Unreal Engine Beat Sex [Development Thread]

AlinaGames

Newbie
Jan 3, 2021
15
15
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Hello! We are Alina Games. We are making a game called Beat Sex: A single button rhythm game where you fuck a Kitsune!






Gameplay:

Overall, we want Beat Sex to be a relatively short game focusing on a single core mechanic. In this case, that would be single button rhythm gameplay. Your goal as the player is to press the spacebar to the beat of the sex and song.

First Demo:

Each level will be about 1min long. The Kitsune's expression will change in the level depending on the player's score. If the player score's 90%+, then the Kitsune will orgasm at the end and you will complete the level. Once the level is complete, you can view the animations in a gallery. Implementing scoring is our next goal, so the next few dev updates will be for fleshing this out and explaining it in further detail.

In the future, we may try out additional styles of controls, but for now we are focused on the single button press.


Story/Meta Gameplay:

We are currently keeping the meta gameplay and story open. We want to first complete the rhythm gameplay and make that feel as satisfying as possible, then look into how we could tie a story or meta gameplay mechanic around the primary loop. If it is a story, it will likely be light hearted. No NTR or non-con.

Music:

The current demo does not have music. Our goal is to have music in a style like "Rosenfeld - Do It For Me" or something more cyberpunk. Given that the two of us are not musicians, we are going to be searching for musicians who are willing to work on an adult title.

Adult Content:

The content will primarily be vanilla. Our eventual goal, as BytesX, is to make adult games that are not exclusively sex. Because of that, we do not want to lock ourselves into fetishes or extreme content. The scenes will primarily be between the generic male and the Kitsune with potential solo scenes aswell.


Monetization:

Currently, the plan is to have this game be free. If the scale of the game grows too large, that would probably change. We also have a Patreon, which we will expand on once there is a playable demo.


I appreciate any feedback for the game and I hope to have a playable demo out soon for y'all!
 
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Saki_Sliz

Well-Known Member
May 3, 2018
1,403
995
Typically from my perspective, I would say that the game seems too simple, but even simple games need a lot of prep and refinement. The video certainly helped changed my mind, as see how far the project is now certainly got my creativity juices going. The form of art that this game will be exploring is primarily animation loops. Again, very simple from how I usually see a project, from my arm chair... but considering just how much adult art content is sex loops (ie the animation section of this web site), that actually may be a great thing to focus on, something a content creator can keep working on after a v0.1, v0.2, v0.3 ... etc.

I'd actually like to see where this goes after the project matures and the animator(s) start to explore more nuances or ideas, such as story. For example, I could see there being a simple story mechanism, simple and linear. The story would be 'something,' broken up into 'scenes' ie each level. in addition, each 'scene' has a mood. For example a simple story would be a meet and fuck, the first level in the story would be what looks like the two on a date, looking at each other, smilling, giggling, leaning towards eachother, as one or the other has their hand on their 'something (ex thigh)', and the looping animation that fades in and out would be the hand rubbing that 'something' with the animation either increasing in amplitude or shifting the hand till 'something' happens. ie moving their skirt up and teasing their crotch or something. The next sceen would be the above demo video. The idea being that between levels the players can assume a story line, what started as a very intimate date leads to a meet and fuck. Then another storyline can start, ie a character at a gym, doing exersises (stretching) and catching the attention of others (or if there is an MC like character, the mc is noticing a girl (same/different character) as they bend over obviously lewdly). It would just be fun to see what kind of scenes you team could come up with when they are not just sex scenes but some how still lewd.

For the music you want, defiantly sounds like you'll need an actual composer, probably commissioned. But maybe just have the nice music for the main sex scenes, for less intense seens, such as my example of the gym or the date, I think it would be cool if you make the simple beat music work. I've only had about a weeks worth of musical theory experience at best, able to play with beats, cords, and start to explore melody's, but I still can't compose or combine anything yet of substance, but if simple beats like in the demo are needed that something I could see even myself doing/have done. My issue, and why you may still need a composer or do general commisions for even simple music, is to try and get a variety of sounds/beats that match a certain mood. Due to my inexperience I can't even think of the key musical elements for certain feelings or mood I want a song to have, I know the basic of major and minor cords and that's it. I haven't analyzed nearly enough songs to even know where to begin with setting up a certain mood.

Mechanics. As it is, I do have two major suggestion that I think would be important to improving the player experience. you want the players to look at the art/animation, and appreciate and notice the nuances of the animation. However, there are 2 issues to this right now.

first is the current prototype UI. I understand that with this being a beat game, the idea is that the player will be hitting the key in time with the music/beat. However, with only a minute or so per level, if this is like a lot of beat games, the player has to know the song ahead of time, know the beat, and play more by memory, but this is often in the case where the game emphasizes skill. If you are keeping this simple, something players can casually enjoy, then this sounds like something you want to avoid, because you'd rather want the players to pass on the first try. I'm not terrible with music, but I'm still garbage at beat games/osu, I make casual players look like gods compared to me, and I didn't realize a lot of my confusion until I started to learn music theory. So someone like me would rely on the visual user interface to first learn the beat, and stay on beat, meaning I'm not looking at and appreciating the art. this is the first problem.

To solve this, basically make the UI more obvious. and infact, make it obvious without players needing to look at it, either filling the screen or becoming part of the periphery. I imagine something like sound bars on the side (tuned to the base), so that they move, specifically taking up more area when its time to hit the beat (like in many music videos with the animated bares on the side). The bars don't need to be a true UV, it can be pre-sequenced/animated like what you already have, just bigger. perefireal vision is mostly based on area (silhouette) and brightness, subtle changes and color change like what you have now wasn't working for me (I often have this website muted), and I imagine it would be frustrating to those hearing impaired or who don't want to turn on the sound too loud and obvious.

You mentioned that their expression change, and I imagine as the animator continues to make more animations, they will continue to play with more ideas, new ideas, and try new things, creating more complex, more nuanced animations and details. what I fear is that a lot of those details may be too subtle and under appreciated. Those details could add a lot to the player experience, but they don't matter if the player never notices them. This is the second problem. How do you add detail and feedback which can add to the player experience? You already have a starting idea, with having the character's expression change. What I think can be done to improve this is to draw attention to this. This can be done in a few ways, Either a status bar indicating a goal. or A notification (mainly a shift in tone, color, some flash, nothing as detailed as an actually notification message), as the variable representing expression changes from false to true, or what I'm exploring with my own project currently is a notification that explains what happened and why, in this case, maybe a picture of a lewd face and something in big text like, 90% achieved! or something, so that players not only know what happened, but why. These are things I would consider adding before an official V1.0 release.
 

AlinaGames

Newbie
Jan 3, 2021
15
15
Thank you for the in depth feed back! You really hit a lot of the sections we were stuck on perfectly.

I could see there being a simple story mechanism, simple and linear. The story would be 'something,' broken up into 'scenes' ie each level.
We are thinking of doing some mini story for this. I am still not pinning an exact meta-mechanic for the game. But this is likely what we will go with. I like your idea of how to add non-sex, story, levels as well. With the thigh rubbing and gym ideas.


For the music you want, defiantly sounds like you'll need an actual composer, probably commissioned.
Without a doubt, we will need to commission someone. We did try licensing with a common music service with no success. If you want, we can connect and discuss further for beats.


I imagine something like sound bars on the side (tuned to the base)
We are currently reformatting the backend to the rhythm game and are trying out the idea of fake sound bars on the side. It is working really well, it honestly makes the game possible to play before even adding animation or music.


what I fear is that a lot of those details may be too subtle and under appreciated
maybe a picture of a lewd face and something in big text like, 90% achieved
100%, I really like your idea with the lewd face notifications. I think we will look into some implementation for it. Possibly, we will do a 4:3 3d viewport with the left or right side of the screen being like a "control panel" UI with the sound bars and possibly notifications.

We did try out having no camera movement (just angle changes) and it makes the animation/face far more readable. Also, pushing more extreme camera angles helped a lot. I think a combination of the ui elements and good camera/animation work will be able to show player progress.


Thanks again for the feedback!
 

AlinaGames

Newbie
Jan 3, 2021
15
15
Hey y'all!

For the past few days, we have been focusing on getting the core functions written properly and updating the UI.


Gameplay and UI:


After recieving Saki's feedback on our game, we decided to use their recommendations on the UI. We delegated the left section of the screen just to the UI. The beatbars take up the majority of that space, making it substantially easier to know when to hit a beat.


UiExplanation.png

In doing so, we noticed that our current gameplay backend is... not great. There is a timer for when the beat happens, but no timer before or after. ALong with that, we were not utilizing the proper GameInstance/GameMode/GameState/PlayerState blueprints.

So we rewrote the beat gameplay to work with those blueprints and to have 3 calls: Gate Open, Beat, Gate Close. This allowed us to inform the ui to call the beat animation before a beat actually happens. Now, the beat bars will start animating when the gate opens, hit the peak when the beat happens, and return back when the gate closes.

This rewrite also helped us get over our next hurdle: how to have multiple rhythm levels and saving the data. By using the proper Gamemode blueprints and such in combination with a flowgraph, we can inform the gamemode of the per-level rules and data before the level starts. When a level ends, the gamestate can inform the Game Instance of the new score and the game instance can handle the data saving of the level.

Our next goal is to write in the song-start/end sections to the gameplay.


Main Menu:
In addition to rewriting the gameplay, we spent a bit of time making a main menu. We want the main menu to somewhat mirror the ingame ui, with the primary navigation on the left side of the screen. We are also planning on adding the Kitsune sitting on a couch in the middle of the screen, to add a bit of movement to the main menu.

Our next goal with the ui is to implement Level loading and showing if you've completed a level and your high score. This would allow us to flesh out our game flow from menu to score card.

 
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Saki_Sliz

Well-Known Member
May 3, 2018
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995
So we rewrote the beat gameplay to work with those blueprints and to have 3 calls: Gate Open, Beat, Gate Close. This allowed us to inform the ui to call the beat animation before a beat actually happens. Now, the beat bars will start animating when the gate opens, hit the peak when the beat happens, and return back when the gate closes.
Nice!

bit more of a technical update than I expected, but I guess that makes sense with this being specifically a dev log. I think the bars and bar animations look quite nice.

If you want, we can connect and discuss further for beats.
I'll have to pass, I've only just started getting into music, I can make a beat, chords, and melody only thanks to online tools, but I still don't know how to compose anything. I did try to make a quick mock up of... something... just to see what I can do. I can make... sounds... but still not versed enough yet to know what to do with stuff, and still learning the tools/instruments I have.

Glad to hear some of my comments were helpful and that progress is being made!
 
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AlinaGames

Newbie
Jan 3, 2021
15
15

We spent the past fortnite working on combining our improved gameplay with the original animations along with adding more variation to the sex animation. At this point, we are pretty confident in our animation workflow, it will just be a matter of producing the rest of the animations now.

*The animations are currently offset 0.1 seconds from the beat, this will be fixed soon

In addition to the gameplay updates, I spent a few hours making a new camera system. The goal of the new system is to replicate the camera style used by Deeper, with a constantly moving handheld camera that keeps everything in view, procedurally. I think this will be the style of camera we end up going with for the future.


We are also fleshing out the main menu design:
 
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