Spankers, Spankees and Switches,
A new version of Scarlet Moon has been uploaded, with the first day of episode 5! This is basically the lovebirds episode, because all three romance subplots are advanced, including introducing a sexy leatherclad Domme to be a dominant female love interest. I’m very proud of how her introductory scene came out. Hopefully, it’s as good as I seem to think it is.
It should hopefully be pretty obvious which choices kick off the romance and which ones don’t, but if there’s any confusion, please let me know.
No sex, despite my earlier promises. I started working on the sex scene with David, but it wasn’t working. I don’t think your relationship with him is at a point where I want sex to happen yet, so instead we introduce a new villain. This is still the most sexual episode to date, so hopefully people will enjoy it.
It’ll probably feel a bit railroaded, mostly because the key decisions that guide your path through the episode (who you’re dating) are mostly decided in earlier episodes.
The content itself has a bit of a jenky flow. It’s not really one coherent storyline, so much as three separate vignettes. Don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it’s definitely a thing. Regardless, you can get it at the Downloads section
Enjoy!
Spankers, Switche and Spankees of All Ages (18 and above),
Working on the first part of episode 5. I’ve got the opening written, the introduction of the dominant female love interest (which I’m very happy with, hopefully you all will be too), and a dancing club scene with David. After that, I had a few false paths as I tried to figure out what felt right. Originally there was going to be some sex with David, but that didn’t feel right, decided I’d rather have David take you on a few dates first. So instead I’ve decided to introduce a supervillain in this episode after all, but the first two I tried didn’t feel right either. I have a pretty good feeling about this third one, though. Decided to push forward a plot whose groundwork was laid in an earlier episode.
No idea when it will be ready, I’m still pretty early in the writing process. But I’m cranking away at it! I’ve written about 3776 lines of content so far, so while I haven’t exactly been a writing whirlwind, I haven’t been idle either.
AKA
Haven’t been super productive this month. Probably because, you know, coronavirus. But I started working on the next episode a few days ago. This episode is probably going to feel more railroaded than it is. The player may not get as many real choices as I usually give, but there will be three big paths, one for each love interest (including the introduction of a dominant female love interest). Which one you see will depend on who you’re attracted to. You’ll also get an opportunity to express interest in Natalie, in case you didn’t last episode (not 100% sure you’re guaranteed the opportunity to be attracted to her in the previous episode, so I put it someplace obvious in this one). Of course, this also means that if you don’t have any love interests at all, this will probably be a fairly boring episode for you. Sorry.
This is also going to focus less on superheroing and more on your player’s mundane life, since the previous episode was pretty heroics heavy. What superheroing there is will be against mostly normal baddies, a glimpse into the kinds of things Scarlet Moon gets up to when tier S supervillains aren’t showing up.
AKA
With some help from a fan, I’ve been able to track down a bug that was causing crashes in combat if you were using the Average AI.
So if you’ve been using the Average AI, and you’ve been having problems with combat crashing, download the latest version and try again!
AKA
Uploaded a new version that fixes some bugs kindly pointed out by Aymer over on animeotk.
This version also *massively* nerfs s-chords, s-fists, and s-eyes. Before, the stat transfers and buffs scaled based on Scarlet Moon’s power stat. However, I realized while debugging that I’m balancing characters to be fairly close in stats. As a result, s-chords and s-fists will only get more powerful relative to your opponent, and will in fact get more powerful very quickly. This plus the new buff in defense means that s-chords is all you need to make Scarlet Moon nigh untouchable.
Now, all three powers modify your stats by a flat 2 points (well, s-fists reduces your power by 4, but increases your strength and speed by 2 each). If as the game goes on, combat becomes a drag (because energy ends up going up faster than damage, which is very possible), then I’ll “manually” upgrade s-chords at a later point in the story. For example, I could imagine Scarlet Moon having a training montage, after which s-chords gives you a 4 point buff or something. S-armor will still scale based on power, and every power’s duration will still be going up as you increase in power. I’ll probably go through and similarly nerf headwind and tailwind when I release episode 5.
I also reduced the power of some enemy powers, since Scarlet Moon now has a much lower defense. Let me know if the combat becomes too difficult (especially Prometheus and Poseidon).
A new version has been uploaded with a bugfix for the Love version that was causing the combat UI to crash after you defeated an opponent.
Sorry about that!
AKA
A new version has been uploaded. There isn’t any new content, instead a new
combat system has been introduced. The big changes are the introduction of
secondary statistics:
1. Attack – This is how much damage you do. It’s base value is strength +
speed/2.
2. Defense – This is how much damage you reduce enemy attacks. It’s base value
is speed.
3. Shield – This is effectively temporary hitpoints. Whenever an enemy damages
you, it reduces your shield stat before it reduces your energy. For example,
suppose you have a shield stat of 5, and an enemy does 3 damage to you. Then
they will do 0 damage, and your shield will be reduced to 2. If they do 3
damage to you *again*, then they will reduce your shield to 0 and do 1 damage
to you. By default, shield is 0, but powers can be used to increase it.
4. Retaliation – This behaves just like shield, except instead of blocking
damage, you retaliate. For example, suppose you have a retaliation of 5 and an
enemy does 3 damage to you. Then, you take 3 damage, do 3 damage to them, and
your retaliation is reduced to 2. If they do 3 damage to you *again*, then they
do 3 damage to you, you do 2 damage to them, and your retaliation is reduced to
0. Note that retaliation ignores defense, so it can be a great way of damaging
enemies with high defense. However, it is blocked by shields.
Buffing and debuffing powers now increase and decrease attack, defense, shield
and retaliation. Most of Scarlet Moon’s powers are the same, except:
1. Scarlet Chords now increases attack and defense based on your Power stop,
rather than increasing your speed based on your Strength. Furthermore, if you
are inflicted with Away at the start of your turn, Scarlet Chords automatically
cures you of it at the start of your turn (rendering you effectively immune to
Away).
2. Scarlet Fists and Scarlet Eyes work the same they did before, except they no
longer inflict a status. This means that they don’t increase your attrition,
they cannot be disrupted by spankings, and they remain in effect until you
cancel them.
3. Scarlet Beam uses your attack stat, rather than your Power stat. This is so
that Scarlet Fists more obviously increases your damage output (before it
increased your Attack damage, but reduced your Shoot damage, which was lame).
Shoot does not trigger retaliation, but is not affected by your weapons.
4. S-Armor – Now increases Scarlet Moon’s shield stat, rather than increasing
her defense.
For Tempestas:
1. Tailwind – Increases all allis’ attack.
2. Headwind – Decreases all enemies’ attacks.
3. Wind tunnel – increases Tempestas’ retaliation.
4. Twister no longer inflicts damage on a character when they are inflicted
with Away. Instead, it does damage at the end of their turn if they are
inflicted with Away. What this means is that Scarlet Moon is effectively immune
to Twister if she is inflicted with Scarlet Chords, because that removes Away
at the start of her turn. Twister also cures Tempestas of Away and gives her a
bonus to her attack that lasts one round.
5. Airburst – Works the same way it did before, except it inflicts Away for a
minimum of two rounds.
Anklyana:
1. Armor – Increases Anklyana’s Defense.
2. Bubblesaurus – Reduces her energy, and increases an ally’s shield by the
same amount (basically, she gives her energy to someone else as temporary
hitpoints). Note that this *does not* inflict a status, which means it stacks,
and it cannot be disrupted by spankings.
3. Wallsaurus – Increases a target’s defense, and decreases their attack by the
same amount.
Also, the game now tells you at the start of every combat whether or not
winning that battle is optional.
Hopefully, people find this combat system fun and well-balanced (Lord knows
it’s a lot simpler to implement at least). Feedback is much appreciated.
Just posted a new version that fixes a bug in the story content, where the game just straight up stops moving forward during one branch of the “escape Princess” route. Thanks Wildfire for the bug report!
There’s also apparently a crash in the battle royale at the end of the episode kindly pointed out by Wildfire that seems to be tied to administering spankings. I’m not going to track that one down though, because I’m currently doing some balancing of a combat rework, and the code is changing so much that whatever bug is there will almost certainly have gone away (to be replaced by three or four new ones I’m sure). I’m hoping to release that in the next few weeks, so tracking down the bug doesn’t seem like it’ll be a good use of my time.
Also, updated the Downloads section to clarify that the source code of Scarlet Moon is released under GPL v3 license, while the story content (i.e. setting, characters, etc) is released under CC-BY-SA. I don’t think that I have it actually written down anywhere on here.
Yet Another Version uploaded. This one fixes a bug that was causing a crash early on in episode 2, and some bugs in the scarletmoon.sh script that kept it from running smoothly when people downloaded the Scarlet Moon loveless version.
I’ve also updated the Downloads section for those of you on Linux. If you want to try the loveless version, make sure to install Lua (5.3.x or 5.2.x) first. I don’t bundle a Lua executable with the Linux loveless version for the same reason I don’t bundle a Love executable with the Linux Love version. I haven’t tried it on the bleeding-edge Lua 5.4 yet, so I can’t guarantee it will work. I wouldn’t be surprised if it does though. My understanding of Lua 5.4 is that it’s mostly touching stuff related to coroutines, and I don’t use anything that advanced in my game.
Moar bug fixes!
— Fixes crashes that occur whenever the game tries to remove your costume when you aren’t wearing it.
— Fixes a crash that can occur if you load an older save file and then try to turn combat on or off.
— Fixes a crash that occurs at the end of episode 2, if you refuse to get spanked by Dr. Parks, and so Juliana spanks you at the end of the episode.