Monthly Archives: September 2008

Magic Stones 1.2.7 BETA

So I found the time to do shit small quest and update the game too. Now the damage calculation during the battles is much more “reliable”. I mean, less use of random numbers, and also you can now see an estimate damage before attacking a enemy, so you can plan your strategy better.

I think this change make the game much more interesting to play, adding more value to the high level monsters and also to the spells and special attacks. To try the new BETA version follow the links below:

Pc version:
http://www.didone.com/games/MagicStonesTrial.exe

Mac version:
http://www.didone.com/games/MagicStonesTrial.zip

Please report any bug you find on the forums or privately using the contact form at my site.

Five Years and still going

Is amazing thinking that I’ve started to be indie dev 5 years ago! Time really fly!

To celebrate it, I’m preparing a small surprise: a mini quest for Magic Stones 🙂 free of course. Don’t expect a full quest like the previous one, but hey, it’s free, so don’t complain!

On other news, I’ve started working on 5 more projects! 8| crazy I know, but since now I have decided not to use Poser art anymore, I depend on artists. And usually they’re slow or disappear… so to prevent long pauses, I have started many project, so hopefully at least one artist manages to finish his job in time 🙂

Stay tuned for the announcement of the new miniquest for Magic Stones in the next few days.

Heileen: sexy but not erotic!

Hope my english is good enough to talk about this! (no worries, the final game will be proof-readed and edited by a native english speaker!).

One of the major complaint I got for Summer Session was that it was sexist,shallow, and such. I don’t agree of course, even if I didn’t write that game myself. The game didn’t contain any explicit scene (actually, not even a nude girl !) but still people complained.

In Heileen there’s going to be lots of sexy situations, but nothing you can’t actually see if you turn on your TV anytime, or you read any teenage comic. Of course the game won’t be suited for kids. But for teenager, surely. There won’t be any explicit reference to anything, just allusions and sexy situation always presented in a fun way.

Since I’m making a romance game, I don’t think I can make it cutting out completely the “eros” part. But the game won’t be erotic. There will be one scene were a girl kisses the other, but is not a passionate kiss. It’s one of those kisses where you barely touch the other people lips.

At least here, it’s common between teenager, especially girls. This doesn’t mean they’re lesbian or whatever, just that are very intimate friends.

Well… when it comes out, hopefully at end of this month, I really wish that people will appreciate my game and won’t make useless and misplaced complaint even on this one! So far all beta-testers (all girls) liked the game and none complained about it being too “sexist” or “vulgar”.

Heileen: endings and sudden death?

I’m at chapter 4 of the game. I plan to have 10 chapters total, for a very LONG game 🙂

Now I’m thinking about the various endings. Better have many of them? I mean, the more, the better? or would be better fewer ones, but with the story that really branches out?

Let me try to explain better… most dating sims just show a different ending based on the skills you raise during the game. Heileen doesn’t have a schedule/planner, but a sort of quest mode to raise points, and has some internal values to store player menu choices (but without showing him exactly how much impact had his last decision heheh).

So I was planning to have at a certain point of the game completely different stories based on player choice. For example at one point you could have to decide if to leave the ship and help a friend of yours in a town nearby, or stay in the ship. Choosing the first option would lead of course to a different end, but also to a different part of the story. I mean not just a few paragraphs but really 1 whole chapter with your adventures helping him in town, like almost a separate sub-story inside the main game.

Another thing I am evaluating is the “sudden death” – very popular in the “Lone Wolf” gamebooks, mean that your character could face a sudden death without any real warning (like happens unfortunately in real life). I am of course aware that this isn’t a good decision for a casual game, but I always liked that feature.

I mean maybe I’m a bit weird but when I was reading the death description in those books, was cool to see how the main character was ending his adventure (also because I knew I could just go back a few pages and choose another path!).

Since I plan to have a “rollback” option, I don’t think that should be a problem. It means the user can use the mousewheel to go back in the game timeline so can choose another path that won’t lead him to the fearsome sudden death 😀