Category Archives: queen of thieves

Queen Of Thieves “crafting”

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crafting

In the screenshot above you see the “crafting” system I’ve just implemented on Queen Of Thieves. It’s nothing complex, and to be honest calling it crafting is a bit too much: you just place gems in the various items sockets, similarly to what happens in Diablo/Torchlight.

Anyway, even if simple, it’s quite addictive, both for casual players but also for nightmare-mode players. For the former because it’s just fun to place the various gems and see the stats go up. For the latter, because using the right combination they could find a new strategy to beat a difficult battle. I tested myself in an early catacomb level, and while leveling up to acquire new skills is what makes your party more powerful, I was able to beat a particularly difficult battles with gems alone (even if I used a cheat mode to get powerful gems early).

So in summary I’m very happy about the result, and I think was a good idea to add it. I think it’s balanced, because it can give you the edge in a battle but not completely change the difficulty.

And most importantly, since you can apply gem to any armor piece, it means that you can always equip the outfit you like most (as said before, the items you wear are reflected in the sprite in this game). Yes, everything started when users in forums wanted a solution to this problem! 🙂

I’m still unsure if to allow the gem-socketing for weapons too. I might need some more time to decide, but I think not. After all players have already a lot of stuff to customize!

This week I’ve resumed the catacomb exploration coding, hoping to finish it by mid-July at the latest. After that, I’ll only need to wait for the writer to finish the otome routes, and the artist to do some missing artwork but most of the work is done.

riddle

The catacombs will have “only” 9 levels, but I’m trying to make each level unique. Currently I’m doing the second level, which will feature a mad priest asking riddles thorough the level, like the one above. Obviously if you answer wrong…bad things will happen 😉

Quick update about the other games

This week made good progress. Just to name a few (there are much more but can’t list everything):

  • the intro scene of Cursed Lands, with the character creation done by talking to Apolimesho. Quite cool 🙂
  • more writing for Loren 2, though obviously it’s still in early stages
  • more writing/art/music for Never Forget Me (Always Remember Me sequel)
  • more Heirs & Graces scenes and CG sketches… very hot and with a good amount of fanservice!
  • more screens for the yet-to-be-announced yuri game. More fanservice for yuri lovers 😉

So even if the month of June is almost ended, it was a good month for the development, like May. Sooner or later all those games “in progress” will be finished… and it could happen that I’ll release 2-3 of them in sequence, since there are several that are “almost done”! 🙂

Queen Of Thieves catacombs exploration

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First of all, as you probably know, there’s the Steam Summer sale going on, until the 21st June. All my games are 50% off, except SOTW which is 25% since is still very new.
Check it here: http://store.steampowered.com/search/?publisher=Winter%20Wolves

Now, about the topic of this post: this week I’ve been busy finishing coding the “dungeon exploration” part of my upcoming game “The Queen Of Thieves”. As I posted in forums already, this part is separate from the main gameplay in which you go robbing the houses of the nobles.

Its mainly purpose is to provide a way to gain experience (the infamous “grinding”) for those players who like it. You’ll be able to access it from the map, as seen in the image below:

updatedmap

You can visit them once a day, and every time you finish a level you’ll need to wait several days before a new level opens (this to limit the grinding speed a bit!).

The first time you enter, you’ll be greeted by Tiberius (one of the romanceable characters, and the guards captain). He’ll accept your offer to help exploring the “catacombs” which are nearby the town.

tiberius

Once you enter them, you’ll see the view of the current catacomb level, like a sort of blueprint/map. You’ll be able to move through the various locations, which will be full of encounters. Each level will have different types of monsters. In this case, the first one has giant rats and disease rats.

catacombs

Before the fight, you’ll be able to place strategically your party members and also see the enemies level and monster type, alongside a short sentence describing the monster feature (for example the disease rat can inflict disease, while the giant rat is very fast).

prebattle

There will be different winning and starting conditions: in some fights you’ll need to kill a specific enemy to win, in others you’ll be ambushed so enemies start with a speed bonus the first round, and so on.

I plan to have 9 levels in total, which should be enough to provide a good variety. Also, differently from what I originally thought, I am also going to write a short story about what happened in those catacombs, so if you manage to explore them all you’ll discover some important information 😉

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
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).

casual
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:

newundead

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.

progress
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:strikethrough

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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kaden

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:

qotnewbattle

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.

skillsup

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/