Renfield

[KleptoLizard]

Well it was unanimous that we should focus on Singleplayer.
Glad I asked before spending all of next week adding a feature people don't want (yet).
Ultimately I'd like to make a game that can stand on its own as an RPG and have a safe-for-work setting.
But there's something else we should resolve.

http://www.strawpoll.me/13246135

Here's another poll regarding Classic vs First Person gameplay.
By Classic, I mean keep the game in a mostly 3rd person mode with turn-based combat.
First Person would mean focusing on making the transition to full-blown realtime First Person exploration and combat.



Keeping it Classic would mean we could focus more on fundamental features for the time being.
It has been rightfully pointed out by several people that any overhaul comes at a cost.
If support for First Person is high enough, we'll make the transition as soon as the obvious bugs and imbalances are solved.
Or perhaps we could have Renfield 1 remain Classic while Renfield 2 makes the jump to First Person

Let me know what you think.

[KleptoLizard]

Looks like I'm off the hook for both multiplayer and modern 1st person.
I was excited at the prospect of the new features, but now I'm just relieved that I don't have to do it.

We're working on making maps you can walk around in and fight.
There will be lots of diverse biomes with subtle differences between maps.



Once those are implemented we'll move on to dungeons and caves.
Towns I'll actually save for last since a menu-based town is actually pretty convenient.

Other than that I'm STILL working on the voice files.  Barely put a dent into them so far.
Also it looks like ambient head and neck turning for H-Scenes should be ready for the next update.
Even better, the dynamic facial expression might be ready soon as well.

[KleptoLizard]

I've decided I need to pace myself while editing the moaning files.
There's simply too much to edit and process in one fell swoop.
So the unique voices will be added one at a time.
There's countless other systems that still need working on and the voice stuff is taking up my whole daily session.



However there's still good progress being made.
The "you explore the wilderness herp derp" filler text will be gradually replaced with NPC encounters and other events.
At the very least I want all of them to have unique flavor text.
We already have one guy working on the first explorable maps and the results are promising so far.

Games like Corruption of Champions or Flexible Survival (both great games imho) get away with "fish for an event" format.
But it seems that once you go full 3D realtime, the ante is raised in terms of expectations.
The Visual Novel style and the in game graphics will exist side by side for the time being.
Anything we can't portray live and in detail will be related through text and still images.

[KleptoLizard]

Oblivion and Skyrim had this great mechanic where you use pickpocketing to plant poisons in your target's inventory.
They would then suffer the effects of that poison as though they'd been hit with it or drank it.



Once the transformation items are implemented in the game, you could sneak a vial into someone's pocket to make their dick shrink,
or change their gender, or make them an anthro of some kind, etc etc.
I foresee a great deal of hilarious emergent gameplay in our future.

[KleptoLizard]

The emotion system is up and running.
Still needs a lot of refining.
Plus I've pinned down some issues with the hair textures rendering incorrectly.
They should look a lot better now.

It's about time I release a new version.
There aren't really any earth-shaking differences.
But there are some important combat balances and bugfixes.

[KleptoLizard]

Uploading version 1.03 right now. Usually takes a few days before new versions appear on DLSite.

New patch includes lots of small upgrades and fixes. Nothing too exciting.
Combat has been balanced a bit more by having attack damage average out at a median rather than being wildly different with each strike.
It's still possible to fumble or crit, just less common.
A bit more battlefield variety has been introduced. Animations are also more varied.

Today and tomorrow I'm going to focus on writing flavor text for traveling through the wilderness. As always, let me know if you find any bugs or have suggestions of any kind.

[KleptoLizard]

Writing is one of the most arduous parts of game design for me.
I tend to stress over each turn of phrase, second-guessing my way through the whole process.
With Renfield, the need to translate everything into Japanese makes this even slower.
Tried hiring scenario writers in the past and was never happy with their results.

Many RPGs inundate the player with text.
Especially arduous are the long, tedious introductions and prologues.
This combined with the endless tutorials and handholding
means that many games take a great deal of time before they truly "start".



Yet it seems that when you wordlessly plop people down and let them explore, they don't feel free; they feel abandoned.
One note from a playtester said literally "Game doesn't tell you exactly what to do".  (!?)
I don't WANT to be told what to do when I play a game.
But it seems that the bulk of players have been indoctrinated / institutionalized.

At any rate, I'm fleshing out the world events and scenarios.
That's going to be my primary focus (aside from fixing bugs as they crop up) over the next few weeks.
Now when you explore you'll have a 50% chance of getting into a fight, 50% chance of getting something else.
The "Something Else" will be 4 categories of events.  

The Wilderness events will each have unique flavor text.
NPC events will let you stop and chat with some traveller or townsperson.
Gathering events will let you hunt, fish, mine, or gather herbs.
Finally there will be Choice Events that will be miscellaneous things that you can react to.

[Oriloceech]

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..

 

Yes. This is something that I don't think gets enough attention in these games: protagonist customization. Sometimes you see it when the protagonist is female, but never with the males. You look like you have your hands full, but customization is always welcome, and -- at least for me, personally -- makes a big difference.

 

Game looks neat, by the way. Almost like a sexy time Mount & Blade.

[KleptoLizard]

 

 

Game looks neat, by the way. Almost like a sexy time Mount & Blade.

 

High praise indeed.  Thank you.

 

 

Yes. This is something that I don't think gets enough attention in these games: protagonist customization. Sometimes you see it when the protagonist is female, but never with the males.

 

The funny thing about your comparison to M&B is that Renfield suffers from M&B's major flaw.

Namely lack of overall content.

M&B has an amazing gameflow.  But whenever I go back to it, I suddenly lose interest in the late game.

 

Other games gradually get more boring as you play them.

But with M&B, one minute I'm having an absolute blast and then BAM! I just don't feel up to another siege.

If M&B had optional story content alongside the sandboxy free mode, it would be just about the perfect game.

 

Renfield needs to expand its content and mechanics in all directions.

I use these forums to try and sort out a priority list.

Whenever I'm working on task X, I can't shake the feeling that I should be working on Y & Z.

Getting back to the issue of customization, I used to think we would have to add it slowly.

 

But....  that annoying sound volume menu issue forced me to learn how to make my own sliders from scratch.

Specifically functional sliders that could access the API of Unity itself and some middleware programs.

Now I'm much more confident that we can port an array of facial morphs in one fell swoop.

Hairstyle, hair color, eye color and skin color are all doable as well.

[KleptoLizard]

The question is: If you can imagine the character creation process being chopped up into all of its sub-aspects, which are the most important?

Which forms of character customization should be added first?

[KleptoLizard]

How important is pregnancy to everyone?
The morphs for pregnancy are already loaded but the scenarios haven't been implemented.
I instructed our animator to make a birth-giving animation.
Is this something people want to see sooner? Or later?

[alucrad90]

How important is pregnancy to everyone?

The morphs for pregnancy are already loaded but the scenarios haven't been implemented.

I instructed our animator to make a birth-giving animation.

Is this something people want to see sooner? Or later?

 

 

In my opinion Preg itself is not so important, since for most sutitaion it's not interesting to wait 10 months even in a game

 

But there could alse be semen filling and egg laying or something else

[alucrad90]

The question is: If you can imagine the character creation process being chopped up into all of its sub-aspects, which are the most important?

Which forms of character customization should be added first?

 

hair

face

feet and high-heels VS breast

thigh-waist-butt

height

 

As my experience

Looks like I'm off the hook for both multiplayer and modern 1st person.

I was excited at the prospect of the new features, but now I'm just relieved that I don't have to do it.

 

We're working on making maps you can walk around in and fight.

There will be lots of diverse biomes with subtle differences between maps.

 

 

Once those are implemented we'll move on to dungeons and caves.

Towns I'll actually save for last since a menu-based town is actually pretty convenient.

 

Other than that I'm STILL working on the voice files.  Barely put a dent into them so far.

Also it looks like ambient head and neck turning for H-Scenes should be ready for the next update.

Even better, the dynamic facial expression might be ready soon as well.

 

Please don't use the 1st person view

 

unless you want to make a shooting game or vr sex scene

 

 

 

[KleptoLizard]

 

In my opinion Preg itself is not so important, since for most sutitaion it's not interesting to wait 10 months even in a game

But there could alse be semen filling and egg laying or something else

 

 

We could definitely do cum inflation and monster eggs expansion in real time.

 

It just seems that there are very few games that do dynamic pregnancy.

Visual novel-style hentai games usually just have a final scene after your chosen love interest or harem is pregnant.

Illusion games either don't have it, or have it as a loss condition (?!) like in Artificial Academy 2.

Come to think of it, I think Violated Heroine is about the only game to have the full package: non-scripted pregnancy complete with gestation and childbirth.

I honestly wonder how much of VH's cult following is owed to those features.

 

[Sagebrush61]

How important is pregnancy to everyone?

The morphs for pregnancy are already loaded but the scenarios haven't been implemented.

I instructed our animator to make a birth-giving animation.

Is this something people want to see sooner? Or later?

 

 

I think if you look at how popular the Beeing Female mod for Skyrim is it will give you a good idea of the potential demand for dynamic pregnancy is in a game.  It is as close to a pregnancy simulator as I've ever seen in a game and I couldn't imagine a playthrough of Skyrim without it.  As to the argument about the time it takes for pregnancy, games always compress the timescale of everything, but somehow people think a pregnancy must take 9 real months.  There is no reason whatsoever why the process couldn't be speeded up to fit within the general timeframe of the game.

[KleptoLizard]

 

I think if you look at how popular the Beeing Female mod for Skyrim is it will give you a good idea of the potential demand for dynamic pregnancy is in a game.  It is as close to a pregnancy simulator as I've ever seen in a game and I couldn't imagine a playthrough of Skyrim without it.  As to the argument about the time it takes for pregnancy, games always compress the timescale of everything, but somehow people think a pregnancy must take 9 real months.  There is no reason whatsoever why the process couldn't be speeded up to fit within the general timeframe of the game.

 

 

Yeah Beeing Female was pretty cool.

I actually lost a permadeath run due to dying during childbirth.

My character was giving birth to Lydia's triplets. (Lydia was a futa naturally)

So my otherwise invincible character died in bed with Lydia standing right next to her.

 

Before I started work on Renfield in Unity, I made a gameflow test alpha in RPGMaker.

Characters would conceive and give birth 270 "days" later.

But each day would be one event.  (A fight, a transition between zones, etc)

And the people who tested it seemed to think it was a decent timescale.

 

[alucrad90]

 

 

In my opinion Preg itself is not so important, since for most sutitaion it's not interesting to wait 10 months even in a game

But there could alse be semen filling and egg laying or something else

 

 

We could definitely do cum inflation and monster eggs expansion in real time.

 

It just seems that there are very few games that do dynamic pregnancy.

Visual novel-style hentai games usually just have a final scene after your chosen love interest or harem is pregnant.

Illusion games either don't have it, or have it as a loss condition (?!) like in Artificial Academy 2.

Come to think of it, I think Violated Heroine is about the only game to have the full package: non-scripted pregnancy complete with gestation and childbirth.

I honestly wonder how much of VH's cult following is owed to those features.

 

 

You forget being female from skrim

 

Thouth I'm those one who like soulgem oven more

 

It's a game, not real life.

 

western gamers(players and developers,especially those stupid developers in EA or Ubi) always forget that

 

[KleptoLizard]

Saw The Founder recently.
Sometimes I feel like Ray selling his milkshake machines.
Marketing something effectively can be more difficult than actually making it.

[KleptoLizard]

This week I'll be focusing on diversifying the events you get when exploring.
Laying the code groundwork will take the weekend, then I'll get to writing the flavor text throughout the weekdays.
I'll also be fixing various animation glitches. There are a lot of them still unfortunately.

[KleptoLizard]

Making events where you can find items in the wilderness via hunting, fishing, mining, foraging etc.



Unfortunately the fully explorable area maps are going to be delayed since I've been forced to lay off the guy I hired to make them.

[KleptoLizard]

Making NPC encounters and dialog.
Trying to finish this new patch by the end of this week.

[KleptoLizard]

After the next update I'm going to have to focus on something completely different: Marketing.
If anyone knows of some good places to advertise a project like this, I'm all ears.



Some projects put all their effort into their marketing and then their product never comes out or is a failure in some other sense.
With Renfield I wanted to put out the client for public sale as soon as I could so that the development process was fully transparent.

[KleptoLizard]

Fixed some more animation issues.
Diversified the type of encounters you can get.
However writing out all the individual flavor texts is going to take a while.
It'll have to be done across several updates.

I'm also working on adding the first anthro content.
Love it or hate it, you really can't deny its popularity.
But this content will be almost entirely optional.
It's something you'll have to unlock in the game which you can ignore if you choose.



By killing a werewolf (the strongest and rarest creature at the moment) you'll gain a were-essence item.
Then you can use it to mix an elixir by combining it with reagents from any animal.
Drink the elixir yourself, or force someone to drink it, and the first stage of the transformation will occur.
One dosage will simply give ears and a tail, whereas multiple doses will turn the drinker into a full beastperson.

[offnightmare]

Now call me crazy but when I first saw this post on what was it hongfire LoK forums? I remember reading that this would be free.

[KleptoLizard]

Now call me crazy but when I first saw this post on what was it hongfire LoK forums? I remember reading that this would be free.

 

I went back and checked the forum posts.

The first time I mentioned price and business model, I said it would sell for "About $10" on DLSite.

But the cost ballooned out of control to the point where I couldn't ever afford to charge so little.

 

There were several people in that thread who got into a long discussion about Free to Play MMOs.

That might be what you're thinking of.