Others Onhold Coming North - Dev Journal

[LewdGamerArtist]

Hi!, I'm Lord D., I had already presented myself in the presentations forum, but just in case. I have been in F95 since some time ago (2 years i believe) under another name, however, i decided to create this new account in order to have the same name i will be using while developing this new game i have been working a few time ago.

So, i took inspiration from games like Summer Memories, The manor, Summer - Countryside Sex Life, and similar games in order to create something new. There were some aspects of all of those games that i really liked, and i really wanted that something that involved all those aspects existed, however, seeing that it was complicated that someone did it, i decided to do it myself (or at least that is the idea) since i already have some experience with digital art and a little bit of programming.

The difficult part was searching for an engine, i know a little bit of programming, but not enough to get into something like unity without having to spend a considerable amount of time learning enough in order to even start, but i also wanted something more complex that rpg maker or similar engines. At the end, i went for Construct 3, wich i think is simple enough to not spend too much time with syntax errors and those things, and complex enough to let me create most of the ideas i have in mind, and it also allows me to export to android and even html5.

So yeah, the name of the game is going to be Coming North, i will be using itch.io to post a web version (with seems to work with android and ios), and the authorized uploading services to post the .exe application and .apk for android.

I was thinking of develop the game enough until it had enough content for a playthrough before posting it, but a friend of mine convinced me to post at least some art or advancements in gameplay to make my game known.

So, that's it, sorry for the long post.

 

[LewdGamerArtist]

Here i leave some of the artwork i have.

Here you can see some of the rooms i already did and the planned interface.

The girl's name is Elena, she is one of the planned main girls.

The artstyle is really simple as you can see, the reason is that i plan to make all the h scenes animated frame by frame, so i wanted to use a design that was simple enough for me to draw quickly.

Sorry if the watermark bothers you, but there has been some recent incident of stolen art that happened within my private life, so i don't really want to risk it.

 

[MissFortune]

Just an FYI, you can change the name of your account on here. Click username -> Account details -> Top most option, change button to the right of name.

 

[LewdGamerArtist]

I... actually didn't know that, thank you, next time i'll do that if i need to. Yet, there's nothing i'm really losing with that account, i already have more likes here, so i'll stick with this one.

 

[LewdGamerArtist]

I just wanted to share a little bit about plans and progress.

I already have a dialogue system with branching, meaning there can be various choices in dialogues, the movement and moving between rooms is also done, is just question of implementing the system every time i add another room. There's also a clock that when it completes a lap, the time of the day changes.

What i'm trying to work into, is the calendar system and the actual h system. As for now, i'm making some animations and character assets to start working on the system itself, as well as finishing some of the house rooms i still haven't finished.

Also i'm thinking about this whole thing of game advancement, how the player is supposed to unlock things, gain the favor of the girls and so on. I have many things written but i'm not sure how to proceed.

There's also the schedule of the heroine, i'm between making it kind of random, so it feels more "alive", and less programmed, or doing it so at certain moments of the day she will always be found in certain areas, so the player always knows where to go to find her.

Another thing i was thinking is to make a export system where the game will export your save in a json text that you can copy to your clipboard and you can also paste it to the game again, making your saves cross platform and solving the issue of the browser deleting saves because it uses the browser storage (which happens to me very often on browser games), yet the game will mantain the traditional save file in the .exe windows version. Kinda like Crimson Keep.

Here i leave a screenshot i took in the game editor. After finishing the base of the h system, the rest of the rooms, and the base progression system, maybe i could upload a playable browser demo on itch.io and share it here.

 

[LewdGamerArtist]

Quick update, i just finished the calendar system, i made it so every "month" has 28 days (because it was easier for me to have a multiple of 7). Instead of months, i will be handling months like seasons (as in stardew valley), there will be 4 seasons and every 4 seasons a year will pass.

This system will allow me to have date specific events and have a better character schedule, where depending on the day, hour and season, the character could be doing something different in a different place.

Now i just have to implement all this information to the UI.

 

[LewdGamerArtist]

Another update. I've had some health issues these past few weeks, wich have prevented me from advancing in the game, also the fact that, i hadn't mentioned this before but, i am a student, so i also have to study while making this game. Between these two, the health problems and college work, i haven't been able to work at the game. Yet, i really want to do this, out of pure fun.

I will wait a little longer while i get better but as soon as i can get something to show, i will post it here.

 

[osanaiko]

Another update. I've had some health issues these past few weeks, wich have prevented me from advancing in the game, also the fact that, i hadn't mentioned this before but, i am a student, so i also have to study while making this game. Between these two, the health problems and college work, i haven't been able to work at the game. Yet, i really want to do this, out of pure fun.

I will wait a little longer while i get better but as soon as i can get something to show, i will post it here.

Sometimes the real world get's in the way of the truly important stuff like creating lewd games.

I hope you feel better and find some time to continue on your dream game. Good luck!

 

[LewdGamerArtist]

Sometimes the real world get's in the way of the truly important stuff like creating lewd games.

I hope you feel better and find some time to continue on your dream game. Good luck!

Thank you!. The health issue is now gone, but i have been busy with college work, i hope that around the end of may i can fully dedicate to the game and have at least a demo.

For now, i leave this pic of the world map that i will be using for early versions (I will probably change it later).

 

[Deleted member 3324659]

this looks promising. good luck, with everything, hope it has a nice chill ost to go with the calm atmosphere.

 

[somebodynobody]

To maybe help your design process have you considered using something like sweet home 3d or sketchup? These are architecture and room planning software, you could make a mock up of your room and either draw that mockup or sketch over it to make it fit your aesthetics.

 

[LewdGamerArtist]

Thank you for the interest, i have been absent because of some personal problems. But i started working on the game again. I hope to soon have something playable to show. Regarding the previous two posts:

this looks promising. good luck, with everything, hope it has a nice chill ost to go with the calm atmosphere.

I actually think that is a good idea, i will try adding that kind of music to the game to see what kind of atmosphere it creates.

To maybe help your design process have you considered using something like sweet home 3d or sketchup? These are architecture and room planning software, you could make a mock up of your room and either draw that mockup or sketch over it to make it fit your aesthetics.

I was afraid of touching 3d software, but since i've been struggling with some rooms, maybe it could be of help. I haven't heard of those two software specifically, so i will check them out and see what goes.

 

[LewdGamerArtist]

I tought i could show you a small clip of the game:



It's a small clip of what is mostly implemented and works, of course i have to change some hud elements and the graphics are not final. For the rest of the systems i have some kind of test room where i am working with them, and rooms that i am still working on.

 

[somebodynobody]

I tought i could show you a small clip of the game:



It's a small clip of what is mostly implemented and works, of course i have to change some hud elements and the graphics are not final. For the rest of the systems i have some kind of test room where i am working with them, and rooms that i am still working on.

During that drive, I suggest the right side panel actually have a driving video, just take a real life driving video and put some filters over it to give the feel of movement.

As one small bit, you will want to keep all transition paths easy to see. Like the stairs going down is actually hard to notice, while the going up is easy to see.

As a different tip, if you want the game to be easily translatable or to fix the text, you will want to code it in such a way to be able to have all the text able to be pulled out without code, so you can have it in a file which can easily be sent around and checked/changed.

 

[LewdGamerArtist]

I wanted to set a goal for myself to help me stay motivated, so from now on, i will try as hard as i can to post an update every one or two weeks. So here goes the first of these updates:

As of right now, i'm working on the sex system itself. I kind of did something that works, but it is still too rough, also, i'm not convinced on the way the map version of the characters look, i'm thinking on maybe trying with pixel art, but i'm not really sure.

Most of this week i worked on a missionary sex animation for Elena, it's almost done, i just have to make some small adjustments.

Listening to the previous comment, i changed the stairs position. I also tried to code it in a way that the text could be modified easily, yet i wasn't able to really do it as i wanted it to be, it defintively is easier to change in case of mistakes or translations, but i still can't figure out how to be able to make it in such a way that you could extract all of the text in a file. Honestly, i don't really want to spend too much time in that part right now, i want to focus on being able to finish all the gameplay aspects first.

I already finished all the rooms of the house, now i just have to put it together, after this i can start working in the other areas of the game.

My objective as of right now is to finish the sex system and find a way for the player to be able to interact with the heroine and gain trust/love (or whatever i end up calling that stat), as in other games of this kind. The idea i have is to incorporate minigames for the player to earn money in order to be able to buy gifts or so. Maybe i can incorporate some kind of goal to be able to advance in the story, as in summer memories. I still have to figure out how the player is going to progress.

Overall i think i made decent progress in the game this week.

 

[LewdGamerArtist]

These past two weeks i've been mostly working on the game assets. I made some animations that i ended discarding because i didn't like how they looked while in game.

I have also been practicing my pixel art, i'm contemplating if i should make the game entirely in pixel art, except for the animations and character sprites, or keep making them more "traditionally". Mostly because the map isometric sprites have been causing me a lot of trouble because of the strange perspective of some things, i think maybe doing them in pixel art would be easier and faster if i can manage to learn to do good pixel art.

Apart from that, i have been organizing the story and my priorities in various game aspects using a tool called Notion. I think i kinda focused too much on art these past two weeks and i could have done better if i had also spent more time in the programming part.

I also got some new ideas that maybe i could test. For now my focus would be in trying to make pixel art for the game and polishing the h system. Tough i don't know if i will really end up with pixel art at this moment.