Run animation, clothing layers.

More or less settled in to the new place.

I Had a week or so where I had to stop working. The same day I took some pills prescribed by a docter for something else, I had what felt like weird circulation problems. Turns out it was a muscle problem due to the hard floors in the new place, of all things.

So with that, I'm back to work again.

As far as the on-going game is concerned, I've mostly been working on some of the stuff that will be shared with other games. That includes the dialogue system, the animation/sound editor, and a couple other things.

I've also been messing with the run animation here and there, since it's one of the most important things to get right before doing clothing. Trying to decide how I want the head movement to be.

I'm also still trying to decide how I want to handle clothing layering. My initial plan was that clothing would come in the form of entire outfits, as opposed to individual pieces. This means that an alternate outfit sprite would include the body itself, as opposed to layering individual clothing sprites over a nude body.

One of the advantages to this would be that the clothing would not need to "fit" the body, and the body could be modified to fit the clothing. For example, if the character wears a dress, the stride of the running animation could be modified to be be a bit more dainty, or allow for whatever the clothing is, like this.

In either case, you're risking rework later on. If clothing changes the body, then if you want to change the face, you need to change it in every outfit. However, if you want to change something about the body, you risk it not fitting existing outfits.

If clothing includes the body, you could also have the style of animations be entirely different. For example if you have a more "seductive" outfit, then a crouch animation could be a lewd kneel as opposed to a "combat ready" stance of knight armor. Whereas if clothing is a separate layer, then modding is also more doable, since you could modify the player sprite and still have all the clothing fit. The middle-ground would be that there are base sprites for different things (seductive, combat, normal, etc), however this would still lock you down to specific templates, and mixing certain kinds of clothing would be more work unless they are also locked by type.

Not sure yet. I'll probably do the base sprites, and then I'll probably decide once I've tested out an outfit or two.

Moved into new place

Moved into my new place. Still settling in but I'm back to working.

Right now I'm programming a text engine for use in the ongoing game and others.
Basically I want all dialogue be stored in external .txt files, which are then parsed in-game.
That way the game can be easily translated, as well as modded in some ways, depending on the game (since in-game functions can also be parsed through the text).

In general, it's just easier to write something like this,

1
Looks like a trapdoor.
If I had the key, I might be able to open it.

It should be somewhere on this floor. 

As opposed to this

name[0] = "Girl"
message[0] = "Looks like a trapdoor."+"\n"+"If I had the key, I might be able to open it."
name[1] = "Girl"
message[1] = "It should be somewhere on this floor."

I'm still trying to figure out how I want everything to be formatted. For example, multiple scenes could be contained within one txt file, or different npcs and any branching dialogue could be separated into different files. Either way has situations were it might be difficult to keep track of, over time.

I also have to decide how certain things will look when writing. For example I need to decide which symbols will be used to denote certain functions;

# denotes that a number can be entered.

#   Use name associated with number until another name is used.
#> Put portrait image for corresponding name on the right.
#< Put portrait image for corresponding name on the left.

[p]#   Choose portrait image for the character who is speaking.
[d]#    Dialogue number.
[d>]#    Go to corresponding dialogue.
[f]#    Set flag to true.
[f?]#    Check if flag is true.
[e]#    Call event.

An example of an interaction would look something like this, (Assuming you use portraits and stuff, otherwise it would look like the one above.)


///////////////////////////////////////////////////

1<
2>
[d]0
[f]0  

1
[p]0
I'm here to buy something. 

2
[p]20
Do you have a membership card?
If you don't have one then you can't shop here. 

[f?]10
[d>]1
[d>]2 

///////////////////////////////////////////////////

[d]1
1
[p]1
Yes, I have it. It took a lot of work to get it. 

2
[p]21
Then take a look around.
[e]10

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

[d]2
1
No I don't. 

2
That's a shame.
;

That said, I haven't really decided for sure yet what all the functions should be.
I won't be using all of them in every game.

Anyhow, that's all for now.

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.