RPG Unknown/Hiatus Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Added a new post to the Tumblr! Feedback welcome-

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[zarion]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Not going to pledge to a patreon as those tend to pile up and eventually drain quite a bit of cash, but I would be willing to pay a fixed amount to be able to play the demon.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Not going to pledge to a patreon as those tend to pile up and eventually drain quite a bit of cash, but I would be willing to pay a fixed amount to be able to play the demon.

Not sure if it makes a difference, but this project will get updated at most once every two months (and it's on a per update basis). You'll therefore never see a pledge get processed without a significant update to the game.

If you are interested in doing the fixed amount for the first (currently the latest) release though I can PM you some details!

 

[Angmir]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Will that game will get the free demo at some point ? Or it will be only for Patrons ?

I am curious about it but I wont pay money blindly.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Will that game will get the free demo at some point ? Or it will be only for Patrons ?

I am curious about it but I wont pay money blindly.

Yeah, a public demo will probably be put out between the third and fourth releases. The second release is focusing on implementing additional and improved game mechanics while it is planned for the third release to contain the start of the story.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Added a new Tumblr post featuring previews of the new artwork for V0.02!

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[PM21]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

So was the Tetra system something you were able to implement yet? Would be cool to see it in action if even for one battle.

Also, will you be releasing the game in increments like Future Fragments is or Aylia's Story? Or will you be following a more traditional route and releasing demos that showcase the systems and the first bit of the story and locking the rest away until release?

Mostly I'm curious if we'll see new monsters and enemies or if you plan to be Secret Squirrel about it. Either way I wish it hadn't only been a month since the first release so we'd be closer to the second.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

So was the Tetra system something you were able to implement yet? Would be cool to see it in action if even for one battle.

Also, will you be releasing the game in increments like Future Fragments is or Aylia's Story? Or will you be following a more traditional route and releasing demos that showcase the systems and the first bit of the story and locking the rest away until release?

Mostly I'm curious if we'll see new monsters and enemies or if you plan to be Secret Squirrel about it. Either way I wish it hadn't only been a month since the first release so we'd be closer to the second.

The Tetra Interface will likely be the last thing to get coded this release because it's the big question mark when it comes to how long it will take. The last couple of weeks have largely gone to artwork as well as design for the armor damage mechanics and something really different planned for the third release.

Eventually the releases will probably follow a pattern of expanding on the story and content as opposed to locking stuff away for the retail version, but these first few are pretty heavily game mechanics oriented. I plan for the third release to be the first that begins the story of the game, and a public demo will likely be derived from that one.

 

[PM21]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Neat. In your response to Angmir I saw you were starting the story with the 3rd release so I was wondering if content releases would stop there or soon after, but it sounds like this year will be punctuated with Malise releases and that's something I can look forward to.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

New Tumblr post showcasing things to come in Release #3:

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[sou93mondal]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Will the finished product be out on DlSite?? If not , then how do I buy the finished product? The game looks interesting btw.

 

[SoaringSpirit]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

So I understand that a lot of the H-content in this game takes place during battles. Is there any scenes or content that don't?

Battle-H (or whatever it's called) is not my favourite thing, in fact I prefer the H-RPG's where the sexy content is mainly found in the non-combat zones (in part because I'm not that into monster/tentacle GoR). That said, I like the concept of not having to lose to see the lewd stuff, and if there's the possibility of ecchi moments and events happening outside of combat (whether related to the story or not) I'd consider giving this a more thorough look.

Also, are there any tags that could be thrown on this game to give people an idea of what kind of H to expect ?

 

[cavecricket48]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

(in part because I'm not that into monster/tentacle GoR).

Most battle rape tends to not involve tentacles but rather humanoids in my experience.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Will the finished product be out on DlSite?? If not , then how do I buy the finished product? The game looks interesting btw.

I haven't worked out what avenue to take with the retail distribution yet, but I'll definitely let everyone know once that gets closer. But yeah, there will definitely be a retail product that you can buy outside of pledging via Patreon, though the game has a long way to go before then.

So I understand that a lot of the H-content in this game takes place during battles. Is there any scenes or content that don't?

Battle-H (or whatever it's called) is not my favourite thing, in fact I prefer the H-RPG's where the sexy content is mainly found in the non-combat zones (in part because I'm not that into monster/tentacle GoR). That said, I like the concept of not having to lose to see the lewd stuff, and if there's the possibility of ecchi moments and events happening outside of combat (whether related to the story or not) I'd consider giving this a more thorough look.

Also, are there any tags that could be thrown on this game to give people an idea of what kind of H to expect ?

There are and will be more story related scenes that occur outside of the battle H mechanics. In the current version there are actually two story H scenes that are triggered by a boss using a skill that breaks away from the battle for the H scenes to occur.

Regarding the types of H there will at least be humans/androids/robots, beasts, insects, tentacles, and vore.

Most battle rape tends to not involve tentacles but rather humanoids in my experience.

This will actually include a lot of different types (see above response).

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

I just made a new Tumblr post showcasing the new and enhanced shadows and lighting system I've been integrating the past few days.

Check it out here:

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[PM21]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

When you say you still have a few kinks to work out but should have everything done in the next few days, does that mean what I think it means, or is that just for the lighting system? (which looks great)

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

When you say you still have a few kinks to work out but should have everything done in the next few days, does that mean what I think it means, or is that just for the lighting system? (which looks great)

Ah, it just means for the lighting. I've pretty much decided on a hard release date of July 1 for V0.02. I'll likely make a post soonish on what all will be included, but the big news for that I guess is I'm highly considering adding a new H skill branch to Vorepups to serve as a demonstration of how the armor damage system functions mechanically (as well as how different characters/outfits can change the behavior of enemies).

Doing this will fill out the content for this release while giving me more time to work on the Tetra Interface for another release cycle, as that's something I *really* don't want to rush since it involves ripping a solid chunk of RPG Maker's battle system out and replacing it. That, and adding the next layer of enemy AI for the armor damage system is something I found I want to tackle sooner rather than later as it will give me a lot more insight on what is and isn't possible for later H attack designs.

Back to the lighting though, a few kinks has turned into more kinks as I'm becoming aware my shadow/light parallax system is ramming RPG Maker's memory limit (since the maps are, for RPG Maker at least, really big, and RPG Maker's memory limit is apparently really low). In an earlier post AltairPL let me know that this was a function of total pixel area being cached, as I was originally running into issues with big enemy sprite sheets. Well, here we have really big parallax layer images (at most 6400x2000 currently).

In short, I need to unexpectedly spend some time addressing how to limit my dependency of big images sitting in the cache (which is something I was going to have to get to at some point anyways if I want big enemy sprites with lots of animation frames).

My current list of solutions include:

1) Get away from caching enemy battle sprite sheets (which are fking huge pixel-wise). This *could* mean some load times, however I could possibly balance it so only sprites for the next battle are cached. To do this I would have to edit the random battle system so that it chooses what battle is next *right after* a battle or when the potential encounter list get updated, and then cache only the enemy sprite sheets for the next battle while the player is derping around on the map/menu instead of loading them the battle starts. Unfortunately I'm not sure offhand how big a project that would be. For evented battles I could manually script that sprite sheets be cached before the battle on a case by case basis, like during dialog before the battle starts or something.

2) This one pretty much has to be done if I want to continue to have big enemy sprites in the future, and that is modify the animated battler sprite system so sprite sheets don't have a ton of unused pixel space (could cut unnecessarily used pixel area by over half). Basically right it has a fixed set of poses for each enemy, meaning a fixed number of rows of sprites per sheet. Well, no enemy is going to use all of them, and some are redundant, so I would add a table that tells the sprite system which row is which pose for each specific enemy.

3) Both of the above.

In addition I need to look for simple things I'm not currently doing, such as forcing a cache dump of all the title screen images and such when the game starts.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I needed to sort these thoughts out anyways, heh.

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

@Eromancer
I was meaning to ask you this during our previous conversation, but it slipped my mind. Did you consider using separate images instead of spritesheets for battle animations? This way you could load and release certain frames on "as needed" basis. Don't know how you're doing this now, but it shouldn't be too hard. And with additional cropping of those images, memory consumption would drop considerably - it is tedious when doing by hand, but fortunately it can be automated.

As for title graphics clean-up, it's very simple - add them to array/hash at creation and then dispose with simple iteration when scene changes. Or you can use self disposing bitmaps - it's easier to do than one may think.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

@Eromancer
I was meaning to ask you this during our previous conversation, but it slipped my mind. Did you consider using separate images instead of spritesheets for battle animations? This way you could load and release certain frames on "as needed" basis. Don't know how you're doing this now, but it shouldn't be too hard. And with additional cropping of those images, memory consumption would drop considerably - it is tedious when doing by hand, but fortunately it can be automated.

As for title graphics clean-up, it's very simple - add them to array/hash at creation and then dispose with simple iteration when scene changes. Or you can use self disposing bitmaps - it's easier to do than one may think.

Separate images per pose row? Currently I do use multiple sheets for enemies that change in some way mid battle, but they have to be cached at least by the beginning of the battle else I get a nice ugly lag spike when it has to load. I do have the sprites trimmed pretty well, but unfortunately I have to account for the biggest frame, as well as their shadows since they are baked into the sprites.

Right now I'm using a cache script that works pretty well for getting rid of stuff that hasn't been used in awhile while holding onto things that are being used a lot, though I think supplementing it with well thought out cache dumps at integral points would help a lot.

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Separate images per pose row? Currently I do use multiple sheets for enemies that change in some way mid battle, but they have to be cached at least by the beginning of the battle else I get a nice ugly lag spike when it has to load. I do have the sprites trimmed pretty well, but unfortunately I have to account for the biggest frame, as well as their shadows since they are baked into the sprites.

Right now I'm using a cache script that works pretty well for getting rid of stuff that hasn't been used in awhile while holding onto things that are being used a lot, though I think supplementing it with well thought out cache dumps at integral points would help a lot.

As I said, I don't know how you're doing things, so I can't be sure this solution would be suitable for you. I meant storing every frame in separate (and cropped) GFX file, and if possible, to load that file only when this frame is to be displayed. This will eliminate the need to load big GFX file at battle start, but I don't know if it will cause visible lags/frame skips during first animation playback. Also, only needed frames will be in the memory, so it will decrease chances of ever seeing that nasty "Failed to load Bitmap" error , especially with independent cropping of every file (which will also decrease loading time). Depending on approach, it may be a lot of work, but I think it's well worth the time.
Drop me a PM if you want some help with caching - I don't think that revealing trade secrets publicly is such a good idea .