Clothing, color swapping, format.

In case you missed the first post

http://www.kyrieru.com/2018/12/starting-free-ongoing-game.html

In the game, I plan on including different outfits. However, I need to decide how exactly I want to handle them.

Clothing will probably be entire outfits, as opposed to individual pieces, like this.



However, there are some things that might layer, such as bags or other misc items.



I'll use palette swapping so that certain outfits can have separate versions (leather, iron, dark, etc). Because the game will have equipment mechanics (and especially since there will be few outfits in the beginning), any variation helps.

Other thing to keep in mind is;

because the game is 2d, editing sprites is very time consuming. Especially if the game is going to be frequently updated, I can't have variations of every H animation for every piece of clothing.

My current plan is to have all long complex animations be nude, with clothing being removed through some means.



I've also thought about having 1-3 simple "common" player animations that would be re-used across enemies (groping, basic sex, etc). Each outfit would have these animations, and the outfit would be removed at the end of the animation. Then the enemy would switch to using their unique, more complex animation with the nude player.

I'll still have to animate all actions with outfits in mind, though, since editing 70 frame animations is not fun. (I know, because I did it in Noaika in some cases -__-)

As a way of mitigating re-animating every time I add a new outfit, I may also make it so some gameplay actions are also outfit specific. I'm not sure yet though. For example if the player could fish, the three options would be be,

1. Player can only fish in a fishing outfit. (detailed smooth animations)
2. Fishing uses re-purposed poses or animations. (Works with all outfits but can be repetitive)
3. Fishing only has like 2 frames. (works with every outfit, but can be time consuming the more actions and outfits you have over time, even with only 2 frames)

I'll probably end up using a little of all of those methods, depending on how important the action is.

There would probably also be outfit specific H-animations.

Also, still thinking about the tile style. I need to avoid using too many colors, so that it's practical to just add stuff on a whim without drawing tiles for a whole day.



Last thing to mention is palette swapping for choosing skin and hair colors.
I'm still not sure how I'll handle it.



I could make it so that the player has full control over it, or I could do something gameplay related. For example, if the game is a rogue-lite where you partially start over when you lose, I could make it so you take on the color scheme of whatever enemy you lost to (as if the protagonist and the monster had a kid.). Dunno yet.

Anyhow, that's all for now.

Starting a free ongoing game

Because none of my large projects will be finished for at least a few months (And because I don't like posting spoilery stuff), I've decided to start something that gets updated regularly to help fill the content gap as I work on larger projects. 

Basically, it will be a free game that starts out simple, and is slowly expanded upon. Every time I change or add content (hopefully something small every week), I'll update the version on this site, and it will be playable regardless of the state. (as opposed to long periods of time between huge updates)

I was going to switch my Patreon to a project like this given that game content is easier for me than high res animations. However with the sales of Eroico, I don't really have any financial concerns at the moment. So instead this will mostly just be something fun to people to mess with.

I'll be talking about the process as I go, what I'm doing, what I plan on doing, etc.

Style, protagonist

First thing on my list of things to do is come up with the idle pose for the protagonist, and the overall style.

Because I want the game to be easy to work with, it can't be too high res, but I also don't want it to be too small, given that I almost always regret using small resolutions later. In addition to the resolution, I also need to decide how many colors to use, given that certain shading styles can slow down the process, especially with tiles.

For now, I'm trying to stick to 3 shades per color.

My plan for this game is something I've spoken about in the past,

Basically I want to make something re-playable on a weekly basis, as opposed to something linear like you'd see in some enty projects that get updated monthly.The game will be an action platformer with some harvest moon type elements, and will probably become more rogue-like over time.

In initial versions, the game won't have many bells and whistles. The first goal is making the player animations, an enemy, and an H animation. That way, as the long term format is built up there's still new H on a frequent basis to make it worth playing.

It may be a few weeks before the first playable update, as I'll be moving very soon.
However I'll still be posting updates on graphics and the like as I make them.

Anyhow, that's all for now.

XP-Pen VS XP-Pen

Input lag

Stylus Deadzone

Bad software options

Stylus buttons jerk the cursor.

Don't buy an XP-Pen.

Why the hell am I bothering with these.

Huion VS Wacom

Quick sort of review of the Huion H1060P

I've been using a Wacom Intuos large for around 8 years, and it's worked spectacularly the entire time. However, the one I have has three disadvantages.

1. It's huge, so drawing can lead to shoulder strain.
2. It takes up a lot of space on my desk, which causes me to have to stretch to reach my keyboard. (My keyboard rests past my tablet, in front of the monitor.)
3. It has large boarders around the active area, which leads to more wasted space.

New wacoms have fixed the boarder problem, however I figured I'd give the Huion I shot because of the price, $74.99 USD, compared to the wacom, which is $349 USD. Since it also has smaller boarders.

Getting past the fact that it feels weird to use a different tablet after 8 years, here's what I consider to be the most relevant factors.

1. When pressing down the stylus, the nib pushes in slightly depending on how hard you press. A small portion of this range is a deadzone, and the pen will not register as drawing until it's beyond this point.

This is not the end of the world when drawing with things like ClipStudio or PS, Sai, etc. Generally a light touch will be 0 opacity or 0 width when drawing anyway. However, for pixel art it ends up being more of a problem, since you are often doing single "clicks" to draw single pixels, and a touch that's too light will sometimes not go past the deadzone. This is also a factor when clicking buttons in menus, etc.

2. The stylus is still detected when it's a short distance from the tablet. However, if you hold a button and move the stylus around above the tablet (such as holding middle mouse to move the view), the range is slightly shorter than the Wacom, and I find that when I'm not paying attention, it will cut in and out of detecting the button press because the stylus is too far away.

3. The Stylus feels rather cheap, and I find the shape to be inferior to the Wacom. It's somewhat slippery and plastic feeling, and my hand tends to drift farther down the pen since it tapers. Wacom's stylus flares out at the end, which prevents your hand from going past a certain point. It also has a rubbery texture which makes it easier to grip. The Huion makes more of an audible clicking sound when you touch the stylus to the surface, whereas the Wacom does not.

It's possible that you could use a normal pencil/pen grip to fix some of these problems.

My Conclusion

- If money is not a concern, buy a Wacom Intuos pro medium.
- If money is a concern and you will only do pixel art, a Wacom intuos pro small or a non pro version may be best.
-If you can't afford an intuos medium, and will mostly be drawing, then the Huion will do the job.
While the stylus feels cheap, the tablet itself does not.
- The extra $275 could buy you a monitor, a keyboard, a graphics card, or any number of other upgrades that may benefit you more than an intuos pro.
-The tablet buttons, the fact that the stylus needs to be charged and lacks and eraser are not relevant to me at all, however they may be to you.

Some of the Huion's disadvantages are also things you could get used to, or may not even notice if it's your first tablet .

Anyhow, after this I'll be taking a look at Wacom's current tablet line. It's possible that a none pro might be the sweetspot for my uses. I'll use the Huion for a while longer, but it will probably stick around as a spare.

Steam results, news.

Eroico/Steam

Well, it's safe to say that Eroico has done pretty well on Steam.

I can't say how much it's made so far, however I can say that just in the first half month it made more than it did on DLsite in it's lifetime. That is, financially it was similar to releasing a new game. In the future I'll be releasing any games I make on Steam.

As for Kurovadis, I plan on releasing it on Steam and other platforms. However I'll probably pay someone to finish the CGs and make all the marketing stuff to avoid turning it into a time sink. Unlike Eroico, Kurovadis would not be an overhaul, and would not have many changes, outside of a lower price.

Patreon/Animations

That said, because I won't have to worry about money for a while, I plan on shutting down the Patreon.

The long-form animations were fun in the beginning, however the need to one-up the quality and do something that made each animation "worth it" sort of caused me to drag my feet after a while. Part of the problem is that if I didn't find an initial pose or concept I was happy with, it was difficult to commit to animating. It also delayed game development pretty often as I'd sit down to do a Patreon animation, but just wouldn't have the drive.

I'll be finishing the Hex Maniac animation (Yes, I still haven't gotten around to finishing that one). Because there won't be any more animations after that, I won't be charging Patrons for it, given that the current vote won't be used.

What's next/mods

I'll be moving out very soon. Hopefully living by myself will make me a bit more productive.

Other than that, my main goal is to just spend 100% of my time working on one of the in-progress games, finish it, and then get back to Noaika. Technically I could go back to Noaika now, but because I'm going to be porting Noaika to GM2, and because the game I'm working on now is meant to establish a bit of a cohesive framework, I want to finish it first so that I can integrate them all into Noaika.

Here and there I've also worked on things like this:

The above image is an editor that I'm making that will allow me to load an animation, load sound effects, and place the sounds on a timeline at different pitches/volume. I can also control frame timing, loop points, and a couple other things. Then at the end, I can export it as a .txt file used by the game to control everything. This cuts down on the time it takes to do sounds like the ones seen in Eroico, which required me to do everything in FL studio, export each sound, and then manually write down frame times.

This also got me thinking about the potential of mods, since editors could double as mod creation tools. It's something I'll have to consider more, however, since I don't "need" an editor for everything. I don't want to create a situation where I make a tool that's limited compared to pure GML, but that I feel compelled to use to avoid incompatibility with user mods, etc.

Unity

A while back, I briefly messed around in Unity for a day or two.

Unexpectedly, everything feels weirdly easy. Thing is; in GM, once you understand position, movement and basic variable stuff, you can kinda do anything. Likewise in Unity it feels like once you know some basic C#, position, and rotation, everything else falls into place quickly.

It's both reassuring and depressing, because on one hand I feel like I could do anything, and a lot of what I know about 2d mechanics carries over to some degree. On the other hand, it's depressing because it's so easy that it makes me wonder how the hell people make so many bad 3d games with Unity. I guess a lot of people go in trying to avoid programming as much as possible, and just rely on the asset store.

Either way, it's reassuring to for me to know that an H Zelda or Darksouls is not only possible, but honestly not that out of the question. (I'd start now, if I didn't have so much shit to do -__-)

That said, for 2d games, I don't think I'd ever use Unity instead of GM. While Unity is easier than I thought for 3d, it still has aspects that make it slower to work with for traditional simple 2d games (which is what all of my games are).

Boring health stuff

One of the things that was causing my a lot of delay has be sorted out "enough" that it doesn't actively affect me any more. However lately my shoulder has been giving me a lot of trouble, so I'm probably going to have to start focusing on exercising my arms more. I wanna make stuff forever, rather than having it cut short in 10 years.

I've purchased a smaller tablet, in the hopes that the smaller range of shoulder movement will be better. Until now, I've been using an Intuos large, which probably contributed to the shoulder problems. I went with a medium Huion, figuring it was worth a shot, so I'll probably do a review of sorts later.

If anybody has any suggestions that might help with shoulder pain, I'd be happy to hear it. I'll also be trying some eye tracking software, and now also use a mouse with my left hand to try and minimize the time using my shoulder, for example.

Anyhow, that's all for now.

Eroico has been released on Steam

Eroico has been released on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/947600/Eroico/

If you download the demo, your unlock codes (Eroico or Noaika) can be placed in the game folder called "cloud", which will unlock the game as usual (uninstalling it may remove it from the libary though). If you've bought the game before and want a Steam code, email me and I'll see what I can do. However it might not happen right away, since I don't have the ability to create codes freely, they must be requested from Steam.

There have been a few minor updates:
-F1 now activates a cheat mode (the 1 key refills health and magic, 2 restarts the room for speed running practice.)
- New title screen
- The ending has different music, and is now animated.
- A few bug fixes.
- The Steam version should now automatically apply button mapping to Xinput controllers, which aren't supported normally in GM8.
- Cloud saves.

Edit: I'll be uploading the updated version to all the other platforms soon. (DLsite, Nutaku, Mangagamer, here.)

Eroico will be on Steam

With Steam opening it's doors to uncensored games, I ran out of reasons not to sell games there

https://store.steampowered.com/app/947600/Eroico/?beta=0

I will probably release future games on Steam as well, assuming the doors don't get slammed shut after they realize crazy people keep coming in.

Would also be convenient if unlock codes purchased here unlock demos downloaded through Steam. Though I think that would probably be against some kind of rule, so I'll have to check.

Edit: Also, sorry for not responding to comments on previous posts as quickly. Blogspot hasn't been emailing me when people comment like it used to. Need update some settings.

Early GM2 template

I've said before that I want to do a GM template at some point, one that beginners with GM can use.

While this doesn't contain much yet, I figured I'd post it here anyway, since I happened to make a quick version for someone else. This doesn't contain what someone would need to make an entire game, obviously, but some people might find parts of it useful.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/s0a819yg3sz7343/template_4.zip/file

This contains
- Tile collisions
- A basic camera system with limiters
- Gamepad support
- Scripts for checking controls and collisions.
- Basic state system

It's rough around the edges since it's derived from the game I'm working on, so there's some stuff that isn't too clean, at the moment.

Anything in the project with blue icons represents files that I will update/add functions to later,
The goal being that the template could be updated without breaking a game project so long as game-specific code is not added to those files. The template could be updated by simply dragging the update into the GM project folder.

This isn't something I'm working on every day, but I want to add stuff to it every so often. Initially I will be refining how the system should work as a whole (since I want to be able to use it myself as a base for games later), but later I also plan on adding templates for things like the player and enemies. The end goal would be the ability to make a game without programming, for artists who just want to make graphics and design levels, while still having a system that programmers can modify to save some time.

I'm open to any suggestions, as far as adding stuff or how it should look from a usability standpoint goes. Will be a while before it can be used for anything by non programmers in a plug and play fashion, though.

Enemy states and formating

Sorry about the silence. Working on stuff, life stuff, etc.

I've talked before about making a template of some kind for people to use. While I'm not currently working on one directly, I am trying to streamline certain parts of my workflow, and that inherently means making something that's easy to use, but flexible.

Part of  the process of making a game is enemy behavior, or rather, the actions an enemy can perform. There are a few methods for making an entity "do" something in GM.

You can have every action as a different object,

Or all the code can be contained within one object, with each action/state being represented by a number.

Initially, I found it easier to use the first method, as when an object is created it has it's own set of events (create, step, animation end, etc). It also made it easier for me to debug games since an issue with an action could be easily isolated, and messing up an object wouldn't affect the rest.

However, it isn't really practical as games become more complex, and as I've become better at programming my original reasons for using it have become less relevant. GM also added #region which is very helpful for keeping code separated.

States
That said, for the second method everything an object can do is separated into a state. For example, a simple jump upwards might be state 5. So switching to a jump is essentially just;

state = 5

So, if you wanted a character to do this,

You can separate it into two states
- move until edge (1)
- wait and turn (2)

So, the object hits an edge, changes the state to 2, it plays out the state, and then it's built into state 2 that it returns to state 1 at the end.

This is basically the manual version of the method; every state does something very specific. However, despite the fact that "wait" and "turn" might be a part of other actions, they are combined, and only go back to state 1. This means that if I wanted to add a new move that involves waiting and turning before doing an attack, I need to make a separate set of states.

Sequences

So instead, you can do things in a sequence. Let's say you have the following states;

- pace (1)
- wait (2)
 - jump back (3)
- jump forward (4)
- melee attack (5)
- neat pose (6)

If you wanted an enemy to jump back, do a pose, jump forward, attack, wait, and then go back to pacing. Instead of programming each state to lead into the next manually, we can program a system that plays them in order based on a simple sequence of numbers. This would be the above sequence.

sequence[0] = [3,6,4,5,2,1]

Thus, that "move" is sequence 0.

By doing this, you can set a sequence to play out, rather than a single state. This also comes in handy for cutscenes, where you need to be able to animate characters quickly and easily.

Format

That said, the question becomes, how much control do I want/need, and how should it be formatted? If you have a state for "jump", what should determine how far, or the direction? For example, you could have each variation be a separate state;

-move around (1)
-shoot (2)
-low jump (10)
-high jump (11)
-low jump back(12)
-high jump back(13)

a low jump back and then shooting would be

sequence[0] = [ 12 , 2 , 1 ]

Or, you could be more complicated with the arrays, such as having modifiers included in the sequence. So instead it might be written like this;

sequence[0] = [[12,5,3],2,1]

With every state having a set of optional modifiers. In this case 12 would be the state, 5 could be jump height, and 3 could be horizontal speed.

In either case, the more more states you eventually have, the more difficult it would be to remember them all. It might make more sense to name states with strings;

sequence[0] = ["jump back", "shoot", "move around"]

Which I guess would looks like this with modifiers

sequence[0] = [["jump back",3,1],["shoot",bullet_1_ob,5],"move around"]

Yikes. Makes sense but probably looks intimidating.

Other formats
Instead of having everything in one array, you could also split controls into multiple optional arrays.

sequence[0] = ["wait","jump","shoot","wait","pace"]
sequence_xspeed[0] = [0,2,0,0,0]
sequence_sprite[0] = [0,0,0,pose_sprite,0]
sequence_time[0] = [10,0,0,50,0]

The first chooses the states to play in sequence,
The second chooses the xspeed modifier for each state,
The third overwrites the sprite that the state displays, with 0 using the default.
The fourth would change the wait time.

Using only sequence[0] with nothing else would use the states with defaults. Could also include states like "jump_back" so that there's a quick and dirty method if more control isn't required.

Of course, it's hard to say how useful so many options would be outside of making a template since; at the end of the day just programming what you want is generally going to be faster for things like enemy specific attacks. Where it would probably be the most useful for me personally is simply creating movement patterns, and for cut-scenes where you definitely need some kind of system.




Words words words...

Anyhow. Let me know if you know of any good standard practice for dealing with states. Maybe something that other engines like RPG maker do particularly well, or stuff you'd like to see when I do eventually make a template.

Back to work...

What kind of protagonist do you prefer?

Figured I may as well just ask, kind of interested to see.


Content of each option

To give more information; this question assumes that a game would be spending the same amount of time on H content regardless of the type. A female protagonist would have 100% of the time spent on animations that include that female character. A game in which you can choose your gender would have that time split between the two.

In the case of my games, a male protagonist implies 100% of the enemies are female, with few body altering mechanics applying to the protagonist. Mechanics such as romance/affection or pregnancy are available for this type of game, involving enemies or other characters.

A female protagonist can involve mechanics like pregnancy, and while mind altering mechanics (lust, lewidity) are possible on a male protagonist, they are more common with a female one. Enemies can be male or female. Romance/affection mechanics are less appealing on male enemies, but would still be possible with either gender.

I'm also more willing to have a female character turn into a male as a mechanic, rather than vice-versa. That said, in a male/female choice game I would be able to add gender bending mechanics in either direction, as at that point it's basically just up to the player what they want, and the distinction isn't something I have to make.

Viability of each option

Gender bending and futa options assume that the majority of the animations would use the default female character, and roughly 25%, a little more, or a little less, would use the secondary form or attribute.

The easiest options are to have either 100% male, 100% female, or a 25% futa attribute, as none of these require extra sprites.

25% male gender bent requires only sligtly more work, as it would likely be a special "form" in which not all gameplay mechanics are applicable (moveset may be different, items may be different, etc).

Male/Female choice requires the most work, or limits the mechanics without further development time, as if there are sets of clothing, action animations, etc, each gender must have a sprite set for them. If these mechanics are not present, then the work would not be drastically different.

Oh hai money

Hwelp, looks like I may have missed a Nutaku payment so I got two at once. Turns out I have plenty of cash at the moment.

For now, I'll get the dental stuff done and go back to working on the game. Will work on the current Patreon animation here and there, but there's no huge rush since I'll be fine for now.

After the final two animations are done, if I still need the Patreon for income I'll switch to a weekly or bi-weekly game. However, I do want to clarify a few things regarding patreon and what I will and wont do;

1. I will not, and will never do any sort of pay-per-month patreon. I will only do pay-per-release models.

2. I will not do any patreon wherein I'm being supported to work on full commercial games (games I'll sell).

What I would do is a pay-per-update game designed solely to be a patreon project. That is, the game would be free to everyone, with patrons getting the updates early along with some kind of voting power. After the game is complete or I stop working on it, it would not be sold.

After Noaika is released, I will likely not do Patreon stuff anymore, as at that point I'll have 3-4 in-progress games to work on and sell. Though if I'm doing a game patreon at that point, I may tie it up into a finished state over the course of a few months and give it closure.

Anyway, all that out of the way, I do need to start thinking a bit more seriously about what I'll actually do for a weekly updated game.

I think that for it to work well, it should be something that is replayable. I've seen projects like Guilty Hell and Unholy Sanctuary that grow over time into a traditional game, but I find that at a certain point it isn't really the same as playing a normal game if you're either replaying the entire game every time an update is released, or experiencing the one new thing and waiting for the next one.

I think that something with some degree of procedural generation and simulation would probably be my best bet. Either a Rogue-Lite meant to be played in sessions, or something in which success comes and goes, even if you slowly progress. Either way it would be a platformer though.

An initial state for the game would probably be a home location, a procedural generated area outside of that home, with the initial goal just being survival

Each update would contain some kind of H content + game content. For example one update would be a new enemy + an animation, while another update might be new items/mechanics + an animation for an existing enemy, or simply an environmental animation.

The main thing I haven't figured out is whether to focus on long term progression or not. A world you "live in" and come back to each day, VS a game where you're meant to play and win or lose within 20 minutes to an hour. Simple pleasures of farming or befriending monsters doesn't really work if none of it is long-term.

A combination of the two might work, wherein there is long term progression, but also the risk of losing progress or assets, either losing aspects of your character, or encountering situations in which the status quo must be taken back over time. Perhaps with leveling your character to further levels requiring you to start from 0 in order to slowly build your persistent base stats, or losing your home location and needing to take it back. Will have to think about it.

Tell me what you guys would like to see from such a game. There's also the matter of the gender of the protagonist, since chances are it wouldn't be viable to do both genders and two sets of enemies, unless the graphics are low res.

Goings ons

Still working on stuff. Frustrating delay-of-the-day is the need to get some expensive dental work done.

Unfortunately, Aster didn't really sell much on DLsite. They stuck it away in a nebulous shooter section, so it doesn't get the exposure of other action games. While I think that if it were a better game it wouldn't have mattered, it is somewhat frustrating to see it not get a normal chance. Might sell it on Nutaku, but man I really don't want to go through the process of preparing promotional stuff again.

So, I'm currently figuring out what to do. Probably Patreon animations. The dental stuff is time sensitive, so I can't simply wait until a game is finished; which is what I would do if that wasn't the case. Every situation like this kinda just widdles down my patience; I just want to work on games have nothing else to worry about.

After I finish what Patreon animations I need to do, if I need money again I'll probably switch from animations to a patreon game. Even an initial week or two of getting something to a "build on" state would be wasting less time than I do spinning my tires on some of these animations.

Next project

I've decided to work on the mario/sonic style game. Once it's done, I'll go back to Noaika full-time. and stop the patreon animations.

To give some context, this game was more or less started because I made some sprites for fun, and added basic controls to test gamepad settings while I was working on Noaika. Stuff slowly got added after that whenever I was bored.

Once GMS2 came out, I used it as a guinea pig for testing the new Tile-based collisions, the benefit of which is that tiles dont slow down the game, which makes things like this possible with little performance impact.

https://i.gyazo.com/d32c8ddedbdd29bcce0f78ba7dca0da5.png

It also speeds up collisions quite a lot, which is why I'll be converting Noaika to GMS2 as a first order of buisness, after this game is done.

As for the game itself, as you can probably tell by the fact that I keep calling it mario/sonic, it's an attempt at a movement based game, with some inspiration taken from each. It will include an  rpg style world map, with some metroidvania elements.

There have been a few snags here and there in finding the game's identity, which I guess is to be expected when you rip stuff from two entirely different games. Luckily I "think" I've mostly sorted those out for now. The two main problems were basically "what happens when you roll into an enemy" and "what the hell are coins going to be used for", both of which conveniently had the same solution which was "depends what item you have equipped".

At the moment, messing with moves is still an active process. Many enemies and level mechanics are done, however they will be changed as the player's moveset gets refined and added to. Being about movement, it's important that I have most of the elements complete before finalizing levels or even a demo.

Anyhow, that's all for now.

Thinking

*dusts off blogger*

While I'm waiting on some stuff to get Aster on DLsite, I'm trying to figure out what I should work on and release next. Always the question..

Needless to say, my main goal at this point is to work on Noaika. My mistake over the past couple years has been saying "I'll release a quick side project so that I can work on Noaika without worrying about money!"

Enter feature creep, uncertainty, and the usual health problems, and I've done a ton of work on various projects without any of them being released. I'd start a project, get a ton done in a week or two, and then the project would blow up into something bigger. I'd work on it a bit before thinking "this is going to take too long", and off I'd go starting another side project, honestly believing that I'd be able to hold myself back and make something small in a month or two.

Hell, Noaika itself was initially a side project taking a break from this



In fact, let's take a look at the trainwreck so far.

Crimson Blue
    > Got too big
         Crimson Brave as side project
               >Got too big
                           >  Kurovadis as side project
                           > Finished Kurovadis.
X Crimson Blue
X Crimson Brave
Try some stuff
Unnamed Metroidvania
   > Was unsure of direction
         >Started Eroico to take a break with lower res sprites
         >Finished Eroico
X  unnamed Metroidvania
Martial arts game
   > Too high res
X  Martial arts game      
Low res metroidvania
                > Cant even remember why I abandoned it
X Low res metroidvania

Umbrella girl
         > Got too big, almost die from health problems.
                    > Noaika as small side project. Behind the scenes demo       
                    > Upsize Noaika due to feedback
                          > Collab side project while working on Noaika
                    > Public Noaika demo
                   > Health,  money problems.
                   > Noaika Pre-orders 
                  > Work on Noaika,
                  > Patreon animations start
                                               > let's make a side project to get out of this rut.
                                               > Nope
                              >Slow work on Noaika
                                               > let's make a side project to get out of this rut.
                                               > Nope
                               > Patreon animations get harder and slow down                           
                               >Slow work on Noaika
                                                > let's make a side project to get out of this rut.
                                                > Nope
                             
                                 Eroico RE
                                         >  Finish Eroico RE
                               > Work on side project
                               >Pick up previous side project, Aster
                                         >Release Aster


That's a lot of red.
                                
To count them up , I've worked on about 12 projects, 3 of which have been sold, and 5 of which are anywhere from 40 to 70% done in dev limbo, and the rest will never see the light of day. Noaika itself is basically a game and a half given that it has three versions at this point that are totally different.

Patreon worked well initially, but has slowed me down quite a bit. It's become harder and harder to come up with animation concepts that dont feel like I'm repeating myself, and a lack of focus and uncertainty in ideas turns into procrastination. I'm always left with the thought "I wish I could just do 5 game animations instead of this one big one"

So what now?

All that said, working on Noaika without doing something else is still not an option at this point, financially. Do I try and finish one the many side projects while doing patreon animations so I can pay off stuff and get back to Noaika with no disctractions? Do I work on Noaika and switch to working on a seperate weekly patreon game instead of animations so that I can have more frequent, consistent patreon releases?

Or do I abandon games altogether and work on like 8 patreon animations in a row and....actually nevermind that sounds horrible.


So, what do you think I should do? I could work on pretty much any of the side projects (which you can see a little more about in the projects tab up top) Could even get the umbrella game out of the way before it becomes any more outdated, graphically. If I start talking about making a new side game and tell you I can finish it in 3 monthes though, just give me a good slap.

If you didnt get your download

I've noticed that at one point there was a string of orders that either didn't get sent out, or they were not downloaded.

If you bought the game and didn't get your link, email me at contact@kyrieru.com and I can send it to you manually, if it was not emailed to you.

Mini game release: Aster

Download Demo (v5)

Buy the full version

Well, this one's something a bit different, that's for sure.

This game is a collaboration I worked on with another artist, who I'll simply refer to as S. It's an Asteroids/arcade style game with in-game H-animations.

While it isn't the usual size or complexity of my other games, it ended up taking me a while to get around to finishing, mostly because the music and sound gave me a bit of artist's block. The bulk of the work was done (including the H animations, which were done by the artist), a couple years ago, so I felt like I should probably get it out of the way, being the smallest project.

In total, the game has 10 animations (no CGs). The demo covers about half of the game and it's content. Since it's not the usual sort of game, I've decided to do a bit of a pay-what-you-want thing, with a $1 minimum. You can play the demo and decide for yourself what you think it's worth. The profits will be split 50/50 between the artist and myself.

Also, if you pre-ordered Noaika, your unlock file will work with this, so you dont need to buy it.

As per usual, this is the initial release so there's sure to be some bugs. Let me know in the comments if you run into any problems.

                                                                                                                                  

Also, as I stated before I'd start posting on the blog again once I released something, and while this isnt a big game this is something. I'll also be making an dedicated page soon showing the ongoing status of all my projects, what I'm working on, etc.

Eroico Revision V7

Download(V8.1)

Buy the full version

New version of the Eroico Revision. (Redone animations, revised CGs, gameplay changes)

Note: Old unlock files still work, and now Noaika pre-order files will unlock Eroico as well.