Monthly Archives: May 2015

Heirs & Graces – Vincent

Today we introduce another character of the upcoming yaoi dating sim “Heirs & Graces”: Vincent.

Vincent has been working for Lord Sandor since he was sixteen. He was initially hired on as a regular servant, but has since risen to the position of butler. Though it is possible he would have gotten the position by simply not quitting, Vincent has proven himself more than capable in the role.

He handles nobles well, does more than his fair share of work, and has a good head for business on top of that. Vincent’s advice has gone far in helping Lord Sandor expand his wealth, though Lord Sandor gives Vincent little credit for it. Vincent doesn’t mind though as he sees it as a normal part of his job. Lord Sandor has grown to trust Vincent implicitly and often lets Vincent take care of his daily affairs.

While Vincent excels at his job, he has a hard time navigating the world outside of it. He doesn’t really know what to do with his free time so he usually spends it completing extra work or learning skills that will help him improve his work.

Needless to say, his social life is virtually non-existent. Kamal is the only one Vincent can honestly claim as a friend and that’s only because Kamal goes out of his way to interact with him. If Vincent isn’t working, he feels useless and Vincent can’t stand feeling useless.

His greatest fear is that the people around him will consider him a bother. To avoid this, Vincent strives for perfection in all of his tasks to the point where he becomes devastated on the rare occasions where he does make a mistake – no matter how small that mistake may be.

Vincent is strict with himself, but he’s surprisingly understanding when others make mistakes. He’s quick to step in to help out when other servants get into trouble and doesn’t reprimand them if they’ve learned their lesson. He is a bit lenient in general, but he can be stern if he’s pushed too far.

Overall, Vincent is reliable and loyal. He’s a good person to have on your side.

More progress on the other games!

I’m making more progress on Queen Of Thieves, the skilltrees are basically done. I had the idea to use Hands Of Fate (not my Heileen 2 game, that popular roguelike) card system for the exploration: instead of cards, will be rooms of the various buildings the girls will explore trying to rob rich people. Each room will have a surprise (both positive or negative) randomly chosen from a set of possible events. I think done this way it’s more “casual” and easier to code than an isometric map 🙂

I still have some great isometric tileset done by artist that I’ll reuse in other fantasy games.

Next week I’ll also begin talking about my CYOA game “Cursed Lands” with some previews and more info about it!

May update!

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Time for a big update on the progress of the various games in the works! Let’s start:

C14 Dating

Deandre asking a tough question to Melissa… 😉 the new GUI interface is still not implemented in the build

Writing for this game is finished since last year, but now even the scripting (which means adding all the various characters on screen, their facial expressions, the musics, etc) is at a very good point. What is really missing now are the romance CGs, which the awesome Deji plans to make next month. Fingers crossed, but MAYBE in July we will be able to start digging-ahem I meant playing this game! 😉

Queen Of Thieves

I’ve made more progress in coding/designing it. I’m not going to talk about it in detail anymore here, since during development things change so quickly that would probably be a waste of time (for example several of the features in previous blog post have been changed once I’ve tried them “on the field”!).

If you’re interested, check the forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewforum.php?f=32

Regarding the writing, I’m happy to report that the first draft of all the yuri routes is finished! the plan now is to finish the missing otome part and review what is already written, to match the yuri part which is generally longer (so even the otome will be around same length).

The new casual outfits for the three sisters 🙂

Regarding art, I should be getting some NPC soon, together with some fixes for the yuri romance characters. There are still the romance CG to do, and several other minor stuff (icons, tilesets, etc) but in general it’s at good point too.

PSCD & Undead Lily

Those two games should have a good amount of gameplay in common (both card-rpg based). As you know, PSCD writing is done, art is almost finished too even if I still need to design all the cards. For Undead Lily, the artist finished all the cards and is remaking the images in the new style. For example, here’s Aquaria and Magma:

Please note: the images above are only sketches, so not final images, which will be much more detailed. But you can already see the big quality improvement 🙂

Each character will have a covered/uncovered outfit, and to make my customers happy, you’ll be able to set for every character in the game the outfit to be used ! 😉 It will be an option page full of buttons, considering there are 14 characters in the game!

As you can see, a lot of progress have been made in May. I daresay… may it continue next month! 😀

The different RPGs mechanics

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Today’s blog post is a bit “nerd” 🙂 I’ve been a long time RPG player, even if recently I don’t have much time, in the past I played a good amount of RPGs.

The new battle layout of Queen Of Thieves is shaping up nicely

As you know, amongst the other things, I’m currently designing/coding my upcoming RPG “Queen Of Thieves” (don’t ask for release date, I don’t know when will be out).

The main focus was on making a more “casual” experience compared to Seasons Of The Wolf, both in interface, layout, rules, etc. This is a specific choice because I can’t really afford to make a big/complex RPG again, considering there will be Roger Steel and Loren 2 in the upcoming years to do as well.

And one of the most noticeable differences between the two titles will be the importance of the skillpoints and the skills themselves. Even if there are only 3 playable characters in your party, each one has a good variety of skills (12 skills with 3 level-up each). However, differently from SOTW, your SP (skill points to use skills in battle) will be very limited, and you won’t have any easy way to recover them during the battle.

This was initially done to make the battles shorter, since I didn’t want to make a game with long battles anymore. But in the end is turning out to be an interesting idea also from the rules/game mechanics point of view: yes because I also limited the HP and healing, so instead of “spamming skills” trying to kill enemies faster and healing/buffing your party to survive, each time you make a choice will have a bigger weight, so you’ll need to plan carefully.

For example, since I’ve eliminated the front/back row, I changed also Kira’s Strikethrough skill:

As told before, in this game the defense is the armor: if the attack value is lower than defense, you will do only 1 damage, but every time a character is hit, the defense/armor value decreases by 1 point. This way even a boss enemy with a starting high 25 defense would get down to zero after it’s hit 25 times.

The skill above though lets the attack ignore armor completely. So even if does 50% base attack (higher version will reach up to 100% base attack) you might want to use that against a specific enemy. For example:

You have 2hp and 4 attack. The only enemy remaining is an armored skeleton with 2 HP and 10 attack and defense.

If you attack with a normal attack, you damage the skeleton for 1 point, and lower his defense to 9. Next turn, he kills you 🙂

If you attack with Kira’s Strikethrough, you’ll ignore his defense and effectively kill him with one strike! (4 attack = 2 damage)

So as you can see there’s need of more thinking/planning. SOTW was a different approach: in that game you needed to “own” the enemy, by using a lot of skills, potions, both to do damage/debuff enemies and to reduce damage/heal. Is a common system in MMORPG and games with a big party. But in this case, being forced to use a smaller party for story reasons, I’ve discovered a new interesting way to design the RPG battles 🙂

PSCD – Meet Kaden

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The game’s main cast was already introduced, but there are a few other characters. They don’t take part in battles, nor are romanceable (unless the main game does well, then might consider doing a DLC) but are present in dialogues and scenes and are part of the story.

Let’ start with a rebel guy with a familiar surname… 😉 (for those who played Planet Stronghold)

Name: Kaden Vargas
Nation of Origin: Mexico
Service Branch: Rebel/Originally a history professor

Born in Mexico, Kaden grew up in a household which was less than fond of the human empire, personified in the Neuville royal family. While each country still retained a great deal of autonomy, one couldn’t deny the Empire was the pre-eminent power. Needless to say, many people resented at what they saw as an over-reaching monarchy out to control every aspect of their lives.

Kaden’s family held similar beliefs, and he grew up in environment where every fault of the empire was magnified, while every benefit was diminished. Still, Kaden might have acclimated to the Empire if not for the day when the Imperial Intelligence Agency arrested his mother for sedition.

Resentment turned to anger, but Kaden also realized actively rebelling was a good way to join his parent in prison. So, he kept his head down, earned a degree in history, and searched for a way off-planet, figuring that while expansive, the Empire’s touch would be lighter on the periphery.

So, it was with great delight when he accepted a position on Planet Stronghold, teaching the children of colonists, instilling skepticism in the imperial mandate.

Kaden might have gone this way, when it was announced a second Captain was assigned to Planet Stronghold. Seeing it as a typical grab to expand power, Kaden made plans with a group of like-minded individuals, and when the opportunity presented itself, they would head into the planetary wilds, confident they could survive, even thrive while the Empire was busy with the various alien powers laying claim to the planet.

More news about Queen Of Thieves

The development of the game continues, in particular the battle screen and RPG elements. As you can see from the screenshot below, I’ve changed the layout again, using a classic view in two rows, similar to Loren’s layout, but without a front/back row:

The idea is that since you play with only 3 characters doesn’t make much sense to have a front/back row mechanic. Instead I’m going to replace it with something else. This also means that there could be battles of 3 (party) vs 5 (enemies).

I think I am at very good point regarding the layout. I’m still tweaking the rules/character progression. Initially I thought to lock the HP/SP values to character’s level, since in this game they’ll be even more important than in other RPGs, because there’s limited healing (potions) and no ways to quick regenenerate SP.

Anyway I finished coding the level up screen too (see screenshot above), and I’ve ran some tests, and I think I’ll allow full customization even in this game. This means that if you want to put all your attribute points into SP, you can: however at level 20 you’ll find yourself with a character with a lot of SP but maybe with very low HP/defense, so that enemies would still kill you quickly 😀

Though in practice those are extreme cases, I don’t think anyone would save all the attribute points on each level up and put them all on the SP, it would be kinda crazy. Don’t blame me if you do that and then are stuck with a party that can’t win anymore 😉

Or maybe I will just allow a “respec” option so you can reset your choices any point during the game. I might just do that 🙂

Seasons Of The Wolf DLC “Bad Blood” on Steam

I just released the DLC on Steam as well: http://store.steampowered.com/app/354190/

As always, buying direct from my site will give you a DRM-Free version + Steam key, and for those who bought it early, you can redeem a key on this site: http://www.bestanimegames.com/steam/

Digging you – a preview of the otome C14 Dating

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It’s still a work in progress screenshot, but looks already good!

So… puns aside, I’m really digging how C14 is coming out! In case you missed my earlier posts (from past year) you can read more about the game here: https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/category/dating-sims/c14-dating/

In summary: it’s an otome dating sim set in the archeology world. And it features a cast of REALLY diverse characters. There’s a boy with a prosthetic arm, another with a cochlear implant, the nerd boy, and so on.

The main story is already over 140,000 words! And the writer and the editor are still tweaking/editing some later scenes 🙂 so it will be another very big game, featuring a lot of scenes and funny/cute/interesting moments. If you’re interested in the archeology world you’ll love this, and if you aren’t… you might become interested after playing it 😉

What is mainly missing are some sprites, the ending CG images and a few things here and there, like some GUI buttons, a few minigames to tweak/balance and so on, but overall it is in a very advanced state, as shown by the screenshots.

The weekly schedule screen, with a lot of different activities showing as animated chibi!

Now I know what you’re wondering… when it will be out? Well I don’t want to say anything to not jinx it 😀 but it shouldn’t really take too long (talking about the beta, the official game for sure won’t be out before this Autumn).

I hope you’re excited as I am to see this game finally out!!

Queen Of Thieves update

This week I’m also trying to come up with a new battle layout for this new RPG in the works. The idea was to make it more user-friendly, maybe even “mobile-friendly”, and simplify the interface. So far I’ve made this:

As you can see if you’re familiar with Loren/SOTW battle interface, I removed the battle log at bottom, and you can toggle it on/off with a button (the “L” button). If the log is turned off, you would see the selected character stats there.

The idea is that I already display almost all the info directly on the portraits: attack (sword), defense (shield), hit points (heart), SP (star). The only stats not shown are speed and critical which aren’t so essential, since the movement order can be seen on the right, and critical is a percentage of doing double damage but can be seen in character’s screen.

The skill or effect description would show on the left too, in the frame below the one in which the log is displayed.

If you have any feedback/ideas about it, I’ve made a thread in forums: http://www.winterwolves.net/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=3624 to discuss 🙂

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva