Friday, December 30, 2016

dev blog #23 - into the new year!



2016 

... what a year! As pretty much everybody else too I had my fair share of unpleasant moments this year but I'm happy to say that I can end it on a high note!



Big thank you to all my supporters who made it possible for me to advance the games development in very big steps! You guys are awesome!

When I started the development of the game I didn't think that I would have such a big support coming from the community this early on. The game is in development since October now which is not for very long at all.
In the beginning I didn't think the interest in it would be that high either but as statistics on my blog and Patreon show: you guys want it!
Ranging from an average of 300-600 hits every day to a recent peak of 3.700 hits on my blog alone on the 25th of December I can assume that the interest indeed is high.

And the game isn't even what it's going to be at all yet. Development just scratched the surface of what's going to come and I can assure you that my motivation is very high to deliver you guys even more quality! Despite the actual lack of real content I'm very thankful to all of the Patrons who decided to support me already with a pledge and I won't let you down.

That said, the amount of people who apparently can't or don't want to understand that development of a custom built game engine takes some time is too high but I won't let them drag me down with their impatience or harsh comments!

If you have not checked it out yet I recommend a look at the roadmap where you can see the development schedule and what's going to come (in the next update or later).
My main objective is still to finish up the game engine as soon as possible so I can start pumping out real game content for you. Therefore I have to focus on game engine development critical tasks more than on the creation of new scenes or characters. But that doesn't mean I'll skip those important things either and you can expect new scenes in every update like I did in the previous updates.

Speaking of updates: my plan is to have the game engine "finished" (it won't be really finished until the full game is done) to a point that all the big and gameplay critical features are implemented in around 2-3 Months at latest! (not making any promises here! only promise I can make is that I'll work as hard on this goal as possible)

Because... let's face it: you guys want them boobies!
and you will get them for sure! and they will be glorious! and I'm sure you're going to have as much fun with them as I had creating them for you.

And regarding them boobies: there are many more female characters coming to the game step by step who will be available for action at one point too. But that doesn't force you to engage with them as the main story line will still be evolving around the twins and their relationship progress with each other. The other girls will just be eye candy to spice up the game. And yes... more guys are coming too.

So aside from game engine "milestones" I also updated the "Goals" section on Patreon because I ran into several bottlenecks while rendering the high quality CGI for the game.
While I can render in a somewhat fast speed with my current 2 year old setup (i7-4790k 4x4GHz, 32GB DDR3-1600, 2x GTX970, all components watercooled) rendering one image in 720p takes between 30 minutes and 6h. The main bottleneck here is the "small" memory of the GTX970 (3.5 GB) which limits me to CGI with only 2 characters in it because the high quality textures take up alot of that. I couldn't render the "new year 2017" image as one image with all 6 of my current characters in it because that would've needed 7GB of graphics RAM. To render it I rendered each character separate and combined the images afterwards which took me some time. With one or two better graphics cards this bottleneck can be eliminated but the cards I have in mind are very expensive Nvidia Titan X Pascal (but the best bang for your bucks).

So where's all this tech bla bla leading to?
Well... I formed a 3-step computer hardware upgrade plan that (if Patreon support keeps being that awesome) will be leading to better hardware for my render PC and thus faster render times. This ultimately leads to faster update cycles for new scenes and other CGI at your end.

So the most needed hardware upgrade would be one Nvidia Titan X Pascal that would join my two existing GTX970 (I have a spare slot on my motherboard, yay) and that's the goal for upgrade step 1.
The other steps are detailed on my Patreon page so check them out (at the goals section) if you like to know more on that topic.

But enough already with this tech gibberish that doesn't really concern your end of the line!

What's in store for you over the next months? Well I plan to host more polls to give my awesome supporters the opportunity to participate in the creation of the game more! Like the currently active poll you will be able to decide in things like new areas, outfits, characters or even story lines (once ready). In addition I will also continue to post high-res and regular concept and preview renders as I already did this year.

To start fresh into the new year I assembled a free pack of wallpapers that everybody can download. It includes the "new year 2017" image and "single" images for each character without any watermarks... all in 4k resolution (3840x2160) so you can downsize them to whatever resolution you like.

LINK: Mega.nz

PREVIEWS:
New Year 2017


tldr; happy new year everybody!

Saturday, December 24, 2016

dev blog #22 - new techDemo 0.5 released



and here it is!
the next techDemo 05. version is ready just in time as a little christmas present!



  • you can play as Lena now!
    you can do almost everything that Mike could do already (except the Mike specific scenes of course)

     
  • new scene (when playing as Lena)
    added a new scene with 25 CGI rendered images with hardcore elements that you can trigger every night at Mikes door (for now)

     
  • new character: Ms. Adams hot young class Teacher of Mike (and Lena for now, she will get a handsome male teacher later)

     
  • new area: School
    on weekdays you have to go to school from morning till afternoon where you can select one of your skills that gets leveld during "class" with the

     
  • skill learning system
    attending class increases your skill points by 25 and once it reaches 100 points that skill goes up one level (skills still have no effect for now)

     
  • new improved inventory
    I re-wrote the inventory system for better performance and to integrate "usable items" for later updates

     
  • formatted dialog text
    improved the dialog text render engine to be able to show different formatted text in the same line (e.g. thinking, bold text, etc)

     
  • many bugfixes and tweaks!
     
all 20$+ Patrons should check their PM inbox for the download link!
10$ Patrons will get access on 31st December and then the public release will be the 7th January 2017

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Poll #1 - new area








the development schedule for techDemo 0.6 is set and includes the implementation of the "money system".
this includes a new area where you can actually earn money.



but instead of me deciding what area gets added next I would like to give you, my awesome supporters, the opportunity to cast a vote for one of the following new areas:

  • The Roadhouse (Restaurant)
    you can work here to earn some money after school or on weekends
    Lena/Mike: Waitress/Waiter
    the skill "Charisma" will affect how much extra tips you get each shift
    Lena: Cooking
    the skill "Creativity" will affect how much extra wage you get

  • The Rear End (Stripclub)
    you can work here to earn some money after school or on weekends
    Lena: Bar/Waitress
    the skill "Charisma" will affect how much extra tips you get each shift
    Mike: Bouncer
    the skill "Strength" will affect how much you get paid

  • Wranglers (Gas Station/Mechanic)
    you can work here to earn some money after school or on weekends
    Lena/Mike: Cashier
    the skill "Charisma" will affect how much extra tips you get each shift
    Mike: Mechanic
    the skill "Engineering" will affect how much extra wage you get

the poll will be active until the public release of techDemo 0.5 which is scheduled for 01/07/17

the poll winner will be implemented first! that also means that the other areas will be implemented at a later point too


cast your vote here

Saturday, December 17, 2016

dev blog #21 - new techDemo in sight





that was a long week of coding and rendering! the to-do list for the next version is getting shorter and shorter with more and more things checked as "done".



just some more fixes and tweaks to the existing "content" and the release is good to go live!
the planned release date for 20$ Patron early access is the 24th Decemeber and after one week the 10$ Patrons will get access on the 31st.

Public release date for techDemo 0.5 is going to be the 7th January 2017!

I'll post a summary of added/changed/fixed features on release day as usual so stay tuned until then.

Saturday, December 10, 2016

dev blog #20 - new Character





thanks to the awesome Patron support this month I was able to buy new character assets and environment assets.
and since development progressed very well too I decided to add a new character already in techDemo 0.5!

meet Ms. Adams: the young, single homeroom teacher of Mike



there wont bey any scene with her yet but some dialogs.

the biggest update would be the implementation of the skill system that lets you level your skills at school. check out a preview video here



as you can see there will also be a new area you can travel to: the school
(although in a very unfinished temporary state, there will be many more rooms later)

every school day you can increase the points on one of your skills by 25 points (1/4th).
Another way of getting your skills higher will be reading skill books. on their implementation I will work next in combination with other "usable" items.

Patrons can expect a first concept render of the new scene very soon to!

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Twin Star - techDemo 0.4 - public release



it's finally here for the public!

get it from the download link

if you haven't already checked it, find more details in the previous blog post here

Friday, December 2, 2016

dev blog #19





with the public release of techDemo 0.4 right around the corner I'm already busy working on the new features for techDemo 0.5!

some new things are already completed, like the new and improved inventory. due to the way the inventory was "generated" until now there have been some bugs and complications regarding things like item drag&drop and consistent control handling. so I decided to completely re-write the code for the inventory handling which lead to a new layout and the improvement of the inventory functionality.



as you can see in this screenshot the "Fridge" inventory is already one of the new smaller inventory types. The item description box got moved from the bottom of each inventory to one single box to the left side with better readability (also featuring the new improved text engine with formattable text).

What you also see is a new item: a skill book
depending on the item type you can "use" some of them right out of "My Inventory" by clicking the action button on the left ("read it" in case of a skill book)

what's also ready to show off? character selection!



it's working, and the integration into the save/load system is also finished. you can only select the character when starting a new game and it is not planned to ever switch between characters midgame! You can expect playing either of them to be a separate experience as the play style of both of them will be a different one.

as it might not look like much the background work of these "simple looking" upgrades took some time and there is still more to come for the new version that is not just bugfixing.

the next big part on my list right now is the skill system that will allow for leveling your skills by different ways. major part of  leveling a skill will be attending a certain class at school (which will be added in this update too). other ways will be things like "skill books" that also increase your skill level by a defined amount of EXP.
Yes that's right, you won't level skills as a whole but step-by-step with increasing the experience bar of that skill.

in addition there will be added many more things to do ingame apart from jerking off into a plant!
so let me wrap up this blog entry and get back to work so I can keep the planned release date around the last week of December (for early access).

also, as successful as this month was for my patreon campaign, I have to rethink the way I grant rewards. the amount of fraud and false patrons was too high so I will change the way patrons get access!

Thursday, November 24, 2016

dev blog #18 - the road ahead




techDemo 0.4 is released for early access patrons for some days now and I started to think about what's going to come in the next update.

while I have a list of things and ideas I want to put into the game it is nothing I would share online because it's unorganized and full of comments for myself.
that's why I decided to setup a public roadmap for the game so you guys can check anytime what's getting worked on and what's going to come later.

find the roadmap here on trello
there is also a link on the top right menu of my blog.

this roadmap is a general overview of things that I plan to put in the game and things that get worked on. you can filter the list for things like "game engine", "explicit content", etc or even the game version of the game, like "techDemo 0.4", "techDemo 0.5" and so on.
it is by far not a complete list so expect things to be added frequently.

other than that I already finished an advanced text display engine that will power the dialogs and scene texts and all major text blocks in the game from now on.
It allows for "formatted" text to be displayed as the GameMaker Studio text engine is not that versatile regarding multiple formats in one text.

here is a screenshot of what that means (oh and it's a preview for the new scene of 0.4):



until now there was only text with the same style for the dialogs and scenes but as you can see in the image: mikes "thoughts" are now displayed in italic font and the text can even have different colors in the same sentence.

so what else am I planning to add for 0.5?

well here is a quick summary of what you can expect for the next update that will be released near the end of December:

  • Character selection - play as Mike or Lena
  • more character background story/info
  • +1 hardcore scene from Lena's POV
  • "random conversation" upgrade to the dialog engine
  • working skill system (level your skills by attending different school classes)
  • +1 new map: school (in a very temporary layout for now)
     
this is going to be a bigger update to the game so I'll take more time for it than the last ones.
of course I already got some feedback from my early access Patrons regarding some bugs.
Bug hunting will be a big part of this update cycle again so expect things to get fixed too.

Saturday, November 19, 2016

dev blog #17 - new techDemo 0.4



and here it is!
the next techDemo version is finally presentable


Twin Star - techDemo 0.4

the new major features are:


  • Skill Menu



    the latest addition to the Journal menu is the skill menu that gives you an overview over your characters skill levels (duh)
    there is no background functionality to it yet other than a display function
    the effects of the skills are still temporary but probably won't change much in the future so you can already see where I'm going with them.
     
  • Map Changer

    in order to travel around in the game world and visit other areas the "map changer" takes control of transition between the different areas that will be in the game.

    In addition I also expanded the house by another floor, the "Groundfloor" that you can reach by going downstairs over the newly added staircase next to the bathroom



    now that there is a "front door" you can also leave the house at "morning" on weekdays to go to school (not really, but it's a placeholder for the next update)
     
  • new hardcore scene

    as already announced in some previews this update includes another new hardcore scene!



    for testing purpose this scene is available every "morning" at the bathroom door, just check it out.
     
  • 'install-free'
    I changed the way the game gets deployed so from now on you don't need to install it anymore in the usual way!
    It comes as an extractable ZIP with 'pre-installed' game files and all you have to do is extract it anywhere you like (your external encrypted porn stache if you have one) and run the games .exe file
     
there have been of course many minor tweaks and a lot of bugfixes. for a more detailed overview check out the changelog page

Early Access
all qualified Patrons will get the download link in a PM in the next hour.
If you want to know more about early access check out the early access page

Public Release
the public release for the techDemo 0.4 will happen in two weeks from now on 4th of December!

Monday, November 14, 2016

dev blog #16




after the very successful public release of the techDemo 0.3 (over 3000 downloads in 2 days)  I'm happy to say that the release for 0.4 is almost here too!

Patrons can expect to get the early access by the end of next weekend (19-20 Nov) and then the public release for 0.4 will follow 14 days later.

so what happened lately in development?
well I hunted down many more bugs that popped up while implementing new functions for several reasons. the main bug infection came from code that was not very optimized from previous versions so it bugged out when I added new stuff.
But that's how it usually works, you fix a bug and add 3 new in the process!

Right now I'm busy furnishing the new area of the house "ground floor".
Transition from upstairs to ground floor is working very well already meaning that the "map changer" is ready. so there will be a new area in the update that comes after this one too (most likely the school).

here you can get a glimpse of the (yet unfinished) new area

that's all there is to show for now as I have previewed the other new function (skill menu) in the last dev blog post

Friday, November 11, 2016

Twin Star - techDemo 0.3 - public release



it's finally here for the public!

get it from the download link

if you haven't already checked it, find more details in the previous blog post here

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

dev blog #15 - bugs ahoi




so the public release for 0.3 is right around the corner and I got reports of several game crashing bugs that you can avoid until they get fixed in 0.4:

  • "Continue" crashes the game:
    well, there was a bug in the way the game checks for the "last save" so if you never saved a game yet your game will crash when you select "continue" in the start menu.

    workaround:
    don't select "continue" when you have never saved yet

    STATUS:
    fixed in 0.4
     
  • "Quest" menu crashes the game:
    somehow I forgot to "remove" the scrollbar of the textbox in the "Quest" menu which crashes the game if you click it after closing the menu

    workaround:
    don't open the "Quest" menu in the journal, there is nothing game related there anyway

    STATUS:
    fixed in 0.4
     
  • using "Lena's Bed" crashes the game:
    only happens if you use her bed in "debug mode" (F1) due to several conditions I never considered of which one is you playing in that ugly "debug mode" :P

    workaround:
    don't play in "debug mode" !

    STATUS:
    fixed in 0.4
     

so what's going on besides hunting down bugs?
well, before I started the bug hunt I finished the new "Skills" menu which you can see here live in action




like the "People" menu the "Skill" menu is only a layout for now with no working functions

Thursday, November 3, 2016

dev blog #14 - what's cooking




so in my last blog update on the new techDemo release I did not mention anything about what's coming next.
That's because I could not decide back then if I want to add new functionality first or start to fine tune what's there already.

But to be realistic: there is not much "there already" so the decision was made to add more features first before I can start fine tuning stuff.


so what's on the list next:

  • new area
    hanging out on the upper floor is all nice n shit but more areas to go to would be nice!
    so along side the new "ground floor" area I can implement the "map changing" functionality which handles transition between different parts of the game world.
     
  • school
    in addition to the "map change" function the school will be added in a temporary form.
    Means that there is no actual "school area" for now but a form of "time advancement" that simulates you going to school in the morning.
    In the long run the school will be the place where you can train your skills by attending different classes which will advance time to afternoon or even evening (depending on the class you pick for that day) on week days (MO-FR)
     
  • skills
    the skill overview will be added to the journal. I'm not done yet deciding which skills and in what form they will be used but that makes no difference for the design and layout of the menu.
    Skills can be trained in school (and maybe other ways too, we will see... books?) by increasing the skill points of certain skills.
    Once the points reach a defined amount your skill level will increase by 1 giving you boni depending on the skill.
    One of these boni could be that you need to hit less "targets" in the scene minigame and stuff like this but that's not final yet.
     
besides coding all this I'm also toying around in DAZ to render the next scene which will be a stealth voyeurism scene in the bathroom (Mike peeping on Lena) but the concept for it is not quite done yet.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

dev blog #13 - new techDemo 0.3



and here it is!
the next techDemo version is finally presentable

Twin Star - techDemo 0.3

the 3 new major features are:
  • Journal


    with the journal you have a menu where you can keep up on your quests,
    people you met and your skills

    in order to see any NPC info in the "People" tab you have to find and talk with an NPC first
    after this initial contact your journal will update with the infos you have on that NPC

    at the current stage all the info there is cosmetic as there is no function behind them,
    but you get a glimpse of what I'm going for in future updates!
     
  • Scene Manager



    now we get to the first juicy update for this game!
    with the implementation of the Scene Manager it is now possible to start "scenes".

    These scenes are where the fun is as you go through them like a dialog but this time you get more or less hardcore content displayed.

    At certain parts of the scene there needs  a decision to be made regarding the way you want to continue the scene. To do so a "minigame" will start where you have to hit the "choice" you want. Just hit "E" or your left mouse button whenever the crosshair is over your choice 3 times to progress (the mouse does not need to be there too).

    Right now there is no penalty if you fail the minigame and for testing purpose you can activate the only scene available each "night".
     
  • Event Manager

    this is a pure background system that handles events. Whenever something in the gameworld gets changed an event is triggered first to perform that change.

    Best example for this is the "night" mode for Lena:
    When "night" time is reached an event is called to place the activator at Lena's door so you can start the scene. In addition her door "status" and her bed "status" is changed too so you can see a difference visually compared to other times (like "morning")

other than these there are some minor tweaks and the "achievement popup" that notifies you when you discovered a new NPC (and more in the future).

Please note that the scenes images are far from "finished" as some of them are slightly misplaced or the camera angle changed slightly (for the same perspective). For now I won't render this scene again because I want to focus on new content first.

If you are part of my Patreon Early Access group you can download the new techDemo 0.3 now

read more about this group here: Early Access Info

this update will be available for public in two weeks from now on 12th November!

Thursday, October 27, 2016

dev blog #12 - new demo in sight

brace yourself, new release is coming!

the current status of techDemo 0.3 is "almost finished" as all three of the new main features are in place and all I do right now is cleaning up some scripts to get rid of bugs and infinite loops and stuff like that

you can expect a release for early access Patrons by the end of this week.
public release will be 2 weeks later from that day but you can read more infos on that here at the early access page

on release day I will also post some detailed infos on what changed or what I added and so on but for now I can show you a bit more of the new scene manager


View post on imgur.com

or the "People" menu in your journal where you can keep track of the friendship progress with the various other NPC you will encounter in the game (for now it's just Lena tho)


View post on imgur.com

so just a few more days until the next release, see you then

Saturday, October 22, 2016

dev blog #11

so I'm really busy working on the new features for techDemo 0.3

I already finished the "Event Manager" functions which allow for dynamically adding/removing quests, dialogs, scenes, pickups and NPC and basically all the things that can be changed during things like a quests (locked doors, chests, etc)

as it is a pure background function there is nothing to see on the players end but I can show the progress of the "Journal" menu which is shaping up (and is not finished yet at all)


View post on imgur.com

while rendering more "steps" of the first scene I also worked on an interactive part of the "Scene manager".
Instead of just progressing through the scene in a linear way there will be a choice based system which can lead to multiple endings (good and bad) of that scene.

to achieve this  there is a "mini game" to select your choice which is a circulating crosshair that passes by the choices you have and depending on what you "hit" the scene will progress accordingly


View post on imgur.com

you got a limited amount of time to choose and have to hit the same choice 3 times in order to progress this line of the scene. you can choose to abort which will end the scene in a harmless way (no penalties) but if you miss any of the choice "targets" you get a bad ending including penalties like friendship decrease etc.

the design of the "mini game" is temporary and just to test the core functionality of the background functions, like most of the game once the framework is ready I will upgrade the game design graphically.

Monday, October 17, 2016

dev blog #10 - bugs!



BUG!

So the first reports came in after the release of techDemo 0.2, apparently there is a bug in the "Start Menu" when you start a "new game" with mouse controls.
It can happen that your new game then won't start with "Monday - afternoon" but "Sunday - morning" instead.

you can work around that bug for now by using the keyboard controls instead and start a "new game" by pressing "E" and not clicking on it

the main problem here was that for both inputs (mouse, keyboard) to work there are two separate calls in the code to start the new game, one of them was an old version from the time when there was no save/load implemented and somehow I forgot to update that one too.


View post on imgur.com

that is fixed now and (hopefully) won't be a problem in techDemo 0.3 anymore!


whats next:

as for new stuff to come, I'm heavily working on the 3 major updates that come to 0.3 which are:

  • Scene Manager
    to load and handle those juicy scenes you guys want
  • Event Manager
    to dynamically add/remove NPCs, items, dialogs, etc on runtime (like quests)
  • Journal screen
    which, for now, gives you an overview of
    - active quests
    - people you met
    (and the info on their persona, like habits, relationship, friendship status, etc)

in the meantime there is still rendering going on in the background to get some nice shots for the first scene that will be Mike sneaking into Lena's room at night and doing all sorts of naughty things to her

Thursday, October 13, 2016

dev blog #9 - new techDemo 0.2


here it is!
after more than a week of coding background functions I can now release the next techDemo

techDemo 0.2

it features some major new gameplay functions
so what's new:

  • mouse control
    the game now fully supports mouse input (in addition to regular keyboard control)
    point-click movement
    drag&drop inventories
    browse dialog choices with the mouse wheel

     
  • revolver quick menu
    called with a right-click (or Q) you can spin it with the mouse wheel (or WASD) to gain quick access to
    - Inventory
    - Smartphone
    - Journal
    - Save/Load
    - Options
    (list might change in the future)

     
  • save/load/continue
    one of the most important features in a game, finally implemented
    you have 5 save slots available (might change in the future to more)
    NOTE: if you close the game via the X or via "Exit" in the save/load menu nothing will be saved since the last time you saved (if you did)

     
  • time and day
    the time system divides into 7 days (MON-SUN) and each day divides into 5 segments
    - morning
    - noon
    - afternoon
    - evening
    - night

    in the future this time system will be used for specialized events that can only take place on a given day and time. this function is already in place as you can only "end the day" at the bed at "night"

as always please keep in mind that all the graphics are still temporary until the basic framework for the game is done. once that is achieved I can spend more time fine tuning the graphics and add more "content" to the game. 

until then it will be called a "techDemo" as there is not much actual content to call it even a "game"

so what is coming for the next techDemo?
I know I have said that this techDemo will have new scene(s) in it but it just wasn't possible to implement them as coding the save/load function took way more time than expected.
BUT: as the next part that gets implemented is the "scene manager" you will get at least one scene in the next demo update to test the functionality of it!

enough talk! gimme that techDemo!



Mirror: https://mega.nz




Wednesday, October 12, 2016

dev blog #8

writing your own save/load function is more time consuming than I thought...
I had to re-write some of the background functions that do the heavy lifting to be more save/load friendly in terms of how they provide or process certain data.



saving already works quite well so my main focus is now on the load function.
the tricky part here is to make sure all things get loaded properly and get moved/placed in the world where they belong (like pickup items, NPCs,...)

View post on imgur.com

as for the mentioned first scene.... this will have to wait for techDemo 0.3 because the way I want to implement scenes is way more code intensive than first estimated.
so in order to let you have some of the new features first I decided to move scenes implementation to 0.3 and release 0.2 once the load function is finished

I know! you guys want "action" and you will get it.... but not with 0.2, sorry
in the meantime, take another preview render for the still unfinished first scene


mischievous Mike


of course the scene is a bit dark as Mike was sneaking into Lena's room at night with the hallway light as the only light source coming through the half opened door.

Monday, October 10, 2016

dev blog #7

so right now the save/load functionality is almost finished, just catching some obvious bugs.
what is also finished is the new inventory layout. note that all the graphics are still temporary and most of the things you see at this stage is just the framework that will be equiped with actual graphics later on.


View post on imgur.com
the new inventory fully supports mouse controls like drag & drop and browsing through the inventory slots by turning the mouse wheel.


View post on imgur.com

(note the "pantie" item between the inventories, it's getting dragged but the mouse pointer won't show on the screenshot)

a right-click cancels any ongoing D&D or closes the inventory if nothing is dragged. dropping an item on an occupied slot will switch out the dragged item with the one in the slot


View post on imgur.com


I also reworked the dialog system to now handle multiple conditions
(like: have item X in Y amount + time NOT noon + ...) so it is more versatile than before.


View post on imgur.com

By doing so time skipping is now possible via the Ficus, the PC and the Bed but not every skip option is possible every time (like Bed - end the day: only possible at time=night)

in the meantime I'm also very busy rendering the images for the first scene that gets implemented before the next demo release. since each image takes render time of about 2h it is going very slow. I also found out that my CPU is actually bottlenecking my graphics cards while rendering so I turned CPU support for rendering off which sped up things a little

3840x3840 render on dual GTX970


Mike is up to no good in this first scene but I won't spoiler anything ;)

resized preview

Saturday, October 8, 2016

dev blog #6

right now there is not much new to show off as most of the new features are purely background functions
I had to adapt the whole system to implement the save/load functionality in a way that it makes more sense.

only optical upgrade is the new icons for the new revolver menu and the day/time display
View post on imgur.com


that's all news for now as I'm busy finishing the save/load functionality

Thursday, October 6, 2016

dev blog #5 - animations

since mouse point-click controls are implemented I figured the game needs some sort of quick-menu to let you access the important menus.
so I coded  a rotating "revolver" menu that you can call with right mouseclick (or Q) and control with the mouse wheel (or WASD)




the menu icons are temporary until I get the time to make some individual icons.

animations?!

while working on the new inventory design I rendered a 3 seconds animation in DAZ3D which took over 4h for a resolution of 480p :O
the intention was to test if and how I could integrate animated scenes to the game so I needed an animation first (duh!)

with 30 images per second the animation is made up of 90 images which I can easily integrate into the GameMaker engine (runs at 30 FPS naturally) but the downside of it is high load times to the game as these 3 seconds of 480p animation totaled in 75MB of data already

you can check out the animation running on GameMaker engine in this "small" test built:
controls: +/- changes the animation speed by a small amount
LINK: https://mega.nz/#!chdlmaJD

here is a crappy GIF conversion of the animation (GIFs run at 10 frames/s that's why it looks so slow)
[animated GIF] animation test


I'm not sure if animated scenes are viable at this point but I'll keep looking into the various possibilities of implementation.

the next tech demo is right around the corner, I just want to finish some more features first before unleashing it onto the public so there is more to try out than in the previous tech demo

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

dev blog #4



the major part of the last coding session was implementing the mouse controls.
thanks to the built in A* pathfinding algorythm of GameMaker I only had to finetune the grid used for the pathfinding calculations

biggest problem here was to handle doors as they can have two different states,
open or not  (compared to walls and other "solid" objects)

depending on each doors own status the path grid had to be adapted  for each pathfinding attempt

I also upgraded the various interactive objects (like containers, beds, NPCs etc) with "action spots" (blue circles) where the pathfinder will walk you if you click that interactive object directly to start interaction right away once you arrive there
View post on imgur.com

to offer more mouse abilites I also added a "hover" function that highlights objects with their names if you can interact with them.
the bold red square is the current mouse position on the grid (not captured with the screenshot)
View post on imgur.com


next will be the rework of the inventory system which was implemented only at the "backend" without a meaningful "frontend" in addition to mouse support for that as well

I plan to finish the save/load functionality first befor the next tech demo release

and with more and more framework features shaping up I plan on rendering some more images next so you guys have something more appealing for the eyes instead of all this tech gibberish :P


enough gibberish, you want images I know

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

dev blog #3

busy busy working on extending the framework

added working doors that can be opened, closed or slightly opened (for that little sneak peek inside)

View post on imgur.com


View post on imgur.com


in foresight of the yet to be coded day/night time cycle I already added a dialog to advance a given time of a day (who gets the reference here? :P )


View post on imgur.com



in addition to some world style upgrades I already worked on the games start menu and the current framework part in progress is the save/load functionality


View post on imgur.com


Sunday, October 2, 2016

CPU BBQ

getting my CPU all worked up for this 3840x3840 render job in DAZ3D


roasting my CPU
luckily it's watercooled sufficiently enough to not be a problem

dev blog #2 - playable tech Demo

so I was busy working on the dialog system and NPC interaction framework.


View post on imgur.com
for now these two components work in a way that I can start focusing on the next framework parts

I'm also happy to present the first little tech demo that you can test out to see ...well... not very much at this stage of the project but I just wanted to let you take part in the development process in a more "hands on" way


View post on imgur.com
also I'd appreciate any bug or problem feedbacks... yes/no/maybe?


get the tech Demo here:
LINK: https://mega.nz/#!pwl1zJIZ

this little tech demo shows the following features:

  • world generation
    wall tileing, walkable area, object highlighting
  • interaction with things
    locker, npc, items on the ground
  • context based dialoges
    no key? get one
  • Lena ignores you?
    see the spoiler at the end for more info




bring Lena her panties back

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Lena concept

today I messed around in DAZ studio a bit to create some poses for Lena
Lena DAZ3D concept


my plans for here are some sort of "shy on the outside but naughty inside" attitude

Lena DAZ3D concept

Lena DAZ3D concept

Lena DAZ3D concept

Thursday, September 29, 2016

devblog #1

the first major task will be to develop the game engine in such a way it works similar to engines like RPG maker VX/Ace e.g.

so why not use that engine right away? it's the task of development that interests me and since I already have a GameMaker Pro license I didn't want to buy another license for other engines.

in addition I have more freedom of implementing stuff with my own engine.
and the game won't feel like all the other RPGMaker games out there :D

for now I finished a basic implementation of the wall tileing and movement of the char
it's set up so that I just have to switch out the wall texture for different rooms and it can work with it you can see the result in the seemless transition of white wall/pink wall.

wall tiles
wall tiles

interaction with things

inventory framework

inventory framework with temporary graphics
I'm currently working on the inventory system. the basic idea is to make the whole game "one hand" operational so everything can be controled either by keyboard (WASD E Q R F TAB etc) or mouse therefor the inventory management is also trimmed to that feature

right now I focus on completing the framework behind the gameplay so almost every graphical design is temporary and not finetuned in any way

the next steps will be completing the inventory framework and building a better test world to prepare for the next part. major next framework parts will be the dialog framework (with choices and rewards and all) and NPC interaction.

if you read until here you must be very interested in my work :D

new 18+ Project: Twin Star

I just started the development of a new 18+ game called

Twin Star



the games main focus is about you spying on your twin sibling. You can choose either the male twin Mike or the female twin Lena as you character.

Twin Stars - Lena & Mike

The ultimate goal will be the seduction of your twin while gathering as many sexual memories as possible.

You have to form a bond with your twin over time to achieve this goal.
In addition you have a variety of tools at your disposal to perform all sorts of "memory gathering" in form of spy cameras, observation, blackmailing, and other sorts of mischievous actions.
These actions might interfere with the bonding progress of your twin but result in some fine material that you can keep or sell to earn some cash to upgrade your equipment even further for better quality material.

As with your relationship with your twin you start from scratch with your available equipment and work your way up.
The game is devided into a day/night cycle with segmentation in morning (pre-school)/noon (school)/afternoon /evening/night


depending on the day (MON-SUN) you have more or less time available because you won't be at school half the day. certain actions will end one segment or more and progress depends on your choices.

now onto some technical details
the game is running on GameMaker Engine (because I already have a Pro license)
and the style will be a top-down RPG with embedded images and action sequences that were pre-rendered in DAZ3D.

I plan on starting a Patreon campaign to raise some funds for more DAZ3D assets for the character art and sprite assets for the game world itself hence the available graphical diversity right now is very limited

the 3D characters are somewhat finished with basic assets, which I hope to improve soon
Lena DAZ3D concept

Mike DAZ3D concept