Update and transformations

So, looks like I'll fall a little short of having all the line-art done by the end of the year, but not my much.  I have a few minor scenes to finish up, and most of the happy ending art.  I've done a fair amount of cleaning up and processing the line-art, and written some the scenes as well.  So things are coming along pretty nicely.

So the game features three transformations, none of which leaves you with a controllable character (instead that character will show up again as a hostile.)  They are: getting "infected" by a werecreature, getting desouled and possessed by a succubus, and getting turned into a vampire.  Although the basics are in, I still have to work in the image coloration and such to make sure the new vampire looks like your randomly-generated character.

Other than that, still looking at a Spring 2014 release.

Artwork continuing

I've finally outlined all the artwork I need to finish the game, and have done a lot of clean up and coloring of the art.  That's the good news... bad news is, I probably won't finish the game until Spring.  There's still a decent amount of coding to do after the art is done, and the art is still a good ways away.

Still, here's some of what's done.  Heroines that are lost, and then rescued by your later characters may turn up in town having had to... change profession:

There's also some Game Over scenes involving hell hounds and spiders that have come along nicely.  I'm going to add a special scene for being defeated by the boss, plus some naga game overs and some involving an orc boss (those are already finished, line art wise)

Art progress

So... I've gotten a lot of the art done, I'm looking towards finishing all the game art (scenes at least, there might be a little more sprite art to do) by the end of the month.  After the drawing, there's still a lot of processing to get it in the game.  Did you know MSPaint still gets memory overflow errors when dealing with monochrome bitmaps?  Neither did I until a few hours ago...

Anyway, one of the novel features of (many) rogue-likes is the persistent world, and one of the things I wanted to add to this game that was lacking in most other hentai games is for the fate of your previous adventurers to play into the game.  For example, losing to a succubus results in a de-souling process similiar to that in Towers of Change 2 with the ghosts, and your new body being inhabited by a demon, turning your former character into a lesser succubus, which is now a hostile enemy.  Here's some of the line art from running into one assuming your last unfortunate player was the half-troll girl:

...as per the rest of the player graphics, although your hair and basic art doesn't change, each character has her own unique hair, eye and skin color which will cascade through to running into her, either as a monster or a victim.

On the game side, all the talents are in except for the active abilities of the Half-Troll.  The programming side is a lot harder to give a time estimate for, since debugging can be either very short or very long, but I'm still hoping to get 1.0 (i.e. the first downloadable, playable version) by the end of the year.

Working on more art

Trying to really get things in gear for an end-of-year release, I've implemented most of the new talents, and done a fair amount of line art that needs to be cleaned up, scanned, and put in the game.

Most recent stuff is related on monsters spawned from slain players, i.e. you get to see a vampire, succubus, or lycanthrope version of your fallen player (and be attacked by it on your current player.)

So far, only the basic art for the gnome is done, but I'm working on the rest.  Also, some different GOR for the boss of the orcs, so it won't be the same art as his followers.  Sorry, no screenshots at the moment since it hasn't been fully put in the game yet.

Talent Trees

So now, each of the three class/races has talent trees to pick from at every level (4 each to be precise) to make the game a little more interesting.  Some basic stats have been added as well.  Much of this still has to be implemented in the game engine, as it currently stands.

There's no armor or weapons in the game, since one of my pet peeves is games with destructible clothing... where you somehow still have armor.  However, since taking equipment out of a Roguelike removes a major element (and incentive to down monsters) I'm going to add "trinkets" that boost your abilities.

On a tangent, it's well worth your time to check out the Redemption of the Crimson Empress project on Offbeatr.  Part 1 of the game is here and is a Koi Koi futa game done all in english, with pretty reasonable renders.  It seems like a good project overall, my only complaint is Offbeatr doesn't take Paypal for some reason.

Game Tweaks

So, as I said, I'm trying to add little diversity to the playing style, so instead of a steady progression (Say like the older MORIA games) where you just learn the same spells, now there'll be 4 skill trees for each race.  Still only 10 spells/abilities total.  Also, I'm separating damage and dodging from HP, and adding elemental resistances to make things a little more interesting.

I'll probably add some more statuses too... but it's all pretty dry at this point.

Art progress

So, as I said, progress is pretty slow during the summer, I have gotten a fair amount of art done, including this guy, who'll act as kind of a "Rare" monster in that you'll have some minor dialogue and he'll be tougher than the average goblin (and possibly have better loot) but there's no unique CG for being defeated by him.

Status

So the nightmare CG is now added, basically, you can dream about the GoR scene from an enemy you defeated if you stay at the inn.  The character coloration is missing in the picture to the left, but that was just a minor oversight.

The game is probably going to take through the end of the year... summer doesn't leave me with much free time, so updates may be irregular.  Although the game is mostly done, there's still a lot of art to do, as well as probably a combat revamp.

Without a real equipment system, the rather vanilla combat made the game kind of boring.  I'll post more about it later once I decide what precisely I'm going to do.

Bathhouses and Inns

It's mostly been town stuff (the bathhouse events are in, as are most of the inn events.)  The bathhouse is mainly just some fluff, at the moment, but the Inn section has some additional H-scenes, plus the ability to have nightmares about GoR scenes for enemies you killed, so you don't have to lose a character to see each scene.

It's basically part of my whole "GoR is nice, but you shouldn't have to intentionally lose to see all the hentai" philosophy.  There's been a lot of additional artwork (Adding some of the minions of the Siren) but I'm trying not to post too much of that before the game comes out.

Also did some work with the NPCs, but they're not fully implemented yet.

More content

Most of my work recently had just been adding content to the game, more monsters, bosses, town stuff, etc.  Also, working on implementing NPCs.  The basics are already in:

I've also expanded the dialogue option box, and will soon make them a little less cryptic.

In other news, my japanese VPN provider is shutting down, so I'm going to have to find a new one...

Dungeon of Lost Maidens

Just wanted to clarify I few base things since there's some confusion (and most people aren't going to read 1 year plus of dev log...)

The game is called "Dungeon of Lost Maidens"

...and there's not a demo anywhere for download, I'm only going to release the game once it's done (hopefully, sometime this year.)

Rescues

So, although one of the main quests (and sources of hentai content) is rescuing various fallen members of Marigold's party, I also plan on implementing the ability to rescue fallen player characters.  The first two members of Marigold's party are already in the game and can be saved, but until recently, you couldn't do anything with downed PCs except for gawk at them.

Well, now you can save them, as long as you have a Town Portal scroll.

Here, we have our unlucky test heroine downed by some kobolds just a few steps into the first level:

...and the standard conclusion seen in various pics I've posted over the development:

Now, we have a half-troll heroine come and kill the kobolds:

...and talk to the downed girl.  Currently, she can only ask her who defeated her, and offer to help by giving her a Town Portal scroll:

I don't have her proper name in there, but that'll be added shortly.  Anyway, hand her a portal scroll and she vanishes:

...and later, you'll be able to run into her in town, interact with her, etc.

Also added, I've got a miniboss who will have her minions drag you to her for the GoR if you're defeated by them.  Along with that, I've addressed one of my long standing gripes about Roguelikes, which is in almost all of them, the enemy just waits for you to arrive.  Now, humanoid enemies will occasionally go patrol the dungeon, which makes resting to heal/regen mana a little riskier than in most games, especially as you have a limited cone of view.

Email problems solved.

So, new email account, givennone at lavabit .com.  I'll check it about once a week.  Still looking for artists for other projects (hopefully another version of my previous games, which were versus memory games.)

Other than that, worked on the GoR scripts for the lycanthropic monsters and boss.  Will have more and meatier updates later.

More features

Lots of small things added to make the game more playable. 

First, I added a Quick Start option:

 

Turning this on means that any time you have a new character (either a new game or because one died in non-roguelike mode) you get to skip all the introductory dialogue/quest grabbing and are immediately ready to go into the dungeon, as below:

Also among usability features is an automap:

I added a controls menu accessed by pressing ?, and also fixed a number of unpleasant bugs.  No recent progress on the artwork, though, spend some time on it, but got frustrated.  Perhaps I'll try again this week...

Back at it

Not a whole lot got done over the holidays, but I did some more work on boss scripts, and there's now a basic config menu:

Did do some research, playing the new ADOM as well as Tales of Maj'Eyal (which is really good, but probably won't influence the game too much, as it has a great deal of complexity)

Should have some significant new content added in the next week or so. 

Also, thanks to Yahoo's dubious security measures, I can't get into my Rocketmail account.  I'll have to find a new one...