- Jun 3, 2020
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- Thread starter Stone Eyes
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- Jul 16, 2021
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Read this /\June 15th 2024: Progress Report
Hello everyone, I don't want to waste time so I want to jump right into the post for today.
It has been a very eventful and stimulating week, and the next few weeks will probably be too in unexpected ways. Through chance encounters, chance happenings, chance conversations, various threads of my life all converged to the same point last week...
And I finally achieved a mental breakthrough. The mental hurdle that was preventing me from fully committing not only an idea, but the concept of making a new game, is finally broken through.
Sachinama has been and will continue to work on the P cup DLC for Karryn's Prison for the next month. But I will be moving on ahead to focusing my energy on planning and designing the next new game.
To simplify it all, I think mental hurdle I was dealing with basically because I was too into my head. Through an unexpected source completely unrelated to gaming really, I was reminded of and asked a question that made me think. Why back in 2017 after I had cancer, I was able to contact Sachinama to propose that I localize Meltys Quest and publish it on Steam? Why a few years later, were I able to design and create Karryn's Prison? And why had I been unable to move forward in the past few years past Karryn's Prison and make a new game?
There's a few ways to answer the first two questions. I hated, DETESTED how Sakuragame fucking operated in 2017 where they took indie japanese eroge and then sold them for pennies on Steam as broken, buggy, machine translated garbage. So I wanted to show them up and prove to the world that it can be properly in native English, and that japanese indie eroges are better than the trash that Sakuragame was turning them into.
I decided to make Karryn's Prison because I already proved that native localizations are way better than machine translations for everyone involved, whether it is the fans who buy and play them, or the original developers, or the eroge industry as a whole. So next I wanted to show that eroge is more than valid medium can be so much more by creating a game that marries the sex with the gameplay.
But these two aren't the real answer. They're the answer for the DRIVE, the PASSION. They are not the answer to HOW I was able to do it. It's not the answer to the WHY I was able to propose the idea to Sachinama in 2017 after I had cancer, but not before I had cancer. Detesting Sakuragame and loving eroge and experience with localization were already part of me before I had cancer, not something I magically developed a month after I recovered from the surgery.
The HOW was... simple and complicated to remember. And it was... because I wasn't afraid to fail. Afraid to make an attempt. After Karryn's Prison, I was afraid. KP used up my life's knowledge of both gaming and eroges and erotic material to create and design the concept, the concept of a game, an eroge, that iterates and pushes the concept of female protagonist corruption past levels anyone else has ever done before. It wasn't even an iteration as it was straight up jumping through levels and steps of iterations that weren't even done yet but theoretically I thought could be done and so I further iterate on those theoretical concepts.
After KP, I was afraid of what else I had left in my tank. I knew I didn't want to just make a sequel, another game that was like KP but with minor iterations. If I had ideas for iterations to KP's format, I would've already done it in the first place when designing it. And I wasn't interesting in just remaking it for the sake of success or money. I'm incapable of operating like that, I can't make a game if I don't have the passion and drive behind it.
And I was also afraid of something else too. With KP, I achieved success and with it came fans and expectations. I was making something that would disappoint our fans. But from the standpoint of the fact that I wasn't going to make a sequel to KP is already going to disappoint some fans. Someone is going to be not pleased so matter what I do.
But through the events of last week, I was reminded that I used to be unafraid to fail. Unafraid to boldly experiment. KP's success ended up chaining me down and restricting both my ability to act, and my ability to further experiment and explore ideas and concepts.
So I'm releasing my mental self bondage and saying fuck it all. Pleasing everyone was never feasible, and pleasing someone else weren't even considerations I had when I started working on Meltys Quest and Karryn's Prison. Karryn's Prison is my magnum opus, and I'm proud of the work me and Sachinama did on it. I can't speak for Sachinama but maybe Sachinama also considers KP his magnum opus. Maybe the next game will end up having a better impact, or maybe it won't. But it doesn't matter.
I've already decided on the wide, broad strokes for the next game. It will be a female protagonist RPG strategy game, but it won't be like any ever done before. It will also have ZERO BATTLEFUCK, in fact, if Karryn's Prison was a proof of testing a concept of iterating on marrying gameplay with sex and marrying sex with gameplay for an eroge and pushing it to new levels, then the next game is testing iterating the concept of what for a long time before DLsite indies appeared, what eroge generally were. The concept of a game that had sex in it. Your Fate/Stay Nights. Your Clannads. Yours Eushullys. Your Ninetails. Your Alicesofts.
I can't apply the words, "Don't fix what's not broken" to my life. When I had cancer, I realized I'm only one person and I won't live forever. If I can bring a meaning to my life, it would be to do something that inspires others to act. I localized Meltys Quest personally. And through that I was able to bring change, much better change than I would have been able to do just my lonesome self. You know, the founder of Kagura Games used to be me and Sachinama's very very first supporter, back in the day on Patreon in 2017 before Meltys Quest was even released. He was the first $10 supporter, and the first to comment and sometimes the only comment on most of my Progress Reports. Now we're not even Discord friends anymore, it's honestly sad but I'm still happy that someone was able to see what I wanted to do with Meltys Quest and take it further and move the industry away from the direction Sakuragame was going to take it.
I just happened to be successful in my attempt to iterate with Karryn's Prison. And it is my dear hope that one day someone else, multiple someone elses hopefully, gets deeply inspired by Karryn's Prison and makes a way better eroge to continue to show the world that eroge is a wonderful medium full of potential.
My next attempt will be to try to iterate eroge in a very different direction. I also hopefully won't be using Rpgmaker this time. I started a few days to check out Godot works. My concept for the next game involves a type of battle system and various interfaces that would've had me just completely gut how default Rpgmaker works, and at that point I thought to myself I might as well use a different engine then, an engine that is literally not Chromium and meant for browsing the internet.
Outside of the wonderful, wonderful voice actresses, translators and volunteers, KP was basically a two men project with me and Sachinama. Sachinama and I have discussed about it, but this time we're going to be willing to hire help on certain parts of the game. The core will have and always going to be just us two, but there's no reason to stubbornly do every single part ourselves. After all, it wasn't like we voiced Karryn ourselves or translated the game to Korean ourselves and so on.
So here is the plan for the next month. Sachinama is going to continue to work on finishing up the P cup DLC for KP while brainstorming with me on the Story and Characters for the next game. I actually have two trips planned within the next three weeks that I had ticketed all the way back in March. Next week I'm going to be gone for a week to go to a board game convention in Ohio during the heat wave. Then come back for a week, and the next week after that I'm going to be flying out to Kansas City to my first Mensa Annual Gathering. I joined Mensa in March because apparently I heard they have a game room during the annual gathering where people just literally play board games all day during the whole event. Like I checked last week, the game room is literally open for 24 hours every day during the event. So during these two trips, I'm going to make the most out of the opportunities and try out as many board games as I can to see if there's any take away or concepts or systems I could use for the next game.
For the most part, I already have a very high level, broad idea for the gameplay systems I have in mind. And I'm going to be putting them into paper, the first time I've ever put anything into paper since when I first drew the concept and systems for Karryn's Prison. Make it physical, and check everything over and over again in my head by running simulations of how it would play out and how it would needed to be code just like I did when I designed KP. And then this time I plan to hire someone with Godot coding experience to make the foundation. When I made Karryn's Prison, it wasn't like I started from zero, I started from what Rpgmaker gave me as well as a host of community plugins and then I added or removed as needed until I had what I wanted. Rather than start with zero Godot experience and make the same mistakes someone with years of programming already made while learning before in the past, I'll let an expert build the starting foundation of what I want, and then I'll take over. A UI expert, a background artist, a music composer are also among the people we plan on hiring at some point in the future.
But first!!!! Building blocks and baby steps, before anything can happen, it will involve me creating a solid plan of everything so there are no surprises or feature creep later. And that is my plan for the next month, and likely a few more months after?? Who knows, certainly not this guy, but I'm very excited to finally mentally be unshackled and experiment again.
I'm fucking back y'all.
(Mentally, not physically because next week and then another week later next month I'm gonna be in two different states lmao)
I agree, but indie devs work on a different scale than triple-A devs, and H-game devs tend to make this feel even worse. I'll show the indie step list then the H-dev amendment.
How Indie Often Works:
1) Make assets for a game.
2) Make the game.
3) Recycle much of the first project's assets for a continuing story universe, because making assets wastes a lot of time and fans want a new game soon because they liked the first game.
4) Iteratively build your world per game.
What H-game Devs Tend to Do As Well:
5) The next game is functionally identical to the previous game to an uncomfortable degree.
6) Make sure the porn characters look different enough.
Correction: The dev's just wrapping up KP because they're not working on any similar game next.
Having Read the Progress Report Now (link):
I'm very surprised and pleased because I've become jaded to the bullshit of H-game development. The short of it is that Rem's not going to do anything remotely similar to KP, because they think life is too short and they don't care what anyone thinks so they're going to do something completely different for their own satisfaction. It's nice to see someone have standards, I practically couldn't believe anyone would set their standards as high as they should.
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- Jun 3, 2020
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i read his progress report, it pleases me that he is planning for new game with a new engine & he's ready to experiment.
Legends like him shouldn't stop making games
Legends like him shouldn't stop making games
True, but considering how well he shaped KP up from mere concepts, it might not be as bad as he wrote the initial idea above. He might end up making a better Fire Emblem style game than Nintendo, depending on what he's considering doing. Plus gameplay isn't 100% of the game. It could be a way to mature his storytelling for the next project afterwards.
- Dec 21, 2019
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This is how it's supposed to be. Someone is creating something they want to do, and like-minded individuals are expressing their support not by trying to control the content for their own selfish means but by encouraging the creator to continue creating the content they appreciate them for. The community has far too much creative control over the content being created, which is why everything is in such a state these days, and too often, it's not even the fan base that has the greatest influence on content creators. I find myself more and more turning to content created 40 or 50 years ago, when content creation wasn't limited by the opinions of loud-mouthed individuals who weren't getting everything they wanted. It's our responsibility to change the channel if we don't like what we see. I understand it's difficult to not try to insert yourself into something that you feel so passionately about; however, people need to leave content creators alone to do the thing they're good at. I'm always reminded of sayings like "too many cooks spoil the broth" or "A camel is a horse designed by a committee" when I see people giving their 2 cents.
So if the Dev creates something bad we should just shut up and take it or leave? What kind of stupid argument is that? If a Dev gets influenced by random people, that don't give constructive feedback, then its the devs fault. But if a dev ignores constructive feedback for whatever reason and then something turns out bad guess what the dev failed. There is a reason the gym DLC is underwhelming in KP because Rem instead of listening to feedback after he recieved a ton of negative feedback still released it in the same state.
- Dec 21, 2019
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- Aug 12, 2021
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Yes, you very clearly stated about if you don't like it leave and just let them do whatever they are good at or not?
- Dec 21, 2019
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I don't say this to upset or offend you however, I don't think you've understood my comment or at least understood past what was on the surface. I wont be replying further, I don't want to derail this thread but if you want to have a conversation with me, send me a PM.
- Aug 5, 2023
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The most constructive thing that was said to rem was that he should throw away all the months of work and do it again, apart from the fact that the ideas that were given could not be implemented because they were tedious as hell, others were impossible because the dlc would have to be redone along with new art and others would take too much time to develop, and besides, Sometimes i read and say, people forget that Karryn Prison is a hentai game and therefore is not unreasonable to release sexual content with 0 mechanics for a hentai game.
Sometimes I get lost and look at the title to see if I am in the Karryn Prison thread or in a darkest dungeon/dark soul thread.
There was more than enough good feedback for the gym DLC on discord on how to improve it with just what was already there. No need to rework anything. I know it, since I was active participating back then in that discussion. That is why I said as a dev you need to ignore the bad feedback and take the good ones.
And yes, it is actually reasonable to expect from a paid DLC in a h-game that actually isn't just a look at pretty pictures h-game, to have mechanics instead of being gloryhole 2.0
- Jan 24, 2022
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as was stated it was never finished. you would have to find the unfinished mod and finish it yourself. the mod was posted here in the past, you might find the unfinished mod with a search. maybe you can finish this mod.
- Aug 5, 2023
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and for this reason we will not have more content from Karryn Prison because you guys have burned so much rem with your stupid ideas, your attempts at developers and your bullshit that now there will be no more content because whatever he does will never make you ppl happy
Even if it is a DLC, it is unreasonable to ask for things because it is something that does not directly affect the story or changes it or adds new mechanics, just add more porn if you like it, buy it and if you don't like it, skip it.
I would buy the argument if this dlc added a new story, new mechanics, new ways to play, more achievements, new bosses, prison expansions, but there are 4 cgs to pass the time watching porn and they do not affect the game at any time. I can play Karryn Prison and enjoy everything it offers me without using the optional cosmetics.
The only thing I can agree with and it seems unfair to me is for the people who liked the art before the drawings were redesigned to add the huge boobs dlc and who can no longer access them
- Oct 15, 2021
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Yeah people burned dev with their "stupid ideas" and it is totally not because dev came up with stupid ideas NOOOO it is always the people's fault. Developers cannot be at fault, ever.
- Aug 5, 2023
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and in that you are right it is true that many developers screw up but this is not the case karrin prison has a very toxic fandom
And of the worst, the type: I have the absolute truth. I am always right and everything that goes outside my line of thought is wrong. Things have to be done the way I say and if you don't you are a bad developer.
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