Dev Diary #6: Both too much to show and not enough

Hello everyone,

Things are progressing for the next update. However I'd rather say it right now. The game won't be ready for the 31st. I'll try to take as least extra time as possible but in the worst case I'm going to need a whole extra week.

The delay is due to different factors: The fact I worked for elements that won't be in this update (the combat part), the fact that early february was not much very productive with the whole Patreon thing, the fact that February has less days (yeah it's a shitty excuse but where's the fun if I can't use it :p) and also the fact that I spent more than a week working on Ambriosa's future secondary characters, which is something I could've done later but got hooked into working on and it delayed the rest -_-

However I stand firm on what I said previously: we'll still work on TH2 after that update. Consider it a huge update split in two. And as I said previously, that next update should take less time.

Anyway, the title says it all. I have too much to show in terms of possible mechanics, but at the same time, since we still have elements that are in WIP stage visually speaking, I don't have that much that is good enough for a Fanbox/SS post ^^'

So I'll first compensate with one of the new character you'll find in the next update (not that one):

Now I've said it for a long time but the majority of the dev time is spent on the brothel. And it's the first time we're implementing something THAT big in an RPG Maker game, so we probably spent too much time on things that didn't needed it. It's extremely complicated because it's not a total stand-alone, in which case you can establish a list of things to do in the order you want and it's not something built with RPG Maker only either. This 50/50 thing made it quite awkward as sometimes you have to do things on RPG Maker, sometimes, just in the javascript files. And this back and forth easily scatters you everywhere when you're not prepared (like it's the case right now.)

All in all, we're at the end of the part we wanted to implement, but still, when I see the time spent for the result, it's a bit heartbreaking that something that consists in a 10-15 seconds gameplay loop took that long to design. Of course there are side elements. I showed the clearing part in the last Dev Diary. And there are other things. But you get the idea. Let say it's ambitious. I can show you two screens that are considered over for now.

Please be aware that everything was designed by Hime and me. Some technical elements were done by Peak but we basically had no UI designer for that part (I'll come back to why one day :x) So I'm sure it looks amateur as fuck compared to other games, but with Hime's and my shitty level in terms of "coming up with a design" that's easily the best we've done so far (so, technically, the best we can provide for now :x). Of course, as time will pass, we'll improve things on their visual look.

You'll forgive me if I don't go over the mechanics: I've already made a post (https://blueaxolotl.fanbox.cc/posts/1201549) to explain them. If you want to see how it was looking before Hime dropped completely TH2 for SoV3 you can also check that one: https://blueaxolotl.fanbox.cc/posts/1424795

And don't fear, there will be tutorials to explain everything in details. Even if it's simple as fuck as the only thing you'll have to do is pick a girl. To explain as quick as possible what's on screen : each window is a room of the brothel. Rooms are locked until you've done all the necessary things to have them available. It's meant to evolve with the game. For this update and the next one you'll be stuck with a single room. You just have to put a girl to work in the free room and when you click on "open the brothel for the night", everything's automatic. The girl will have sex with a set number of customers (once again I won't go into details.) And once it's over, there will be calculations that will appear and you'll earn a certain amount of money for the night. While not the only way it'll be the MAIN way to earn money in the game. As they'll have sex, the girls will gain XP and will be able to raise some of their stats, allowing them to (among other things) earn more per trick so more for Kaya.

This is the girl selection screen. Of course it looks empty cause at the beginning you'll only have Kaya and Halcyon available. As you'll progress through the main story, more and more girls from Ominira will be available to work in the brothel. The ultimate goal being, as Kaya said it at the end of the first version: to have the entire cast of the first game being available in the brothel.

We're kinda proud of the passport idea. that's the kind of thing were we had a base look but Peak helped a lot in improving it. It's supposed to contain all the necessary informations needed to select a girl for the evening. The bottom part will contain stamps that will show what's the girl's highest rank (once again I don't detail.) If you watched the small video I posted in Dev Diary #4 above, you can see we've come a long way from the original design to that. But the absurd amount of in-betweens were not interesting to show cause most were average to really ugly, hence why I don't post that kind of stuff ^^'

That's all I can show you for the moment. We'll try to release this new version asap. Unfortunately, there are still many things to do. As you can guess, I probably won't post anything new until the release of the update. I'll see you then!

See ya o/