RPGM Maids & Masters [Arrival Demo Available!]

Custom Busts or RTP Edit Faces?


  • Total voters
    18
  • Poll closed .

hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
So. I maked dis.



And have a mirror, since I'm not sure how well google docs plays with downloads.



Maids & Masters: Arrival serves as the prequel to a project I've been kicking around in my head for a while now. I found myself with a little extra free time and wanted to try something new, so I picked this out of my folder of half-baked plot threads and made a little RPG Maker loaf of bread out of it.

Edit: Important Note: Saves from Arrival are not intended to transfer to the main game. Attempting to carry over a save will allow the save to load, but will cause many bugs and other issues.

But this is more of a slice of bread. Knowing where everything is, I can run through and interact with everything that gives a unique interaction and complete the demo in about 40 minutes. If I do only what is required, it takes 15-20. But I'm proud of myself for finishing this and I want to share it. (and maybe it doesn't belong here because it's a finished product, but also it's only a demo that serves as the prequel to a decidedly larger project that I'll continue to work on? please have mercy, mods.)

As some fair warning, there are a few placeholder assets. I need to make some custom tiles, and I intend to make a whole slew of other custom assets to do things like give characters their unique appearances and allow them to emote a little more beyond the occasional emote bubble. That, along with things like trophies and secrets that don't break the 4th wall, are things I intend to include with the full game. So if you see/find any jank (like the super obvious staircase), that should be ironed out by the time I put out 0.1 of the actual game.

Though I have play tested the snot out of this thing. It takes less than an hour to beat, but based on my cumulative save slot times, I've got a little over 5 hours put in. Which doesn't include all the little things I spent launching the game to test, playing for a few minutes to confirm it works, and then closing out of the game. It might have a little jank because I wanted to keep the game as vanilla RPG Maker as possible (except for Fullscreen ++; you can push F5/F6 to change screen size) but otherwise nothing should break or be broken during play.

I haven't been terribly vocal or active here, even though I've been lurking for quite some time. I'm trying to break into creative fields, and I've made the decision to take the Kinoko Nasu strategy of "call somebody a servant and let the MC bone her defenseless anus and maybe it's a billion dollar franchise in 15 years" as my own port of call. If you pay a lot of attention to the threads that come through the Development section of the forum, you might've seen The Rising Son pop up every so often. I'm the writer for that there, as part of a three person team. Maids & Masters is something I'm doing completely solo, and intend to continue doing completely solo. I've greatly enjoyed doing the work, so I hope those of you who download Arrival get some enjoyment out of playing through it.

I suppose I should talk about what this actually is as a project, too.

I'm a huge fan of Sierra Lee, so I've taken quite a bit of inspiration from The Last Sovereign and Desecration of Wings. Though I don't intend to get quite as deep into the meta-theology of my setting, threads and allusions will be sprinkled throughout, and I do have my own private notes about the "truth" of things. I'm also hoping to include some economical aspects and get good use out of the switches and variables in RPG Maker. However, the scale will be much smaller. You aren't going to become Master of Arclent (disclaimer: M&M is not set on Arclent). You aren't going to have to attend a religious summit that blue-balls your horny succubi while you discuss the finer points of theological denominations. You're just out to avenge your parents, earn your way back to riches, and fix your house. Probably not even in that deliberate of an order.

I've also taken quite a bit of inspiration from other long running games, like Harem Collector and the likely considerably less popular Harem. While the goal of the Master here isn't to collect 101 Maids and buy up two thirds of all available real estate across five cities to house them all, the idea of organically encountering and recruiting girls (be they friend, foe, or in between) is going to be the main way additional characters join the party. Similarly, not all characters that join will be combatants; some will simply move in and provide a particular service. As well as other "services" upon request (because let's face it, we all know why we're here).

The last piece of relevant information is the original concept statement. "Like Black Butler, but horny." That's literally what I had in the document when the idea first popped into my head, and that's the way it stayed until about a week and a half ago. Servants (or for the gendered terms, Maids and Butlers) sign Pacts with their Masters to gain prowess in combat and the occasional magical power, which is referred to in-universe as Theurgy. Masters themselves, while they are the only ones who can enact these Pacts and Servants have no power without them, are functionally mundane people. There is of course societal hierarchy and all of that, but that's a different can of worms. For those unfamiliar, Black Butler is an anime where the main protagonist is a small boy who inherited his estate at a young age, and his butler (who is very definitely a demon one hell of a butler) created a magical pact with him to protect the young master. And also Jack the Ripper is a horny redhead with a chainsaw, so maybe I'm not that far off the mark anyway.

So TL;DR:

Maids & Masters: Arrival is the stand-alone prequel to Maids & Masters. It has some place holder assets, but is complete and bug free. What to expect? Imagine The Last Sovereign and Harem Collector went on vacation in the Black Butler universe for a year and popped out a child there which they promptly abandoned.

Enjoy, and stay cultured my friends.

PS, this thing is absolutely laden with secrets. Interacting with things more than once will get you different scenes, there are tons of things to interact with, there's a talking bush, the ending is packed full of variables to adjust for how much you do, etc. Unless all of you are EXTREMELY thorough, everyone should have a slightly different experience.
 
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hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
Custom assets are nearly done. Working on events and the like within the game and otherwise improving things from Arrival, and the first 30 minutes or so of game is done (assuming you walk into every room and interact with things arbitrarily like I have in playtesting) with the one exception being the library.

There are still some things I need to do, like make sure you can't leave when there's nothing to leave to, and that filling out of the library with some additional lore, but things are coming together.

If anyone has any thoughts about Arrival, I'd love to hear them. Even if you hate it, at least I know some of you have downloaded and tried it.

If you're into reading philosophical design ramblings, I have plenty of those, too, so lets get into some of that. I was talking about the general design and story themes for the game with my roommate, and I came across a couple of realizations.

Before we get into those realizations, some context. I take issue with capitalism, especially the hyper-capitalist mentality of the US. It has merits and flaws, like any economy, and I recognize that rapid adoption of a different model would cause more harm than good as people tried to resist or manipulate the transition. However, capitalism as it currently exists feels to me like less of an economy and more of a means for those with resources to gather more resources through the work of those that stand to benefit significantly less by earning their own resources in the process of gathering resources on behalf of the person who already has significant resources. In short, rich people buy poor people through employment. Wage slavery.

I have personal experience in this from two different angles. One as the person who couldn't afford to seek ways to improve my life because my resources were so limited that it was all I could do to keep living paycheck to paycheck, and one as middle management that helped ensure that the company was making as much profit as possible through the manipulation of the human resource. I was good at my job and started at the ground level, so I did everything I could to keep the employees in my charge happy, but every single ounce of training I received to that end turned people into numbers and I hated it.

With that in mind, we come to the world of Maids & Masters. In this world, there are three types of people. Masters, who are given access to Contracts, a kind of magic that they channel from the Headstone which serves as the centerpiece of their Estate. Servants, who come into the employ of Masters through Contracts, and in so doing gain access to a second type of magic called Theurgy in exchange for devoting their lives to the whims of their Master. The last are the Uncommon Folk, people who live in the wilds between Estates that have no magic and are beholden to none save their own chosen society.

The Folk, despite being no less intelligent or capable than Masters or Servants, are generally looked down upon as uncultured and uneducated savages that would only serve as a drain on Estates were a Master to accept them without a Contract to make them into Servants. Not all Masters think this way, and some have even created Pacts of Accord, which supply those Masters with goods and services through the Folk that they otherwise cannot get from other Estates. The Folk are otherwise content to live in their small ramshackle homes and hunt the beasts of the wilds and harvest their communal gardens for food. The Folk are also the only group to practice religion and believe in a power higher than themselves (there are exceptions to this, but that's a post for another day).

Theurgy, the magic wielded by Servants, grants a large range of different effects. Some Servants become exceptionally strong, fast, or tough to the point of being superhuman. Others gain power over the mind, able to dull senses, slow opponents, and charm people into doing things they might otherwise never consider. Some are able to weaponize their sexuality, able to achieve all of this by swaying their hips, fluttering their eyelashes, or revealing their body. Nearly all servants, regardless of how Theurgy manifests for them, gain the meager power of prestidigitation - magical party tricks that can be used to produce lights or clean objects with a word or gesture. Though extremely rare, some servants display Theurgy in extreme ways, able to call down and dismiss lightning storms or hurricanes at will, or launch bolts of pure energy from their hands.

For all the power of their Servants, Masters receive no such endowments. Many have tried over the years, but the only abilities their power grants them is their Contracts, and issuing Orders to those subject to a Contract. They are otherwise entirely mundane and average, but most are so caught up in their own hubris that they see the religion of the Uncommon Folk as ridiculous, because surely there is no greater power in the world than the economic might that Masters are able to wield through their Contracts. Many Masters twist this power for their own purposes in subtle or cruel ways, such as stripping their Servants of their personality and replacing it with a new one, or making them into sex slaves, or making it impossible to refuse Orders instead of the Order only being a compulsion.

Those of you who are adept at reading between the lines have probably already drawn the connection for yourselves, but I did this unintentionally as I was building the world prior to starting development on Arrival. I didn't connect the dots until after I said some of this out loud.

The Uncommon Folk are a metaphor for the unemployed or those not traditionally employed (such as farmers, workers in the gig economy, people who can't work and live off government programs, survivalists that choose to leave society to live off the land, religious communities like the Amish, etc.). Masters are the corporate elite, and Servants are their employees. Those in power only have it because of an old system that put them there by way of luck and nepotism, or by marrying into it. Those not in power have little to no way to change their circumstances should they have a desire to. Those that have no power and are happy with their situation are seen as strange outsiders and shunned.

This may not be universally true of the real world, but I believe there are plenty of examples. It's definitely true in the world of Maids & Masters. There is nothing preventing the Uncommon Folk (or another Master, or even the Servants of another Estate) from ousting a Master and removing them from power save their Servants. A Master without Servants is no Master at all. A Servant, on the other hand, keeps their Theurgy regardless of who holds the Writ for their Pact of Servitude. This makes them as feared as they are desired, as a significantly powerful Servant can single-handedly topple everything a Master has built. This has happened in the history of the game, both in the ancient past and as the catalyst that led to the situation of our main character and began his story.

The metaphor feels especially poignant as we come out of the pandemic, and we start to hear ridiculous things like "we need to cut support so people are forced return to work" and "we as a business deserve employees, and people should be made to work for us." Within the game, I already had antagonists in mind that would represent these aspects without fully realizing I had made them to be such a metaphor.

So I may be using Maids & Masters as a platform for me to process my thoughts on the subject of unfair economic practices and culturally-enforced hypocrisy and false dichotomy. Whoops.

(I'm not sorry.)

And if you're still here, you're handsome and/or beautiful. I appreciate you. Here's a sneak peek at the first thing you see when you hit New Game.

Opening Scene.png

Stay cultured, ladies and gents.
 

hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
Smaller, rant-less update this time. Between making a new language for NPCs because why the hell not, finding more and more custom assets that need to be either conjured from nothing or edited from the work of other people (my list of credits grows by the day), and finding better ways to do things that then mean I need to go back and redesign and playtest the same section of the game for the 5th+ time, things are going a little slower than they maybe could be.

I am still plugging away at this, though. The first batch of quests is nearly done, the relevant custom assets have been properly customized and implemented, I've improved my organization so I shouldn't need to go back and fix basically the entire game again, and I've written out how the first release of the game will go story-wise. The only thing left to do is put all the pieces together into a cohesive whole.

Which should only take another 30 hours of work or so. Phew.

After that, it's one final round of playtesting, and then those of you who are interested can start playing this thing. So far it's looking like it'll be about an hour of content, depending on how much of the content you commit to doing. There are of course still all sorts of hidden scenes and multiple interactions and switches and variables and all that good stuff that I tried to pack into the demo, this time without any nonsensical fourth wall breaks.

In other news, I made a website.



Right now there isn't really anything there, and there won't be anything there that won't also be here for a while, but it's something I've been meaning to do, and I might as well share that here. Updates related to my projects that don't get posted here as major updates will go there eventually.

In conclusion, v0.1 will be out in about a week, possibly sooner. Unless I decide to go down a redesign hole and do something stupid like create a bastardized fictional language for no reason. Not that I've ever done that before.

PS, I'm planning on trophies being used to unlock scenes as opposed to keeping them the arbitrary "you did a thing!" things that I low key originally intended them to be. There's already one planned for v0.1, and I have another that I'm also debating including, but it'll take a lot of extra work to get done. Regardless of when I include it, it will be in the game eventually and will be an additional feature instead of just a scene. It will be completely optional and won't negatively impact the game if you don't find it or choose to skip it, but it's based off of the hidden trophy you learn about by finding the trophy room in the demo, so if you haven't checked out Arrival yet, here's a bit of incentive to do so.

PPS, poll question. I've found myself needing to edit character faces regardless, so I'm curious if I should stay the course between using custom busts, or switch to editing rtp faces. Since it seems like a similar amount of work regardless, here's an example of Master's custom bust, followed by a quit edit (I say quick, but even being sloppy this took over an hour) as a possible alternative.

Master.png Master 2.png
 

hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
So, the last stretch of development took a smidge longer than expected, but it is now complete. v0.1 is done, it just needs a few rounds of playtesting and I need to get a few other things in order so that I can comply with the upload requirements of F95. Once that's done, a new post will go up so that the game becomes available to download, and I'll update my website so that it's available there as well. That will hopefully be happening within the next 24 hours.

There are a few quality of life changes that could potentially be made, but if I decide to make them, they can wait for any bugfix versions that might be necessary, or v0.2, whichever comes first.

There is something of a debug feature available for people who like to do the bug hunting thing. It's tied to the bonus trophy for playing Arrival, so if you have any trouble finding the trophy and turning the feature on, the first step would be to make sure you're looking in the right place. You do need to be exact in order to get it, and you'll get a notification when you do. Then examine the plaque beneath the trophy. If it still isn't working after that, let me know (either here or on my website) and I'll help you figure it out.

Speaking of bugs, there is one issue I encountered during playtesting that happened both within and outside of the playtest environment. The game would crash, seemingly at random, when a battle started. The exact step when it crashed seemed to be after the battle launched, but before the menu appeared to allow the player to select battle commands. I added a script to help identify the exact issue, whereupon I stopped encountering the issue. Hopefully whatever was causing the crash was delayed and is now processing correctly because it's being forced to slow down by an extra frame or two. I haven't encountered the issue again since adding the debug script. If anyone does encounter this, please let me know so I can investigate further.

Which goes for any bugs or performance issues. There shouldn't be anything game-breaking, but every machine is different, so anything from sound issues to graphical bugs to slowdown to crashes, I want to know about it so I can see if there's anything to do about it from my end.

As for the poll here, that will stay open until I'm nearing completion for v0.2. I want to get a decent sample size of opinions before I fully commit to going one way or the other, and closing the poll too quickly feels like a step in the opposite direction. And just for the record, I will take into account any feedback that happens outside of the poll, regardless of how that feedback finds me. I don't want to just take the poll at face value as an absolute representation of opinion.

One last note, there are some placeholder assets in place. It's only a single sprite and the associated faces, and they're only present in the portion of the game that's after the current "end" (you'll know when you hit the end, it's literally impossible to miss).

Past that, there is one other thing I'm trying to figure out involving displayed sprites; namely displaying Master as the player character regardless of the party composition. I'm not sure if it's something that can be easily done without adding scripts, so it might be something that just ends up getting skipped as it's something that may require restarting the game or adding more initialization scripts to prevent game crashes due to moved/missing images. We'll see, it depends on how hard it is to accomplish.
 

hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
So, for those of you who don't read the blog, an update over the last post: I figured out the thing that involved displayed sprites. So all your Maids will correctly show up in the save screen, Master (should) always show as the player sprite, and I can build this costume system that I've been considering building. Jury is still out on when that costume system will be implemented though.

Speaking of the blog, I made a giant post about how the magic system of the world works. There's still a lot of nuance that could be discussed in conversation but I need to stop typing eventually or I'm going to write myself into a vortex. If magic systems and how they work is your thing, . I'll do my best to respond either here or there for people who do want to talk about it or for people who think I'm a moron and want to call me out.

For the actual game, I found a few things that warrant some bug fixing, and in turn make me feel like a v0.1.1 is necessary. The bugs (should) only affect the post-game, but if it doesn't get fixed there's a possibility you'll soft-lock yourself out of continuing when v0.2 comes out, and no one wants that. I also don't want to push out arbitrary "new" versions of the game for the sake of vying for more attention, so I'm working on things like replacing Ella's placeholder assets and adding in some other bonus things for the curious to find. So v0.1.1 will be out... I dunno, next week? Maybe this weekend. It depends on how much of a pain it is to get everything updated and whether I find more things I missed.

I have also started on the maps for the new areas present in v0.2. They aren't accessible yet, but at least one of them is quite large. I'm also aiming to have some fully optional content for v0.2. I don't know how well I'm going to adhere to putting it all into the same release or if I'll hold off for v0.2.1 or some such, but I'll do my best.

The big hurdle with v0.2 is going to be the economy. I'm trying something I haven't really seen elsewhere, but is largely similar to something like Dark Souls, where your currency is also something you use to make yourself stronger. It's a work in progress. I hope it works out, because I think the idea is neat, and will let y'all customize the way you play the game a bit. You'll also get access to your shop, which will work a little differently than most RPG shops do.

Then it's just balancing all the classes and making sure everything in combat works the way it's supposed to, because I've already had (and subsequently fixed) a wolf's debuff howl accidentally heal a random party member.

Game development is a trip, you guys.
 

hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
Version 0.1.1 update!

Most of the work done was behind-the-scenes systematic stuff. Some of it was game balance, some of it was making future updates would work probably, most of it was preparing for version 0.2. Game balance may have been slightly affected, but not so much that the game should be any harder or easier combat-wise.

The appropriate placeholder assets have also been replaced, so the Maid in the post-game now has all of her own sprites and portraits and all that good stuff. Master's Maids have also been made available. There's still not a lot to actually do in the post-game (actually less, since I fixed a thing that defaulted to always-on that shouldn't be active until after you get the quest for it), but you're still able to run back and forth between Cumhaill and the Estate and explore those areas to your heart's content.

Just as a not of caution, as much as it's said in the game itself, don't save during the post-game. Events are going to play out slightly differently than they currently do, and if your save exists during the post-game, there's about a 70% chance things won't work the way they're supposed to and you won't be able to continue on that save file when v0.2 comes out. I'll do my best to mitigate that happening, but I can't make any guarantees, and I definitely can't fix your mistakes for you.

Other than that, the poll is still open and will remain as such until a little further into the development of v0.2. Though it does look like custom busts are the majority vote by a good margin, there's still a bit of time to make voices heard regardless of the outcome you want.

I'll probably give it a day or two before development on v0.2 starts in earnest in case there's still a game-breaker somewhere that I haven't found, but I've already got a few maps built out and I'm excited to get everything filled in with actual content.

Though v0.2 is shaping up to be a much bigger update than I thought it might be, especially with all of the optional content I'm planning. I might decide to split v0.2 into different parts if the optional content ends up being too much to manage for a single release. We'll see how things shape up.

Anyway, v0.1.1 is already live on if you don't want to wait for it to show up here. Otherwise, it will be up here fairly soon.

Edit: I did a goof. Download page had to come down for a moment while I fix the game version. If you downloaded it in the short time things were still up, congratulations, you get a preview of some of the upcoming content that I was playtesting.
 
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hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
Work on v0.2 is now fully underway. I'm busy spending what is probably far too much time on a quest that people will likely find tedious and skip, but that's game design for you.

More bugs and placeholder assets were found and fixed, as well as even more necessary map adjustments to get rid of some of the jank, but I'm fairly certain I've gotten all of it now. For the maps that exist within the released version of the game, anyway. For the biggest current issue involving key items - it was pointed out by a couple people that it was possible to use those items, which would do nothing except delete the item from your inventory. Those items have been fixed so they cannot be consumed, and the dildo event has been re-written for the next phase of the game to check whether or not you have it in your inventory. So if you took "eat a dick" too literally and gobbled that thing down, you can just go pick up a new one. For the funeral trophy, you'll be able to talk to Setri (the mother) and she'll give you a new flower. Steps have also been taken to prevent trophies being consumable going forward, so no more gulping down everything in sight to break the game. The one thing that can't be easily fixed is the girl's body; if you ate that, you need to use the debug feature to get a new one, or you need to start a new game.

If you are one of those people that ate the body and broke your game and you don't know what or where the debug feature is and you don't want to restart your save, feel free to contact me however you see fit and I'll tell you how to unlock and turn on the debug feature.

For other random bugs, one bug I've found is that sometimes an ally will evade a buff. This shouldn't happen ever, but after digging around in my database a while, I found out why it might have been happening and changed some things so that it shouldn't be possible for buffs to "miss" any more. The other was the game returning "cannot divide by 0" under certain circumstances. I've never told the game to attempt to divide by zero and after some research, the issue seems to be linked to the game trying to find something that no longer exists. A few rounds of playtesting later, and I noticed this was only happening in one specific area, so my guess is that this was happening because two combat instances tried to trigger simultaneously and the post-combat event running couldn't happen until after the second combat resolved, which caused the crash. So I deleted one mob and moved a few others around, and now it shouldn't happen unless you try to make it happen. And if you're breaking my game on purpose, there's only so much I can do to help you.

The maps for three new areas are complete, including the first portion of the world map, the first optional dungeon, and a map that is easily the largest map in the game so far - the deep wilds. For reference, the map for the Estate grounds is 60 tiles by 60 tiles, and the deep wilds is 120 by 120 tiles. I don't want to get too far into what's left, but I'm looking at easily another two weeks of development, and that's assuming I don't make any mistakes along the way (so it'll probably be 3-4 weeks before v0.2 is actually ready for release).

For those of you who just want more things to be horny about, there will be at least five new scenes coming with v0.2. One will be very short, but all of them (as with the others already in the game) will be repeatable, and two of those will be with characters that have not yet been introduced. The current issue of Stay Clean Quarterly that can be found in the library will also finally be getting the renders that it has been missing. While you won't get to interact with those girls directly, you will be able to browse the magazine to your hearts' content. I don't want to over-commit, but I am also currently working on a way for you to subscribe to Stay Clean Quarterly, so you'll get new renders of new girls on a semi-regular basis (if I'm able to get that working the way I want to - otherwise new issues will be more of a collectible hidden in the world).

Past that, I think I've finally settled on a final iteration of what the shop system will look like. It isn't a normal shop where you buy items directly, it will work on more of a "supply line" basis. I'll include lots of in-game info about how the shop works, but just to cover it quickly here: When you purchase an item, instead of the item itself, you'll get a Writ. Once you have the Writ, you will (by default) receive a number of the items per game phase increase (the number of items you receive will vary based on the item itself). If you decide you don't need any more of a particular item, rather than selling your extra items, you can change your Contract so that you receive silcrow every time the game phase increases. This makes the shop less of a traditional shop and more of an investment office. If this system sounds convoluted or bad to you, it should be pretty self-explanatory once you get access to it. If you just don't like it, there will still be various opportunities to trade for items directly with the Folk, though their offerings will be more limited.

Edit: I totally forgot to mention the poll! With v0.2 development underway and custom busts being in the lead by 10 votes, it looks like that's the direction I'll be going in. I've gotten no negative feedback about the custom busts, and one person gave positive feedback about them, so I'm confident in going with that direction. The poll will remain open for another 7 days, so if you hate this decision and wish to rage against the Hourglass, now is the time to do so before the sands run their course.

No other current news. Just look forward to your first non-combatant Maid, getting your fourth party member and fifth Maid, and the next batch of story content that brings those things your way.

And more importantly, stay cultured, my friends.
 

hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
The busts vs portaits poll is now officially closed. Final tally for votes is 16 in favor of doing custom busts (including feedback from outside F95) and 4 votes in favor of doing RTP edits. So the majority of custom characters will be using the busts that are currently in the game. Though it is worth noting that there will still be other characters in the game that won't use these busts and will still use an edit or variant of RTP assets, these characters will mostly be NPCs and antagonists, not player party characters. I apologize in advance if the difference is bothersome.

I spent the entire weekend doing art and the past two days building out new maps, so there's lots of new space to explore and interact with, as well as plenty of that cultured content. I don't want to spoil anything, but for those of you who went poking around in the library and found the issue of Stay Clean Quarterly in there, you might be happy to know that it will contain renders in v0.2. It will also no longer be the only magazine of it's kind, though the other issue will be elsewhere in the game world.

This section of the game is so far proving to be surprisingly technical, so it might end up being a little light on actual story content. The good news on that front is that the optional content is almost completely finished, and is more or less ready to enter playtesting, so if v0.2 does end up being light on story there will still be plenty to do and explore. The other bit of silver lining is that the release will come sooner rather than later, which means less waiting.

I've also been chewing on how to construct future content. Not having a traditional fantasy setting means it's harder to justify traditional fantasy game style dungeons, but I knew that from the outset. The answer to this problem was originally only going to be Holds, but it's hard to put in a lot of those without ruining the game economy. So the "dungeons" of the game will also include Estates, which v0.2 will give you two examples of. These two Estates won't be dungeons to fight your way through, but they should serve to give you an idea of what to expect and they'll have plenty to find in their own right.

There's also a lot of mechanical work being done right now. I've added two new sets of armor which need to be balanced out (which you can find a piece of if you're nosy enough), a slew of new states that need to be tested, and the shop needs to be set up. Since the shop is going to be somewhat non-standard, it's going to take a lot of math and background work in order to get ready, but it should go pretty smoothly once it gets rolling. I hope.

I've also got a Readme included with the game now. I've gotten a few questions and comments about controlling the BGM volume and changing the screen size, and you can do both within the game without messing with any of your computer's other settings. The Readme will point out how to do those things and where to find the relevant options within the game.

But once all the maps are done and filled with events, the work on the quests should go pretty quickly. So far things are fairly squarely on schedule, so v0.2 is still on track to be ready in another 2-3 weeks.
 

hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
This week went by way too fast for my liking.

Anyway, I'm gonna share the bad news first. I lost a few days of dev time to technical issues. First my computer crashed and lost a handful of maps and events, then an old cloud save ate my new data which lost a handful of sprite sheets. I'll spare you the details, mostly because losing all that work crumpled up my soul like a used tissue that I then had to fish back out and uncrumple in order to keep working, but I'm on the other side of it now. That work has been recovered and work on other things has continued. This does unfortunately mean that I'm looking at being closer to two weeks out until the next release, but that's it for the bad news.

The good news is that everything else is still coming along nicely. The maps for all the new content are complete, and they've all been filled with static events. The big thing that needs doing now is populating those maps with NPCs, then it's onto the smaller stuff, like finding a good place to put Trophy 6.

I still need to wrap up a few more art assets for the NPCs, but as they're variations on assets I've already put together that shouldn't take more than another day of work (so long as random crashes or cloud-save betrayals don't happen). It's just two sprites and the associated faces, then that's done.

The last step is putting the quests together, and playtesting and bugfixing everything. That phase will hopefully only take a few days, as I'd like to think I'm getting better at making this thing and will by extension have fewer bugs to find and squash. A lot of the problems the first version (and many in v0.1.1) were fairly dumb mistakes on my part, and I've taken steps to try to prevent those problems pre-emptively.

Not a lot to say otherwise. Losing two days of work and then spending a day recovering from that slowed things down, but this last week wasn't a complete wash. It just means you can expect to see v0.2 in closer to two weeks from now instead of one.

In the mean time, stay cultured, my friends.
 

hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
I'm doing this a bit later than I intended, but on the bright side, that's kind of a good thing.

After the issues of last week, this week has gone pretty smoothly. Development on v0.2 is very nearly done, with only about half of one quest and a character introduction to complete. I've already started playtesting specific segments and nothing seems irreparably broken so far. That really just leaves another day or two of dev time and a few days to playtest and bugfix. It might end up being a little longer than a week before the build is ready for release, but not by a lot.

The shop, which will be the post-game preview for v0.2, is proving to be considerably more complicated than I had initially anticipated due to RPG Maker not having certain options by default, and the scripts to implement those options being harder to use than the other plug-and-play scripts that I'm using to add other features. I'll still be able to work with it, and hopefully the finished product will look like it was all planned from the start, but the waters are a little muddier than I want them to be.

With that in mind, I'll be looking for more feedback than usual for the shop in particular once v0.2 releases. There are a few configurations for it that I could change around and try new things, but I don't want to throw a web of choice trees at you and hope you catch on. The actual shop window is much more self-explanatory, and I would greatly prefer using it as opposed to setting up the alternative. But that's why I want feedback. If the current version ends up being too confusing or convoluted, I can give the alternate version a go. Even though it wouldn't use the shop window, it might streamline the gameplay angle. Though it would be harder to program.

But that's for later. We can talk about that more after v0.2 is out.

Right now I'm in the middle of writing out how you recruit your fourth party member. This was originally going to be a considerably shorter nice and quick in-and-out (Clockwork-Orange-inspired pun intended) where you just grab your new character and leave, but that felt like a missed opportunity. With the uncle's Estate being completely optional (and likely going to stay completely optional for the entirety of the game), that put any opportunity to interact with a friendly Master much further down the road than I really wanted it to be. So this section of the game will now also feature an introduction to how Masters tend to treat each other when they aren't at odds, as well as a number of player choices that will hopefully make things feel more like you as the player are guiding events, rather than just following them.

This does mean that this section of the game will be longer than I had originally intended. I see that as a positive, even if it does mean a longer development period, because I had some concerns about this section of the game being too short if you chose to skip certain parts. I will admit that if you aren't the sort of person who wants to get to know fictional characters and do some reading when you open up an RPG, this game probably isn't for you. But in fairness, as much as I enjoyed Mass Effect, I never once opened the in-game codex to learn more about the planets and races. I understand not wanting a game to give you homework in order to have fun. So I still want you to be able to experience the story I'm presenting through your own lens in a way that is still enjoyable. I don't want to punish you for finding certain aspects of the game (such as combat or longer, more tedious quests) unenjoyable when you otherwise do like the rest of the game. I think finding that balance is worth taking the extra development time.

The other trick I'm going to try to pull off is a bit more seasonal, and puts me on something of a time limit. The game world does have seasons, but doing this "early access/release in chunks" style of development means those seasons should roughly line up with the seasons in real life. This creates an issue where that part of the game should happen early on, but by the nature of what it is, it definitely shouldn't be one of the first things you encounter. I already know what I want to do for the "halloween" update, so most of that content is pre-planned, but given the current cadence of my work it may be November by the time I'm ready to begin working on it. Which further means that any "Christmas/winter" content might not be ready to roll out until spring is already approaching. I have a couple ideas of how I might be able to handle this, but it's definitely a barrier I'll have to overcome, especially since this project wasn't initially planned to have a development span of multiple years.

I suppose we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the mean time, wish me luck, and stay cultured, my friends.
 

hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
Well, this is going surprisingly well, I say to myself while waiting for something terrible to happen and set me back a few days. Fingers crossed, ladies and gents.

I don't want to get too far into the weeds, so to summarize, v0.3 is more or less on track to see release this weekend. Thursday at the earliest, but Friday or Saturday is more likely. The next story section can be approached in one of two ways (technically three, as you'll resort to the other if the first way doesn't work out) and as of the writing of this post, I'm writing out the events that wrap up the story for v0.3 for one of those two paths. It's the more complicated of the two paths, and most of it has already been playtested, so as long as the second path doesn't prove to be more difficult than anticipated to write out, that should only take a day or two to implement and another day or two to playtest and bugfix.

For the sake of setting some expectations, there's going to be some cut content with v0.3. There are things that I intended to include that would take nearly a full day to build all the assets for and implement into the game and so on and so forth... each. So instead of taking a week to fill in the corners, I'm going to focus on pushing out the meat of the update (which is the story) and I'll be returning to complete all of that content (which I have quite thoroughly documented so I won't miss anything) at some point in the near future. That near-future point will probably be after v0.4 is released, because I don't want to get my Halloween content built out and put together just for it to get delayed to the third week of November. That also means the v0.3 post-game won't really have any content. I'll at least get things to where you'll be able to roam the open world again, but there won't be any additional content like the addition of a new character or the shop.

Speaking of the shop, I'm still looking for feedback on that. If I don't hear anything, I'm going to go ahead and assume that everything is more or less fine and I'll continue with the current iteration.

Now, before you think to yourself "why bother making seasonal content if you're having to cut other content to make timely releases?" it's because I decided to include content of this nature when I was still working on v0.1. It was always going to happen, and I have the opportunity to explore certain aspects of the setting I've created around the time that the majority of people are going to be in the mood for that type of content. I feel it would be poor form to miss that opportunity since I was always going to put this content together anyway.

Besides, I dunno about ya'll, but I'm down with big tiddy goths. So I'm gonna put a big tiddy goth or two in a maid outfit and you're gonna have to live with it.
 
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hreserves

The Mithril Hourglass
Game Developer
Sep 15, 2018
608
565
So, as some of you may have noticed, I'm not updating this thread quite so much anymore. I've given it some thought, and it feels a little unnecessary to post both here and on my actual dev blog, so I probably won't be posting much here unless people leave comments here.

As with the main game thread, I'll do my best to keep up with and respond to comments that come through, but I won't be making regular updates to this particular thread.

If you're interested in following development, I will continue to make weekly updates over on the aforementioned blog.

I may come back here to update this thread on occasion, but it's unlikely that it'll be anything besides a cross-post from my blog if I do, so checking my blog is going to be the best place to get news and notes about development regarding Maids & Masters, as well as any other projects as more news becomes available.