Thursday, December 27, 2018

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.




52 comments:

  1. Whoa, I really like the idea of the palette swap for losing to monsters. However, I also feel like there should be at least some player control. If you use the defeat color swap option, I feel like you should also allow the player to change colors by using a certain item, perhaps a craftable, maybe just some kind of drop. That way, players who have an attachment to a particular setup have a way to get back the colors they want.

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    1. It's always a tough choice because it works for a lot of gameplay stuff, yet at the end of the day people just want to look the way they wanna look from the start.

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    2. Maybe have losing to monsters and other things unlock new palette options that you can freely change into later?

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    3. That might be close to how I end up doing it.

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    4. Could combine the ideas. Make it so by default when starting a new game, you'll take on the color of the enemy you lost to last time, but also make it so right there in the starting zone you can change it. Like a "wardrobe" object, or something you can interact with to bring up the customize menu.

      This retains the neat element of the whole "color scheme of enemy you lost to" thing (which I really like), but also lets the player ignore it and just do their own thing if they choose.

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  2. Yo. Can you give out a rough idea of how finished all your other games are? Like a percentage for Noaika, and all other games you are working on? Like 60% finished with *insert game here*

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  3. I really like the rogue-lite idea for the palette swap. I was thinking, why not also adding some basic buff/ability depending of monster you lost to?

    On a side note, I remember reading something about potential modding in your future games. Would you consider this game to have some sort of modding ability at some point? If you end up going for the rogue-lite gameplay, it could be very interesting if we could add our own enemies, weapons, levels, etc...

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    1. Buffs and the like will depend on what the overall format of the game ends up being like. I've yet to decide to what degree the rogue-lite elements will come into play.

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    2. Sure, I mean you're still drafting what the game will be after all. I'm curious to see what you will do, I'm looking forward to it.

      And no mention about the modding question, so I suppose it's a no :P

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    3. Modding is possible but I don't know for sure if I'll do it or how far I'll go. Good modding tools create a bit of extra overhead in terms of time investment.

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  4. I'll second the others and say that I really like the game-over palette swap idea! It sounds brilliant.

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  5. Hmm for the whole pallete swap from losing to enemies is concerned,which is brilliant, how bout just making it an option at the start for random swap or not? On the thing about the enemies having rip off clothes animation, what if you make like 4 or 5 animations for the girl and then just animate the enemy around that? You could make it different states such as back, front, grounded, in-air, on all fours. That may help you to speed up animating enemies for all cloth types.

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    1. Problem is; the more animations clothing have, the more animations I have to do in order to add a new outfit or visual element. Having only shared animations would also mean that every enemy would have the same poses, which isn't much fun.

      H Animations tend to be better when they have more stages, more frames, gimicks, etc. That's a lot easier to do when I know I won't have to retroactively animate 10 outfits, which is why they have to be nude.

      The compromise to this is making even just one simple shared animation, such as groping. Or something that can be used in multiple ways. That way clothing is included in H at least a little, without a huge time investment.

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  6. How much money would you pay if you could get an AI to automatically and fairly accurately draw an outfit for all frames, from just two (back and front) reference frames.

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    1. Wouldn't be possible, even if it had more reference images.
      Good pixel art is inherently visually illogical.

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    2. To be honest it shouldn't really matter whether the art is visually illogical or not, what matters is that there is a pattern in the visuals that the AI can develop an algorithm around. Obliviously teaching the AI to be completely on par with artists, would probably be impossible as of now, but getting a fairly competent result that could quickly be brushed up by a real artist shouldn't be impossible.

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  7. Since this is a free project please try to keep it fun for yourself. If something feels tedious to implement, don't bother.

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    1. Yeah, that's generally how I'm trying to plan the format. I want it to be open ended enough that I can add whatever sort of content I feel like at the time without being limited too much by early decisions.

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  8. Hmm rogue like huh? does that mean only sexy times on lose? Also i think players should have some control over the color palette just in case you get stuck with something you ain't fond of, know what i mean? either way the concept looks pretty good so far, so im interested to see where this goes.

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  9. Here's a idea you could have 3 stages for the outfits. Stage 1 no damage, stage 2 visible damage(holes and stains, ect), finely for stage 3 have a destroyed form that all outfits regard less of variation become. Which could be rags dirtied and damaged beyond recantation on the character(reason for having damaged versions be the same).
    For the color scheme change on death. I think maybe adding a button some where on the screen upon death. Saying accept new colors or retain old would be fine. And with harder difficulties remove it? Hope this helps and good luck with the game.

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  10. just wanted to stop by and say I really appreciate your animations they are so smooth, so keep up the good work would love to see more.

    personally they don't even have to be erotic in nature for me to enjoy them good animations in general make me happy, so i guess i'm easy to please that way.

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  11. I agree with option 1 that the player can only fish in a fishing outfit, imagine adding a new animation for all other outfits if you add for example mining mechanics as an update after release.

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  12. Yeah, I definitely feel that outfits should come in "types" if you want to both save yourself time but also add some variety. Basically what you see in both modern and old-school RPGs already where lets say you've got the standard adventurers garb which is brown, but you can also get the "jungle" gear or something where it looks just like the standard gear but the palette swap is more green and dark brown or something like that. Then of course maybe there'd be something like bikini armour in the game let's say, and there's also "mermaid armour" which is pretty much the bikini armour but in a blue colour and stat changes, etc. That's what it sounds like to me at least.

    Regarding the outfits themselves, I really feel that since this is a game where you start over a lot anyway, then perhaps they should really be disposable? Like think Breath of the Wild but clothes break permanently instead of weapons. That way you're forced to always look for new clothes to help you survive even if it means stocking up on a bunch of "standard" gear just to prevent your character getting raped as often and to take less damage than a nude run. I don't even believe it's necessary to put time into "damaged" outfits either, really.
    Just: Nude > Underwear > Outfit
    As long as there's a general animation for clothes getting ripped off, I think that'll be plenty.

    For the fishing animation options I think either option 1 or 3 are fully acceptable. For time sake though I actually do believe option 3 would make more sense. There are literally games with tons more budget and a few frames is generally all they need to make something convincing.
    1. Holding rod over head.
    2. Holding rod in front.
    3. Icon or text letting you know if fishing was successful or what the character caught.
    4. Character resumes idle animation and is in full control again.
    I think that's all you'd need to be honest. A "unique" fishing outfit sounds like maybe if you were to add diving to the game or just access to underwater areas.

    Like everyone else, I do like the sound of the losing to a monster palette for starting a new game, but I still also think the very first character you start as should be bare bones customisable like in the newer pokemon games where at the start you choose from light skin, mixed skin and dark skin.
    I'd only say that I probably wouldn't like it if the protagonist changing colour meant that she'd be like, green skinned or something.
    I feel like if you're going to imply that the new protagonist is half goblin or something, she shouldn't take on such obvious traits if it meant that other obvious traits were missing like horns, size or tails, I dunno. I don't think you'd want that extra work so I think it'd be best to keep her still looking very much human, just changing natural skin tone, hair colour and eye colour (you might be able to get away with slightly red-ish skin colours for say demons).

    Slightly related to the new start based on monster defeat idea, I'd like to know if something else would be possible in the future. For example say you lost to an Orc and your character was actually defeated in a cave where they live, would it be possible the new character would start in a similar area? So that way it's implied that the last character was captured and gave birth in the same type of place. Of course if that were to be a thing, it'd likely be later rather than sooner since it sounds like there'll only be one or two types of areas to start with before adding more like monsters and enemies.

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    1. Last thing is will there be towns or small villages of sorts? Rare places where the player can stock up on supplies and rest away from their home. I mainly ask this because I think you could easily do something similar with a wandering merchant or something, but I also want to know if there'll be human NPCs or enemies which will have H animations with the player character.
      Keep it up and Happy New Year!

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    2. Clothing damage isn't really planned, just removal and possibly underwear.
      Different home types are something I've considered, including ones based on losing in certain situations.
      I plan on having village type locations, and locations that have their own gameplay loop.
      The game's format will make it open to many kinds of events, so nothing is off the table.

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    3. as long as i can be naked if i want ill be happy

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    4. You will be able to
      https://i.gyazo.com/d80695cb360d11458639863358cb3a30.png
      https://i.gyazo.com/18d323a8e87194c951a92213c77dc9c7.png
      at any time.

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  13. When did you make that Hex Maniac animation? It's amazing. Also, it would be kind of cool to inherit something from an enemy that beat you. Is this rolling out anytime soon?

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    1. Hex was around Christmas.

      I'm moving in a couple days, so there will be a bit of a delay before the first playable version.

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    2. Okay. Good luck with your move.

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  14. to prevent some h-scenes from being too repetitive you could just include the different underwear states shown in the third picture. That much shouldn't take too long and it could go a long ways.

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    1. Problem with having clothing on normal H animations is that if there are 10 enemies each with long animations, then every-time I add clothing thats 10 extra animations with 15-50 frames each that I need to edit. Then the number goes up the longer I work on the game.

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  15. i like the idea of taking on a monster's colours (and maybe stat buffs/debuffs). if you did that would it tie into the game over scene? (e.g. monster carrying away the heroine for breeding)

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    1. Well in terms of game over, there wouldn't be game over CGs. There would be events in some cases, or maybe even some animations like my patreon animations (albeit probably lower res).

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  16. Have you ever thought about making a discord server? It'd be neat to post pixel art and talk about adult game dev stuff somewhere.

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    1. Nah, I don't think there'd be a huge reason to.

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  17. Your pixel art is great. Do you do commissions?

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  18. I dont know much about game making, but Isnt it possible to make animations on blank character and make clothes work as a override? I hope u understand what I mean, I think that this is the way modern games work. But case might be diffrent since it's 2D not 3D. Anyway looking forward for updates.

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    1. Nope. To make equipable clothing in raster based 2D you have to manually draw every frame the outfit is used in.

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    2. it would work in 2d if it used tweening, and such like many flash games does, but it would look like crap unless you spend a awful lot of time on it.

      now Kyrieru uses pixels for his animations, and that don't work at all really doing that, so he said, he is left with no option but making every frame by hand.

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  19. Taking the colors of an ennemy, and probably some of their resistance/weaknesses, yeah that could be an interesting game mechanic that add some depth to the (re)birth/new-adventurer trope. It could make some zones easier or more challenging because of the character's new traits. Passing the base stats to an offspring who have monster blood, naturally stronger than a normal human, would make sense too.

    It could even open the possibility of "consent" events if there's monsters villages for intellegent races, adding a new start point and maybe nullifying the equipment removal of game overs since you pass it to the new character when she's in age of adventuring trought the event, instead of being defeated.

    That would be a nice nuance to have, and quite cute to say hi to papa'monster and mama'human, or grandmama'human (both in default outfit) in another village sometimes. But maybe they'll just disappear after 2 generations, having the monster village back to hostile/stronhold state, just to show the passing of time.

    As animating many clothings goes, more simple would be common "struggle" animations, then just dropping the armor out of the way (can be collected if inventory not full) then using common armorless animations for H-scenes.

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    1. If there is only one common animation, then it would be a struggle animation.

      Havn't decided on gameovers/loss yet. On one hand, I want restarting to be fun and a part of the game, but it's also hard to completely discount long term progression.

      All the stuff you mentioned about offspring is certainly on the table. As far as consent goes I've considered making it possible to manually rebirth to permanently gain a higher stat ceiling. (That way starting over is possible without dying.), not sure yet though.

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    2. (hi, same annon here)
      Long term progression is always hard to balance regardless of methods used for such design that allow infinite restarts, especially with "new characters" instead of pure rebirth. You may need at least a bank system for a start, I guess.

      1)A bank,
      Don't lose every coins unless you always forget to deposit them.
      Charge to deposit items in a safe inventory you acess only there.
      The problem of "daughter not being the same character" can be overlooked if a flavor item (akin to adventurer's tag in the status menu) act as ID.

      This alone can help in both transition to new adventurer and long term monetary goals, as long as the player pay the small fee. It do not allow craft, so using stores is still really expensive.

      2)Main base,
      Long term goal can be to buy an empty house.
      Get the furnitures (dresser, chest, kitchen, craft statons) later.
      In case of "consent end" the new adventurer can use their parent's house for storage instead.

      That would be the main difference between an owned base, and a borrowed place. In one case you just have free storage for a few free loses and at best "cooking" craft, in the other case you have a permanent upgradable place linked to your "flavor adventurer ID".

      3)Chests
      Depending on the level of abstraction, either:
      -Let players put one of those per map (with a key you have to keep in your inventory or deposit in bank) so nobody else pillage them. -Consider chest with key more of an easely abusable mechanic to be restricted as "upgrade safe zones" instead.
      -No need for keys, just keep the "upgrade safe zones" concept and access said zone's chest with your "flavor adventurer ID"

      Cheaper chest may not have a key but are at risk to be pilliaged, also the item itself usually takes alot of inventory space so it's more useful to players who really knows what they're doing even if it's just to carry material for a zone upgrade.

      The logic behind placing generic empty key'less chest in non-safe zones is that it can encourage intellegent ennemies to use it, so that could be an interesting difficulty mechanic (more guarding baddies VS more exp + extra loot in chest). It could also be used to store specific items attracting specific monsters, for those into simple puzzle-quests (or just into these types of monster in general...for the exclusive stats/traits, of course!) before more appropriate methods are implemented. Overall, a way to make optional bosses spawn only when the player feel ready to try the challenge.
      ---
      As growth-rates modifiers goes, one-time choice for each new adventurer's motivation (more answers depending on the type of end of previous character) could be simple enough to implement yet engaging.

      some exemples:
      To avenge mother
      (disappeared after regular lose) ATK+3 DEF-1
      To find mother's treasure
      (any end after using key'chest, have key in inventory) Luck+2
      To defend the weak
      (default options?) ATK+1 DEF+1
      To find answers...
      (default options?) DEF+1 Luck+1
      To show the world how dragons are awesome!
      (dragon's bride) ALL stats+2, "dragonslayer" may appear randomly

      The character may not give birth to a new adventurer (full restart) each time aside of manual restart. An invisible variable could just give more chances of it to happen as you cumulate loses with a same adventurer. That could balance the restarts and add incertenity to not just exploit the mechanics.

      But I can understand how people may not want too many "engaging mechanics" in a H-game, it may feel really wierd to play for the lewds yet being midly attached to the everchanging characters. Well, at least it could motivate to play seriously and progress, not just "for the loses".

      Balancing the game tone and audience's everchanging expectations is one hell of a hard challenge of any dev. Good luck with that project, rambling over. ^^

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    3. The trouble is finding a balance between allowing the player to "play" and experience content casually, while still having consequences that work in a rogue lite setting. For example, losing or "seeing what happens" with certain enemies is part of the fun, so I don't want it to be too easy to get a gameover.

      As it is, my plan is that only certain circumstances will result in a gameover/rebirth. Though I'm not sure what those conditions will be yet.

      An example of such a circumstance might be; a rebirth would not occur if you are in a low level area, but would if you lose within a higher level than your own. This could be offset by limiting how much you can actually progress within a zone the same level as you. There could also be conditions for manual rebirth that yield higher benefits (at least for one generation anyway), for example woo-ing a monster and having a child or full-filling conditions for an event.

      On the topic of chests, I plan on having an equipment system that is a bit different from games like minecraft. Rather than having a large inventory, I plan on making the inventory somewhat small, but item type dependant.
      For example, a player in full plate armor would not be able to carry as much harvested fruit as a player wearing casual clothing and carrying a basket.
      My intent is that the player will have to choose what their goal is when leaving their home and prepare accordingly, rather than carrying an array of everything you would ever need. You generally aren't going to carry more than one weapon unless you know you're going to fight, or fight something specific.

      That said, I'm not totally sure how storage will work yet, since the question is how permanent any item or storage should be. Between weapon durability, weapons being replaced frequently, or it being expected to lose weapons by gameover, I prefer the third option. I think it's more fun to see "what you get this time" as opposed to weapons being meaningless, or feeling like they're too valuable to use. Not sure yet though.

      I also plan on making it so you can upgrade the house. The starting house would be a crappy shack, and then you would be able to add security measures and other features with wood. One of the reasons to travel beyond early areas may simply be a larger abundance of wood in higher level areas, or declining resources in general in the lower level areas.

      But yeah, main trouble is the conflict between a harvest mooon type mentality and the concept of being able to lose, or having a "shifting state of success" without making it feel bad.

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  20. I think a good "lose" scenario could be pregnancy. There could be a pregnancy danger meter that fills up each time you have sex, and the only way to reset it is to take a bath. Maybe this is a special bath that costs a lot? And the price goes up each time you use it, or it's just a hassle to get to (like having to return to a save point in a Metroid game). In the next run the parent is the player's previous character. The new character could take on traits of both the parent and monster. On the 3rd run the original character is now a grandparent (and looks old), and on the 4th run the oldest generation dies and there's even a little graveyard. Maybe we could even manage the graveyard, buy additional plots, select which graves to keep or throw away, and maybe even get passive bonuses for keeping special heroes who accomplished a lot in their run.

    Also, I'm not sure if you've played the Corruption of Champions & TitS games, but they have a neat system where you can change your character by using enemy drops. You could do something similar like if you beat a blue slime, then you have a chance of getting blue dye, and when you do get that blue dye then it's permanently unlocked in a shop for future characters. Special rewards could even reduce the price of cosmetic items in future runs (like maybe Hero X in the graveyard spent 50,000 gold during their life, so the player gets 50% off all cosmetic items).

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    1. Just wanted to add that the pregnancy danger meter could go up really slowly for consensual sex, but go up much faster when you "lose" to monsters.

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    2. Well, the pregnancy angle would be unlikely, if only because I plan on making it possible to get pregnant/have kids.

      As for showing the previous character, death, etc, I don't think the previous girl would ever be shown old, or killed. I'd probably just keep things unexplained and up to the player's imagination. I don't think there would ever be interactions between the last girl and the latest.

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