Monthly Archives: September 2013

Terrain modifiers

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A very nice dog that joined us for a trip on the mountains years ago

A concept that is well known to strategy/wargame players is the so called “terrain modifier”. What is it? is the influence that each terrain type has on the gameplay, for example movement, attack / defense bonuses, and so on.

I’ve decided to experiment with it too in the upcoming RPG Seasons Of The Wolf:

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In the new pre-battle party setup there’s indication of the battlefield type

You might recognize it if you played Loren Amazon Princess, even if here it’s completely revamped: is the pre-battle party setup screen, where you place your party members in the front / back row.

This time though, beside letting you know some limitations/restrictions of the battle (like which party members must be present, the minimum/maximum party size, and so on) it also displays the battlefield type, in this case “Hot”, which gives a bonus to Fire attack/spells.

Of course there are still “normal” battlefields with no particular bonus. But I plan to use this new gameplay addition to make some interesting battles and to add more variety (since if you play at high difficulty level, you’ll need to take that aspect in consideration).

Amber Magic Shop update

I have also some good news for Amber Magic Shop. I won’t go much into details because will make a series of post about that game when we are closer to its release (which won’t be sooner than next year unfortunately).

Writer has planned the two extra characters yuri routes, and is already writing them. So differently from Nicole, this time even if the game will be out later all the yuri content will be available either at launch day. Or with a very small delay πŸ˜‰

I’ve also got a bit more art, in particular some nicer clothes for Amber:

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Two new outfits for Amber, who on left is the young version, on right the adult one

So that’s another game which is progressing slowly but at least constantly and hopefully will be able to code a good alchemy/crafting system for it πŸ™‚

Aravorn’s Map and Timeline (WIP)

I am also doing a bit more world-building of Aravorn, the imaginary world where all my fantasy games takes place. You can check this forum thread if you’re curious about it:

http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3007

That’s all for now! Lots of stuff happening, but can’t talk about it yet πŸ™‚

Looking at the bright future

HORIZON
My cat Gilda is looking at the future with optimism

This year was a bit of a rough year for me (though obviously, it could be MUCH worse in general!). The main problem was all the events that happened in real life, and that influenced this year releases (or lack of).

The year is not yet over: but if I compare it with previous years, in 2012 by now I was about to release Loren’s expansion after releasing the main game. In 2011 I had already finished Planet Stronghold, and other cool games like Always Remember Me.

Sadly, it seems that this year I’m going to miss the “release of a new RPG” milestone πŸ™

Anyway, the future looks brighter! Read below.

Nicole status – almost done!

Nicole seems very close to completion: I have all boys route finished and the mystery path done by 60-70%. There are still several scenes missing, and also some art, but I think worse case in October the game should be out with all the promised content and gameplay changes (if you’re curious check my forum thread here: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=39&p=19101#p19101).

Roommates update

Yesterday I also got all the backgrounds for Roommates! Even if I’m considering adding a couple more. The new “steamy beach sex scenes” (which aren’t porn, but very hot!) are at good point too, about halfway done. If things go as planned it could be out around Christmas or early next year πŸ™‚

Undead Lily and the return of CCG

There has been a recent interest/return of CCG, which stands for Collectible Card Games. I also have some cool memories of one of the first games I made, several years ago, called Magic Stones, which was indeed a sort of mix between a RPG and a CCG.

Together with Roommates writer (who will write Undead Lily too) we started brainstorming the creatures list for Undead Lily.

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A sketch of the Sylph creature

There are going to be 12 base creatures for the 6 elements, plus other cards (spells and some extra combo creatures). Writer counted 114 different creatures cards, so there should be a good variety!

Some of the creatures include: Griffon, Harpy, Mermaid, Shark, Ifrit, Salamander, Giant Mole, Purple Worm, Tree-ent, Giant Ant, Ghouls, Vampires, and more. I’ll post more previews as I get them.

Obviously I’m talking about a game that will be out not sooner than next year Summer or later πŸ˜‰

Seasons Of The Wolf update

This week for various reasons was unable to work at all on SOTW, but I plan to get back on it next week. I was planning to have a sort of battles preview at end of month but that probably won’t be possible, since I want to redesign a bit the skills, adding a few more variety. In practice now there are 5 skills each, with 3 degree of power. So you could say 15 skills each character, but in practice is 5 unique skills each one with 3 power variants.

I was thinking instead to eliminate the various power levels, or use them only for non-scaling skills. For example, if we take two healing skills:

A) Healing Balm – heals 30% of character’s total HP
B) Minor Heal – heals target character by 25HP

For B we could have Major Heal that heals 50HP, while for A, as the character HP increases (presumably by leveling up) the spell power will automatically increase.

The writing and art production is going well, and I think that for sure in October I should be able to show something (sort of alpha version, to get feedback on the battle system changes).

Greenlight

Speaking about RPGs, in case you don’t know, recently Valve Greenlit a lot of games, and for the first time my RPG Loren Amazon Princess is around rank 85-86 in the top100. Still a long way to go, but now would be a good moment to vote for it using the link below:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92923628

No need to say that getting a game on Steam would mean I could afford to invest a lot more in my games, making them even better πŸ˜‰

Creepy stuff!

If you follow me on the various social networks you probably already saw the two videos below:


Nicole mystery scene video, part one

Nicole mystery scene video, part two

Scary stuff, eh? πŸ˜€ is one of the scenes of the mystery path of Nicole dating sim otome version, which should hopefully be out at end of month or beginning of October (there are some last minute things still to finish).

For those who don’t like scary stuff, you’ll be able to play the game with the mystery/scary stuff, or like a regular otome dating sim. Though so far based on the feedback people seems to enjoy that kind of things, at the point that I’m seriously considering doing a horror game in future!

Meanwhile, somewhere in Aravorn…

Seasons Of The Wolf development continues. I finished the inventory screen and the skills screen too:

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The new skills subscreen of SOTW

I am still pondering some changes to the skills, not to the system (I’ll use the same skilltree system as Loren) but maybe I’ll add more variety of skills since there are less characters in your party.

As for the Traits, they are permanent bonuses that you’ll unlock once you reach certain values in your character’s base attributes, which you see on the bottom of the screen. Obviously unlocking them all will be impossible so you’ll have to plan your strategy accordingly πŸ˜‰

That’s all for now, I’m pretty busy so this was a short post. More news about the other games coming soon!

Hey guys let’s do some GUI!

One of the best blog post titles ever πŸ˜€ (no not really)

For those who don’t know what GUI is, it stands for Graphical User Interface, and in practice you see it every day when you use any operating system. It’s the windows, buttons, arrows, scrollbars, etc artwork.

In games, in particular in strategy, simulations and RPGs, GUI is very important. It must be nice to look at, but also it must be user-friendly, since players are going to use it A LOT.

So this week I worked on Seasons Of The Wolf GUI. I have yet to finish redesigning the skilltrees, but having a graphical representation of the character screen will help me, get me the inspiration.

The character screen is composed of two static parts: one on the top, showing all the party members with the “classic” HP/SP colored bars on the sides, and two buttons to close the screen. And one on the left, where the currently selected character is shown in big, along with his basic info: HP/SP, Name, Class, Level, Experience Points.

On the right instead the content changes based on the active “subscreen”, which can be one of the following: attributes, skills, inventory & quests.

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The familiar attributes seen previously, with a quick help on the bottom of the screen

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The inventory screen, which I need to redesign unfortunately…

The attributes subscreen is done, the inventory is at good point but I need to re-arrange the layout. In the screenshot above it seems to work fine, but the problem comes when you examine an armor: there isn’t enough space on the bottom of the screen to display all the armor stats, which are more than the weapons πŸ˜€

Luckily I can just rearrange the various windows/buttons, so while is still quite some work, is not like I need to redo it completelyΒ  from scratch.

I plan to finish it this week and begin working on the skills next Monday… I think it will keep me busy for at least two weeks though. At least after that is done, I’ll be able to start putting all the content in, so I’m not too far behind schedule! πŸ™‚

Β Other news

I got last scenes for Jeff’s path of Nicole otome dating sim, so we need to work on the mystery scenes and add some last minute art. It might be finished by end of this month as I hoped πŸ™‚

As you know if you read the forums, decided to get another writer to help Aleema with Planet Stronghold 2 so she can begin working on Loren next game already. Since is a big game, this way might be ready in a not-too-distant future!