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

So, Scarlet Moon has been released with a brand spanking new engine
written in Lua. I did this primarily because distributing the Java
version has been a huge pain in the ass, especially for users who
aren’t technically savvy. The distribution was also *very* bloated.

The Lua version should be much simpler and much easier to run. Unlike
the Java version, you don’t need to download anything extra. Just
download the game and play it. Directions can be found under the Downloads
page.

I’m using the *wonderful* LOVE game engine, and it lets you build a Windows
executable and Mac App without actually owning a Windows or Mac machine. Which
means that we now have a Mac App for you Mac users! I have no idea if it works
obviously, but fingers crossed.

There isn’t any new content (except for a few tweaks and edits here or
there). However, the combat is *very* different. First, I’ve removed the
positioning system. It wasn’t adding much to combat, and it made the
AI more complicated than necessary to implement.

For the new combat, the key conceit is that you get to use *every* action
avalable each round. This is different from most RPG’s, where you pick one
action from several. You start with just the ability to attack a single
target, and use one power. Additional powers may give you additional
actions, or stop enemies from using actions.

I’m *super* excited about this combat engine. When I play-tested it, it
felt very dynamic to me. I think it does the best job yet of capturing
the fast paced, dynamic combat that makes superheroes so much fun to
watch.

Combat itself is also deterministic now. Each supervillain has their own unique
pattern. A lot of combat will be figuring what each supervillain does when.

AI also has a *much* bigger impact than in the previous game:

1. With the dumb AI, enemies will only attack, and they will attack the target
with the most energy. Use this AI if you don’t care about all this RPG crap
and just want to warm some supervillain bums.

2. With the average AI, enemies will attack just like with the dumb AI, and
use *only* powers that deal damage.

3. With the smart AI, each supervillain has their own strategy, and will use
their powers to their fullest.

Needless to say, the game is balanced for the smart AI. You *will* get your
bum roasted a few times, and even the fights you do win will be near things.
However, none of the battles will be luck based, since as I said above, enemies
are deterministic. So once you find a winning strategy, it will win every time
(in that particular battle).

Get it over at the Downloads section! As always, don’t hesitate to let me know
if you run into any problems.

Because the combat is so very different, I decided not to make the saves from
the old engine compatible with this engine. You’re gonna want to learn the
new combat engine, and the best way to do that is from the beginning.

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

Sorry about the delay in posting a progress report It wasn’t my fault!

Actually, yes, yes it was totally my fault.

This hasn’t been the most productive of months, mostly because I keep
discovering awesome RPGs that insist I spend all my free time playing them
instead of working on my game.

Like Star Crawlers. A fun dungeon crawly game with *very* interesting classes
and skills.

Or Radiant Historia. Probably the best JRPG I’ve ever played. A compelling,
very *human* plot, simple yet deep combat mechanics, and fast-paced,
challenging combat that’s almost like a puzzle.

Or Legend of Legacy. A fun romp with very organic leveling mechanics that
I most favor (as anyone whose played Potion Wars will know). Also fun character
designs, a very cool atmosphere, and a very unique, compelling combat system.

And don’t even get me started on Romancing SaGa 2. I love the SaGa series so
much (turns out Legend of Legacy is made by a lot of the same people).

That being said, I’ve managed to make some progress. I’ve started writing
the next episode. It’s been a bit slow going, mostly because the first 500 lines
are always the hardest for me (starting is hard).

I’ve also ported the first episode of content into the new engine, nd I’m
working on debugging it now. I hope to have all the current content released
under the new engine by the end of the month. The transition’s been a much
smoother process than I expected.

You will have to start over though. I considered making the save files
compatible, but then decided that the gameplay will be different enough that
you really should start from the beginning. Sorry about that.

Anyway, I’m chugging along, I promise.

AKA

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

I took a couple of weeks off, like I always do after a big release, so I haven’t made a ton of progress. Right now, I’m focused on migrating over to the new engine in Lua. Note that save files will *not* be compatible between versions, so you will have to start a new game once the Lua version is out. I could translate the save files fairly easily, but the game will be different enough, that I think it’s better if people start over anyway. The combat in particular will be *very* different.

I’ve also started writing the first day of episode 3. I’m trying a slightly different tack with this episode than with episode 2. In episode 2, I planned out very thoroughly what I wanted to write, even down to the spanking scenes. This time, I planned out the main plot points that I want to hit, but I’m leaving the spanking scenes vague. I’m doing this mostly because I find that I have the most fun writing spanking scenes that occur to me spontaneously. When you’ve been thinking about a particular spanking scene for months before you finally get around to writing it, writing it turns into a chore. So we’ll see how that goes.

So basically, I know *what* I want this episode to accomplish, but not sure how.

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

I’ve just uploaded a new version, version 2.3.2. It includes bug fixes for the event in the elevator that stalls, the event in Megawater that crashes, and I wrote the missing spanking scenes where you join Vanessa’s marketplace brawl on day 2.

Get it over at the downloads section. Hope you enjoy it!

AKA

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

Haven’t heard anything over the past few weeks from my beta testers, so eh, I’m going to go ahead and release the new content:

1. Have your ultimate(ish?) showdown with Succubus to decide whose the top thong-clad superhuman in *this* town (you did pick the sexy costume right? :D).

2. A fewer number of choices in this part of the episode, *but* many of the choices you do make have a much bigger impact on how the rest of the episode progresses.

3. You can defeat Succubus without ever defeating her in battle. Can you find the right path?

4. Be disappointed as the cops interrupt the spanking of a supervillain *again*. Someone seriously needs to do something about those eager beavers…

Get it over at the Downloads section.

Also a couple of hints: Your speed dictates how much damage you take from enemies who shoot you. Succubus’ minions are the bulk of her damage output. She mostly just makes you more vulnerable to them.

Enjoy!

AKA

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

Episode 2 is complete! Yay! It’s currently out for beta testing. Hopefully I’ll be able to release the next version by the end of the month.

I’ve also got a new engine written in Lua, using the Love engine. Love promises to make it super easy to bundle the game into standalone executables for each of the major operating system families (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux). Something that Java does *not* make easy. A really big part of Lua’s design philosophy is to be *really really really* tiny, so the new engine won’t have as much bloat as the Java engine either.

Anyway, let’s see if Love’s promise holds up!

I have a sample game uploaded using my new engine, and I’d be very grateful if people could download and try it. There’s like one choice, and a small battle, so it’s not really a “game.” But it should allow us to see how smoothly the engine runs on different operating systems, as well as give people a sense of the new UI:

Windows

Mac OS X

Linux

The only one that isn’t a standalone executive is Linux, because Love doesn’t *really* support building standalone executables for Linux, mostly because Linux isn’t really an OS but rather a family of OS’s. Instructions for playing the game for Linux is included in the README. Basically, you install love and then run the ScarletMoon.love file with it.

If people could download and try the sample game on their operating system and let me know:

a) if the sample game is working on your OS

b) feedback on the new UI.

Most of the UI is very similar to the Java version. The biggest difference is in combat, because the combat is actually quite different.

AKA

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

Sorry about the delay in posting. Had a busy weekend. I am damn close to finishing the content of episode 2. Just have a few more events to write, and then I’ll be going through and making the text dynamic. Then I need to balance the combat and do general debugging.

I’m thinking I’ll probably have the rest of episode 2 ready for release by the end of February.

AKA

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

November wasn’t as productive as I had hoped, for a couple of reasons including getting my hands on Batman Beyond the Complete Series (never saw it), and the second season of Justice League.

However, I’ve also been struggling to write episode 2’s climax: a cat and mouse through Phillipa Silver’s office tower. The other day I finally, *finally* figured out why. Originally, the plan had been to have Scarlet Moon running up and down the office with the queen of a Generic European Constitutional Monarchy. Unfortunately, said queen isn’t introduced until just before the cat and mouse and she’s your generic bratty princess.

So I was going to spend an *entire* quarter of an episode on a character we’ve never seen before, will likely never see again, and whose entire personality is a setup for a spanking scene. It’s no wonder her dialog was stilted, two-dimensional and forced. She’s stilted, two-dimensional and forced. So I’m reworking things some, so that we spend more time with an actual character and less time on spanking props.

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

Sorry the November update is so damned late. The past few weeks have been keeping me very busy.

Anyway, October was a fairly middling month as far as productivity goes. I took a couple of weeks off from the game after my latest release like I always do, and I’ve only been working on it sporadically since (had a bit of a creative slump).

That being said, I’ve still managed to write just shy of 3000 lines so far. Basically, there are going to be two components to the third day, a Preamble, and the Main Event. In the preamble, you’ll be offered a choice that will send you down two very different paths, before converging again for the Main Event. Each choice will shed a bit of light on different aspects of the game world, and both will give you the opportunity to make the Main Event easier, though in very different ways. The Preamble is pretty much written.

As far as the Main Event, that hasn’t been written yet, so it’s in too much flux for me to be comfortable talking about here (don’t want to get people’s hopes up). With Christmas and Thanksgiving approaching, I should have more time to write than I usually do though, so I’m thinking that we’ll probably be able to get the next day out sometime in January, maybe in December if I’m productive.

Furthermore, for the past year or so, when I haven’t felt like writing I’ve been working on a yet another engine in Lua, using the Love framework. It started as an excuse to learn Lua, but I’ve kept at it because Lua is a gorgeous little language. Seriously, it amazes me just how *simple* the language’s mental model is. Furthermore, Lua itself is tiny, has very few dependencies, and encourages you to keep your programs the same way. This is important when you’re working on a relatively simple program (i.e. my game) that you want to distribute to a variety of other computers without too many headaches (i.e. my game). Furthermore, it looks like Love makes it _super_ easy to build platform-specific executables without actually owning one of those platforms. So I may actually be able to provide a Mac app in addition to Windows and Linux executables. The game will also be _much_ smaller, and hopefully much easier for people to run.

At this point, I’ve got the bulk of the framework implemented. There is one small rework of the combat engine (mostly how to display it) that I want to do, and then I’ll be whipping up a toy “game” that I can use to do some very preliminary testing. I’m on track to release a beta with the new engine sometime in the spring, probably April or May.

Accompanying the new engine will be a streamlining of the combat engine (of course!). The idea was to craft an engine that provides enough flexibility to make things interesting for the player, but enough rigidity to make halfway decent AI easy to write. The engine is heavily inspired by the various deck games out there (Smash Up, Sentinels of the Multiverse) where you build up your character/team over time, and each round you’re able to perform multiple things.

The two biggest changes are the following:

1. Elimination of “positioning.” I don’t think the positions (armslength, distant, grapple) really contribute much to combat, but they do make combat significantly more complicated, especially the AI. While positioning can be used to craft simple, yet deep combat systems (see: Battle for Wesnoth, Blackguards), you really need to craft your entire combat system around it. I have no interest in that. Instead, I want to base my combat system completely around interesting powers.

2. Every character will have two base actions: “attack,” and “power” *both* of which you’ll be able to use every round, in any order. So you could use the Scarlet Armor power to increase your strength, followed by an attack, allowing you to do extra damage, all in one turn. Or you could attack first, and then use Scarlet Boots to increase your speed, perhaps providing a defense boost, all in one turn. Most characters will only be do each 1 once per turn, but some characters might be able to do one of them more (or less).

Furthermore, a lot of powers will revolve around giving you additional options. For example, Scarlet Beam will actually be a buff. It’ll give you a new action “shoot” that you’ll be able to perform *in addition to* your attack and power actions, though it would also increase your attrition by 2.

The idea behind this is to make combat more dynamic as it progresses. As the tension rises, combat will get more intense, with characters growing stronger and more dynamic with every round. I also want Scarlet Moon to be a self-buff based hero. However, in the current engine buffing is so slow. You have to spend an entire round buffing yourself, while your enemies whale on you, and attrition eats away at you. By allowing you to perform other actions as well, we can keep combat moving swiftly without making a purely self-buffing character obnoxious.

Naturally, we can have powers that take away actions as well. For example, a power “Scarlet Force” that makes it so that for one round, all attacks or shoots reduce the target’s attack down to 0 (i.e. your enemy can’t attack, though they can still use any other actions at their disposal).

Note: Spanking in combat won’t go away. It’ll be unlocked by various powers (like say, Scarlet Paddle). My current thoughts around spanking is that they’ll reduce the damage of the target’s next attack by 1, and provide a “marker” status that could affect other powers. For example, some of Succubus’ powers could only target (or be more effective against) targets who have been spanked recently. By the same token, she might be able to use one less power per turn if she is humiliated, or something.

The AI will also be very different. First, they will be much more deterministic (though not completely so). The dumb AI won’t actually use powers, it’ll just attack (so Buzzsaw might still be a bit of a *little* bit of a threat, but Succubus not so much). The average AI will attack the same way as the dumb AI, but will also use a random power each turn. Finally, the smart AI will have its own strategy for every supervillain, allowing them to take full advantage of their gimmicks in a way the current AI really can’t.

So the dumb AI will be for those of you who just want to get off, and are sick of watching me masturbate over combat systems. The average AI is for those of you who want combat to be fun, but not too challenging, and smart will be for those of you who really want to dig into the combat system and learn how to use it effectively.

Thoughts? While this combat system is very different from what you’re used to seeing in RPGs, I do think it’ll be simpler than my current system, while also much more interesting.