Release Tomorrow

Well it's cold and flu season. I got my flu shot but somehow managed to get myself sick anyway. So right now I'm full-on miserable.

Plus side: The game is playable, shops are remade, and it should be good to go for tomorrow. Armor and Weapons are fairly balanced, monsters are closer to where they should be and overall things are pretty good basics-wise.

Downside: Only bosses have special abilities right now, and they are not fully fleshed out. I'm remaking all the special abilities.

Downside Two: I have not done the thorough playtesting I usually do prior to release. My sincere apologies if there's more bugs than usual. I just don't have the energy right now. Your efforts as beta testers are especially appreciated right now. Thanks to your generous donations, I have spent... $4.75 on Steam. I'm not very good at spending money. I appreciate it though, you all have actually given quite a bit.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna go watch Attack of the Killer Klowns from Outer Space. May your day be filled with spooky scary skeleton blowjobs!

Source of those spooky pictures here.

Simple stuff

For the past few days I've been working about eight hours a night on the game. Most of it is just boring, mindless copy/paste stuff that will soon be done, but some of it really just illustrates WHY VX Ace is so much better.

Tonight I came across a very simple script that allowed me to have limited supplies of items in shops. That means I can simply set something like the "Repairs Work Order" to only have one copy. Then I can simply set up a shop screen like any normal shop screen.

This is effectively what it looks like, with the relevant portion highlighted in red:

It's just any normal item shop. By contrast, I was limited in how many scripts I could use in VX Vanilla because adding, modifying, or altering any script was like playing a game of Jenga that almost always broke something somewhere. As a result I had to use a workaround with the ATS multichoice system because VX Vanilla only allowed four consecutive choices. That in itself took a long time to get working because it fought with another script system I couldn't afford to remove.

This is what that looked like:

It's simple and repetitive, but that took a lot of time to initially figure out and bugtest. And adding new stuff was a headache and a half. Now? I add a number to a few lists and that crap is done in a second. Even if you do RPG Maker programming yourself you've got to admit that the first option is VASTLY superior to the second. I can already do a ludicrous number of things I couldn't in RPG Maker VX Vanilla, and it's so easy that it's like...

I don't know. It's a feeling between relief and frustration. In a few minutes I can do things that took me days before.

One other thing I should mention. The reason why the Orb of Dominion system never got fully replaced was, essentially, the above reason. I eventually got a script to make it easier. After a LONG time of fighting with the damn system it even worked without breaking the game too much.

In the end, it ended up being VASTLY more complex than the above. All I wanted to do was make an item shop that substituted Orgasmic energy for cash and it eventually became a nightmare to work on.

Now I haven't found something for this version (though I did experiment with ATS's crafting system, it might be more in-depth than I want to get since all I really want to do is write) but then again I haven't really been looking.

The focus right now has been entirely on modernizing things. As a part of that I had to fix the shops, as the database had been redone.

It took me roughly ten minutes to plug in that script, get it working, and get that shop running. It has caused no problems or bugs whatsoever.

That is how much fucking easier it is for me. It's almost painful in a way that's hard to express while also being a relief.

I dunno. But while the 0.4 Ace release won't be much different than the 0.4b release, the December release is going to be a whole new game, better in every possible way.

Now if the game only let me edit dialogue or nametags en masse. Oh well. Only the Dwarven area is left in terms of updating dialogue, then I'll be doing multiple playthroughs and tweaking bugs and improving things.

Since this nonsense is probably boring you have some delightful concept sketches done by Mindwipe. These are of the Redheaded Baker's Daughter and Blowjob Chef of Sayda, two girls you fans have wanted. The art for them is already done.

Initial concept sketch of the baker's daughter:

Finalized designs (with a slightly plumper Baker's Daughter, as she's based on a meme where she's supposed to be plump): 

Scene concept sketches:

Anyway, that's all for now! Look forward to the 1st, donators! Everyone else, December will rock.

Donator's Beta Release on the 1st of November

Well as of tonight I can say one thing with confidence:

You can play the game up until the current story is complete without bugs crashing the game in the new system (if you just play through straight without TRYING to break the game).

This doesn't mean stuff is complete though! I will have to crunch hard for the rest of the week on this because a few things still need doing.

These things are:

1: Rebuilding all shops in the game

2: Rebalancing weapons, armor, levels, and characters (about 30% done)

3: Balancing XP ratios by area

4: Add all new picture and text sets to the game (Mostly complete until Sayda)

HOWEVER, I'm actually very confident that I can get this done by the 1st of November. Why? Because all the groundwork is properly laid, the system is carefully and properly rebuilt, and I've already completed a few simple playtests.

As such I'm going to make a donators-only beta release We'll call 0.4 Ace.

This will NOT include new content for the most part. This release will purely be a bug testing release (though I'll try to squeeze a few extras in). The game has swapped platforms and as such will probably be broken in a few areas. I need YOUR help to make sure it is working right.

Remember, donations of ANY amount allow someone access to the betas.

By and large the game will look very similar to the last released version. Worry not. Next month will be devoted to building the city of Bilbao and the adventure there, as well as adding in all the art that has been completed since the last release, and that's quite a bit!

If you aren't interested in beta testing what is essentially the same game as last time you're better off waiting until Ver 0.5 in a short while. That will probably be somewhere in December.


To wet your appetite for more, have this nice sketch done by Mindwipe of the Baker's Daughter and Saydan Chef! The sex scenes for these two are already done and WILL be in Ver 0.5.

It won't be long now! Look forward to it!

Love

On a subject that has nothing to do with this game but a great deal to do with what matters to me, I love my girlfriend a great deal.

Happy birthday. When you do your silly regular check of this blog that I so rarely update I hope that this message is a pleasant surprise.

Progress!

Good progress is being made on the game, and things are definitely on schedule for a complete conversion by the end of this month and release of a new chapter by the end of the next.

The scale of the work needing to be done is, frankly, staggering. But I've had my regular work decrease and as a result have been able to put a bunch of eight hour days into working on the conversion.

What needs to be done? Every single item had to be remade or tweaked in some fashion, and as a result so did every appearance of any item in the game. I haven't totally finished with the items yet, but I've made good progress. Shops haven't been remade but the the items are sorted, working, and chests now contain what they used to.

Skills had to totally be remade. 0nymous made some really good additions to the Overmind's commands and other skills right before the converstion and those needed to be redone after. Thanks to VX Ace's "tp" system, I can make greater use of the Overmind's commands without breaking the game and making it too easy. Most skills are remade, though many are placeholders.

Weapons and armor all needed to be remade as well. There are currently placeholders for everything, including the metal tiers I mentioned in the last post. Actual balancing has to wait for now.

All the monsters had to be more or less remade. All the skills getting tossed out meant all of THEIR skills were tossed out and the conversion program didn't bring over their stats right. HOWEVER, they are functional right now after a lot of work on a purely "basic attack" basis. I'm working on tweaking them to have special attacks and abilities. One of the common complaints about Overwhored was that combat early on was boring. Thanks to VX Ace making it much easier for me to make conditional enemy attacks and the TP system making it possible for me to have abilities that don't just use MP I'm working on making combat much more interesting.

Something else I need to do - some cutscenes in the game are broken due to timing and such working just a bit differently.

However, just to list off some of the progress so far:

1: Items have been remade and work.
2: Weapons and Armor have working placeholders (unbalanced)
3: Skills have been remade and work (unbalanced)
4: The game is playable through at least the first dungeon (I haven't tested more than that with actual platests yet)
5: Name tags have been updated up to Sayda, which still needs to be fixed. Everyone has appropriate name tags and custom actor images with multiple expressions now.
6: More art is done, including one bit of art for the monstergirl village.

I'd like to thank everyone for their continued support of the project. Also, our sister project, Harem Collector, has just had a release. Go to BadKittyGames and check it out!

I look forward to a Christmas time release of Overwhored for you all!