HTML [Dev Log] :: Updates on what I'm working on

[Satori6]

The fixes are almost done.

I spent most of the week working on the council mechanics:

- Vanilla cards will always be available.
- Cards from other factions will require as many council members as their loyalty value to be from their faction.
- Non-vanilla unique cards will require the entire council to be from their faction.

This paves the way for the introduction of new faction in the April or May updates, and it will work for any custom factions from mods.

The mechanic has been integrated into the random deck generation, so randomly generated decks will always follow these rules, even if modded cards are included.

To make it easier, the deck builder screen now displays the faction logo, and the loyalty of a card:


If no number is present, that means it's vanilla (loyalty 0).

The council will also display the picture of the faction:


These won't be shown on the match, just during the deck building phase.
You can still see the faction and loyalty during a match by clicking on a card.

You may have noticed that the modded card had a red border: you'll be able to select the border color of your cards when making a mod:



Finally, I've added a rainbow effect to unique cards, both to make them easier to spot when building a deck, and to make them stand out during the game:




Other than that, I've been refactoring some code, moving things around, and fixing bugs.

I've also started creating art for the first non-vanilla faction. This first faction will focus on butt/anal content.
It won't be introduced on this update, because I want to add at least 30 cards when it's introduced, but with art being one of the most time-consuming parts (skill coding being the other), I'm already preparing some pictures.



So far everything's on track for a late March update.

 

[Satori6]

A quick update:
I've implemented active targeted skills. That's the last type of character card that I had in mind.

Now I'm working a bit on the tutorials, because that part is awfully boring and I don't want to have to do them all together at the end like last time.

 

[Satori6]

I took care of the character modding tutorial and a couple more. There's 3 more tutorials left to be added, but I'll do those later - I truly dislike this part.

Right now I'm working on new vanilla cards and their abilities. I'll see if I can release the next version with 45 vanilla cards.

I'd also like to rework some of the defeat pictures, but I don't want to spend too much time on those, as I'm thinking about including defeat modding on the next version. We'll see.

 

[Satori6]

The update is pretty much ready - I just need to update tutorials, thus the delay.
It should be published by the weekend.

 

[Satori6]

If forgot to mention that 0.2 is live. I'd also like to take this chance to announce some updates regarding the development:

From the start, the plan has been to make a second tutorial project focused on learning Twine.
I believe this to be a good moment to start with that.

This doesn't mean that this game will stop getting updates, or that the other one will take priority: it simply means that my development time will be divided between the two, instead of focused on just one game.

Funnily enough, a big part of this decision has been the weather: it's been hot, and having the AI software running only makes things worse, to the point where I've needed to have a fan on for 8h+ during the days when I've been creating pics. Having the fan gives me a a stuffy nose/allergies - I guess it's related to dust/pollen.

Because of this, I'd rather use the AI software for as little as possible. I plan on using stolen porn with a bit of AI and drawing for the other project, so besides helping with the heat and allergies issue, it will require considerably less time on the art department.

Due to that, I expect the new game to require less time per update: I'll mostly need to focus on the writing and design, as I'll be able to get dozens of video clips and pictures in the time that it takes to get a single AI one.

Updates for this game will take twice as much. I may opt to release smaller updates so that they can be more frequent, instead of having to wait for major ones. We'll see.

This will also give me some time to see if there's interest in the modding features now that character modding has been added to the game. If people don't care about it, I may just scratch all future modding updates and focus on other elements.

 

[Satori6]

As planned, I've started working on the new game.

So far I've mostly been working on creating a framework that will allow me to easily include different passage types (scene descriptions, horizontal and vertical videos, multi character dialogues, single character monologues...) and to mix and match them at will.



Through that framework, the second picture comes down to writing the following:



This will save me a lot of time in the long run, allowing me to focus on writing the events without wasting too much time on organizing the visual elements. Changing the color template will be even easier.

I'll likely spend some more time on this down the line, but I've already started working on the intro scenes, which I'll be using to test the different passage layouts, and they'll serve as the character creation phase.

That game is now on pause while I work on the cards game. I'll probably maintain this schedule: working two weeks on one game, then two weeks on the other.

One thing that I noticed while working on the new project is how much time you save when you don't need to waste 6+ hours on every picture. As such, I've decided to include porn on the cards game: I will use a different art style for each set, because fuck it, the cards are moddable.

For example, the vanilla deck will continue using AI images, this one will use real porn, another one may use drawings, and so on. It's probably not the best idea, but the point of this game is for me to get good at Javascript, not to spend thousands of hours generating AI art.



I was able to create 8 new cards in the time that it'd normally take me to make 1. The plan is to include 30 by the next update.

This will give me a lot of free time for the much needed AI rework, and other planned elements.

Depending on how long it takes me to work on those, I may include even more cards on the following update.

 

[Satori6]

I worked on the cards game for the past two weeks.

Bug fixes, AI, new cards and skills.
The skills and AI files alone are over 4k lines of code already, and that's just the general AI (for free play mode) - I plan on making custom AIs for each story mission. It's going to get a bit hectic.

I'm not liking the change to real porn - AI cards look much more unique and I can get them to look how I want them to instead of being generic naked women.

I'll see if I get some free time before the planned deadline. Maybe I'll at least use AI to make some background changes, while leaving the models as they are.

This week I got back to the new game. I'm mostly toying around with Twine.
I've been adding music, and even created a custom dream sequence video for the intro, which will likely take me these two weeks.

Progress has been slow, because it always is as you're laying down the framework, but it should start speeding up once most of the basic functionalities are ready.

 

[Satori6]

I've added a poll to the card game's thread.

By now I've learned as much JS as I'll learn from that game: anything from here on will just be slight variations of the code I've written so far, so it's served its purpose as a tutorial project.

I still want to continue working on it, but at this point I believe that working on a Twine-focused tutorial project would be a better use of my time.

I will continue working on this update, and then based on the poll a week after the update's release, I'll decide whether I maintain the current timeline, or if I move it to the backburner and focus 90% of the time on the new project.

 

[Satori6]

My disk is on the verge of death. I've already ordered a new one, and so far it looks I'll be able to save most -if not all- of the files for my projects.

It's very unlikely that there are further complications; everything should be up and running again once I reinstall things and move back the project files.

I'm mainly posting this because there's always the chance that something else is malfunctioning and that the fix may take a bit longer.

 

[Satori6]

The replacement disk is installed. I think I was able to save all of the files for the card game, and most of those for the new project.

These days I've mostly been reinstalling software, and organizing files not related to the games.

Right before the disk dies I had scratched the new project and restarted it because what I had planned was growing way too much for what is meant to be a tutorial.

I expect to resume work on the cards game by the end of the week, and the update should be ready by the end of the month, as planned.

 

[Satori6]

I've been adding some more debugging tools. Sometimes I understand why most devs release games with dozens of bugs and just wait for people to report them before fixing them - hunting them down yourself can be quite time-consuming.

The plan is for all of the newly added skills to have an AI implementation by Friday. The defeat modding will be implemented during the weekend, and next week will be used for creating the art and updating the tutorials.

I'll likely leave this debug menu available on the release version, although cheating through the console is simpler.

Almost forgot - there's now battle music. It'll probably be changed in future versions.

 

[Satori6]

Moddable defeats seem to be working now.

Unlike with the character mod packs, I made it so you can set the extension for each defeat (instead of using the same extension for all files in the mod). This will make it easier to include animated defeats along with static pictures.

I'll spend another couple of hours testing it and making sure that there aren't any more bugs - implementing this required a lot of changes and bugs in every step.

 

[Satori6]

I was fixing some details on the pictures, and the more I looked at them, the more I disliked the use of real porn here - it looked so bad when compared to the AI pictures, mostly because of how generic the settings tend to be in porn: it's always a bed, a living room, kitchen, restroom... maybe a forest if you get lucky.

So I found a middle ground and kept the actresses while using AI to replace the backgrounds.
In one of these examples I ended up replacing most, and half of the body in another.

I think I'll continue doing this; it still takes some time (30-60 mins of post edition per picture), but not nearly as much as doing an AI image from scratch.




I may not get enough time to update all tutorials. If I run out of time by the release deadline, I'll just add the defeat modding tutorial, and add the rest by the next update.

And talking about updates, I'll start releasing smaller, frequent ones.

 

[Satori6]

I've spent the past couple of weeks writing, editing, and deleting the plot for the new game. I think I should have a very detailed path to follow by next weekend.

At first it felt like a waste of time, but I think it will save me a lot of headaches in the future. It will also prevent common issues to writing stories on the go; namely plot holes, deus ex machinas, and the seemingly random introduction of characters and plot elements that end up being key components of the story, but which were never mentioned before.

Once I'm done with that, I'll spend a couple of weeks to release a mini update for the cards game - make a few more cards, keep tuning the AI, and such.

After that, I hope I can finally get to start working on the new project, which I'm quite excited about.

 

[Satori6]

There's been some major changes:

Remember how in the initial post I mentioned an accident? I won't go into details, but basically I used to practice an extreme sport, and as it often happens when you push things to the extreme, things went wrong.

After many months of painful recovery and stubbornness, I was able to start doing things that I was told I'd never be able to do again, so I've been at it pretty much every day, doubling down on the physical therapy, and pushing myself a bit more each day.
Being able to start doing some more intense physical activity has given a boost to my creativity, and I'm adding a lot of new ideas to the plot for the new game.

I won't set a deadline, because I don't want to rush things - I feel like I have something good here, and I want to do it right.

The card game will probably be put on hold, with some tiny updates released once in a while when I feel like taking a break, but from now on all efforts will be focused on the new project.