Victory in our Time!

For those unaware I'll present a quick summary of recent events.

1: Google announced that blogger would be doing their best to hide all NSFW blogs, and prevent any new ones from being made.

2: This got everyone really freaking mad.

3: Google almost immediately realized the trouble they caused and caved. Thus, my blog will not have to move.

Just to note I was never in any real danger. There were many of other places I could have gone. First and foremost I could have just gone to the BadKittyGames site and made a blog there; I had already discussed it with NoMoshing. There were also plenty of other alternatives including just making my own website. Even so this means I don't have to waste time moving things, and that is good.

So success! Congrats, the status quo is maintained. This was an entirely pointless venture all 'round.

Human Faces

Here's a quick question you never asked or cared about the answer to. What would Nanshe look like if she were human? The answer? Probably a lot like this: 

Mia Khalifa is a porn star that is Lebanese by birth. A number of the nations in Overwhored are based upon mediterranean and middle-eastern nations. Indeed, the city of Sayda is actually named so because Sayda is the Phoenician name for Sidon - also known as the third most populous city in Lebanon.

Nanshe herself is from the Dark Elf culture which is more based upon Babylon, but I can assure you that women from ancient Babylon could also look a lot like Mia as they were also likely semetic. (Even modern Iraqis can also be pale and have red hair and blue eyes, if decidedly different-than-Irish facial features; I saw a few people like that. There is a great deal of variance there.) The Ancient Babylonians probably weren't that much different from Mia in appearance.

I suppose you could say I have a weakness for "semetic" women. They tend to have large eyebrows, larger noses, and wide smiles. I just so happen to like all of those things! They also tend to have amazing booty, but they have not yet discovered the power of its use. The day there is a proper acronym for middle-eastern booty shall be a day of great things. One must also admit that their eyebrow game is STRONK and that's fucking glorious.

Now poor Mia has received death threats for being in porn because she is Lebanese by birth. Lebanon is arguably the most liberal nation in the middle east and they ended up in quite an uproar because of her. She was disowned by her family and had her entire birth nation be angered by her actions. Fortunately she's in the US so she can do whatever she damn well pleases while they can do nothing but cry while fapping to her, knowing that the world finally knows how hot Lebanese women are. May rich people the world over steal those women away that they may have glorious and gratuitous sex lives.

My belief? The middle east knows they have so many beautiful women everyone would steal them away if they didn't make the place as unappealing to visit as possible. I've been there; I actually like the people. I'd probably go back to visit sometimes if they wouldn't chop off my head for doing so. Well, my girlfriend would be angry with me if I tried to bring back all the girls in the Middle East, of course. That's a good bit scarier than terrorists.

Still - the point is that although real women may face many issues in that part of the world the women I create are not real and thus not subject to death threats. I can make as many semetic girls as I like! Jewish, Lebanese, or purple elf variations. Girls with blue or green hair? Yep! Lebanese princesses turned into cowgirls? You bet! (As a side note Bulls and cows were quite prominent in many faiths and standards of ancient eras in that region. Just another layer I thought of well in advance.)

The great liberating truth of fiction is that you can do whatever you damn well please in it. As time goes on I will continue to bring you women that the real world conspires not to allow you to have.

PS: Funny note, Mia did not exist as a porn star when Nanshe was designed years ago. They just happened to end up looking very similar because Mia has the same features I wanted designed into Nanshe, which are basically just common features in women from that region. I let the artists decide eyebrow thickness because if I were choosing all the girls would have thicker eyebrows than Satsuki from Kill La Kill. It is my fetish. Also Mind control, but mostly eyebrows.

The Combat System Redux

So I'm sitting here at 3:49 AM on a Saturday working on the game because I am not yet convinced weekends or nights are things I should take off of working, and I came to a decision. I said I would release an update containing an updated combat system on the 1st of next month, including the big group battle scene. I will not.

This isn't because I don't like keeping those dates I set. As I've been working I've just realized just how much beyond the combat system I started with I can take this. During the course of this month I've done a bit of script writing, taken other scripts, and started to accomplish a LOT to improve the combat system. Let's go over some of it.

1: You are now able to have multiple groups at once and switch between them with a single button press. This was absolutely necessary for the army battle and was a huge pain in the butt to set up, but it's also something I could use for a wide number of things in the future. Now that it IS set up it's practically trivial to make a large number of complex and fun things. When I make Overwhored 2 expect me to make a ludicrous amount of use of it.

2: Spells and abilities can have an "area of effect". Thus, like in Chrono Trigger or Lunar or a lot of the games I based this off of spells can now do more than hit one or all enemies at once. This means I can and must think carefully about how to position enemies now.

3: Many of the things I wanted in the VX Vanilla version of the game I can now implement. Things like Regeneration are built into the new system, some, like a reflect spell, are something that has some in-system functionality but needs scripting to work optimally. Still - I can do everything I actually want to do now.

4: I can make custom animations, sound effects, and etc, and add them to the game. Because I can draw and do a limited degree of audio editing I can work in custom animations for practically everything I want to customize. I could make my own, custom icon sets as well. No more would I have to live with scraping by with what other people have made. I can make my own and have it be on-par with the default stuff in the game.

5: Enemies have a chase ability built into them. When you come close they will chase you, but when you are far away (or go a certain distance from them) they cannot chase you any further. They also require line of sight to start the chase, allowing for stealthy sneaking past enemies. I'm also looking into some "fixed area" fights like you see in Chrono Trigger.

6: Enemies now respawn whenever you leave and re-enter a map, save for ones like the villagers who are designed to only be fought once ever.

Also I should talk a bit more about how I'm designing these encounters. About a month ago someone linked me to a very informative analysis of the game Chrono Trigger and it just blew my mind. There were so many things in there that I could now do. I can't do things exactly like Chrono Trigger or Lunar because your sprites aren't really interacting with the enemy; I'm still using the "names at the bottom of the screen are your characters and they don't move" system, but even so, I can build in a staggering amount of potential into things.

Basically everything I couldn't do in VX Vanilla I can do now, and I can do it REALLY, REALLY well. I positively want to make these fights fun and work very hard on designing encounters, boss battles, and abilities that make the game truly enjoyable. I've got notes, plans, and I've been working a hell of a lot on things. There are still things I haven't quite figured out how to make like "triggered vulnerability" enemies, but I will get those down in time.

As a result I don't think I'll be making a single "Combat Release". It's ending as a large enough thing that it is far better I don't just try and hammer it out in a short period of time. Instead I'll gradully work on it alongside other game improvements as the game comes out.

My next goal is to release a version with the monstergirl village and some basic combat improvements. Right now the village, initial cave area, mountains, and graveyard have had some combat revamps. The monsters there now have abilities and use them; the enemy types vary a bit so some need magic to hurt or encourage you to use certain abilities against them like the three slaves Bash skill, or the upgraded Thrash skill they'll get that I've added in.

I'm trying to add depth to everyone and it is particularly important that I do so well. Rather than hit crunchtime and do something that isn't up to standard, I'll work on it more gradually while filling in more content and rewriting weak sections.

Expect the Monstergirl Village release complete with sex scenes by about March the 9th, along with some revamped combat for the first half of the game. After that I'll be working on rewrites and on Ilmatar's chapter.

Another Goal Reached!

Hey all! The $600 goal is reached. That means more Sleepymaid art in the game! Yaaay!

Note that this ONLY applies to this game. As I stated when I started the goal Sleepymaid's images have half their cost reserved already. That's because they cost twice as much as what was budgeted initially. Once the art for Overwhored is finished - and we're getting close - I won't be at the 4 pics/month rate until it's at $800. Not terribly nice, I know, but in order to do this at all I have to provide at least $360 a month to Sleepymaid.

But for now the money is reserved and pics will get made! Let's celebrate!

I spent much of yesterday working on the Monstergirl Village. It's far from done, alas. Why? Because it requires custom sprites. Custom sprites are a LOT of work and one can take several hours.

I did this one last night. It was relatively easy. Took several hours.

It's based on this character, drawn by Drew, with the finished art ready to go in the game:

I do start with a nude base. I take the nude sprites from this site, which is an incredibly useful place and resource.  I could make something like that myself, but when something like it already exists and its great - why? Just make sure you credit people if you use stuff like that. That site has a policy on it - no commercial games. I need to doublecheck my credits section before my next release to make sure I'm getting everyone.

I usually don't use the auto-generator as it's pretty limited, and if I do I usually do some custom work. Someone more skilled than I am could probably do it pretty quickly and better. But I'm fairly okay with the outcome. I also got about half the sprite sheet for a Lamia character you'll get a sex scene with in the Monstergirl village as well.

So! Time for announcing what I'll make the $20 reward.

Soon I'll be setting up a kind of "beginner's hall" much like you saw in FFVI. I'm going to allow named cameos in it. Not custom sprites, because those take several hours each. But custom names for the tutorial characters (within reason). These can be of you or an OC. I don't really care so long as they won't cause copyright issues.

I could make custom sprites for people for a $50 reward - but then I go and look at that and I just shake my head. $50 for a single custom sprite and a name? It's the only way I can justify it timewise, but I don't think it's worth it for what you get. So I likely won't be doing that. Likewise for me doing custom pictures for people. A single full color picture is at least four hours of work for me, usually more. I'd rather work on the game. I'm also not a pro-artist. Give that business to the art team. They're awesome people that will like it. For now you can donate more than $20 if you want to, but I'm not going to put up any bonuses because I can't think of anything good enough.

Still - just going off of the current tiers I'm doing better than I ever imagined. Thank you all so much for your support - you make it possible for me to do more and more work every month!

Progressing In Good Order

Lots of success so far. Having more time to work on things gives me a lot of freedom to experiment where I would have rushed before. Thusfar I have added scripts that allow enemies to chase the player with varied speed when they see you al la Lunar, and also made zones that restricts their movement so they won't chase you endlessly. This means that monsters chase you if you get too close but can't chase you past their "section". So if you were trying to sneak past a monster and avoided them when they chased you you could reach a section they cannot pass. I think this will make monsters much more engaging.

I'm also working out a proper support system for the game and working on improving the three starting slaves to teach you how to use heroines will use later, better. For instance Alexia now uses the "purity" ability to cure a few status effects such as poison. This will also help with complaints about status effects. I'm making sure there are proper counters to everything. I'm also working on spells with an "area of effect" so that attacks have more variance than one or nothing; it'll also help me differentiate the various characters more and help the game from a tactical perspective.

I don't know that I'll have time this month to do much more than fix combat and make the big battle, but I've got some nice plans.

As you may be aware Audr and Bilbine's chapters weren't the strongest. They didn't have a proper reversal like Nanshe and Branda did, and it shows. But I've sat down, read a lot of comments, and crunched on their sections. They were the least well defined in the planning stage and I don't think I could have fully figured them out without your feedback. I now have a very solid understanding of where I want them to go, however. Audr will become more of a selfish and greedy person and that can be played out with Captain Oola. Bilbine will be partially robotized. I might have some slight alterations made to the images to reflect this, but probably not much.

I'm strongly considering remaking Skree as a fist-user character type. She's always been more of the Ayla sort (a character from Chrono Trigger - look it up) and Audr is the bow user. To go along with this I'm looking into various things that will make everything work well that way.

I've also put together an ability system separate from the Default "Special" "Magic" and etc ones. This allows for individualized special abilities for each character. For instance Skree's Vampirism can be selected and act straight away. Audr already has "Steal" programmed in as a command and she is capable of stealing items from enemies. These could work well with the orb of dominion, allowing you to, say, upgrade Skree's Vampirism to drain both health and mana or Audr's Steal skill to become like FFVI's Mug command and do damage when stealing.

Also people have asked for it for a long time, so I'll make it so that enemies can respawn. With the changes I'm making I think it's a fairly good idea. In order to make the arenas still relevant I'll work on a tier system with some unique rewards for completing a "ladder".

I'm also going to look back on your feedback and start remaking some of the least popular maps. Don't necessarily expect that to happen this month, however.

I have some concept art of the sixth heroine here: Ilmatar. The Finnish-based Ice Spirit heroine. I had some pictures of her done forever ago but felt her design from that period didn't fit where I was going with her in the game. So I'm paying out-of-pocket to have her redrawn in a new style.

I have all the monstergirl pictures in and will also work on getting the Monstergirl village into the game ASAP.

One final note: If you paid to get the bonus gallery last month there will be even more pictures in it this month. There are four pictures of Skree done by Mindwipe just recently. Here's a preview of one of them:

I'm going to add an $20 reward this month. Stay tuned for it!

Lapis Azurai

Hey all! A friend of mine that goes by the name of Bluewinds is also making an adult game. She's currently making a game called Lapis Azurai.

She's going the route of "vanilla game with adult extra optional downloads" that I have thought about doing with future games. Basically it's a way to get adult games onto mainstream sites. You present an entirely vanilla game, then you offer a NSFW "Patch" on your website.

I've played through some of the early versions of it and it was fairly interesting. Rather than pipe on too much about it I think I'd rather let her speak for herself. She has some pretty awesome artists and made a sweet commercial on her Kickstarter page.

Check it out!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bluewinds/lapis-azurai


Also a quick update on what I'm doing lately: Revamping combat to make it fun. It was very bare-bones before, now I'm really crunching down and trying to make it as fun as possible. Thanks again for all the support - it means I can spend the time doing this stuff. I'll have a test-release for the new combat system on the 1st of next month!