Metagame, stats.

First off, if I didn't respond to your comment, don't worry; I read all the comments, and consider those about mechanics.

Anyhow.

One of the biggest roadblocks in deciding on how the metagame will work is the conflict between the desire to make a Roguelite (permadeath, highly randomized, short play sessions), combined with the satisfaction of casual progression of Harvest Moon, and have H content which isn't overtly risky to experience.

My current plan is to have multiple concurrent runs that can go on at once, in the form of different worlds that are linked to each other.

Starting world

Essentially, you would begin the game in a fairly casual world. Not all the content of the game would be available here, and while it would be possible to be defeated, it would not be possible to "lose". H could be experienced casually. The farming element would probably also be more pronounced.

In this world, you would find seeds which could be planted to create "standard" worlds.

Standard world

Standard worlds would be randomized, and could contain most of the content of the game. Some elements would be luck based, and it would be possible to "lose" here. While these would be individual "runs" that could be won or lost, the purpose of them would be up to the player.

For example, if the player is currently doing a run in one world to "defeat the cave demon", they may create a new world with the sole intention of finding an item that will make it easier to defeat the cave demon, without risking the other "run". Some items could be transferred between runs, meaning that difficulty could be controlled somewhat if the player is having a hard time.

"Losing" would be possible, but would not come in the form of literal gameovers. Losing to the Cave Demon might severely limit the player's combat capabilities, or change them. So while it will have been "lost" as a run to defeat the cave demon, it can still be used to experience other content. Most enemies would probably not limit the players capabilities, and would simply set them back in resources. Getting to a point where you are at the mercy of the world's situation yet can't get the resources you need to get out of it would be the closest thing to a gameover, and at this point the player could either abandon the world, or do another run in the hopes that they will get resources to send over. (For example, losing to an enemy might curse you, and you're unable to undo the curse while cursed, yet another run may yield the anti curse item.)

Content you experience in standard worlds would be added to the starting world, albeit without the rewards. That way it can be experienced on a more casual level.

Special worlds

Other worlds could be one-off concepts. For example if I feel like doing a linear scenario, it might be done this way. Or, special worlds might be standard worlds with modifiers that change the overall nature of the run. For example one world might have the modifier of all female enemies, or the inability to use magic, but have stronger melee, etc.

There's also the possibility of making "active" worlds, that progress while you're away. Might lead to a type of gameplay that's more about "fixing today's problems" as opposed to actively playing. These runs might be used to set up farms that yield resources on a more consistent basis, but would become more about managing them with risk/reward, compared to the casual world which would only be low level items.

Stats

Some hud concepts I was messing with.

One of the things I've been thinking about is whether to use hearts or not.

The Binding of Isaac makes amazing use of hearts as a resource and risk/reward gameplay. However, the downside is that they don't scale with large amounts of health/ leveling up as well as a number represented by a bar.

One of the solutions I've considered is to have a sort of incremental health system using hearts.

Imagine that you have only one heart, and each heart can contain four quarters.

If you have 100 HP, and get hit by an attack that does 30 damage, it would round up to half a heart, and take away 50hp.

Essentially, there would be two stats. You're actual HP, and the number of hearts, which determines the increments of damage you can sustain. As stats, it would probably be something like HP/endurance.

This way, HP could level up, but you could still do resource management where some events cost you a heart container.

Of course, the main problem with this is that it's not exactly very intuitive for the player. 

Anyhow, that's all the rambling for now.

Deciding on shared poses

In the ongoing game, there will be two main types of animations:

Nude animations:

These animations would not have clothing variations, and only happen when nude. The player's pose and animation would be detailed and unique. Every enemy would have at least one of these.

Shared/generic animations:

The player's pose would be one of two generic, short animations. The poses can be flipped or rotated in order to fit the pose of the enemy. Because these animations would all use the same player part, every outfit would have these two poses, and thus would show up in all generic animations that use them.

Right now I'm trying to decide on those two poses. So far I've determined that the one in the top right is fairly practical given how much it can be rotated. It could be used for most generic sex.

The other pose would need to be used for things like groping, or enemies removing clothing, so it's a bit more difficult to decide on. These are some of my experiments with various poses.

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.