RPGM Sword Art Online RPG Prototype

Chuuni Badger

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Nice detailed reports, as always. I actually quite like the choice of words for Fame/Reputation/Rumours, from a lexical point of view. For the general audience, however, something one can grasp just by looking at the stat is probably better. Maybe "Player Reputation", "Erotic Reputation" or "Lewd Reputation" (easy to differentiate right away from player reputation) and then "Gossip" (carries a heavier connotation).
Ohh, gossip - that's the word I was looking for! As for the other ones:
  • I think Fame is actually a better choice since it's less about Asuna as a person and more as a "symbol" (frontlines cleaners being kind of celebrities for normal players).
  • The second field (reputation) however does need a better name. Erotic/lewd rep might be a little too long and too direct, I think. I'll keep those in mind but I'll keep thinking for now.
Thanks for the suggestions!
 

Chuuni Badger

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Well, F95 going down wasn't on my bingo card so I'm glad we're back.

Progress report
As always, TL;DR/full task list can be found at the bottom of the post for easier reading.

As mentioned before my free time will fluctuate for a bit so this week I decided to focus on smaller and less time consuming tasks.

I started with more quest manager work, specifically implementing the quest objective updating and support for reputation rewards (something I forgot to include in the remaining tasks last week) as well as updating the internal quest data used by the plugin with values used in the current quest implementations.

I also started migrating existing quests to the new system. Most (if not all) of them will be remade before the next release but they're still useful for testing. In fact, this process already uncovered a few minor issues I haven't found before so I fixed those as well.

After that, I moved to icons. Right now the only way to check equipment durability is to go into your inventory and check manually which can be pretty tedious. In the future, when equipment reaches certain durability thresholds an icon symbolising item's state will pop-up on screen to let player know before anything bad happens.

equipment_durability_icons.png

These icons represent slots, not specific item types, so:
  • Main hand
  • Off hand
  • Head
  • Underwear
  • Body
  • Accessory
I'm currently using the same style I drew the stamina icons in. I'm not sure if this is how all of the icons are going to look like in the final release or if I decide on a completely different style but for now I decided to go with consistency instead of new, snazzy designs.

Finally, there was a lot of brainstorming and design work going on. The main focus here was on fleshing out the design of a reusable orgasm handling system as right now both test H events do it on their own - this leads to a lot of work duplication and makes mistakes easier to miss.
I also thought about how to link it with the stress system - stress reduction on orgasm is one of the missing elements of that feature after all. Right now I'm leaning towards inhibition based stress reduction, specifically: (max_inhibition - current_inhibition) / 2.

Besides that I've been thinking a lot about how to approach H scenes - from the purely technical side, that is. It's honestly one of the toughest things to decide on at the moment since once I start making content, I'll be stuck making them in that specific way.
  • Do I make them as generic (mechanically, not content wise) and reusable as possible for easier content creation?
  • Should I take a more curated and unique approach for each event?
  • Is there a way to make the event creation window bigger so I can work in comfort and see more than a few lines at a time?!
  • How much of the scene flow decisions should be left up to players and how much should be dependant on Asuna's stats (mainly arousal)? How much should the narrative affect the flow? I said before I want players to have some say during H scenes but even that has to have its limits.
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On a different note, I decided to archive all of the progress updates posted until now in case I need to migrate development to a different platform. While I don't expect F95 to die it's important to be ready for any situation.
 
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Fioli

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Apr 17, 2022
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I believe that allowing players to vote during H-scenes is a waste of energy and time. It is much more effective to simply create good H-scenes. The appeal of H-games is determined by a good main storyline and high-quality H-storylines. Your game also looks interesting with its deep RPG gameplay. Again, this is just my opinion.
 

Chuuni Badger

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I believe that allowing players to vote during H-scenes is a waste of energy and time. It is much more effective to simply create good H-scenes. The appeal of H-games is determined by a good main storyline and high-quality H-storylines. Your game also looks interesting with its deep RPG gameplay. Again, this is just my opinion.
Just to be clear, this isn't about giving players full control of H scenes, mostly just:
  • Deciding on what they're comfortable with during optional/consensual acts (do you think your Asuna is ready for specific thing).
  • Quest branching (you might be willing to give someone a handy for important info but are you willing to fuck for it or would you rather look for another way?).
  • Preventing surprise H progression (alright, I agreed to a nice picnic with an NPC... wait, why are we suddenly in the middle of a gangbang and my character doesn't question it?).
  • Choices during "active NTR" scenes to make hiding your affair an actual part of the game.
Enough to give folks a choice when appropriate and let them avoid scenes one couldn't expect before starting an event. Some amount of choice will be there, it's simply a matter of scale. Also, there will be scenes where you'll have little to no input (certain narrative scenes, non-con situations etc) but I want things to make sense.

Also also... I've never written smut before and I'm simply not confident in my ability to write engaging H scenes. I need some kind of hook to make them stand out instead of being basic slideshows with word salad happening in the background.

Thanks for the opinion! It'll be useful when I decide on the balance between the two approaches.
 

Fioli

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Apr 17, 2022
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Oh, now I understand what you meant. I don't think it's difficult to write an exciting H-scene. If you have a rough idea of how the relationship between the characters will develop, there are different types of actions at different stages. Finally, nowadays there are AI that can help with this if you give them a good description, and there are many different H-games of varying popularity from which you can get ideas for your game. Good luck!
 

Chuuni Badger

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Honestly? I'm more interested in mediocre but human made stuff than anything that uses AI - whether it's to help with writing, CG generation or anything else. Not that I want my project to turn out mediocre, obviously, but I'd rather learn and try again based on feedback. It'll be slower and require rewrites but it's the best way to improve both as a dev and writer specifically. I know this is a bit of a luddite thing to write in 2025 but that's how I feel about it.

And yeah, I intend to steal learn from other games (or media in general) as much as possible. No point in trying to reinvent the wheel with every single thing when there's combined experience of other authors at your fingertips.
 
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Chuuni Badger

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Progress report
As always, TL;DR/full task list can be found at the bottom of the post for easier reading.

Lots of job searching, not a lot of project work this week.

I made further progress on migrating quests to the new system. It's mostly done at this point, I just need to make sure I caught all of the quest triggers and play-test everything to confirm nothing breaks. I also fixed an issue which prevented quest update notifications from displaying icons and added new notifications informing about received quest rewards.

Next, I started working on a generic orgasm handling system which will simplify the H scene setup a bit and allow me to add some new functionality in the future. First tests went without issues so: yay!

Lastly, I spent some time play-testing and bug fixing the recent changes. It's a tedious work but it has to be done so I might as well tackle some of it now.

Now back to the mines I go.

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Chuuni Badger

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Progress report
As always, TL;DR/full task list can be found at the bottom of the post for easier reading.

I'm starting to think finding a job might not be worth the time and effort required. Lets just make a happy horny commune for ero media enthusiasts instead!

Work on new orgasm handling continues. This time I've added a new "Sensitivity" value - it rises on orgasm, makes reaching successive ones easier and can lead to a "Dizzy" (temporary name?) status effect which will lower Asuna's inhibition and (possibly) stress gains temporarily. This value drops over time as long as you don't reach another orgasm.

Due to changes to the inner workings of my H stats plugin I decided to revisit the idea of moving NTR scene values from the message window into its own pop-up, similar to the gold window. Despite my utter failure during my first attempt, this time I was able to implement this change without any issues.

ntr_values.png
I'm sill deciding on the size and location of this window but the important part is that it works.

Next, I refactored some of the game code and events in preparation for incoming plugin changes. The biggest task here focused on already mentioned H stats plugin rework which included clean up of a lot of unnecessary data processing and storage as well as simplifying some of the code for faster and more robust operations.
On the more general side of things, I fixed some smaller inconsistencies and mistakes that didn't affect game operations too much but could potentially lead to hard to figure out problems in the future.

Lastly, I spent some time fixing existing written content. I fixed some formatting inconsistencies, moved SAO and character specific terms to easily replaceable macros (both for ease of updating and just in case I need to pivot away from the franchise) and reworded a few unfinished or weirdly worded sentences I didn't caught before.

This month has honestly been an absolute nightmare so I'm glad that I'm able to make any progress each week, even if it's tiny when compared to my previous updates. I can only hope things will get on track eventually but until then I'll keep trudging along as I can. See ya next week!

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Chuuni Badger

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Musings about player blacksmiths
Small clarification before we start: whenever I mention "players" in this post I mean in-universe SAO players, not you, the person playing this project. This is to differentiate them from in-universe NPCs, i.e. computer characters which are part of SAO the game.

Player crafters are an integral part of MMORPGs since the early days of the genre. They provide services at a level not available at NPC run establishments and gameplay for those interested in less confrontational ways of spending free time. Player crafters are also a core element of SAO, with many players opting to stay away from danger and supporting the frontline forces in their own ways. We even have Liz as THE blacksmith representative since the second book of this franchise.

Why am I writing all this?

Player blacksmiths are one of the new features planned for the next release so I've been thinking about these things recently. I've been thinking and I've been getting increasingly unsure about my ideas for how to approach it.

My original plan was simple:
  • NPC crafters are cheap and provide stable but mediocre service.
  • Players are more expensive but more unpredictable - they can improve your gear by a way higher margin or they can provide less benefit than NPC and damage your item in the process.
Cheap and sure vs expensive and risky.

Well, if you played games for a while you probably spotted an issue with this idea - any time RNG is involved, people WILL find a way to cheese it. In this case doing so is extremely easy: just save scum. Unpredictability ceases to exist when you can simply try again without needing to worry about consequences of your actions and, as a result, the whole system might as well not exist in the first place.

I know this might sound like an overly serious deliberation (it's just a porn parody after all) but I'd really want this project to be a decent game with smut as a topping rather than the only thing propping it up. Not that the latter is unimportant, it's just approaching gameplay as a secondary concern can lead to situations where where the "game" part of the game becomes a tedious slog and folks would be better served with a simple scene collector - that is not something I want to make here.

I'm in a bit of a bind on how to proceed with this feature. My current idea is to keep NPC crafters as is and push player ones towards something like this:
  • Keep the higher prices.
  • Remove RNG, each player will provide bonuses based on their skill level.
  • Chance to damage the item based on skill level (upgrade still goes through)?
  • Maybe add a time skip while the service is done or require leaving your weapon with them for a day or so?
  • Service bonuses for long patronage (especially early on, when skills are low)?
On one hand this approach makes NPC crafters pretty much obsolete outside of repair services, on the other, it no longer wastes people's time or patience. It's still better than my initial plan at least.

Does any of this sound interesting to you guys? Am I overthinking it and should simply treat player and NPC blacksmiths the same, with story context and potential side-events being the only things differentiating the two? Any comments or ideas on this topic would be very welcome.

Anyway, that's all the rambling I have for today. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled progress reports on Monday so thanks for reading and I'll see you then!
 

Chuuni Badger

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Progress report
As always, TL;DR/full task list can be found at the bottom of the post for easier reading.

Jobsaren'trealjobsaren'trealjobsaren'trealjobsaren'trealjobsaren'trealjobsaren'trealjobsaren'trealjobsaren'trealjobsaren'trealjobsaren'treal...

I spent more time on improving orgasm handling since last week. I moved some additional parts from common event to code and added the ability to achieve arousal overflow. The latter can cause successive orgasms and higher sensitivity increase at once. It also means reaching orgasm won't always reset arousal to 0 - remaining value depends on sensitivity and arousal overflow at the time of the climax.
Another climax related update has to do with player states - specifically, addition of the "Dizzy" status effect. It's triggered by reaching sensitivity of 6 or more, causes 10% increase to arousal and equal decrease of stress gains, as well as slightly decreases willpower cost for H events.

Next, I tackled dynamic willpower pricing for starting erotic events. It's a way to prevent Asuna from knowingly jumping into scenes she isn't ready for but also giving some leeway so she can force herself if the situation demands it. It's currently based on multiple parameters, specifically:
  • Base scene cost (lewder or unappealing events will usually start higher).
  • Love for Kirito (mainly relevant for those interested in the love route).
  • Current inhibition (specifically, difference between max and current inhibition values).
  • Asuna's arousal.
  • Scene importance (sometimes one can force themselves to do something for the greater good).
On a quality of life side, I finally implemented on-screen equipment durability indicators. It's a bit janky on the technical side but it works and that's what matters. I did have to rework the icons as the original ones were too small and hard to see (they were made with a slightly different approach in mind).

durability_indicators_1.png durability_indicators_2.png
I'm testing two versions of the icons, with and without the black outlines, to account for proper visibility on various backgrounds.

With this, all of the UI additions planned for the next release are implemented. They will need some polishing touches and there's still plenty of other tasks left before everything is ready but it's another small step towards the first non-prototype version of the game. We're getting there!

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GeorgFantom

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Размышления о кузнецах-играх
Небольшое уточнение, прежде чем мы начнём: когда я упоминаю «игроков» в этом посте, я имею в виду игроков из вселенной SAO, а не вас, человека, играющего в этом проекте. Это сделано для того, чтобы отличить их от NPC из вселенной, то есть есть компьютерные персонажи, которые являются частью игры SAO.

Игровые крафтеры являются частью MMORPG самого начала жанра. Они предоставляют услуги на уровне, ограниченном в заведениях, управляемых NPC, и предлагают технологические процессы для тех, кто предпочитает менее конфронтационные методы обеспечения свободного времени. Игровые крафтеры также являются ключевым элементом SAO, поскольку многие игроки придерживаются принципа опасности и поддерживают передовые силы своими методами. Лиз даже выступает в роли представителя кузнецов во второй книге этой серии.

Зачем я все это пишу?

Игровые кузнецы — одна из новых функций, запланированных к следующему релизу, поэтому я недавно задумался об этом. Я задумывался и всё больше сомневался в своих идеях, как к этому подойти.

Мой первоначальный план был прост:
  • NPC-ремесленники недорогие и предоставляют стабильные, но посредственные услуги.
  • Игроки стоят выше, но и более непредсказуемы: они могут значительно улучшить ваше снаряжение или принести меньше пользы, чем NPC, и при этом повредить ваш объект.
Дешево и против надёжности — дорого и рискованно.

Что ж, если вы какое-то время играли в играх, то наверняка заметили проблему в этой идее: всякий раз, когда задействуется генератор случайных чисел, люди ОБЯЗАТЕЛЬНО рассматривают способ обойти его. В данном случае сделайте это в крайнем случае: просто спасите отбросы. Непредсказуемость исчезает, когда можно просто попробовать ещё раз, не беспокоясь о последствиях своих действий, и, как утверждает теория, любая система, как бы она существовала, не существует изначально.

Знаю, это может показаться серьёзным намерением (в конце концов, это лишь лишь порнопародия), но мне бы очень хотелось, чтобы этот проект стал достойной игрой, где пошлость была бы её украшением, а не каким-либо её элементом. Не последнее время просто был неважным, подход к геймплею как к второстепенной задаче может привести к ситуации, когда «игровая» часть игры превращается в утомительную рутину, и люди больше подошли к простому сборщику сцен — но я не хочу этого здесь делать.

Я немного запутался в том, как реализовать эту функцию. Сейчас я думаю оставить NPC-ремесленников, как есть игроки и подтолкнуть к чему-то вроде этого:
  • Сохраняйте более высокие цены.
  • Укажите бонус ГСЧ, каждый игрок будет получать вознаграждение в зависимости от уровня своего мастерства.
  • Вероятность повреждения предмета зависит от уровня навыков (улучшение всех происходит одинаково)?
  • Может быть, добавить временной пропуск во время проведения или оставить оружие у них на день-другой?
  • Бонусы за долгосрочное сотрудничество (особенно на начальном этапе, когда навыки низкие)?
С одной стороны такой подход делает NPC-ремесленников практически ненужными, за исключением ремонтных служб, с другой — он больше не тратит время и терпит людей. По сути, это всё равно лучше моего первоначального плана.

Вам что-нибудь из этого кажется интересным? Может, я слишком много думаю, и стоит просто считать кузнецов-игроков и NPC одинаковыми, сюжетным контекстом и потенциальными вариативными событиями — какими-то их различиями? Буду очень рад любым комментариям и идеям по этой теме.

В общем, на сегодня всё. Мы вернёмся к нашим обычным отчётам о выполнении работ в понедельник, так что спасибо за внимание, и увидимся там!
[/ЦИТИРОВАТЬ]

Добрый день! Думаю, первое, что вам нужно сделать, — это определить, интересно ли это лично вам. Вы же создатель. Большинству игроков это не понравится.
 

Chuuni Badger

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Добрый день! Думаю, первое, что вам нужно сделать, — это определить, интересно ли это лично вам. Вы же создатель. Большинству игроков это не понравится.
Some time after posting that I decided to put this feature on hold and go with a simpler version for now. There's no point in spending time on something I'm not sure about when there's so much other work waiting to happen. But yeah, I think this was another instance of me overthinking things but that's exactly why I make these posts. They help me take a step back, organise my thoughts and realise I'm going overboard.

It's good to have an outside confirmation though!
 

athosberger

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Mar 21, 2022
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hey, maybe im a dumb man here, but we have some kind of version of actual uppdate to test and give some feedback? XD
 

Chuuni Badger

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hey, maybe im a dumb man here, but we have some kind of version of actual uppdate to test and give some feedback? XD
You can find links to 2 prototypes at the bottom of the OP. If you're asking about the stuff I'm currently working on then not yet - I wanted to finish the remaining features (and preferably content for floor 1) before posting another version. I'm open to changing these plans if people are fine with purely mechanical changes and no new content, otherwise I'll just keep chugging along until it's ready.
 

Chuuni Badger

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Aug 17, 2016
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Progress report
As always, TL;DR/full task list can be found at the bottom of the post for easier reading.

It was a busy week, not in a fun way unfortunately. Work ended up light on the technical side and focused on design/planning instead.

First things first, after thinking some more about player blacksmiths I decided to postpone additional work on this feature until I can come up with a clear idea on what I want to do with it. For now, all crafters will be treated the same in terms of mechanics, regardless on whether they're NPCs or players (in-universe). The only differences between the two will be existence of side events and the ability to craft items unavailable in stores - both of these elements will be limited to player characters.

Next, I moved the "Wait" skill to the "Investigation" skill family - there's no point in keeping it in a separate category and it kinda fits thematically.

Finally, there was item planning work. I decided on all the item categories (mostly used for organisation purposes) and started filling them up with what I'd like to implement. It currently looks as follows:

CategoryNumber of items
Crafting material19
Crafting tool3
Crystal5
Food13
Drink6
Potion4
Equipment upgrade10
Throwable4
Readable1
Quest item6

None of these categories are even close to being done and will be expanded as the work continues. The last two categories will be especially prone to that since the necessity for quest items and documents is only limited by the amount of content I manage to come up with.

These are just general items, as you can see. Equipment pieces like weapons, armour and more are a separate category both in-engine and in my own design work. I did some planning work for that as well, coming up with a few additional armour and accessory items for the future.

CategoryNumber of items
Accessory9
Underwear9
Clothing9
Light Armour8
Heavy Armour7
Shield5
Weapons26

Some of these values don't tell the whole story and might look overambitious but categories like "Heavy Armour" include items for both body and head equipment slots as well as non usable pieces specific to other characters (like Kirito's swords for example).
Besides that, I'm still deciding on how much gear is really needed in a project like this as well as how many equipment pieces should be unique vs generic. This is both due to usability standpoint (I don't want to add gear that serves no purpose other than being a filler) and the fact that body slot items mean more work in regards to character sprites and renders (both dialogue and H scene ones).

That's all for last week but what's next? My first task for this week is to go through all of the remaining entries on my TODO list and decide what has to be done for the next release, what can be left for later and which ideas need to be pulled completely for further refining. After that I'd like to implement the planned item upgrade changes (option to upgrade & repair items in all of the equipment slots, reworked item upgrades) and go back to working on what will hopefully be the final render art style. I'll try to squeeze more if I have the time but these are the priority tasks for now.

Will any of this come to fruition? Dunno, we'll see. Having a plan is half of the battle, right? Seriously though, it all depends on how my job searching goes as that's still my main focus at the moment (unless I somehow win a lottery or something).

Anyway, that's all for this progress report. See you next week!

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Knight6797

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Jul 26, 2022
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Hey I saw you help others on the MY... thread a lot and decided to drop by to check out what you're developing, seems very interesting so far I wish you good luck :)
 

Chuuni Badger

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Aug 17, 2016
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Progress report
As always, TL;DR/full task list can be found at the bottom of the post for easier reading.

As mentioned in my last progress report, I stared this week by going through my task list to reassess what is or isn't needed for the next release. I moved a few less important or bigger tasks to the backlog and added some new ones that were technically planned but not written down until now.

Next, I added stress increase to relevant events. At the moment this only means end of the prologue and visiting the rumour cave but that's enough to confirm everything works correctly.

After that, I played around with adding a small, sensitivity based, multiplier to the formula for the stress relief on orgasm. It seemed like a decent idea to make the sensitivity value more useful but after some testing and thinking about it, I decided against doing that. Low inhibition can already wipe out half of the stress at once, there's no point in making it even easier.
I did however add stamina hit on orgasm. It's based on base cost, player lewdness (max inhibition - current inhibition) and sensitivity. Current calculation formula looks like this: base_cost * (1 - (lewdness / 10) + (sensitivity / 10)).
There's a little bit more to that but that's the important part. As always, treat it as a starting point which will be rebalanced as needed.

With item planning on the way, I started reorganising the item database. I split all of the item entries into categories and filled out ones I already came up with. This included the reworked equipment upgrades which uncovered another problem - working on this section made me realise some of the ideas I had for upgrades aren't really feasible without reworking the item upgrade plugin and had to adjust my plans accordingly.
As a result, upgrades will be a bit less interesting than I initially hoped, at least for now. I might revisit this topic in the future but that will require some more involved work making it a low priority task due to all the other things waiting for their turn.

After updating the database it was time for all of the events referencing items - stores, quests, item chests and blacksmiths. So yeah, I updated that as well.
Speaking of blacksmiths - I added the ability to upgrade and repair all of the remaining equipment slots. All except underwear, which will be handled via the sewing skill.

Last but not least, I spent some time editing CG renders, trying to make them look less like Koikatsu and closer to the anime or some of the fan art in my reference folder. I don't expect miracles but I might as well try. Don't have much to show for it at this moment to be honest but will post pictures if that changes.

I'm writing another update report, this time fully focused on the remaining tasks planned for the next version. It should clarify where things stand and how much work is left until there's something new to play with. It should be ready in a day or two but, as always, we'll see how things go.

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