Spankers, Spankees and Switches,

So I finally worked up the guts to let a local friend who knows what I’m up to take a look at my game. It’s been very enlightening watching over their shoulder. This version contains a bug fix they stumbled across when trying to load their save file. I believe it’s only triggered if you try to change font size (particularly body font size) through the Options menu.

Furthermore, I’ve cleaned up to the office park scene at the beginning of the game, and rearranged the buttons some.

It became clear while watching my friend futz with the game that the UI is way too busy. In particular, there are too many buttons along the bottom row on the story screen. While they were added so that people could know what to do, it does mean it’s difficult for them to notice things like the scroll buttons. Plus, it just makes the screen look really crowded on their small laptop screen. So the utility style buttons ((T)itle, (O)ptions etc) have been moved behind “(Spacebar)Commands.” The key commands all still work the same as you’d expect, but you can click on Commands or press “Spacebar” to view the list of available commands, and from there click on the buttons.

Furthermore, I’ve also used that idea for story choices. So now, you can click on “(#) Choices” to see a list of buttons containing each choice, and then click on the appropriate choice. Which means the story screen is now 100% useable with the mouse! It’s a little bit clunky, but it’s the mouse. Mice are always clunky.

The next update will see the same treatment applied to the combat screen.

Again, *none of the key commands have changed.* You can still press 1 or 2 or 3 to select a choice from the story screen. You can still press “c” on the story screen to view your character. The buttons have just been hidden.

Also, the statistics have been moved off the character creation screen. There’s no reason for it to be there anymore, since your stats are now displayed on the story screen, and you can’t edit them anyway. Plus they were taking up valuable screen real estate on my friend’s very small laptop.

Let me know what you think of the changes.

AKA

Spankers, Spankees and Switches,

Just uploaded a new version Scarlet Moon 3.2.9 with two changes:

1. First a bug fix to the player spankable option. We weren’t loading it correctly, so that the game was always treating “player spankable” as true after loading. You’ll need to start a new game for the bugfix to take effect though.

2. A new option has been added “combat” with two settings: “Yes” and “No.” This allows you to enable and disable combat. If combat is enabled, then nothing’s changed for you. However, if you disable combat, then you’ll get some silly (textual) sound effects. If the combat is optional, you’ll get to decide whether you win or lose. This is intended for those of you who want to enjoy the smexy spanking goodness without having to deal with all that awesome RPG turn-based combat goodness, because not every spanko’s into smexy spanking RPG turn-based combat goodness. However, I would *strongly* encourage people to at least try the combat before disabling it. It’s the primary form of “gameplay” in this game.

Get it at the downloads section (or don’t if like seeing the player get spanked, and you enjoy the combat).

Uploaded a few version that fixes a crash thanks to some malformed text. That’s what I get for not running the previous version before uploading it.

Spankers, Spankees and Switches 18 and above,

I’ve uploaded a new version of Scarlet Moon, 3.2.6. It contains a few bug fixes kindly pointed out to me by somebody whose handle I forget because I accidentally
deleted the e-mail. All fixes deal with a male player character, so if you don’t play a male character, there really isn’t any reason to download the latest version:

1. The game crashed if the player chose to wear regular swim trunks in episode 1, instead of a sexy sexy thong speedo. Come on guys, this is a porn game! Strut your
stuff! That has been fixed. 😉

2. Fixed a whole *mess* of places in episode 3 where we were using “his” where we should have been using “him.” Guess what the female equivalent of “his” is? “her.” Guess what the female equivalent of “him” is? “her.” Guess what gender I use when writing and debugging? “her.”

As far as current work, I’m cranking away at episode 4 day 1. I’m much happier with this episode than I was with episode 3. The villain is infinitely more fun to write. Hopefully she’ll be more fun to read too. We’ll also be seeing the introduction of new superheroine, and a little bit of (boring) insight into Keiko’s past! I’m hoping to have content ready by the end of the month, but we’ll have to see.

In case you don’t remember, Keiko’s the melodramatic Canadian roommate. She hasn’t really shown up since episode 1, so I figure it’s past due to feature her a bit. Especially since I’m not quite sure what to do with her. She’s fun to write, but I haven’t figured out an arc for her.

I’ll also be participating in the game jam that’s being hosted the week of the 15th over at animeotk. I’ll be posting it here as well once it’s ready.

AKA

Uploaded a new version that upgrades to Love 11.2. One user had reported being unable to open the game on Windows as an exe (though they were able to run it after renaming the exe extension to love, weirdly enough). Apparently there was a bug in previous versions of Love that could cause it to not run properly on some versions of Windows 10. Not sure if that was the cause of my player’s issue, but I figured I’d upgrade to the latest version of Love just in case.

So if you’re having difficulty running the game on Windows, I’d encourage you to download this version.

AKA

A new version has been uploaded with some bug fixes:

1. Fixes a crash in the character creation screen when options wrap around (i.e. you press up or down enough times). Thanks to a fan for e-mailing me a bug report complete with the error and log!

2. Fixes a crash in combat when using the average difficulty against Poseidon and Prometheus.

3. Fixes a bug in Tempestas’ new power.

4. Optimized the character creation screen some, though not convinced it makes a particularly large difference.

5. Miscellaneous cleanups, so please let me know if previously correct code starts crashing or showing otherwise buggy behavior!

Get it over at the Downloads section!

Uploaded a new version with a fix for a crash kindly pointed out by giant432 over on animeotk. Thanks a lot giant432!

The crash happened when you draw David’s ire at the gym.

Spankers, Spankees and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),

The second and final day of Episode 3 is complete and available for download! Go and get it under the Downloads section.

I’m not too happy about it though. For one thing, you get railroaded like *crazy* this time around. Sorry. I kinda found Prometheus and Poseidon to be rather boring villains to write, and they’re bringing out a bit more of a serious side in Tempestas than I really wanted. So it’s been a bit of chore to even write this much, and I’ve been really wanting to just get this episode done and move onto different (and hopefully more fun) villains. I also didn’t do the extensive planning I did with episodes 1 and 2, and it shows. There was nothing getting me excited about this episode (like the Silver Tower scene did for episode 2), and I kinda didn’t really have a good sense of where I wanted things to go. So it meanders a bit.

That being said I *did* like how the battles turned out. I gave each of Prometheus and Poseidon new powers, and hot damn do they change their game. It’s a a bit brutal though, so please let me know if you’re having difficulty with the final battle, *especially* if you’re not doing a strength build. I’m concerned that other builds may not have quite the damage output needed in this fight and things might need to be nerfed a bit.

Hopefully it’s still enjoyable. Let me know if you run into any bugs, or have any feedback!

AKA

Spankers, Spankees and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),

I’m cranking away at the content for the second day of episode 3. Not sure
yet when I’ll have it ready though, especially with the holidays.

I’m honestly not too happy about how
this episode is coming together. I don’t think I’ve got Prometheus
and Poseidon figured out yet. But I already threw things out and started
over once, so I don’t really want to do that again. Especially since I’ve
already released a day of content. Regardless, expect more opportunities
to fight alongside Tempestas in the next episode, and a little bit more
time with Natalie.

At this point, the code engine is pretty much complete, and we’re
transitioning into maintenance mode. What that means is that we won’t see
any big changes. There will be some new features, but
they will mostly be quality of life stuff (like auto scrolling combat).
Nothing that will fundamentally change the experience. Here is
my current task list:

1. Improve the performance of the character selection screen.
Sometimes flipping through clothing options, there is an apparently random
delay of a few seconds before responding the player’s input. I think this
is because of some old, poor implementation choices I made when I was first
learning Lua.

2. Cleanup the combat code. The code for combat is *way* more complicated than
it needs to be, mostly because of an abortive attempt to reuse some of the
story mode code. This is the only part of the codebase that I consider truly
gnarly. Simplifying that will make everything so much easier going forward.

3. Autoscrolling combat. This was one of the first feature requests I got, and
hopefully I’ll have an easier time implementing and fiddling with it once I’ve
simplified combat a bit.

4. An additional “help” screen where players can look up characters.

5. Expand the help screen with information on statistics.

6. Add power information to the help screen.

7. Change your outfit without having to go to the character screen.

I’ll accomplish each task between episodes. That should hopefully strike a decent
balance of generating more content, and keeping the codebase healthy.

Of course, this is just a preliminary list. If anybody has experienced
any pain using the game, please let me know. I’ll try to work with you to come
up with a solution, and add it to the priority list.

I’m *especially* interested in anything that makes you feel like you’ve wasted
any time at all waiting on the game, rather than the game waiting on
you. Every minute of your precious time that you dedicate to my game is an honor,
and I don’t want to waste any of them.

AKA