Spankers, Spankees and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
Sorry the February update has been so late. The past few weeks have been kinda crazy, and I haven’t had a ton of time to work on my game (though I have been working on it when I can).
I’ve finished the bulk of the code for a fairly significant combat rewrite, and am currently working on fixing my tests.
Basically, what I’m trying to do is streamline combat some, and make it easier to have a variety of interesting powers in the future, though you guys won’t see many changes. In fact, there are only three:
- There is no longer the notion of a forced grapple. Grappling still moves both the grappler and the grapplee into the Grapple range, but it no longer forces them to be in range for a certain number of rounds.
- Spankings are no longer multi-round affairs. They are now a single round action that inflict the Humiliated status, and has fun flavor text.
- Combat will be truly turn-based (as opposed to round based). What this means is that you will give your characters their command, and specify the order in which the commands should be executed, and then the player’s characters will execute those actions in the specified order. Then your enemies will execute their actions.
The first two are changing because the previous mechanics just complicated my refactoring too much, so I decided to simplify them. Also, the multi-round spanking mechanic doesn’t mesh well with my current vision for combat.
The third change is because I have a better handle on how I want combat to work. Basically, I want each hero to be very focused and have very different powers that allow players to chain them together in very interesting ways.
However, in order for this kind of chaining to be truly satisfying, the player needs to have complete control over which action executes when.
Grand plans falling apart because of bad luck are great in stories, but they usually just lead to frustrating gameplay.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
Sorry about the website being down for however long it was down. A plugin that I wasn’t really using was misbehaving, so I’ve removed it.
Anyway, a new version is available for download. It fixes some bugs that were introduced by the previous version, as well as a few more subtle bugs that I’ve only just now noticed. The upshot is that you should be able to use powers now without crashing the game, and when you select the same gender for spanker and spankee, switches will automatically be set to the same gender as well.
Get it over at the downloads section!
And of course, many thanks to those of you who were kind of enough to report bugs and crashes to me.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
I’ve just released a new version of Scarlet Moon, with fixes for the bugs that people have so helpfully pointed out. Note that I wasn’t able to replicate the NULL bug that one user was experiencing, on either of my machines. I did find a different bug while investigating that one, and fixed that however. Get the latest version on the Download page.
Anyway, here’s a detailed changelog for those who are interested:
## Fixed
- Some missing dynamic gender text.
- A place where the sexy costume event should trigger, but wasn't.
- Scarlet Cord no longer does damage, and applies its cost to the user.
- A bug where mulit-slot equipment was having its risque effectively
doubled.
- A few missing gender checks, causing the player to have to select
a gender for Vanessa even if she already has one.
## Added
- Players can now access the character customization screen at any time.
- Male players also equip a t-shirt when equipping their bathing suits.
## Changed
- Removed some unnecessary continues and singleton choices.
Also, don’t forget that I am looking for anyone with any skill/experience in costume design to help design superhero/villain costumes. Details can be found in the previous post.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
So I didn’t get as much done as I’d planned over break. I started doing some work, but then realized that I needed a break, so I took it. Also, I got some fun new shinies over break, and I wanted to play with them (I _love_ the skills in Etrian Odyssey Untold 2: Fafnir Knight. They have got to be some of the most interesting skills I’ve yet seen in an RPG).
But I’ve started to get back into it. I’ve written up an outline for episode 2, and sent it to my writers for feedback. I’ve finished the first pass of my combat refactor to support more interesting skills. Right now, I’m reworking my tests around combat to support the changes.
I’ve also fixed those bugs that I’ve been able to reproduce. Expect another release this weekend. It won’t have any new content, but it will have the following:
- Various bug fixes.
- I’ve removed a bunch of unnecessary singleton choices. They were a hold over from when I was experimenting with spanking sound effects, before deciding that it would be too much work to make the sound effects work well, and sound good.
- You’ll be able to open up the character creation menu no matter where you are. Basically, this will allow you to see your character’s current stats, as well as change your clothing, and appearance. Yes, it’s weird that you could change your outfit while in the middle of a battle with a supervillain, but you don’t have to. And I’ll make sure to include a brief scene at home at the beginning of each day, so that those of you who don’t want to break your suspension of disbelief have a time when it makes sense to change clothing.
Also, I’m looking for help from anyone out there from anyone who has any skill in visual design. Particularly costume/wardrobe design to help come up with costumes for the various superheroes/villains that will be introduced as the game progresses. Essentially, we’d give you some information about a supercharacter, and you’d help us come up with an interesting costume for the character. I want my heroes/villains to have flashy, colorful, and sexy costumes, but I for one have no skill in that costume design.
Thanks!
Edit: One thing I forgot to mention. CM Zero has released a management/spanking game over on animeotk.com called Peach Springs. It’s a wonderful game. Probably my favorite spanking game to come out since the Spanking Adventures by Robin Pierce (and those will always have a special place in my heart, because they finally inspired me to develop Potion Wars). I’ve added it to the Other Spanking Games tab. I haven’t played the most recent update yet, so my analysis may be a bit out of date.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
I’ve just posted the next version of Scarlet Moon, 1.0.5. We finally have some new content! Included in this release is the entire second (and last) day of episode 1. Episode 1 is now complete. Get it in the Downloads section!
It’s not perfect (I think the beach scene could stand to be trimmed down a little bit, and the heroics at the end expanded upon), but I think it’s good enough to be released. And I’m kind of sick of working on this first episode, so I figure now’s a good time to release.
As for what I’m working on right now, there are two big priorities:
- Refactoring combat.
2. Working out the details of episode 2 (I know what villain I want to introduce, and rough idea of the major scenes, I just need to flesh them out).
I’ll talk a little bit more about my combat refactors once they’re done, but the basic gist is that every action in combat will be reduced to 1 or more of the following atomic actions:
- Do damage to a character (healing is negative damage).
- Inflict a status on a character for some duration (inflicting a status with negative duration attempts to cure the status).
- Move a character to a different position.
This should simplify the combat logic some (which will be nice. Combat is the most complicated part of the system). However, I’m doing this primarily because this will allow me to easily implement all sorts of interesting powers. For example, you could have a power that redirects the first X positive damage actions targeting you to a random target. Or you could attack the first X enemies that move. The villain in Episode 2 will be primarily using these kinds of powers, so it’s a little bit important to get this refactor done now. This will open the door for all sorts of interesting powers and synergies between powers that will hopefully make the combat compelling and fun.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
Sorry about missing the November update. I was preoccupied.
Anyway, it turns out that when you do a massive rewrite of your system, you end up with a fair number of bugs. So my beta testers have spent the past month dutifully documenting the many, many, _many_ bugs they’ve found in the latest update, and I’ve been squashing them.
It’s been like 5 whole days since I sent my beta testers the latest version, and they haven’t sent back any bugs (which is a record I think). So hopefully we’ll have the full first episode ready for your avid consumption. I’m honestly a little bit disappointed with it. I think I spend too much time catering to my thong-bikini-beach-spanking fetish and not enough to my thong-superheroine-spanking-fetish. So the superheroing part is a little bit more railroaded than I would have liked.
But I’m kind of sick of this episode, and ready to get the hell on with it, so whatever.
Anyway, now I’m going to talk about my plans for the rest of the game. Here were my original plans:
The first episode would be a little bit unique in that it would be a CYOA tree of choices in which we introduce the majority of the main cast and try to tell a superhero origin story that has less “normal person is normal” and more “superhero-just-punched-that-guy-through-a-wall-holy-fuck-this-is-awesome.”
All subsequent episodes would be in a style similar to the Spanking Adventures by Robin Pierce: a loosely connected set of CYOA-style vinettes, with a hub screen where you choose which to do when. The idea was that each day would have the following choices: study, patrol, sleep, work, and go out.
To add a bit of gameplay to these events, there would be three additional statistics: stress, fatigue, and GPA. The various vignettes would have different choices that could increase or decreaes these three stats. Furthermore, for every 5 points of stress you would receive a 1 point penalty to your primary stats. Meanwhile, every point of fatigue would subtract a point from your maximum energy. Meanwhile, GPA would serve as a multiplier on your stress: the higher your GPA the slower your stress increases.
Furthermore, there wouldn’t be enough hours in the day to do all the events, so you’d have to make decisions: should I study, or take a nap? Go to work or go and party? The idea was to add some tension to the game, because you’d have to carefully balance your priorities to make sure you have high enough stats and energy to defeat the villain of the episode, but also leave you in a good place for the next episode.
However, I think I’m going to do away with this approach, and make every episode more like the first, for a couple of reasons both story and gameplay related.
Gameplay:
My biggest problem with the gameplay is that you have no idea how powerful you need to be to defeat the villain. As a result, you don’t have enough information to make good choices when deciding which events you want to do for a given day. You could very easily find yourself in an unwinnable situation because you made sub-optimal choices three in-game days ago. I’ve played games that pull this, and it always frustrates me to no end. Keep in mind that I do want the game to have some challenge, but this feels too much like fake difficulty.
One thing I’ve learned from the playing through the first episode is that energy is _precious_. It’s even more precious than I expected it to be. It is a non-renewable resource that leaks away with every round of combat. Every power you use brings you a little bit closer to defeat, and you’re hoping that the advantage you get from the power offsets that. This introduces more than enough tension. Trying to stack on any more will turn tense gameplay into frustrating gameplay.
Story:
The problems with the gameplay could be solved easily enough by simply doing away with stress, fatigue, and GPA. However, I also think that this format would make it harder to tell a good story. The original plan had been that each choice would star a particular supporting character. For example, the patrol choice would feature Juliana in a starring role. This makes sense because it makes it easier to manage a large cast: by having subplots that focus on one character at a time, the player has time to learn about each character without being overwhelmed.
However, the player has a choice of which events to partake in each day. As a result, you can’t really build on previous events (the complexity would rapidly spin out of control). Furthermore, we can’t really incorporate key character development into these events because we have no idea if the player will see them or not. As a result, each subplot has to be a standalone vignette that doesn’t really contribute anything significant to the story, and doesn’t significantly develop the character. It would also be very difficult to weave these vignettes into the main plot.
In other words, it’d be filler. I don’t want any filler. One of my main goals is to make every scene contribute in some way to the story, either by advancing the plot or shedding some light on a character, or world-building.
Instead, I think we would get more mileage if we structure our episodes a lot like in X-Men: Evolution. In X-Men: Evolution you often had a main plot that focused on a handful of the cast (two to three characters typically), and a more light-hearted subplot that focused on other members of the cast. The subplot allowed them to inject some comic relief into the episodes, as well as give screen time to more characters without affecting the pacing of the main story. So my current plan is to have a main plot that will focus on Juliana, the player and the villain-of-the-week’s shenanigans. Meanwhile, we’ll have a subplot that stars one of the support cast. Essentially, these subplots will be the vignettes that we had originally planned to be separate events. Except we’ll be able to weave them into the main plot, and we can guarantee that the player will see some form of them (of course, we intend to give the player choices that effect how each plot plays out).
This also means that I don’t have to add any new features to the codebase (like I would if I wanted to do the original plan), which will be a huge timesavings. There is still a fair amount of coding that I want to do for the next episode (I need to refactor combat to better support some of the more interesting powers that I have in mind). So I’m not done with major development just yet.
Those of you who have kindly volunteered to help me write will be primarily helping me with the subplots, and possibly enriching the main plot with additional choices.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
Haven’t been super productive this month (worked my ass off to finish the code rewrite, so I’ve been taking a working break). However, I have managed to finish the first draft of game content. I write each update’s worth of content in three phases:
- Write a static version of the text. The purpose here is to get the bulk of the story on paper. To keep things simple, I give everyone fixed genders, names and outfits. Note that I do write up the choices as well.
- Go through a second pass and make the text dynamic, i.e. add additional text for male characters, outfits, etc.
I’m currently working my way through the second step.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
I’ve released a new version (0.1.24) with a small fix that sets a minimum font size of 6. This should protect against the font being so ridiculously small that you can’t read it, even on small screens.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
I’ve finished the major rewrite of Scarlet Moon. The bug with saving making the game unresponsive should now be fixed. There have also been a few small interface tweaks. The biggest one being that skills are now selected with letters rather than numbers (made the new implementation a bit simpler, and gives me more single keystrokes for selecting skills).
You can get it on the downloads page.
Note: I’ve also moved over to gitlabs, partially because Gitlab allows me to have private repositories without a paid membership, and partly because I like open source and like to use/support it when I can. The links in the Downloads page should all be updated already, but if any are broken please let me know.
Note that there is no new content (beyond a little bit of editing). However, now that I’ve finished my rewrite, my focus until the end of the first episode will be on writing the game’s content, and bugfixes.
AKA Russell
So I’m eyeballs deep into the debugging of the Great Refactor. Right now, I’m working on debugging combat (the most complex piece, so naturally the buggiest).
At this stage, I’ve got attacking, and moving (moving is one of the more complex parts) working correctly. Right now I’m working on making sure skills work properly.
Events are also working correctly, I believe, as is saving and loading.
Fortunately, while I’ve found a ton of bugs, all of them have been pretty straightforward to fix (one bonus of the Great Refactor: everything being modified is local, and methods can’t do all sorts of wild and crazy shit behind the scenes, so it makes it a lot easier to track down the misbehaving code).
I’ve also been working on some of the writing for the rest of the first episode.
Sorry this is all taking so long. But I have a much better handle on how the codebase works, especially how the GUI is communicating with the rest of the system, so _hopefully_ this means we’ll have fewer of those weird-ass bugs that I couldn’t track down.
AKA