Maids & Masters (& Starting on v0.16)

v0.16 is mostly in the map creation stage at this point, but between following up on getting v0.15.2 out the door, having enough content to justify a v0.15.3, and wanting to get rolling on the rest of this game's story, there's still plenty to talk about.

For the content that I had wanted to be in v0.15.2 (and could make v0.15.3, but we aren't doing v0.15.3), there's obviously June's and Chloe's affection quests, but v0.16 is also introducing the last (planned) optional Maid, and she'll need her own affection quest eventually. Plus there's trophy 31 that never got implemented, and I've been wanting to do that for a while. And then there's a whole extra wave of love shack content. 

See, love shack content is meant to evolve as you complete affection quests. The cabin scenes change in some way after completing that Maid's affection quest (what changes varies depending on the Maid), and new fireside conversations are meant to open up. I've also meant to add a second fireside chat for each Maid for a while now so there's less repetition in conversation even before completing affection quests, and after completing affection quests there's meant to be a choice tree conversation that gets added to the pool of random conversations so you have a little more control over seeing all the dialogue while keeping chats randomized.

And that's before getting into the second (and third, and for some Maids, fourth) wave of affection quests, all the love shack and extra content those are meant to unlock, adding more random events to the Estate (both related to and unrelated to affection quests), and figuring out exactly how to implement some of the more unique rewards that are meant to come with later affection quests.

Though not all of that can be added right now, as some of those quests (like Ella's and Emily's) will require you to have access to the desert regions north of the mountains, and like I've mentioned, I want to get rolling on the rest of the game's story.

Which brings us to finally visiting the Ambrose Estate, which is a little different from every other Estate in that there's a proper city attached to it. Where some Estates have villages attached (like the Read Estate and Roich, and the Bancroft Estate and Magach), the Ambrose City is a place of commerce as much as it is a place to live, and offers Servants a means to work and earn a living for themselves without working directly for a Master (though they do qualify as Ambrose Servants, so don't get any funny ideas).

This also gives me an opportunity to do something I've never done in the game before - make a normal shop.

Of course, the pricing of things is going to be a little weird. Buying individual items is going to come with a ridiculous mark-up compared to getting shipments through the Contracts you can buy from Emily. That said, it'll give you a way to just outright buy things like Scrap material or early tiers of gear, as well as opportunities to get rid of early tiers of gear you've grown out of in exchange for materials or maybe even Silcrow.

There's also a few shops that aren't strictly commercial that I want to turn into their own set of randomized events, like a tea shop you can buy a membership to and then sit down with a random Maid for a little time off, provided that's a thing you decide you want to do in the middle of Archibald's Estate. 

My overall plan right now is to finish everything I want to do with the Ambrose Estate/City, finish the story for the segment, and get that last optional Maid implemented to get v0.16 to a "finished" state, and depending on how long all of that takes, start adding in content that was meant for v0.15.2. It's still too early to even know if I'll have a test build ready for VIP Patrons this Friday, much less how much (if any) of that content will make it in, and I don't want to miss putting out a monthly release, but you best believe I'll be trying my best.

If you want to find out about that test build for yourself (and see the patch notes for the test build), I'd really appreciate it if you considered taking a look at my Patreon. Continued development wouldn't be possible without my Patrons, and every little bit counts.

Maids & Masters v0.15.2 Release

Patrons have started getting more specific notes as I put out test builds for VIPs, so the only major call-out here is that June and Chloe aren't included in this round of affection quests for a number of reasons. Other than that, some of these affection quests cover a few things that people have been asking about for a while, so hopefully this will give you some answers that you've wanted.

 

If you want more details, please do consider supporting me on Patreon. It's my most reliable source of income, and it's rarely easy making sure an update worth playing goes out every month. Plus, you get more than just patch notes; I do content polls, there's an invite-only Discord, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

And now: the changelog.

v0.15.2
Added the first affection quest for all Maids except June and Chloe.
- Affection quests become available once Act 2 is started by meeting with Evdokia.
- All affection quests require that Maid’s affection score to be at least 25 before triggering.
- Some quests have an additional unlock requirement, such as completing an Act 2 segment.
- Rewards vary; some only increase affection, some are generic, others have unique rewards.
- Unique rewards include new scenes, random events, Estate customizations, and more.
Added a bugfix feature to discover Emily’s Estate Info entry on entering her shop.
Added additional “invisible walls” to Clannestad to prevent possible crashes.
Added more locations for the effect of Trophy 27 to take place.
Fixed a bug that caused the sprite for Trophy 27 to not appear in the trophy room.
Fixed a bug where teleporting out of the Hold near Ventíre would put you in a Haunt map.
Fixed a bug that could disable random events in the library after completing the second Haunt.
Fixed a bug where the Homing Stone may provide options it isn’t intended to provide.
Fixed a bug that made Vendra think she was pregnant when she wasn’t.
Fixed bugs that caused Auda to say the wrong number when you gave or took stored supplies.
Updated Big Dick’s fence to not mention Chicken 69 when you’re not near him.
Updated the player Estate’s upper floor event randomizer to accommodate affection quests.
Updated several minor things in Lalita’s Estate to accommodate her affection quest.
Updated the Love Shack instance of Punchinella to tell you the present Maid’s affection score.
Updated some infrastructure that affects how Ivy changes the Estate garden.
Updated the June Cowgirl and Chloe Standing scenes to be properly replayable.
Various other minor map, dialogue, and event updates.

Maids & Masters (& A Release Date For v0.15.2)

Well, as anticipated, I'm definitely not finding enough time to get all of the content I originally wanted to include in here while still hitting the release for Friday. Even fitting June and Chloe in there will be a pretty tight squeeze, and may not happen. However, I'm very happy to announce that I am, in fact, hitting that release date. v0.15.2 will be available to Patrons on Patreon and through early access on itch this Friday, the 26th.

Despite all my talk of not putting in as much as I'd like, there's still a ton going on in this update. If you're a Patron, you'll already know that Lalita's affection quest alone adds a load of new paintings (more than 20) for you to customize your Estate's gallery with, and there are still a bunch of other customization options to choose from that come from some of the other affection quests, including some additional sub-systems within the customization room to use the Scrap items to build yet more new items. That last thing is something I really wanted to spend more time on to really open up options (and let you earn some affection with Auda without going to the love shack finally) but with everything going on, I simply don't have the time to build it out for this update.

Aside from all the customization options these quests unlock, there's also a bunch of new renders and animations (exactly 103 renders and 6 new animations at the time I'm writing this), new random Estate events, new infrastructure and sub-systems to handle implementing the new content (and in the case of the futanari content, the ability to toggle it on through a new item; for those who aren't interested, it defaults to off and will stay that way whether you complete Vicky's affection quest or not) and it's built in a way that allows me to add content in the future without needing to restructure or break something. That means I can catch up on the content I missed including relatively easily once I have the time to develop it.

As for when that content will finally make it in - I don't know. It feels like it's about time to move on to v0.16 and the second half of Act 2, and once I finish Act 2 and start with Act 3, I know I'm going to want my primary focus to be on making Maids & Masters story-complete. I'm already laying out different possibilities for how to tackle. Finishing the game is not the end - I still intend on supporting it through post-game content and maybe a little extra for Patrons and people who purchased early access as an extra "thank you" for the financial support, but sometimes it feels like I'm getting too far ahead of myself and this is definitely one of those times.

Which brings us back to v0.16, and Friday's release of v0.15.2. I hope you're looking forward to it.

Maids & Masters (& v0.15.2 & Somber News)

I have some good news, and some sad news. 

The good news is that I managed to get nearly 4 more affection quests done over the weekend. Two of the four completed are on the more complex side, and a third (the one that isn't quite finished) is definitely more complex (or at least more render-heavy than most). I'm hoping to get that one finished today, and if I can keep this pace up with the simpler affection quests, I might have 6 or 7 new affection quests done for the test build. I was hoping for more, but with some of the new affection quests being the more complicated ones, I should still have v0.15.2 ready for Patrons on the 26th.

I say "should" because of the sad news. Like I've said in the past, I don't want to get too personal here and only want to share personal news where it affects development - but this is definitely going to affect development, at least in the short term. My grandmother passed away over the weekend. Between funeral preparations and attending the funeral, along with everything else that comes with a death in the family, I'm obviously going to lose a few days I'd otherwise be able to dedicate to development. Like I said above, I'm hoping this won't result in delays, but I'm almost certainly not going to be able to fit in as much content as I'd originally wanted to.

I'll leave things there for now. I may put up a poll for Patrons to see if a delay is preferred so v0.15.2 is more complete or if these things should wait until v0.16, but that's for another day.

Maids & Masters (& A Post About v0.15.2, Finally)

I'm a smidge behind schedule thanks to the inordinately busy last couple of weeks, but development on v0.15.2 is actually in full swing. There's a whole 20 affection quests to put together along with a good number of other things I want to try and fit into this update, so while this isn't a story update, it's probably going to be one of the biggest updates I've put out. It's basically both the first and second Freeze updates put together, plus extras.

As of right now, 5 of those affection quests are done, and roughly half of the background infrastructure around the affection quests as a whole is done. With as busy as the new client work as been keeping me, that pace is probably going to more or less hold steady. That means v0.15.2 is probably going to be ready at the end of the month. Not to say that v0.15.2 may not be ready in time for a July release. v0.15.2 will  release on the 26th at the latest, but some of those extras may not be present despite some of them being more than a little overdue to be put into the game (and the update may be a little light on playtesting, which is a little more important for some of this because it uses existing infrastructure in a number of places for the affection quests to function).

 

What I would like to do is get both v0.15.2 plus Precious Kouhai v0.3 out this month to make up for last month's only release being the Dawnfall demo, but with where I am mentally and creatively, I really want to knuckle down and try to get MnM story-complete shortly after the start of 2025. Reaching that goal isn't impossible; once v0.15.2 goes out, if I stay focused on story-centric updates and ignore additional side content (while still leaving room for a Haunt and Freeze update for October and December), there's roughly 7 major updates left; two more for Act 2, two for the holidays, and three for Act 3. Of course, that would result in pretty large updates, and keeping up with monthly releases for updates that big would be difficult at best. It's more likely that Act 2 will have 3 more updates and Act 3 will be closer to 5 updates, but this is all generalized speculation for the future anyway.

For now, I'll have a test build go out to VIP Patrons on Patreon each Friday until v0.15.2 is ready for proper release. I'll also be trying something new to accompany these test builds for the rest of my Patrons, sharing a preview of the content in the test build and giving a short summary of what the test build contains, instead of just posting the test build for VIPs like I've largely done in the past. After that, it's on to v0.16 and the second half of Act 2.

The Summer Adult Games Bundle

Sunshine. Beach weather. Girls in bikinis. What's not to love?

The Summer Adult Games bundle includes over 50 games from over 40 developers, including over $20 worth of games you'd otherwise have to pay full price to get! 

So what are you waiting for? Jump on in, the water's fine!

https://itch.io/b/2547/summer-adult-games-bundle

This bundle comes with stretch goals!

Once the bundle reaches it's initial goal of $2000 in contributions, the stretch goals will be added below. Once reached, stretch goals will be made available for everyone right here on the bundle page!

$2000 - Stretch goals unlocked!

The bundle hasn't even been live for 48 hours yet,  and we're already just over 30% of the way to unlocking the stretch goals! If you're able, please consider supporting these developers; many are on the smaller side despite working for years on some great games. Or, share the bundle with a friend - there's lots there, and it's free!

And if you want a hint at what the stretch goals might include, let's say you might get to see a little more of Summer.

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.