Renfield

[KleptoLizard]

Renfield is a new hentai RPG.

It features combat similar to the Final Fantasy series installments 7, 8, 9 or 10

and exploration on a globe world map that you can manually spin to reach your destination.

I've sunk a lot of time and resources into this and would really appreciate your feedback, suggestions & criticism.

The game is currently on sale at DLSite's Maniax (Japanese-language) storefront.

In about a week it should come on sale at the English site as well.

Let me know what kind of content / scenarios you want to see and I'll do my best to implement it.

 

 

http://www.dlsite.com/ecchi-eng/work/=/product_id/RE200983.html

[KleptoLizard]

Game includes realtime sex animations with both a manual flying camera and a cinematic auto-cam.

Also features dynamic breast physics and internal cumshots with particle physics calculated in realtime.

 

[Darkening Demise]

I remember you on hongfire. Its really changed and come a long way.

[KleptoLizard]

I remember you on hongfire. Its really changed and come a long way.

 

Yeah it's finally becoming a reality.

Unfortunately it's already buried on Maniax.

I'm trying to get some last-minute updates before the English site gets it.

Right now I'm adding animation variants to the attacks, dodges and deaths.

 

So what would you like to have in the game?

We can do anything (theoretically).

[KleptoLizard]

Making some tweaks to the combat system and the underlying formulas.
The damage will average out a bit more between attacks.
Also editing the voice files for the other girls. 
Soon they'll each have a unique voice for the H-scenes.

[KleptoLizard]

Like so many sessions, today I logged in wanting to add stuff but spent most of that time just fixing various things.
The changes made to the animation controllers needed to be updated on every creature model to work properly.
 

The damage tweaking is done for now.
Before a weapon would do a single base roll to determine damage before modifiers.
So if you rolled a D20 and it came up a 2, the enemy's natural armor would absorb it all.
Now it averages out the result of two rolls, making the spectacular crits and fumbles much less common.
It also means you won't get one shot as much.   Emphasis on "as much".
You should still use the Defend command against heavies and get some light armor as soon as you can.


I've also refined my workflow for editing the voice files, so it will take about half the time originally estimated.

[KleptoLizard]

Today I'm focusing on smoother transitions from the world map to the combat and H-scenes.
Combat levels are loading relatively quickly, but the H-scenes are taking way too long.



I notice these posts are getting views, but nobody's commenting.
Don't be shy. Your input could prove incredibly valuable.
At this early stage the moral support alone is really appreciated.

[Bledric]

So I went over to the store page, looked at what was there and calculated the price and if I am not mistake it's around 27 dollars. I will just be blunt and say, I don't see many people taking a chance on this game at that price. I would be willing to look into this game and give it a chance if it had a demo, but as it stands I would just have to throw down 27 (I got this calculation from google, full disclosure there) to try a game that on the surface looks rough around the edges. 

 

Basically what I am saying is, it's going to be really hard for you to get input on this game or get people interest with so little actual information about it's game play and functionality especially at that price level. I think a demo version would help you immensely.

[KleptoLizard]

So I went over to the store page, looked at what was there and calculated the price and if I am not mistake it's around 27 dollars. I will just be blunt and say, I don't see many people taking a chance on this game at that price. I would be willing to look into this game and give it a chance if it had a demo, but as it stands I would just have to throw down 27 (I got this calculation from google, full disclosure there) to try a game that on the surface looks rough around the edges. 

 

Basically what I am saying is, it's going to be really hard for you to get input on this game or get people interest with so little actual information about it's game play and functionality especially at that price level. I think a demo version would help you immensely.

 

Yeah you're right on both counts.

It is a relatively high price if you compare it to many other games in the same genre.

And the game is indeed still rough around the edges, admittedly.

I don't mind people biding their time until I've shown them more.  That's only sensible really.

Around the time the English site launches its version I'll put out a demo and trailer.

 

Renfield's an odd duck for an H-game.

It's a middle child between the low-end RPGMaker games (of which there are a zillion of varying quality)

and the high-end games it aspires to one day compete with (IllusionSoft for the sex, Bethesda for the gameplay).

So I expect it will struggle a great deal at first.

 

Thanks for your input.  If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

[KleptoLizard]

The game is out on the English DLSite
A very special thanks to a user who made the following write up about the game.
I'll be using this as a checklist of things to focus on in the coming days.
Addressing these problems should enhance the game significantly.

==========================================================

----------
Gameplay
----------

//General//
-What is the point in random encounters if you can only fight when you're actively looking for battles?
    -Similarly, text such as "You wander through the wilderness" is not only useless, but it's also unexciting. It tells you nothing about the world you're supposed to be "exploring".
    -The difference is you either press confirm once or some arbitrary number of times before some encounter.
    -The point of random encounters is to put obstacles in your way from point A to point B. They do nothing when you can travel anywhere at any time.

-Nothing to serve as a goal or reason to be running around the world exploring when the only things to find are enemies.

-No item descriptions.
    -Makes it apparent what things are for, what they do and whether or not it's better than currently equipped gear at a glance.

//Controls//
-Screen for viewing controls in-game looks terrible. Would rather have it all inside a menu, with some means to choose a single scheme.

-No way to change controls on the fly; requires restarting the application. Could put said options in the afforementioned menu.

-Clicking on [Enter] or [Explore] should allow you to do those things. The controls are simple enough to allow complete mouse control instead of partial.

//Combat//
-Animations are very slow
    -There's a reason so many RPGs of this style have characters jumping all around and doing very fast attacks. You want turns to be a quick, instant payoff.
    -Slow animations are better suited to bigger, flashier effects. Think summons in something like Final Fantasy.

-Some means to adjust time speed would be extraordinarily helpful.
    -Lets slower players take more time to think, and faster players to not sit around doing nothing.

-Battle menu takes long enough to load that it feels almost laggy.
    -Should be able to menu *very* quickly.
        -Combat is mindless enough in the beginning to be able to just mash the confirm button. You would want to reduce the time it takes to do so.

-No gauge of how strong enemies are before encountering them.
    -As there is no kind of path to take, you can encounter enemies that kill you in two or three hits from the start. These deaths feel completely arbitrary and frustrating, as the player has, quite honetly, done nothing wrong.

-Damage seems completely random.
    -Attacked a Loriden Spider multiple times. First few attacks did 2-4 damage, final did 37. If it was a crit, there was no indication thereof.
    -Similarly, enemies seem to either do very little damage, or a lot ("a lot" being enough to 2 or 3-shot).

-Damage shown continues to tick up after hit instead of displaying full value instantly

-Minor gripe, but I think the time gauge should fill smoothly.

//Leveling & Exp//
-The amount of Exp needed to level up, even from Level 1, is HUGELY disproportionate to the amount given by enemies; even stronger ones. This means you're grinding from the very start.
    -Level grinding does nothing but arbitrarily extend play time. With combat as simple as this, it's a complete waste.
    -First level up was after over an hour of game time, including only about 4 h-scenes.

-Why do you need to go back to a town to level up when there's absolutely no danger in doing so?
    -Seems like a complete waste of time.
        -Even if time wasted is only a few seconds, it also hurts pacing.

-The amount of gains from leveling a stat should be open information to the player, to make the choice more meaningful.
    -It's more of a quality-of-life thing, but it lets the player know what they're actually doing.

------
NPCs
------

//General//
-It seems that the only way to progress with any NPCs is to kill some amount of enemies in the area. There's no indication that this does anything, nor for letting you know you can continue with any given NPC.
    -Makes no sense
    -No indication of how to progess with this character
    -I still am not entirely sure if this was the reason, since it seems so arbitrary

-What the hell is "The Voice" and why am I using it to seduce women?

----------
H-Scenes
----------
-The "Cinematic Camera" loves to clip through objects and move through/behind walls.

-Would like some way to manage position and control the pacing.
    -Some means to skip some or all of the scene or allow it to run indefinitely also seems in order.
    -Static positions are boring as shit.

-Mouse sensitivity is SUPER LOW
    -takes several swipes to move the camera any meaningful amount
        -might be good to consider adding in an option to adjust mouse sensitivity up or down

-Faces are completely lifeless.
    -No change in expression
    -They just stare into space
        -They could stare at each other or literally any part of one another

-Option to disable x-ray?

-Body parts sometimes clip through environment and even a character's own model
    Ex. Girl's arm clipping through her breast in one of the sideways positions (pardon my not knowing names for these things)

==========================================================

[KleptoLizard]

Yesterday was one of the most aggravating coding sessions I've had in a while.
But I finally pinned down a serious problem with the passive regeneration effects.
As frustrating as it was, it forced me to learn the API of this framework much better.
Today I'm adding more battleground levels and putting some more polish into the H-scenes.

[KleptoLizard]

Straw poll on the preferred protagonist gender.
Note that we're going to have male and female regardless.
But I want to know which is the priority.

http://www.strawpoll.me/13176658

[KleptoLizard]

 

Well it seems we have a clear winner.
Now we have a lot of issues to settle regarding how a female protagonist will be handled.
Should we let the player choose from the existing lineup of fuckable girls?
Or an original, new character?

One thing I've already decided is that the Level 1 version of the heroine needs to be much stronger than Glasser.
It's one thing to let the guy struggle a bit at the beginning.  It's the price he pays to build his harem.
But once we introduce GOR for the female, we need to give her more of a fighting chance.  Just seems fair.
Other than that, I'd really appreciate people coming out of lurk mode to decide what kind of character(s) and scenarios they want.

This is going to be a fair amount of work so let's try to get it right.

[obscure2011]

I'm interested but i am having a hard time finding anything about this game. Have you considered setting up a blog? Have you already a blog and my google-fu is weak?

 

Also you mention an English DL-site. My google-fu may be weak but i cant find it. I don't want you to violate any terms of service and i haven't reviewed the TOS for Lovers Lab lately but if you can mention or link to your storefront i'd investigate it.

 

Also as far as a suggestion i might recommend a brief succinct description of the game in this thread. Information such as features (3d-sex, open world, combat, lama-raising and etc), genre (medieval fantasy, sci-fi, steam punk and etc), system requirements and stuff like that. More information is usually a good thing.

 

Thanks for sharing your creation i look forward to learning more about it.

[KleptoLizard]

I'm interested but i am having a hard time finding anything about this game. Have you considered setting up a blog? Have you already a blog and my google-fu is weak?

 

Also you mention an English DL-site. My google-fu may be weak but i cant find it. I don't want you to violate any terms of service and i haven't reviewed the TOS for Lovers Lab lately but if you can mention or link to your storefront i'd investigate it.

 

Also as far as a suggestion i might recommend a brief succinct description of the game in this thread. Information such as features (3d-sex, open world, combat, lama-raising and etc), genre (medieval fantasy, sci-fi, steam punk and etc), system requirements and stuff like that. More information is usually a good thing.

 

Thanks for sharing your creation i look forward to learning more about it.

 

Here's a link, if a mod tells me "Hey, no links!" I won't argue.

http://www.dlsite.com/ecchi-eng/work/=/product_id/RE200983.html

 

Be warned though: The game's still in a very bare-bones state.

I wouldn't be offended if you chose to wait until it had more content.

I was forced to put it to market early due to some financial constraints.

Plus I needed feedback from people playing the full version to compile a list of things to fix and improve.

 

You can also read the history of the game's development on Hongfire or ULMF:

http://www.hongfire.com/forum/forum/hentai-lair/hentai-game-discussion/402901-renfield/page42

http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/showthread.php?t=25964&page=36

Some of the general discussions of game theory on the ULMF thread in particular were quite interesting.

However much of the info is obsolete since the game has changed so much during development.

 

Thanks for your interest.

[KleptoLizard]

Early version of the upcoming heroine character.
I've always thought blue eyes with brown hair looked really nice.
How is Hanna for a name?

 

[obscure2011]

Thank you. I bookmarked the storefront site. I will definitely be following your work.

[KleptoLizard]

Art style is controversial in and of itself.

(I've already been told by one person that my art direction is "wrong" and that I should've gone with an Anime aesthetic.)

But body aesthetic is also highly divisive.
Sometimes an artist draws cute faces but draws breasts in a weird shape.
Everyone has different tastes which is part of the success of the Artificial series and other 3D games with high degrees of customization.



In the short term, the pictured body will suffice as the default.
Ultimately not only would I like to build a full character creator, but I want in-game customization of the body the way transformation games handle it.
Spells, potions, enemy attacks and other things could cause your character to change shape or color.
As a longtime player of Fenoxo's games, I was disappointed when the character viewer stopped being updated.
Now with Renfield you'll be able to see these slight changes over time vividly and in full 3D.

[KleptoLizard]

Alright I've compiled a list of almost 100 suggestions, requests and complaints.
I'll be jumping around the list fixing / adding things in a random order.
Some are simple adjustments while others are significant overhauls.
Everyone stay tuned and keep the comments coming.

[KleptoLizard]

Some of the menus from the middleware I'm using are sticky, unresponsive or unintuitive.
I'm tinkering with my own handmade menus to overwrite some of them.



Later today I'll focus on processing all the sound files I have backed up.
The unique voices for all the girls, as well as the slurping sound necessary for the fellatio scenes, have all been recorded.
But editing it all is going to take some time.

[KleptoLizard]

Yesterday was quite an ordeal.
That's the problem with middleware; they can save you hundreds of hours of coding basic systems,
but when they lack a feature or have a misfeature it can be a HUGE pain in the ass circumventing it.

The good news is that the new volume setting menu looks nicer, is much more responsive / smooth and can increment by a smaller amount.
Also, the volume settings are now stored in the registry and shared across save files.
You'll no longer get blasted by the music at full volume when you start up.
Lastly, a new Voice slider has been added to adjust moaning levels.
Perhaps I'll add a Master Volume or an H-sound effects slider later on.

But today I'm going to focus entirely on finally processing all those voice files.
When it's all said and done we'll have a unique voice for each girl's H-scenes.
Sucking / slurping sounds will also be ready so the oral sex scenes can be activated.

[KleptoLizard]

Still working on editing the voice files.
Some of the content was unusable due to background noise.
This one girl in particular must have been sitting in a leather or vinyl chair while she recorded and she kept fidgeting.
All you can hear on the resulting audio files is the constant squeaking sound of the chair cushions.



I've gone ahead and hired a new environmental artist to help make wilderness maps.
Once they're ready, you'll be able to wander around the world in first person instead of the menu-based exploration.
The fighting will remain the same at this stage however.
A lot of buggy pathing, AI and movement animation issues need to be sorted out before we make the change to Elder Scrolls-style combat.

Much of the world will be procedurally generated like in Arena.
But the fidelity of the environments will be like Skyrim, or a bit better.
I always liked the sprawling worlds of Arena and Daggerfall, but to say the graphics are outdated on those games is an understatement.
Once we make a world of decent size and variety using procedural methods, we'll go back and implant handmade areas and handwritten questlines.

[KleptoLizard]

At first I was using runtime methods to change pitch in audio, but I found that using Audacity's quality stretching is worth waiting for.
The oral sounds should be fully processed by the end of today.
We have a total of 48 positions made including penetration, fellatio and cunnilingus but few of them have been implemented.
There's just so much to do.



DLSite posted this on their Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/reblog/161870984285/2oUEwF0m
Which reminds me that I still need to make a playable demo and preview video.

[KleptoLizard]

So I've been asking people everywhere I go "If you could make your own Elder Scrolls-type game, what would it feature?"
The overwhelmingly most common answer is "Co-op".
Not massive multiplayer, but co-op.
That's got me thinking....

How would everyone feel about an early experimental multiplayer mode?
To start, it would probably be like a deathmatch game with rape.
I know that's a far cry from the experience of adventure co-op that people want.
But it would be a quick-and-dirty way to test online functionality.



I've made net games in the past and it's really not that hard.
I've tinkered with multiplayer modding since back in the days of Quake and games like that.
Plus I've set up a dedicated server for a project using the BigWorld engine.
Using Unity's multiplayer extensions is child's play by comparison.

Let me know what kind of multiplayer modes you'd like to see.
Never forget: We're making this game from the ground up so anything's possible.

[KleptoLizard]

http://www.strawpoll.me/13243258

 

Please take the poll.

Singleplayer or Multiplayer?