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Re: Renfield

Sithri said:

There is an audience for everything...

Just be sure to know who you are directing the game towards...

Personally I'm all for knocking limbs with female abominations lol

But I get why you would not

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I think I'll put an option that will be off by default that will allow sex with the freakier creatures.

But the first few batches of female mobs will be "Star Trek Fuckable" types.

Re: Renfield

MajorKagami said:

I'm getting excited again over this game now that the female MC is underway, was upset when you shifted the work away from that.

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Well it's just a matter of time.
Adding things to the prototype RPGMaker version of Renfield was a matter of minutes.
Adding the same amount of content to a full 3D game can take hours/days/weeks.

I've been testing various monster rigs to see if they can adapt to the existing H-animations.
So far the results have been encouraging.
As long as the hips align, the animations seem okay.
The only things that break are precision tandem animations like when he grabs and restraints her wrist.
I'll have to compensate for that with an inverse kinematic system.

Re: Renfield

all girls with one face oO

Re: Renfield

Still working on the flavor text / random npcs / radiant events.
Eager to get this done so we can finally implement Hanna as a playable character.

Also I've updated the backer rewards on Patreon.
Essentially now you can add some dialogue, dialogue options, or some other micro-scenario material.
Keep in mind that I have veto power over this.
If you write something that is Mass Effect: Andromeda levels of lame, I'll ask you to try again.

Having said that, you can either shape a scenario involving a major character or adopt a generic NPC to give them a personality of your choice.

Re: Renfield

Been listening to iDubbbz's Kickstarter Crap series while I work.
It's pretty funny how people just sit down and describe these amazing games that exist in their imaginations as though they are already completed masterpieces.
If only it were that simple.



The nature scenes are coming along nicely.
I've been reading several books on geology, geography, meteorology etc. in order to improve my nature-vocab.
Just like reading a fantasy novel, the more descriptive the flavor text, the better/more engrossing it is overall.

If you've pledged on Patreon please message me and redeem your backer rewards.
(I put this here because some people likely check these threads more often than their Patreon notifications)

Re: Renfield

Do you honestly think that people who want a demo, try before you buy, something that's been around in video games for decades are "cheapskates who won't buy it anyway"?

Re: Renfield

So while I was working I helped out a streamer with Monster Hunter Double Cross.
If he got stuck I'd translate some of the Japanese UI or other text.
Now I realize that MH has been for mobile devices for much of its history,
but I was surprised at the minimalist design considering how popular it is.
Would people tolerate or even prefer these small, bare-bones levels consisting of connected rooms
as a low-budget temporary alternative to a large single open world?



The nature events are nearly done.
After this come the generic npc events and other more dynamic events with dialogue options and choices with consequences.
It's a lot of work for text that (it seems) most players just click through without reading even once.
Nevertheless a game can feel very incomplete without the illusion of depth that flavor narration / dialogue provides.

Re: Renfield

Not having played Monster Hunter, I can't be sure what kind of connected rooms are in question, but I'd give a tentative yes to tolerating them.

A vast, open world is only interesting if it has interesting things in it. Making and placing said things is going to take a lot of time, effort and inspiration. Set locations and stage-style setups are fine in the meanwhile. Or even permanently, if it's good stuff.

What makes you think most players click through text without reading it?

Re: Renfield

reading is for books, lets get to the tits ruddering dicks!!

Re: Renfield

Krh said:

A vast, open world is only interesting if it has interesting things in it. Making and placing said things is going to take a lot of time, effort and inspiration. Set locations and stage-style setups are fine in the meanwhile. Or even permanently, if it's good stuff.

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Exactly.
Which is why I chose to make the game 2D in its first incarnation.
Originally I wanted to make an Elder Scrolls-style 1st person game right off the bat.
But after I'd gotten the basic systems in place, it began to sink in just how much time was involved in building the world itself.

The size, complexity and level of detail expected from a full 3D game is so much higher than a game with a more "classic" framework.
Just look at projects like the ones trying to rebuild Morrowind or Oblivion using Skyrim's engine.
The Skyblivion project has been going on for 5 years and they still describe it as a "very early alpha".
Now consider that they aren't making an original world; they're duplicating an existing one.

If they had to make something of similar size, but an original design, the time needed bloats even more.

Clearly I needed to come up with a humble solution to this while I installed all the other systems an RPG needs.
So what we'll do is advance through several phases of world space.

Phase 1: Purely instanced through menus (Corruption of Champions, Flexible Survival (Single Player Version), Trials in Tainted Space)
Phase 2: Small instanced free roam areas (Monster Hunter, various Japanese RPGs)
Phase 3: Larger instanced free roam areas (Witcher 1 & 2)
Phase 4: Massive instanced free roam areas (Witcher 3)
Phase 5: Entire world open and persistent (Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3/NV/4)

In short, once I'm done with the stupid generic flavor events I need to introduce the playable female character at long last due to overwhelming demand.
But after that I'll start generating field maps.
They'll be procedurally generated at first, but the good news is the same software that makes the landscape and places trees, grass and rocks can also place gathering nodes intelligently.
Plus there will be random battles that will place you nearby on the same map (Like in Chrono Trigger; no moving to a separate scene).

Re: Renfield

Based on how long the nature events took, it's clear I need to pare down the total number or we'll be stuck at this stage for far too long.
Before I wanted to have 800 unique events, 200 for each of the 4 subcategories. (200/200/200/200)
I felt this would be a competitive number of events/encounters with Corruption of Champions or singleplayer Flexible Survival.
However for now I'm going to make 200/100/50/25 which in total is less than half as many.
We can always come back later and add more.

Okay I'm back.
Most of my time and effort has been focused on the new gameplay, but the H-scene systems are also being rebuilt.
Here's an early test demo (still very rough) :
If you'd like to support the project, please consider a modest pledge
Working in 3D gets quite expensive and I'd really appreciate the help.

Still waiting on the maker of this fluid simulation middleware to get back to me.
In the meantime, here's a slightly updated public tech demo.



I'm going to start posting each demo with a new random girl.
This one came out relatively small breasted.
Probably a good thing that the NPC generator can make them like that.
Seen enough comments from people griping about games that only feature "balloon tits".

Download:

The world of Renfield will feature a vast variety of humanoid species.
All of them will be able to interbreed with the offspring reflecting a combination of the parents' features.
Children of a human father and elven mother will be half elves in a very literal sense.



If one of those half-elves breeds with an orc, the children will be half orc, 1/4 human, 1/4 elf.
Then those children could mate with a half-human, half-canine humanoid.
And so on and so on....

Done with the hair models/morphs/textures and found out the issue with the fluid dynamic system.




The next demo should be ready today or tomorrow.

Fixed the nakadashi system.



The camera auto systems, manual control systems, facial expressions, sound timing / quality, additive head / neck animations...
still many systems that need attention.

Making gradual progress with the runtime character creation along with skin and hair shaders.
Next I'm going to focus on the facial expression system.
At the moment the face just changes instantly.
The finished system will use linear interpolation for subtle changes over time.



Also I've added hotkeys to adjust animation speed and skip straight to the climax.
The random-girl-of-the-day came out with a really nice face but with a flat chest and hard nipples.
Maybe that's to some people's liking. Takes all kinds.

Hopefully this will be the last day of hair-related work for a while.
Wigs are made of multiple submeshes and can feature highlights.
It will take hours of tweaking render queues, opacity levels and
other settings to get the runtime wigs looking like these renders.

Today was an ulcer-inducing shitfest but I ended up victorious over the various issues I was tangling with.
Mostly dealing with render queues and such.
Now the hair models should look quite a bit better.

New test demo with gradual facial changes.
I think it's turning out really well but the actual expression targets are completely random and therefore not necessarily appropriate.