if you're in that $1 tier and haven't said a word since you joined, are the ones that keep me going. If you want to be one of those people, I'd appreciate it if you became part of that 1.3% and took a look at my Patreon page.