Got a couple of bugfixes here, including one for a crash waaay back in Episode 5 when you’re exploring a house (hopefully!), a crash in Episode 7 during your first encounter with the villain, and a bug that was causing the game to display the male character clothing text even when playing a female. Relatedly, there was a bug where I wasn’t correctly displaying the new option: clothingstyle.
So, we have a new option now: clothingstyle. This allows the player to tell the game which gendered set of clothing to put on when putting on clothing automatically. So for example, when the game automatically puts the player in their work clothes, if the setting is “genderbased” (the default), a female PC will wear a skirt, a male PC will wear pants. However, if clothingstyle is set to “female” then the PC will equip a skirt even if they are male. If clothingstyle is set to “male” the PC will equip pants even if they are female.
Furthermore, as a part of these bug fixes, I got the transcript-generating code working again, so we now have a transcript up that contains the last episode of content. Enjoy!
Another bugfix version, this time for an old bug in Episode 1 that was causing the game to stall if you wore any variety of jeans.
Many thanks to Beragon56 for the bug report!
A new version up with a bugfix for a crash reported by Wildfire on the route you take if you lose the first battle.
New version with some small bug fixes pointed out by Wildfire. No crashes, just a couple of typos, and one inconsistency.
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages,
Just posted a new version with a fix for an old, but relatively obscure bug. Basically, saving was broken for the first day of episode 1. My saving logic relies on the event names following a specific format, and the first day of episode 1 followed a different format (because it was the very first content I wrote, and I didn’t know what I was doing).
I didn’t want to change the event names, because I didn’t want to break people’s saves (save compatibility is a big deal for me). I thought I’d added logic to account for it, but I guess it doesn’t work. Since saving on the first day of episode 1 apparently doesn’t work anyway, I figured save compatibility wasn’t a problem, so I went and fixed episode 1 day 1 to line up with the rest of the game.
I loaded some saves from later in the game, and they all seemed to work fine, so it shouldn’t have any impact on saves past episode 1.
Spankers, Spankees and Switches,
Just uploaded Scarlet Moon 7.1.0, and Scarlet Moon is officially complete! At last, the team comes face to face with Roots, the mysterious crime boss who has watched Scarlet Moon’s career unfold from the shadows. What dastardly plans does Roots have in store? Play and find out!
The last episode is fairly short, but there is a scene at the beginning that has several different paths, and two major paths through the episode (plus a third fairly large one for people dating Midnight), so hopefully it won’t feel too phoned-in. It’s also (I think) fairly climactic, so I hope it proves satisfying despite its brevity.
You can get the now full(!) game over at the Downloads section! Unfortunately, the code for generating the HTML transcript has decided to stop working, on old content no less -_-. So I don’t have a transcript available, sorry. I mighty try to find some time at some point to figure out what’s wrong, but right now, I’m pretty done and just can’t bring myself to dig through years-old code.
Naturally, I expect a week or two of bug fixing as people find bugs that I missed. Once it’s stabilized, I’ll probably take a break from game development for a few months. To set expectations, I probably don’t expect to do any serious heads-down writing for about six months. Could be shorter, who knows. Won’t be any longer than that though.
In the meantime, I’m going to ruminate some more on Mischievous Misfortune and Spacewoman Spice, and I’ll probably be playing a bit with Twine. Since my future games won’t include any real combat mechanics, there really isn’t any reason *not* to use Twine. It’s much more portable than my own engine, and will require much less programming on my end (a big deal now that I’m so much busier). I’ve already played with it a little bit and verified that I should be able to do everything I want to do fairly easily, but there’s definitely more I can learn about how to do things.
I doubt I’ll be silent over the next few months. I’ll probably periodically post my evolving thoughts on Mischievous Misfortune and Spacewoman Spice. None of this is set in stone, it’s all pure brainstorming at this point. Still, it will be nice to see people’s reactions and suggestions over the next few months. These are going to be multi-year commitments, so I want to make sure the premise is fun for everyone (especially me!).
Take Mischievous Misfortune. One idea that occurred to me is to set it about ten years after Scarlet Moon. Then, make Juliana, now in her late twenties to early thirties, the player’s employer. Basically, instead of the PC being a secretary at some biggish company or other, they are hired as a lab assistant by Juliana as she attempts to establish her own company based on her own inventions. Juliana is a fun character to write, and it would be interesting to see what she’s like ten years down the road. We could also introduce her as a (much!) Lighter and Softer Batman-esque superhero: one without physical superpowers, but lots of gadgets and really good hand-to-hand combat techniques. I was already imagining Moonlight as this sort of Superman-esque hero, so you could have some fun tension and rivalry between this highly experienced hero (Juliana) and this new up-and-comer, with the PC caught in the middle and just trying to make off with the shinies. And the shenanigans in Juliana’s laboratory would write themselves.
Not a whole lot to add. Chipping away at the second day of content. The second day has a fair number of paths, so it’s taking a bit, but we’re getting there.
The previous version accidentally included some (incomplete) content from episode 6, which was causing the game to crash at the very end. This version fixes that!
Episode 5 is complete, and now uploaded.
Does Scarlet Moon stand a chance against the fierce Leopard? And what of this strange new woman lurking in the shadows, watching her? Who is she and what does she want with Scarlet Moon? Play and find out (assuming you aren’t already attracted to David or Natalie anyway).
Anklyana gains access to two more skills. Hopefully people have fun with them.
Twister now does damage at the start of a character’s turn, rather than the end. The damage is multiplied by the duration of their Away status, and they are cured of Away. This was done to keep Scarlet Spring still worth using in battles that include Tempestas, and to make it so that you have a choice: you can use Away to reduce the enemy’s damage, by eliminating their Attack, or to increase the damage you do to them, by inflicting them with Twister first, but you can’t do both.
Note that if two skills activate at the start of the turn, they activate in the order they were inflicted. So unless you want Scarlet Moon to be damaged by Twister (totally makes sense if you’re playing a team of superheroes who haven’t quite mastered teamwork yet), make sure to use s-chords before twister.
Like with the first half of Episode 5, this episode appears more linear than it is, because each love interest has scenes exclusive to them. There is also a fairly elaborate scene where you raid Leopard’s lair that includes no less than *3* stat checks. So hopefully people have fun.
Enjoy!
Spankers, Spankees and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
Cranking away at the second part of Episode 4. It’s been a pretty productive month, and I’m about halfway through, so if I can keep up the pace, I expect I’ll have the new content posted in early to mid November.
AKA