itch.io

I've heard news that FFT is actually getting a remaster or remake. Granted, more rumors than proper news. It hasn't been officially announced or anything. Yet.
Fully agree on Tactics Advance. I liked the story, but that judge system was awful. Plus it was in that weird FF12 Ivalice, not the original FFT Ivalice. Somehow it got a sequel and a spinoff, though.

TLS is a huge inspiration for me. Sierra Lee is unironically one of the reasons I started on this game development journey. If you do end up playing Maids & Masters, you'll probably be able to pick out a number of pretty direct references (and maybe a few not-so-direct ones).
Though in the case of Dawnfall, I'm taking more from Fire Emblem, which does occasionally have something like an arena where you can kinda grind a little, but for the most part if you want to level up and over-prepare, you need to do side missions. You can't just wander the map like you can in FFT.

I don't mind grind when it's done right. The trouble is that it's hard to do right. Like, I play a fair bit of Warframe, and that's a pretty grindy game, but the more you play it, the faster missions go. I've also played and enjoyed a handful of loot-heavy games, including Borderlands. A lot of them, though (including Borderlands 3, as far as I'm concerned) kinda stop being about interesting loot. Instead there's just a large volume of it with little to none of it being interesting and nearly all of it being roughly equally useful. That leads to "RPG mechanics" in games that don't need them and giant piles of look that are nothing but tiny incremental gains, so none of it is ever interesting, even if they try to cover it in a "loot rarity" coat of paint. I swear RPGs get a bad reputation because of that kind of behavior leading to a ton of people not liking them, when what they really don't like is bad game design. And now here I am with my love of RPGs and next to no one is making the kind of games I want to play. 

At least now I have the skills necessary to do it myself. Even if the production value isn't where I'd like.

Most of my games are just demos (at least for now), but Maids & Masters has around 30 hours of gameplay and is roughly halfway through the second act. The little prequel thing, Arrival, also lets you carry your save forward so you can keep the stuff you find (and if you get a 100% clear, you get a bonus).

I can't say I'm familiar with SL. Second Life?

Sounds like pretty typical TTRPG chaos (though admittedly with more bunny girl seggs and tentacles). Of all the nerdy hobbies I have, TTRPGs are probably my favorite. I just don't have the spare brain space to run them anymore with all my creative energy going into making my games now. Still a deeply rewarding and uniquely fun hobby when I get to play in games, though. 

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

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.

I think you misunderstood me. Sorry if the way I worded it wasn't super clear.

The door doesn't hide itself if you miss something. It only shows up after you walk through it.

Since you can't walk through it from the outside, you need to walk through it from inside the tower.

After you've walked through it from inside, then it'll show up outside.

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'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).

If you have feedback, I'm more than open to hearing it.

This is going to remain a demo for the next 8 months at a minimum while I finish my current main project, but there are definitely things I want to add and things I'm already considering changing and/or rebalancing.

The door for the tower itself?

There's an illusion on it, similar to the trees concealing the underground path. You have to walk through the door on the inside in order to get it to appear on the outside.

(though tbh I'm just now realizing that's never pointed out in-game - added an event for that for v0.16)

Sorry for the trouble! Some Mac OS versions no longer support RPG Maker, so it can be difficult to get the game to run.

There's a post on another one of my projects (here: https://itch.io/post/10264135) with instructions that might work for you. If they do, feel free to leave a like; I can start putting up steps if I know a given solution is reliable enough.
If it doesn't work, there's a reply with alternate instructions that might work instead. Same thing with the like - if it works, like his post instead.

I've seen 4 or 5 different versions of roughly the same steps that work for some but not others, so it might take a bit of fiddling to get working.

For what it's worth, it will open eventually. 

There actually isn't a trophy for Lothario's section, though. You can get some extra gear from him if you gain enough reputation during negotiations, and there's an attic and a hidden room with some goodies to find (plus the hidden Elixir that's in every Estate), but that's about it.

You don't. It's there for future content that hasn't been implemented yet.

Mostly references in dialogue. There's already one of those.

I'm glad you got it to work for you!

Feel free to add screenshots to your post for posterity if you think it'd be helpful. It's hard to put an official guide together when all the solutions I have are only confirmed to work for one or two people, but it'll be good to have your steps around to see if they work for others.

Speaking of others - if you happen to be reading this comment chain trying to figure out how to get the Mac version working and this method works for you, drop mephits an upvote. It's the easiest way to let me know the method worked for you as well.

The one solution that I've had confirmed working was only confirmed by one person, but I've suggested others try it and they didn't come back saying it didn't work, so that might be the best I've got.

Trying to be as concise as possible; (this isn't something I made, so use your best judgment) download this and extract it, then find "package.json" and rename it to the game name.
Once that's done, go to Game.app/Contents/Resources/app.nw/, then copy these files from my game's files: audio, css, data, fonts, icon, img, js, locales, movies, switshader, credits.html, FOSSILindex.html, index.html, package.json, README.txt.
Once those are copied over, the app should launch. This may require downloading the Windows version of the game instead of the Mac version; I can't test it for myself so I'm a little unclear on that. Definitely let me know if it works for you, though. The next best suggestion I have is to use something like Wine, but I've had a bunch of people say it doesn't work for them.

Yeah, I'm aware. I've been trying to work with people to find a handful of solutions that should work for the majority of people that don't require a bunch of hoop-jumping, but I haven't had much in the way of confirmations one way or the other.

Once I've gotten a decent number of confirmations that a certain method works, I'll start including it in the README and online in places like my dev blog so Mac users can hopefully get something working for themselves.
Trouble with that being not a lot of Mac users download games like mine in the first place, so it's slow going, even working with other devs.

Nope. The price is the price until the game is complete.

Unless it goes on sale or is in a bundle. I do both of those every so often.

If anything, the price goes down. Updates become free after the next build enters early access. There's a link to the free version up on the game page.

Always has been.

That's kind of a difficult question to answer, mostly due to the planned length of the project.

It's going to be too short for the topic to have any meaningful impact, but it'll still come up more than just the once at the start.

All three of those puzzles work the same way. Some panels you just need to step on twice.

There's nothing extra like needing to step on them in a specific direction or anything.

The short answer is to talk to Bianca in the dungeon. She'll tell you what to do.

The long answer depends on which step you're on. If Bianca isn't there yet, you have to continue the story until she asks you to meet you there. Assuming you're stuck on the first step, make sure the challenge is active when you talk to her.

It's kinda story locked, but there are still things you can do with it.

If you find the headstone, it's similar to the two ruined Estates in the swamps in that you have the option to repair or destroy the headstone. The consequences for what you do (if anything) become relevant during the second Haunt, and some other things become available after completing the second Haunt. The state of it will also be relevant in Act 3.

Ah, gotcha. That's on purpose.

After the first set of repairs, the walls stay damaged. The windows will get fixed at the same time the walls do. The windows in the next room over are the same way.
Unless those are fixed and there's no cracks in the walls, but that one window is still broken. If that's the case, I have some bug hunting to do.

Yeah, FOSSIL and JoiPlay don't get along very well.

If you're able to get into the game files to rename things, there's an alternate index file called fossilindex. Try renaming "index.html" to "indexoriginal.html" and that "fossilindex.html" file to "index.html." If that doesn't fix it, there should also be a "FOSSIL.js" file in another folder - make sure that is in all-caps, or the file may not be getting read properly. For example, "Fossil.js" and "fossil.js" are wrong, and might be causing the error.

There isn't really a bugfix page, I take bug reports wherever I can get them.

Do you mind providing a little more info, though? The Master Bedroom in the player Estate doesn't have windows until the final version of it, and I can't find anything broken (narratively or mechanically) with either of those.
Either that or it's something that got fixed in v0.15 and I can't find it because I addressed it already.

Those are really hard to find and solve. I try to include a "text skip run" when I do playtesting to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen, but some of it still slips through anyway. Waiting for movement to finish is always a good fallback if you encounter it, but I appreciate you letting me know so I can go in and add in some fail-safes.

I do my best. Glad to hear that did it!

It sounds like you've encountered a remnant of spaghetti code. You're not locked out of it by progressing through the story.

There's a switch that tells the game whether you've found the place and know what it is that needs to be flipped. Once it's flipped, you'll get a bit of dialogue every time you enter the map that'll tell you that you can work on it and roughly what to do. If you're not getting that dialogue and you've already been there, you might've just found the place before you had Phoebe around to tell you what it is. If that's the case, go inside the shack, check the chest (even if it's empty), then leave the grove and come back. That'll flip that switch and let you go about fixing the place up.
If you're getting dialogue that says to come back alone when you can't invite someone yet, that means I need to update the dialogue.

What released is a special preview version of the game made for a bundle my main project participated in. It is currently only one scene, making it just a few minutes long, but more content is planned for the future.

In theory, yes, but in practice, not as is.
The demo here is only deployed as a Windows version, but with something like Wine, it should be relatively easy to get running.

Ah. Yeah, that does kinda complicate things.

Unfortunately, I don't really have good saves to share at the moment. I've been meaning to do a more thorough playthrough of the entire game and have a series of saves set at different points in the story, but haven't found the time. The only saves I have are test saves that have things missing or broken.

I do, but it's a Patreon benefit. I typically don't invite people outside of my Patrons to join it.

I don't mind being bothered, though. I typically only check most things once or twice per day, but I like talking about my work, even if it's just finding and fixing bugs.

You're welcome!

For Deirlinn's phase moving after Vendra - Apparently the wrong variable got specified somewhere. Found and fixed. Good catch!

For Kala's extra objective - nah, it's not that big of a deal. It's just copying it elsewhere and changing a bit of dialogue to match the situation.

Huh. I swear I had it set up so she could give birth before the second Freeze without jumping through the extra hoops. That'll have to go into my notes so I can look further into it.
If nothing else, it sounds like I should probably put in an alternate way of completing Kala's bonus objective. If it's that finicky, chances are basically no one is able to do it, and that's not how I want that to work. I definitely get it being frustrating if you know content exists and can't get to it despite knowing the steps to find it.

Well, let's try to figure it out. For anyone who doesn't want to see spoilers or how the sausage is made (so to speak), look away.

To get it out of the way, sharing your save will give me a lot of insight into what's happening, if you don't mind doing so (just keep in mind I need both the numbered save and the global.rmmzsave, or I won't be able to load the save). If you don't want to share it publicly, feel free to find me on Twitter (or X or whatever it is now) and DM it to me there. Also, I apologize if I repeat anything I've told you before, I just want to be thorough.
For the mechanical bits, it is possible to get her pregnant before the game phase changes, but you might have to try a few times to get it to happen. Deirlinn has roughly a 28% chance of becoming pregnant every time you try. If you were successful, she'll have an extra line of dialogue every time you repeat the scene while the screen is black. When she gets pregnant, the game checks the current game phase and adds 18 to it. If you have Trophy 0 from Arrival and make Punchinella active, there's an instance of her between Phoebe's house and the elder's house. She'll tell you what the current game phase is, as well as confirm whether Deirlinn is pregnant and what game phase she'll give birth in.
Once the relevant game phase comes up or has passed, the birth event will trigger as soon as you enter the final version of your Estate's yard. That means if you see weeds and your garden and pool look like crap, it will never trigger. Same with if the Freeze is active. If your pool and garden are fixed up and there's no snow on the ground, the event can trigger. So if you did get Deirlinn pregnant in game phase 0, the earliest the event can trigger is game phase 18. If you left Cumhaill after the funeral and returned, the game phase may have been 1 or 2, meaning she'd give birth on (or after) game phase 19 or 20 respectively.  For this particular example, she can't give birth on game phase 19, because the Freeze doesn't end until game phase 20.
There are a few things that could be happening that's causing you to miss the event before the second Freeze. If memory serves, it's possible to go from game phase 18 into the Freeze without going outside, and if you do that, Deirlinn's stuck waiting for the Freeze to end. The second Freeze ends on game phase 20, so if you did end up not getting her pregnant until game phase 1 or 2, that would explain why it isn't triggering. If you want to confirm that, you could try continuing on and seeing if the birth event triggers after you've completed the Freeze.
As an extra bit of information, if you're worried about Kala's bonus Freeze objective (since that requires Deirlinn being in your nursery), you don't need to worry about that locking you out of getting the second Freeze trophy. The trophy doesn't require Quinn or Teely, so if you've completed one (or both) of their extra objectives along with everyone else's, you'll still get the trophy.

I hope this helps.

The "I was close" thing is actually evidence you're making progress towards the trophy there. While the trophy isn't required, getting it does let you skip doing the normal puzzle. That's definitely the hard way, though.

For the regular way, remember the hidden choice cancel mechanic. There's more info on it in the Hints & Tips section of the README.

There's a hidden tunnel elsewhere in the Deep Wilds that you need to find. It's in the western half of the middle bit.
Iris will start giving you hints if you go the wrong way when you're close to it.

Just like the other one, a Maid's Dress is an equipment item. You have at least one either in your inventory or equipped to a party member. You can get more in several ways, including (but not limited to) finding them in chests and as a regular shipment by purchasing the appropriate Contract from Emily.

Just like the other one, a Maid's Dress is an equipment item. You have at least one either in your inventory or equipped to a party member. You can get more in several ways, including (but not limited to) finding them in chests and as a regular shipment by purchasing the appropriate Contract from Emily.

Assuming you mean the ring, it's in Fekhacht. You don't have access to it right away, and it's entirely optional in terms of completing the quest. If you still want to complete the objective, you still can after completing the move.