GameDev 30-07-2022

Before we continue...

Before I continue I first want to remind people about an earlier post (link: https://lerra.fanbox.cc/manage/posts/4139053 ) where I mentioned how the work at my father's old house has come to an end and how I'm finally able to focus more on artwork again. However, I posted that on the 15th of July and I realized, there wasn't a lot of time to fill an entire folder with art and stories. Because of that, I decided to spend the last 10 days of this month on the game I'm building. The result below is from June and July added together. But it must be said: past 10 days I made a ton of progress mainly because I was hoping to get a demo out today. Sadly, after running into several problems, I realized this deadline wasn't realistic. Still, I want to share what I have so far, the problems I'm still facing and see what you think of it. Also, if you have no interest in the game at all, let me know in the comments below. After all, people signed up for artwork and stories. Not an alpha game...

Introduction lore of the game

I won't spoil everything but I guess I can share the intro lore (Grammar nazi's are welcome since I want to put this in the game as an introduction :P ) :

" A long time ago, in a realm where gods consider themselves at home, was an evil goddess who tried to take control of the realm using magic. It was unclear where she had learned it or from who but it was considered impossible. Because although each god has their own powers, magic was something foreign in the realm of gods and could therefore not be controlled. With her new learned magic, the evil goddess created an island. An island of evil. An island of curses.

Those who set out to stop the evil goddess were quickly stopped and added to the already endless list of prisoners. Subjected to her magic they were powerless but to submit to her.

Desperate and with time running out the leaders of the realm turned to the realm of humans and sought out a witch. Born with the ability of controlling magic that the gods oh so feared, she was brought in to fight the evil goddess.

After a fierce battle peace returned to the island and the realm of gods. With the evil goddess defeated, there was nothing to fear anymore.

... but the island remained. And instead of destroying it, many fought to protect it. It quickly became clear that this island and the magic surrounding it, had a strange effect on the goddesses that were once trapped.

The island, once known as a place of torture and prisoners became an island of fantasies and pleasure. With the help of the witch, the goddesses enjoyed the magic which they were submitted to.

Years passed by where many learned to love the island in their own way. The island received a name, befitting the activities that took place there: Prancing fields.

It was fun, for as long as it lasted. Since the witch was no more but a mere human, she did not posses the endless lifespan of the gods. And so, when she came to pass, the island was left without a true ruler.

At first this caused no problems but as time passed by, the goddesses themselves started to experiment with the magic on the island. They craved their submissive status which they now couldn't get anymore.

One failed experiment after another led to magic which could only be described as 'cursed'. It was uncontrollable and instead of fulfilling fantasies, it fulfilled the goddesses their worst nightmares.

This way, the island quickly deteriorated and many goddesses left the island, knowing things would never be the same again. Only a handfull stayed behind, hoping that one day, another witch would somehow find her way into the realm of gods, and turn Prancing fields into a true paradise again.

This is where your story begins..."

Goal of the game

Bring Prancing fields back to its former glory. Achieve this by fighting back the 'cursed' magical items on the island, solve puzzles, help the village by rebuilding certain parts and grow a harem of kinky followers who are willing to serve you whenever, wherever.

The game so far

The last devlog was 2 months ago and it was about improving the looks of the game (link: https://lerra.fanbox.cc/manage/posts/3917975 ).

At this point I realized I needed to stop building systems and instead build something playable. I put the character creator on hold (for now...). It still works but it's a lot of object management and UI that makes simple things overly complicated. The demo/alpha will therefore NOT contain a character creator but it's still on the agenda.

Continuing from last devlog I figured the forest felt kind of empty. At first I wanted to add grass with the built in terrain tool but quickly faced a problem: grass in Unity is a flat plane and standing straight up. With a top down camera this added a horrible/ugly view of the grass. Therefore, grass needed to be THICCC so people could view it from all sides without much performance loss. Even more important: grass that's just waving in the wind DOESN'T ADD ANYTHING. It's a thing I see in too many triple A games these days. And since I'm a solo dev, building an island type game, I felt there needed to be more options for the player to choose from with whatever is on screen at that moment.

I tried to come up with ways of using the grass as a gameplay element instead. Hiding in grass quickly came to mind but I feel one other game sort of nailed it in terms of looking good/adding gameplay: The legend of Zelda: The Windwaker:

This type of grass has always drawn my attention. Mostly because it's more than "just" grass. Looking at Windwaker's gameplay, that grass also consists of just flat planes.

The model I made is inspired by Windwaker's grass. Though I did add some optimizations hoping it would allow the game to run smoother.

All grass models have hitboxes, allowing to make "contact" and hide the player. At the same time I plan to make them in a way where they can be destroyed and when you do there is a chance it will drop items like in Windwaker. Health? Arrows? Common resources? Let's be real, 1 arrow isn't going to cut it when facing an enemy. But the moment you have no health or arrows and there is a chance grass might drop them you'll be happy the grass exists. No running back to town, just start cutting grass...

The grass models above also show different models/colors. This is because I would like to re-use the grass at other parts of the island. Below is an "idea" of what I mean:

I want the island to have several biomes with different resources/NPC's/Enemies and puzzle elements. Naturally, a lot of elements will come back just slightly different.

Like neutral mobs roaming the island: Slimes.

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He said no and left...

But he came back with many friends!

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I wrote simple AI behaviour allowing NPC's to wander around certain areas but they can also follow the player. Slimes are meant to be a neutral mob in all biomes. Therefore I wrote a see through shader which can have many different color combinations. Different colors: different resources/loot. Keep in mind though, slimes love water and that's where you'll usually find them.

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Although the slimes have their own pathfinding, they do not walk around players. They're very stubborn apparently... I guess this can be used as a feature instead. I'm imagining slimes pushing a player into the "wrong" direction...

The slimes are simple for a reason: They too are meant to add more than just "fighting/slaying" to the game. I plan to use them for puzzles with pressure pads etc. At some point I want the player to be able to pick them up and place them where they are needed or even lure away enemies...

Speaking about enemies, I shared an image on discord earlier this month about a drone I modeled and textured:

Drones have the same behaviour as slimes. They usually wander around and can follow the player if you turned him friendly. In terms of gameplay: if you befriended a drone, you can switch to the drone as your main character. This is extremely useful in certain situations...

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I plan to add drones to random locations in biomes/the island. You'll never find them in the same place that way. I wrote a working prototype script giving the drone a view angle/cone. Together with the grass that I showed earlier this creates moments where you can choose to fight drones or hide from them in the tall grass or by walking around their view angle. Drones usually patrol, scanning areas for research purposes:

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I plan to add more types of drones but for now I have one model with different textures for different biomes:

As mentioned before, drones can help players get out of nasty situations but sometimes the player has no choice but to go and do the puzzle his/her-self.

I made machine models/textures/scripts which are meant as props and interactible objects at the same time. To get an idea of what I mean:

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I know the scanner is kinda lame/the same as the drone, but it gets the idea across. Stand on the pad to get scanned and YES. Without the right requirements, the scan would return a false and therefore, the door of the machine wouldn't open. Also, notice how the blue (neutral) button turned green to indicate the result of the scan. It would turn red if the requirements weren't met.

Now I have more machines/models to show, but I'm not going to spoil those. It's up to you to find out how they work/give you what you want.

For the demo I thought an options panel with graphics & performance was a minimal requirement. Hence I put that together and YES this works too although it has one visual bug: You can turn off the active toggles. This does nothing in the background so I left the bug in for now.

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I updated the indoor models too. But there are still A LOT that I need/want to do. For the alpha I only prepared a few of them.

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I went with the classic oldschool "2d" indoor style. It's a good tradeoff considering outside and inside are seperate places that I can "lock/shutoff" and deny players access. Although the above scene looks a bit empty right? Almost as if there's something hidden for the player to find... No spoilers. Go and find it yourself when you get the chance :P

The cave models aren't done yet but I can give a screenshot of what I have so far:

The inside models are modular, allowing me to set up larger buildings/rooms quickly. I'm also planning to create dungeons that change layout each new day in the game. This way, some houses and caves on the island will provide a slightly different experience every in-game day since loot is never in the same place.

So... now that we've went through the boring part, it's time for that stuff you came for: Bondage. I already mentioned earlier how I put the character creator on hold. Instead for the alpha I created some premade models that are triggered at certain points or situations in the game. You've already seen the standard outfit:

There will be moments in the game however where you or your companions need to complete puzzles or in some cases you might lose fights against enemies. When this happens you or your companions might be forced to dress up a bit more... kinky...

Now depending on the situation, this can be bad (Is that latex glued on?...). But even so, you're still able to interact with objects, so finding a way to get out of this sticky suit is still possible.

Worst case scenario, you might end up like this:

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For the big breast lovers:

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This is a combination of animations, blend shapes, the right models and my own made shaders. But the shaders have a big flaw still... Realtime point lights and spotlights apparently don't work... yet. I found this out 2 days ago and realized I wasn't able to fix this before the devlog. But for now, I'm very, VERY happy with the result I have so far.

... Maybe we can add one more thing to the pile of: "OH NO THIS IS NOT GOOD AT ALL!"

Inspired by Scriptor's game (which has been very fun to play through) I decided to create my own leathery/latex worm sack. WITH SQUEEZE ANIMATION! :P

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It's a bit choppy since I still need to write a proper dialogue script. But you get the idea :P

There is a lot I can still mention/talk about, but that would be more technical etc. Like how I changed the movement from "click to walk" to WASDA keys where your mouse cursor acts as your eyes. Or how I added different sprites for the mouse cursor. But that's... not that interesting. As of right now there are no sounds in the game yet so I still got that on my list. The first demo features a forest, some houses with clues etc about what happened/is going on and some small puzzles/bondage elements which the player can play around with. Don't expect too much... It's not a AAA game after al.

I want to end this devlog talking about the images/stories. Next month I'm continuing the usual stuff. So expect some images coming your way and of course a new dropbox folder. This also means I can't work as much on the game as I did the past few days (sorry...).

Thank you for reading my devlog. I hope you like what you read!

Let me know what you think of the footage above, like? not like? continue? quit? Let me know!