This is charming. I'll be following this for sure.
I have some stylistic issues with it, however, it's nothing serious.
Keep it up!
Viewing post in Light Eternal: Dawnfall (Demo) comments
Given the "Pre-Alpha" state of it, I assume there will be plenty of changes to the systems. What you have now is intriguing enough that I am eager to see what you do next. I imagine the RPG Maker engine has its own quirks. So, none of that is really a concern to me at this point.
My hangup is pedantic and nerdy. Basically, the armor geometry. Boob plate creates... not really "shock traps". In plate armor design, deflection is a big consideration. Slapping somebody in the center of the chest with boob plate ends up more easily transferring a lot of energy to the target. That's why you end up seeing a lot of later armor pieces ending in more of a point.
I realize I run the risk of insulting your intelligence here and that is not my desire. Like I mentioned, it's pedantic and nerdy in the context of a sexy game.
Boobs seem massive on the succubus and the angel lady. I imagine I'll lose that fight so it's not something I'm going to really hassle anybody on. Boobs are quite nice. The elf woman is gorgeous, though. I mean, all of the models are well made and a feast for the eyes. I just feel my back hurt in sympathy for the really big ones.
Big boobies and boob plate isn't going to turn me away by any means.
I've been known to be pedantic and nerdy at times. No harm, no foul.
Though the "boob plate debate" is something I've heard go both ways. There's plenty of armor styles that existed in history with distended plates near the belly rather than the chest (I think it's called goosebelly or peascod? I've done my research, but I wouldn't call myself an expert) as well as purely fashion-based elements, like an exaggeratedly-thin waist or things like metal codpieces in addition to aesthetic details. I fully understand the argument, but there is historical precedent for it.
But mostly I have very limited armor assets and it was really difficult finding parts that got anywhere close to the image in my head. There are some design elements I'm not the completely happy with either, but I don't have the funding to hire an artist.
As for chest size, those two are probably going to be the biggest in the game. I see too many adult games where the only thing different about the women is the face and hair, with everything below the neck being the exact same toned hourglass figure toting spine-busters. Or those characters are on the small side and they go even bigger (which is it's own kink, and to each their own, but it's not for me). I at least try to make an attempt at including different body types (which, yeah, given what I'm making, is going to include big boobs).
Thanks for the write up! I firmly believe feedback is a good thing, so I really do appreciate you taking the time (and knowing Arielle has at least one fan - I wasn't sure how people would feel about muscle elf).
Ah, a fellow nerd~
I'm not an armorer by any means. And, I think, most people aren't. It's amazing just how much effort was needed to get through such thin armor plates. Not only that but if you have a huge bugger-all AoE attack like she does, you can probably get away with wearing anything you want!
Arielle is great. I love her design. I have a fondness for the slender athletic types and I'm one of those weird people who likes smaller breasts in general. Plus, it makes sense for a soldier to be fit. She looks like she would be better served with lighter armor, which I suspect might be something that happens in the game. I also have soft spot for the earnest, straight-forward and kind-of awkward types who are always too formal.
The succubus was really fun, too. She was enjoying herself and playful but never came across as annoying. In general, I did enjoy the writing and the decisions by the characters made a lot of sense. It also made sense that she folded like a piece of paper if anybody got to her. Satin slip makes for good mobility but poor protection.
I may be a silly person but I enjoy more serious narratives with people making the best of their situation. It makes the quiet, funny or tender moments feel much more impactful... You know, in my porn games x3
Being functionally a demigod does make protective gear pretty much entirely optional, yeah. Including for most opponents.
I'm more of a "boobs are boobs" kind of guy. Big boobs? Great. Small boobs? Great. Somewhere in the middle? Still great.
But the best boobs are and always have been the boobs I get to play with.
Though at risk of going the way of Jocat, I'm a fan of women in general. Looks-wise, a pretty face is what really does it for me, but there aren't many parts or types of women that I'd complain about seeing more of.
I won't spoil anything (at least nothing story-relevant; there's a lot of Arielle's story that happens in between this game and the potential prequel I have in mind, though bits of it will obviously come out over time), but Arielle's a terrible fighter. She's accurate with a spear, but only mostly because she can hold the back end of the haft and thrust. She can't shoot a bow, and most of melee combat has her hiding behind a shield trying not to fall over. The heavy armor is more of a crutch to keep her steady enough to stay standing after she gets hit so she can take advantage of whatever opening there is after her opponent is done swinging.
Which I realize doesn't line up with the gameplay at all because you can just plop her in the middle of everything and watch her push back the tide single-handedly, but combat is still being balanced.
I like Ynna, too. I mean, I like all my characters, but some of them are definitely a lot more fun to write. My current main project kinda has a problem with too many characters (there are more than 20 just in the MC's harem), so it's hard to keep the characters distinct while still having them fit a trope so I don't have to exposit a bunch to make you understand the character while still giving them room to grow and show proper depth over time. With a smaller cast (I think I've only got three or four other core party members to introduce here) I can spread those fun traits out a little more without worrying too much about overlap.
Back on the topic of not great fighters, Ynna does kinda need armor. Something I'm debating doing to help balance out combat is locking down all the armor options so all you get to change out is the weapon and accessory, which would let me tone down overall attack power, put health levels back where I originally wanted them, and bring Arielle down and Ynna up. Though part of my wanting to let you change gear on your own is the mobility aspect. Ynna's armor (well, "armor") gives her +1 move because it's light and unrestrictive (if maybe a little overly so), and Arielle's armor and shield both give -1 move under the same logic. I like the way those mechanics tie into the narrative of heavy armor being, y'know, heavy, and the effect that can have in terms of customizing your gameplay to your liking.
It might need to change for the sake of the overall health of the game, though.
But yeah, same. I've gotten to know a lot of adult game devs in the couple years I've been doing this, and the vast majority of them emphasize the narrative and the story they want to tell over almost anything else, and personally I think it's fantastic to see. I don't dislike porn (which I'm sure doesn't come as a surprise), but in the same way I'd say I'm not a pornographer, I'm a game developer - I want a game, or at least a good story, not porn.
I just also want a little more than a fade to black in my romance arcs, too.
I like girls, too x3
And best boobies are the ones you get to play with, hehe. Agreed!
A pretty face trumps the rest of the body. Yes. A good personality is the best. But I'm not going to pretend I'm here for ugly faces and bodies. Ynna is gorgeous. She has a youthfulness to her that is fun and is very pretty but still inviting, I guess? Like, some girls are so pretty that it's kind of intimidating. She feels inviting.
The awkwardness with Arielle did come through a little bit. Mostly, to me, the self doubt but absent a victim mentality. Like... A drive to do better but starting from such a low point that it's hard to gauge her successes. In the fights, this comes through to me with the massively reduced movement range. I saw her as a capable fighter but literally falling behind the main character (please forgive me I am bad at remembering names >.<). Like, the body armor is quite literally enough to make her viable as a front liner because, well, plate armor is really sturdy. If I could give her something more akin to medium armor, I felt like that would be perfect.
Ynna would be equally perfect, to me, with some spells that let her enjoy her mobility advantage. Nothing too crazy. Causing infighting or debuffing from arousal or just generally messing with people. Something like a combat enabler. Then again, I'm also pretty happy accepting, from a narrative perspective, that she's just not cut out for fighting.
On the topic of armor, I'm a big fan of personal customization. But, I also see the benefit in restricting player choice when you want to keep a certain narrative tone. Being able to turn Agrias into a Dancer or Ramza into a Monk with Double-Attack is immensely fun but might cause some narrative disconnects.
You could go with a progress tree, maybe, giving people who really need to go the extra distance the option to grind it out. Maybe the main character is far enough along the paladin tree to gain something like a buff to wearing heavy armor so his movement isn't so reduced and help with leadership or whatever. Arielle could have a focus on... toughness, maybe, to offset being physically more smaller at the expense of equipment specialization?
Naturally, the simple option is a linear progression for each character. That would be fine, too, and probably easier to plan around. It worked pretty well for TLS.
I do some light game mastering stuff on the side and enjoy diving into mechanics like this. I toy around with a system my friend made. It emphasizes ease of resolution so there aren't any complicated calculations. Lets me focus on world building and character development. I take a lot of pride in my NPCs but I also can't put as much into each of them as I like. So, I do tend to pick out favorites. Also, they're all aspects of me since I'm really not THAT creative. I'm just expressive with my writing.
A good personality is definitely the most important. Doesn't matter how pretty the outside is if the inside is ugly. Though that's true of everybody.
Succubi (and Incubi, for that matter) are kinda odd lore-wise in that regard, given they should probably be generically attractive enough for most people to not ask too many questions when they show up in your bedroom in the middle of the night going "hey stranger, wanna bang?" At the same time, they're still, y'know, demons, and being cast down from heaven and trapped in hell has got to say something about the type of "person" they are. I also like the idea of "biblically accurate angels" effectively being purpose-built for a given task rather than making biological sense. Like, a watcher angel probably would be a halo of eyeballs and a bunch of wings for a mode of transportation. If demons are fallen angels, and succubi/incubi are sex demons, then it kinda tracks that they'd be purpose-built for sex, personality included.
So that's what I tried to aim for. Nice to know it mostly worked out.
I really want to talk about it, but I really don't want to spoil anything about Arielle being the way she is, so aside from mentioning survivor's guilt (which is something that would've come out in a map event that is written and in the demo, but I didn't have time to make renders for it so it's locked up to not trigger), I'll try to keep it to things mentioned in the demo.
Baldric (the MC; I don't blame you for not remembering his name, you're able to change it pretty early on) is her hero. There's a line where Ynna says "You know she l-" and Arielle cuts her off (the implication being Ynna was about to out her romantic feelings), but Ynna was only going to say "looks up to you." He's quite literally her hero, and in the years she's known him, he actually lived up to expectations. It'd be like your favorite celebrity crush becoming your boss and learning that maybe they like you back. That's kind of an awkward position to be in (especially since most celebrities have their own love lives), but she also really wants to live up to his expectations of her the way he's done with her expectations of him.
Her literally falling behind due to low move (and you, acting through the MC, possibly making a deliberate choice to not leave her behind for the sake of the relationship system gaining points based on proximity) isn't a perfect ludo-narrative metaphor, but I thought it was still a pretty good one, and having someone in the party that can take a beating helps round the party out.
Ynna has a reason for not knowing any spells, too (ignoring the fact that the weapon she starts with isn't the weapon that gives characters the Charm spell), aside from the obvious "she was drafted" bit that comes out in conversation. You will eventually be able to teach her other spells as you find/buy weapons (which is another thing I think I want to rebalance a little; I need to do more testing, but I feel like it currently takes too long to learn weapon skills, and while I do want people to be deliberate about their choices instead of trying to get every character to learn every skill/spell, there are only going to be roughly 30 main story missions and I want people to have a good suite of skills/spells for that final mission, so I want to give out at least a few weapon options earlier than the end of the demo). Ynna's narrative on that front isn't nearly as complex or deep, though. It's like she tells you, she's built for something besides fighting.
But yeah, the differences between something like Fire Emblem compared to something like Final Fantasy Tactics is why I'm kinda torn on how to handle equipment options. I've played a large majority of Fire Emblem games, but I probably still have more cumulative hours in the different versions of FF:Tactics (that thing is my desert island game; I think I have two different saves from different runs over 1000 hours, and I've beaten the game at least a dozen times), so it's hard to say what the bigger inspiration is. I like the idea of giving the player that freedom, and I definitely want to experiment a bit with other entries (in what I'm really hoping will be an entire series because I loved making this demo) so I can try on a job system to see how it compares to what I've done here with the weapon skill system, compared to a skill equip system, compared to more traditional RPG "get skills when you level" system (though that's what my main project is, so I dunno that I'll do that for a strategy RPG).
I don't want to try to do more than one in the same game unless I land on something that feels like a genius idea, though. Implementing a skill tree might solve some problems, but it'd create a ton of work. And while I do intend to create optional side missions, I want to avoid implementing even the opportunity to grind. The idea that "players will optimize the fun out of a game" is something I've seen a lot of even before I decided to start making games, and it's a whole other thing seeing it up close.
Though there is something of a "specialization" aspect built into the weapon skill system. Each time you attack with a character, the game checks the weapon they're wielding and increases that character's associated weapon type skill (Sword, Spear, Whip, etc.). Then, it does some math and increases the specific weapon skill (Shortsword, Longsword, Greatsword, etc.) according to the type skill. Some characters have a higher weapon type cap, so later in the game, they'll learn weapon skills from certain types of weapons really quickly. They might also have lower (or higher) thresholds for preferred (or disliked) individual weapons, so it takes less (or more) work to learn that weapon's skill.
As an example, Arielle likes spears, but is awful with magic. Keep giving her spears, and it should be pretty easy to get her to learn all of the spear skills before the end of the game. Give her a spellbook, and it's going to take her ages to learn a spell to be able to cast it without the book, and it'll take a ton of work for her to learn all four spells and master that spell category. Getting her to master all spells in all spellbooks is probably impossible.
A change I'm debating making is giving characters a higher base score for weapon type skill, like Baldric starting with the equivalent of a C or B rank in swords, rather than everyone starting off with a D rank in everything. Possibly even going further and making C rank the default so you can see B rank is their preferred weapon type, and giving a character a D rank weapon might not be worth your time.
Though first I have to find a good way to display this information and get that implemented into the game, because I haven't found a plugin that does something similar yet, and I want to be able to show similar ranks for relationships so you have a base idea of relationship growth as well.
Spoiler alert on the "NPCs are just aspects of me" thing - same. I'm definitely not some smokeshow succubus that broke out of hell just to put lewds in games (disappointing, I know), so obviously none of my characters are exactly me. There's definitely some truth in the "write what you know" idea, but I don't see it as advice or a restriction, I see it as more of a fact of fiction. Regardless of what's being written or who is writing it, the writer needs some kind of frame of reference. When it comes to characters, sure, there's an element of "I like this idea for a character so I'm going to steal borrow it," but it's ultimately your brain writing, so there's going to be a little bit of you in there no matter how much you try and avoid it. I've been playing and running D&D and World of Darkness games for almost 20 years now, and have been writing homebrew campaigns for nearly as long, and my personal experience has been that you become more creative if you lean into that fact and leverage it rather than trying to write a character that specifically isn't you.
As an example to prove that point, there's a character in Maids & Masters that's nothing like me, so she's almost all trope. She's meant to be shallow, so it kinda works out, but I have a really hard time writing for her in some scenes. She's also basically the only character (in the harem, anyway) that I haven't heard anyone say they didn't either love or hate.
But I LIKE filling out my army with only minotaurs! What does it REALLY mean to break a game x3
No, I get it. Ensuring that players play a game "the right way" is difficult when players always find a way to put every block through the square hole. I'm not the biggest fan of "optimal gameplay" but I also accept that some people are either going to be hyper sweaty about it or... Or, like me, move Heaven and Hell to ensure they get two assassin/healers with Last Breath and the Angel Rings just so I can call them my "Death Angels".
Goodness, I don't know how to balance that. I like the ideas you're talking about but I don't know if any kind of system that encourages freedom with the builds will come into its own within thirty missions. Like you said, jobs or skill trees or whatever will be a lot of work for the short time you have access to them.
Then again, why not make an anthology of games to experiment on different systems? Keep it short and sweet while you test out features? Or, maybe an anthology of demos? Set it up as a different characters around the world and short stories attached to them so you can try out your ideas while fleshing things out. I think something infinity did something that with alternative timelines in the demos. Or scratch the story elements and make combat demos to see what resonates? I tend to use an iterative process myself because I'm awful at planning things.
I'm even more excited to see what you end up doing x3
Biblically accurate angels. That's a horror story in itself. I always enjoy the idea of function deciding form and the nuance behind the angels becoming fallen in the first place is, I find, often greatly overlooked. It's nice to hear you considering it! Gets my mind thinking about how a watcher living among humans would become a sex deviant after being cut off from Heaven. If they are considered bystanders in this fight to the point that they're being press-ganged into service, that indicates the fallen angels are not a united front. Could be that the main Adversary (the Light Bringer himself - or your equivalent) has his cadre of conspirators. When God closed off Heaven to the fallen, He could have left behind a lot of angels who were largely in the wrong place at the wrong time. If interacting with humans caused the problem, then any angels with direct contact to humans are potential traitors. That includes the watchers.
I wish my mind wasn't so scattered and I could remember all of this stuff more clearly. Sorry if it's a bit of a mess. I do enjoy speculating x3
Hehe. I'm no stranger to temptation. I like to joke that I'm not the snake; I'm the fruit. That kind of thing plays a big part in my games, too. I just love seeing what people consider important enough to risk themselves over. That goes for physical and spiritual risks. What will make you compromise on your principals or betray yourself and others? But I also love seeing how the relationships form and grow over time and how decisions impact the world around people. I'm not a purely sadistic person... but I also believe that every aspect of one's self is important. This includes the more destructive, devious or disruptive aspects. The more a person gets to visit those aspects, the better they are able to define themselves and grow.
You could treat Ynna like an out of combat asset that has to be protected while in combat. I mean, that implies you could ever progress without her, I guess. Like, she can help make situations easier to overcome or gather intel in her own special way or other things. That could be the offset for her being a bit shit in a fight. You want her there for what she can get you outside of fights but that is weighed against the risk she poses in a fight.
I do like Arielle. She would be a really fun character to have for an "evil" playthrough. Lots of vulnerabilities to exploit. But I really like what you mentioned about her wanting to live up to her hero. That's a really cool dynamic. I would abuse it x.x
My NPCs run the gauntlet, from snuggly and innocent with no will of their own to sadistic, authoritarian megalomaniacs. But they usually always have a reason for being the way they are and some redeeming qualities about them. Think of... finding a weird balance to them. Like, maybe somebody is ruthless and power hungry but values their reputation and integrity. They want the world but are held in check by their own self image and sense of propriety. Or, a person who gets along easily with everybody but will absolutely screw them over for personal gain and struggles because of it.
Some of my favorite NPCs are the throwaway ones like the ubiquitous bandits. I had a small encounter where the town offered food and free lodging to save some of their people from a bandit group. Then, you find out the bandits were mercenaries that the town refused to pay for services. During the negotiation, some people panicked, some people got killed and a few of the mercs took hostages out of desperation to get out of the fight alive.
I think I may have strayed off topic >.<
Well, and if that's how you have fun, I don't want to stop you having fun. I just also don't want to put things in the way of people that are just exploring mechanics, or make something sloppy in the name of player choice. Though I don't really believe in there being a "right way" to enjoy a game, either. I've got a Rotten Meat item in one of my demos. You can eat it. Doing so hurts you. There's a small chance you might even get cursed. But if you eat it while cursed, it's the best food you have available, while almost every other food becomes either vastly less useful or outright harmful. If you want to try to play the entire game cursed, or drunk, or whatever, I want you to have that option, even if it's sub-optimal.
In that same vein, Maids & Masters has all sorts of opportunities to do something in at least two different ways. The problem is that I also have a lot of people that don't like doing it one way trying it out anyway on a second play through and complaining that the way they don't like feels like a waste of their time and there's no benefit because there's all this combat in their way (when the benefit is being able to go through that combat to get more XP in a game without respawning enemies or a way to grind levels indefinitely). It's really tricky to balance that out so everyone gets to have fun, because there are going to be some players that recognize the value of XP as a resource and slog through every combat encounter they possibly can for the sake of optimizing their levels even if they don't like the combat.
The way that translates to Dawnfall means I could add grind in stretching out missions so there's 50 or 60 - but that's way less fun for people that want the story but not combat, and it's kinda lazy game design. I can do something similar and make those extras side missions, but if all they are is a means to grind, it's still lazy, and that laziness will shine through and make the game less fun.
So it comes back around to making sure the balancing is as tight as possible, and hoping that translates into engaging with mechanics feeling rewarding instead of engagement feeling restrictive or mandatory.
The anthology thing is kinda what I'm already doing. Though they're all completely different games rather than being iterations on the exact same genre.
If you look at my creator page, aside from 3 pages being dedicated to Maids & Masters (my current main project), I've got a classic JRPG where combat is slow and thoughtful, a more modern RPG where combat is meant to be fast and easy and play less of a role in the overall game, a survival RPG with just as many mechanics put into crafting and management as there is combat, this (a tactical strategy RPG with a lot more complexity in and consideration given toward the equipment the characters use), a real-time action survival horror, and a straight up visual novel with none of any of that.
Everything except Maids & Masters and Precious Kouhai is effectively a demo that I made just to see if I had the tools and skills to pull it off (and Precious Kouhai is an excuse for me to learn Ren'Py and get better/faster at animating).
Honestly, the real trouble is that I'm just one person and I've got too many ideas for things I want to make. Just turning all my demos into full games is likely to take me a decade - probably longer - and that's before getting into the 40-something GDDs I have saved elsewhere.
Anyway.
I love theology. I studied it a fair bit when I was younger (mostly through church youth groups). I had questions, so I kept doing research and started dipping my toes into religions besides Christianity and learning how different views on what is functionally the same thing could lead to wildly different interpretations. From there, I got into pop culture things like the World of Darkness TTRPGs (specifically, Demon the Fallen, and a supplement for it called Dies Ignis that details things like the Book of Genesis and the War in Heaven from Lucifer's perspective, and later Demon the Descent from Chronicles of Darkness), TV shows like Supernatural, and on and on.
Demon the Descent in particular sets up player characters as former angels. You had a specific purpose based on the type of angel you were (and you build a "demonic form" to suit that purpose, which they heavily recommend not being humanoid), and you fell because you stopped serving that purpose. Aside from the main storyline the GM wants to tell, each player is supposed to have their own mystery to unravel to learn what their purpose was, why they fell (which could be anything from hesitating to perform your function for a split second to full-blown monstrous villainy), who they want to be now that they have autonomy, and whether you want to try and redeem yourself to return to your function or construct your own personal hell to do whatever you want without worrying about angels hunting you down. And each major "key" thing you learn about yourself unlocks a new level of powers you're able to get. It's a neat game.
Combining the pop culture fiction with actual theology and trying to answer the questions I keep asking myself results in some really interesting ideas (I think, anyway).
I did consider something like a character having more out-of-combat utility than in-combat (though that was for Emma; she's meant to join you as an archer but I didn't have enough time to get her fully implemented), but I couldn't decide on a good way to implement it (my first thought was to have her join and leave at certain intervals, coming back with more stock for you to buy from her at the cost of her not being around for fights, but it felt too arbitrary to do at story points and too punishing to make you choose it deliberately), so I ultimately decided to just have everybody be a party member for the sake of flexibility. Trying to avoid spoilers, once you get your hands on more weapons, Ynna should start being more glass-cannon-y or utility-based over time - depending on what weapons you give her to learn skills from. You could just give her a sword and shield and tell her to deal with it.
Same with the idea of an "evil Arielle." Way too many spoilers.
That's kinda how character depth works, though. I've got plenty of characters that start out giving you nothing but reasons to hate them. Maybe they're trying to trick you into saying something stupid so they can take advantage of it, maybe they want to kick you when you're down, maybe they're just pretending to be a friend so they can abuse you when you lower your guard. But also maybe they're really affectionate once you prove you can hold your own against them, or they'll be your most powerful ally if you can set aside your differences. Or maybe they're irredeemable and are going to snap and start committing atrocities the moment they see a chance to do so. At least some of that depends on what you do as a player rather than there only being one way for the story to go.
I'm expecting to get some backlash once MnM's next story update goes public because there won't be an option to kick in one guy's door and stab him to death because he's been openly hostile toward you for most of the game, and now you have to sit down and have a conversation with him in order to keep moving forward.
I've had similar experiences with what should otherwise be throwaway NPCs. There was one guy in particular (of 7, none of whom were even given enough of a description for players to know if they were orcs or humans or whatever) that one of my D&D parties got so attached to, not only did they refuse to kill him, they helped rehabilitate him so he'd have a shorter prison sentence, then hired him to help one of them run their smithy that they used to make their own armor during downtime.
Which, yeah, is probably pretty far off topic. No worries, though. With the number of keystrokes we've thrown at each other, some meandering is expected. =P