Patreon Game concepts

Just thought I'd talk about one of the concepts for a Patreon game.

I didn't bother elaborating on the idea with the drill girl, because I kind of guessed that people would want a more neutral character for a Patreon game before I even posted it. However, there is a certain concept at it's core that would work for many different kinds of games, so I'll talk about that, and what could be done with it. It shares some similarities with a previous idea I've had before.

Concept

Home
Basically, there would be a home base. For example, a house. This would be were you start.

World generation

Beyond the house, and the immediate area around it (such as a farm, or additional buildings), everything would be randomly generated (what is generated depends on the game.)

Progression

The farther you get away from the house, the higher level enemies you would encounter, and the better stuff you would get. Some enemies would only start appearing at later levels. Higher level enemies would behave differently, in addition to being tougher.

Relocation

Once you're strong enough, have met a condition, or have a particular item, you could choose to relocate your house to a higher level.  A higher level home base means you can explore much further than before, since your search would begin at the higher level.

Time, Night/Day

As you explore, time would pass. The later it gets, the stronger enemies would become, even at lower levels. Not all enemies are generated when you sleep, so the farther you get from your house, the more dangerous it would be to return. Some stuff may only appear at night.

Events. Ambushes, events, towns.

Some events could be added. For example, you might be ambushed within your house, or during the night depending on your defenses (upgrading the door, windows, etc)

You might encounter travelers, who have their own events, or show up at your home. 

Later on, could have towns that can be encountered, or trading camps. Not sure how these would be handled yet. Could make it so time doesn't pass in them. Could make it so once you find them once, you can go to them any time.

Possible themes, combat, etc (Some of these are mutually exclusive)

Martial arts.

Learning moves, brawling, grappling. Could base the game around a martial arts theme. Finding martial arts masters in the wild that teach you moves, finding and going to martial arts schools, etc.

Medeival

Dueling, high stakes gameplay. Fight fewer enemies at once, but make them stronger. 

Farming

Could be combined with the above. Focus on improving the base-camp, finding stuff to plant in the wild, taming creatures to use at home, etc.

Taming/ Breeding

Could base the game around taming monsters, rather than combat. Make a system that gives each monster a "personality"What food do they like? What behavior from the player do they react to? What other creatures do they like, or hate? Do they get happy in water? Do they get angry when it rains? Do they fucking despise green clothing and those who wear it, or does it make them go mad with lust? Could give every "type" of monster a base set of parameters, and then randomize some of it on a monster by monster basis.

Drilling

Not this one. Only a twin-tailed character with paws and a desire for shiny things digs with drills (You monsters :<).

Goals

There would probably be a short term goal while there's less content. (For example, finding an item)

As more content is added, there would be more end-game goals as the means to achieve them is added. For example, finding all of a type of item, beating all the bosses, etc. Depends on the game.

Personally? I'm leaning towards a martial arts game. Could still combine farming aspects and resource gathering if there's a survival angle to it. The main goal would be making enemies really fun to fight, and dynamic, so that even early on it's worth playing.

Regardless of what kind of game it is, I also like the idea of some enemies feeling like nature, and a part of the game's mythlogy, rather than just enemies. for example it could be a mushroom that comes alive in the rain, or an enemy that fears fire, etc. Stuff that interacts with other parts of the game in a dynamic way.

Whether or not it would be a rogue-lite, I don't know. Could have different modes. If it's a rogue-lite it may benefit from it, since there will be a short about of content early on. If the gameplay is naturally balanced to be repayable multiple times, it might make it easier to play with every update.

Anyhow, that's all for now.

WIP animation

Just thought I'd post the WIP of the Frame-by-frame Fio animation.

I'd animate hair (front) and the breasts after the rest of the animation/stages are done since it would all be based on the way the body is moving. I'll also make adjustments to how the limbs are moving so it isn't just going back and fourth. (right now it's just a forward movement that goes backgwards at the end)

Also, I feel like I wasted a lot of time doing somewhat defined lines, since the final animation won't even have lines. I need to keep it a bit more rough, and rely more on guidelines.


Also just for the heck of it, here's some stuff from a game idea I was thinking about over the past week. (Maybe I'll talk about the gameplay a little later.)

In the order that I drew them,

She grew boobs by the end....

Also, if you think this character looks like someone, you're probably about 1/5 right.

Derpy animation test

One of the reasons why the weekly animations were getting boring, is because they consisted mostly of drawing a single high res image (like a CG), and then editing it a lot. It doesn't really feel like actual animation the way lower res animations does, and can be sort of "stiff". At best it looks like the Shantae animation (when I go all out with the details), but at it's worst it looks like the Hilda animation (where I stuck too much to using layers because I was using Aesprite for the first time). It's boring as hell when it gets too repetitive.

To make it more interesting (And hopefully higher quality in the future), I want to try and animate stuff frame by frame instead, Here's a short animation test I did (sorry about the missing details, I didn't think I'd be posting this so I don't have all parts of the initial rough)

Result wasn't great because I sort of rushed through the initial rough animation, since I was just doing it out of curiosity. In this one, the anatomy and movement of the body isn't really "logical" to say the least -__-

However, the head does serve as a good example of the difference between frame-by frame animation and the weekly animations I've done thus far. Whereas the weekly animations had mostly subtle shifting to create the illusion of depth, and rotation, with frame by frame I can do much more drastic movements.

Since this has at the very least proven to me that animating this way is viable, I'm going to try and redo one of the previous week's WIP animations this way. I'll spend more time on the initial rough, this time around, so we'll see how it turns out.

Ultimately, this would be a better skill to practice long-term, compared to the way I was doing weekly animations before. If it doesn't work, I'll finish the previous animations the way they were, and continue to do weekly animations until I have a developed weekly game idea, and a working engine for it.



Also for the heck of it, here are two style tests I did. I want to find a good style for animation. One that's a little stylized, and easy to work with. The one thing I know for sure is that I'm going to stay away from styles with a lot of lines.

Edit: Oh, by the way, Curly Brace from Cave Story was the winner.

Lumeheid

I've written two long posts in the past two days.

One talking about weekly animations, as well as design considerations regarding weekly game updates and what I would have to do to make a weekly game work. But then I decided that it was too long, convoluted, and that people would be annoyed with it given the current situation with animations.

Then today, I wrote one about Noaika, what my eventual end-goals are, and when I would consider it done. I wrote about weekly animations, what I find boring about them lately, and what I might do to make it more interesting again.

Then, I decided that it was sort of pointless too, and I can't really explain why, or why I'm writing this, for that matter. Hell, if I didn't post this, then I suppose I could make another post tomorrow about how I wrote three posts, but didn't post any of them.

Maybe this comes off as too crazy. Or like someone who isn't crazy who's trying to be? The title might be too pretentious. I wonder how many people know that Kurovadis was a play on Quo-Vadis, and that my my idea of "depth" in naming schemes is little more than google translate and using spelling that get's the fewest google results? 3 is pretty good. I guess this post was good for that, even if I don't post it. (I will)

Over the course of the next blank days, I will be doing blank. I know you'll understand why, because I wrote about it in those two posts I didn't post. Don't blank or you'll miss it.

Patreon-Game plans.

After my last post, I considered how many months I should wait before switching to making a game with weekly updates in place of animations, or if I should at all. After all, surely people who are supporting my Patreon would be pretty bummed if I just stopped doing animations this soon.

Of course, then I remembered that I can just...you know, ask them. >_>

So, keeping in mind that only about half the people who vote in the polls have "voted" so far, around 64% were favor of making a weekly updated game instead of doing animations. Now, it isn't enough for me to give up animations right away, but it is enough for me to start thinking about what I would actually do in more detail. Especially since a lot of the people who voted against it did so because they think that a game would be more difficult.

So, over the next week or so I'll be posting about some of my ideas, and showing off any style tests or sketches that I do. Once I have an idea that I think is viable, whenever I have the time I'll start creating the base engine for the game (What I'll be building on each week). Once it's playable, I'll basically do a test run for two weeks, so that we'll know what kind of content I could do in 8 hours a week.

At that point, after people have played the base part of the game, I'll do another poll on Patreon. If a large majority is in favor of replacing animations with a game, then I'll do it. If it's not a huge majority, then I may do both, but every second week (alternating). It all depends on how people react. May not do games at all.

Anyhow, that's all for now. Feel free to make suggestions about what you'd like to see.

Yup

You can make suggestions for the next character animation now. Tharja was the winner of the previous poll. The "pause" will be ending this week, at which point I'll post the stuff I did, and things will go back to normal.

Also, this isn't what I was referring to when I said I'd show off some screenshots of Noaika, but I already showed this in the comments so I may as well show it here. This is Noaika's original sprite size in the demo, compared to what it is now. (Should also clarify that this is a change that happened a long time ago, so it's not as though it's causing some unforeseen delay now.)



Future Patreon considerations

Also, I've been thinking about what it would be like to eventually do a Patreon funded game instead of animations. (Making a game and adding an enemy or some form of H-content each week.). It isn't something I plan on doing any time soon, but it's something I'm thinking about for the future nonetheless. Since I'll be financially better off once I release Noaika, it might just be something I do for fun since it wouldn't be bound by DLsite content rules, and I wouldn't have to worry about how it will sell because it'd be free.

That said, I'm mostly just trying to think about what the best option for such a game would be, given that it would have to be designed around the idea that it wouldn't have much content in the beginning. I assume it would have to be some sort of sand-box game, a simulator, arena based, or a fighting game. If it's not designed for a lack of content, then it would be little more than a slowly developed free game with a new playable version every week. (But hey, maybe that's what some people would want).

And before you ask; No, Patreon content is ever going to replace my normal games, so don't worry about that -__-

anyway, that's all for now.

Pause!

Okay, okay, gotta get things under control here -___-

I need to finish/do the following.

-Fio animation (Almost done)

-THIS week's animation. (Haven't started)

-Animation tutorial. (Started)

-Image draw (Will see who won tomorrow)

-Make a better page or site for animations. 

-3 week Extra low-res animation

- GIF/Sound versions of previous animations.

So, I'm hitting PAUSE. I'll take the vote for this week's animation, but I won't be working on weekly animations until I've caught up with everything. All the stretch goals were met from the beginning, and the whole sound thing slowed me down a lot.

So, I'm going to take a few weeks to finish all the stuff I need to finish in this order,

1. Fio animation

2. Extras

3. Extra animation

4. THIS week's animation

Once all that is done, I'll go back to my usual schedule. If I keep trying to play catch up the way I am now, the extras will never get done and weekly animations will always be pushed ahead.

Also, just to clarify again; Keep in mind that I'm not spending on all day on these. I'm still working on Noaika, so I can't really take time away from it to marathon everything and get it over with. Of course, this is exactly why these are paid on a per-work basis, as opposed to monthly.

Anyway, that's all for now. If only animations took as little time as that pause image -__-