Paperheads demo out now!

I just wanted to point out:
Please read the tutorial (at least the controls and the Grab-System) before you start out.
Even if you don't read it throughly, please at least look at the screenshots.

[Paperheads] Tutorial

If you have any questions, please read the tutorial first.
It took me quite some time to type all that text, and it should cover most questions.
If it's not in the tutorial, I'll answer it of course.


Here is the link to the demo:
(please link to this blog directly, so people can read the tutorial and information themselves)

Paperheads beta v1



Some additional information on the demo:

This games purpose is to be a hentai game.
Which means, the Grab-System is the focus, not the beat'em up parts.
(I already stated that when I began this project)
The beat'em up part is just an addition to spice it up a bit.
Because the Grab-System alone would be a bit boring.
But keep in mind, this is no beat'em up with hentai... it's a hentai game with beat'em up elements.

The tutorial function is not ingame right now.
Due to several reasons.
(the interface isn't 100%ly complete yet, we want to chance the picture of Verdanis face in the future)
When I implement it, I'll implement more pictures, less text.
And I mean reaaaally by far "less text".

The game works as planned, and I don't want to do any major changes in the controls part.
I know that people wish for customizable controls, but to be honest, I kinda failed at that.
I tried it for about 2 days (up to 8 hours a day) but whatever I tried, it was no use...
Somehow the system wasn't able to detect all keys, and there where lots of other issues.
So I dropped this... I'm very sorry, but it seems that it's more than I can handle.
(I'm using game maker, by the way)

I also tried several scripts and guides, but it was no use at all.
So I'm very sorry, but I can't change the fact that I'm incapable of implementing it.


Regarding the CGs and text:


I just wanted to point out, that we are by far not there, where we want to be.
Regarding the CGs and CG scenes.
We will implement a lot more CGs in the future.
So every enemy type will get at least 3 different CG scenes.
Also, currently most scenes just have 1 picture, we will change this and build in variation when the time has come.
But not now.
I just implemented one scene with several different variations in the pictures.
And even here, I didn't implement all the pictures yet.
(I also cut down the text of that scene, so... to match the text, I also cut down on the pictures)

I'm talking about the tentacle scene, yes.
And I'll include the full scene, with all pictures, into the final version.
It's currently the only scene with several pictures, and I don't want the other scenes to look pale compared to that.
(doing variations into a CG scene is a whole lot of work... so we have to take our time for this)

The text for all the scenes should be fine.
Except the tentacle scene, that one will get a pretty much longer text, as already stated.

For future reference:
- CG scenes should have only about 3-5 different variations (there will be exceptions that will be much longer)
- CG scenes will have about 10-20 text-blocks (there will also be exceptions that are longer)
- every enemy type will get at least 3 CG's
(Bosses might get 2 CG's only, because you might not want to lose to them all the time)
- there will also be "good" CG's in the future, when you complete a stage etc.


What we will add in the future:

- more CG's
- CG variations
- Boss battles (with own Grab-System attacks/animations)
- we will complete the sewer stage (currently it's only about 30-40% done)
- we will add 2 more stages (subway & harbor)
- we will add 2 more enemy types and several subtypes for the Paperheads.
- in total there will be 3 bosses to fight
- there will be voice for the Paperheads
- 2 Paperheads should be able to grab Verdani

...and some more stuff, but I'll cover that in one of my next posts.


Regarding the Grab-System and our next game:

(after we finished the Paperheads game, which will be hopefully at the end of july)

I thought about simplyfing the Grab-System a bit.
Also there will be no pleasure meter in the Wolfenstahl game.
Roughly spoken, it will still be the same system.
Just several parts that are not needed will be cut out.
(all the "pleasure" relating stuff etc.)

Since the Wolfenstahl game will be a Megaman clone, you won't be grabbed too often.
(since you can shoot and all)
And of course, we will focus much more on non hentai content (gameplay) in the Wolfenstahl game.
(I even want to completely leave the Grab-System out of boss battles, since it would spoil the megaman-like feeling... and least out of the boss battles with the regular bosses)
But... lets talk about that stuff, when the time has come.
I just felt, that I should mention this at least.



Thanks for reading!
And have fun playing the game.



~Wolfenstahl~


P.S:
If you have read the tutorial while I was writing this article, please take another look at the arrangement.
I added 2 categorys while writing this article ^^"
It's not that important, but I could be interesting.
(I didn't touch the text that was already written, so you don't have to read it all again, just the new parts)

Those are:

3.2 Grab-System additional information
5. Difficulty System


I'm really tired now...
Time to go to bed, good night and have fun testing the demo everyone! ^^

Text to the CGs?

Yeah, I planned to have text to all CGs in the full release.
But for the demo I decided to do text for the special scene.

Whatever, I did everything important already, so I thought I should maybe include text for more than just the special scene?

The point is:
I could write loooong text, after all I do that every day.
I only see the main problem in the fact, that I'll have to write text for about 30-40 CG scenes.
And it would be overkill... if every scene gets a pretty long text.
(we are no professional VN company... just 2 people working on this project seriously, and several others giving slightly support (voice acting, translating etc.))

So I went with following decision:
I'll only write some "short" text for the scenes.
I'm well aware that short texts end up being a bit crappy, because you can't "squeeze" all the details of a game over scene into a few lines of text...
But I'll include longer texts for special scenes to make up for that.

This means... mostly "short" texts, but here and there a longer text.

I guess this is a good compromise, so we can keep the work at a minimum.
Also the translation into japanese won't take that much time, if we do it this way.
So I really think this is a good solution.

I also hope noone gets disappointed too much.
But it's really hard to do a good game, within a set time limit, without any limitations.


Anyway, that's all for now.
I'm writing all of the texts now, then I'll go to bed.
So tomorrow I'll just have to write down the story (I already came up with one) and give out the game for final "inofficial" testing.
If all goes well, the demo will be out on thuesday, just as promised.


Oh, and one final notice:
I already wrote a pretty good and long text for the tentacles.
But I'll include just a small version into the game.
Because I want to save the long text for the final demo-release (end of july), when the game is done.
(it might be one of the longest and most detailed CG text in the game... and it'll be a little "thank you" for all the tentacle lovers out there)

So please, don't be disappointed by the short version ^^"
I don't like the short version either... but it's just a temporary measure.

The other scenes should be fine as they are.
Since there are no longer versions for them, I can't complain myself.. lol

Enough chit chat, time to get back to work!



~Wolfenstahl~

Everything's coming along nicely

Well, a small status report once in a while doesn't hurt.
The menu works now as intended, options etc. that is.
The tutorial option still has no function, but I'll work on it tomorrow or on saturday.
(it's just screenshots with text and explanation anyway)

I'm still adding details to the backgrounds, and yeah, it takes a bit longer than expected.
But this isn't really a problem, it's just a matter of time.

For tomorrow I'm aiming to do:
- 2 simple events for the game
- one new CG
- some more testing, balancing and bug fixing
- as well as placing enemies into the different areas
- adding again some more details to the backgrounds

To tell you something about the events:
One event needs to be completed in order to proceed, while the other event is just an instant game over scene.
I might add some text to only this one game over scene, if I have the time left to do so.
(since it's really just a "dead end", but if you want to unlock the CG, you'll have to go there at least once)
Of course later all CG scenes get text.
But as mentioned earlier, I can't make it in time for the beta-demo.

There will be more events like this, the more we complete the game.
I mean: events that you need to accomplish to proceed, as well as events where you get a game over.
I won't share the CG to it before the demo release, since there should be at least some surprises.
So there will only be 4 CG's in this beta-demo version.
3 of them where already shown here on the blog.
(1 was just a draft, 1 was only a small portion of the CG, and the last one was completely shown)

But of course we will add more to the game later.
We aim to make about 30-40 different CGs (or lets say, CG scenes).
Most of them will be done in july, and of course we won't show all of them here.
(there have to be some good surprises and secrets left to uncover, right?)


So after I completed my goals for tomorrow, I'll see what's left to do for the weekend.
I guess it'll be mainly testing, balancing and bugfixing.
Maybe adding some minor details and stuff.
But I want to have it all done on saturday night.
So on sunday (and maybe monday) some (selected) people can test the game.
After that I guess, most bugs should be taken care of.
And yes, if everything goes well, the demo will be available on thuesday or wednesday.

That's all for now.
Time to get some sleep.



~Wolfenstahl~

Difficulty settings and options?

So far we implemented the basic hentai attacks for the Paperheads.
There are more to come, but not for the beta-demo version.
(there are more than enough for now)

Currently I'm thinking about the difficulty/balancing, the difficulty options, as well as the options themselves.
While I come up with quite a lot of possible solutions for a difficulty system.
I still have no great idea what to place into the options section?

Window mode and fullscreen are at least one option I should place there.
But in fact, F4 is the standard button for this...
So it's kinda pointless doing an option menu just for this.

Otherwise I could place the difficulty settings into the option menu?
Maybe I should try looking into the keymapping stuff.
So people could customize their controls?
But I've no idea how much time this would cost me, implementing this.

Yeah, I guess I'll take a look into it.
After that I can still decide wether to implement it this week or not.

Currently we are also working on the backgrounds.
We want to be "ready" for Saturday, then do some final testing and balancing.
After that we'll finally release the beta-demo version.
(So yeah, it'll be 100%ly available at the end of may)

Oh, and I thought it would be better if I concentrate on the game itself first.
So we included just a few CG scenes, and we included no text for the CGs so far.
(we will cover this in one of the next demo releases)
The game needs to be tested in order to get rid of bugs (there are sometimes some).
But CGs and text is much easier to be corrected or altered.
So they have a lesser priority during our main developement phase.
(we occasionally do some, but I guess most of them will be done in july)


So, that's all for now.
I hope you all look forward to the release of the demo.
There are just a few days left after all ^^



~Wolfenstahl~

Voice Acting

Again everything is going quite smothly.
During the past days, Amelia did the voice acting for Verdani.
As mentioned before, there will be nearly no spoken sentences, but all the voices will be recorded ourselves.
The sound effects are partly done ourselves, partly taken from various random pages throughout the internet.
(til now I would say, about 80 % of the amount of sound-files are done by ourselves, out of scratch)

So yeah, the game has now sound effects, voices etc. ... but still no music.
I highly doubt that I'll be able to add music to it for the upcoming demo-version.
So I hope no one is disappointed about the missing background music.


Anyway, what are our plans for the next two weeks?

Well, we will add some hentai-attacks for the Paperheads.
Then we do some more background tiles.
Making about 30-50% of the first stage available in the beta-demo.

And of course we have to write some text for the game over scenes.
So there's lots of time consuming stuff to do, but since everything works out so far, I highly doubt that we'll have any unforseen troubles.

Not that spectacular news, but I just wanted to give you all a brief status report.



~Wolfenstahl~

Tentacle Monster done

A few days ago we've done all the animations for the tentacle monster.
As stated before, we will only implement a small number of enemies.
But therefore they'll have lots of different hentai-attacks and animations.
(I also plan on implementing some subtypes of enemies, they'll be pretty similar to others, but may have some different special attacks or hentai-attacks)

The Grab-System is already done, as well as the continue system.
(where you have to struggle in order to be able to continue, before the enemy comes to the heroine)
Oh yes, and the whole Grab-System, continue stuff and everything "ingame" regarding the tentacle monster has already been implemented.
(the only thing that has to be done is the overall CG stuff for the tentacle monster, there is just one CG currently done, today we'll do the variations in this CG scene, and in the future we'll add at least 2 more scenes for it)

Here's a picture of the animations:

You'll find more "new" sprite excerpts in our game description section:
Game Information [Sprites / CG's]

I also updated the Game Information section overall.
I may have forgotten to edit something, but at least I reworked the most certain part.

Anway, I'll have to take screenshots of the Grab-System and write a tutorial for it in the upcoming week.
Currently we are finishing some other spriteworks, just occasionally doing CG's.
(in fact we haven't done that much CG's during the past month, we focused on setting the game up)



Here's a little reward for being so patient:

This will be one of the possible CG scenes when losing against Chao.
(yes he's wearing a tuxedo in this game... and cool sunglasses)
And yes, Verdani is already "broken" in this scene.









I guess I wrote enough stuff.
I'll better get back to working on the game.
It's not long before the end of may, so stay tuned!



~Wolfenstahl~

good news for everyone!

I finally managed to get the Grab-System working as it should be.
I must admit that at one point, it was pretty frustrating...
I couldn't find the mistake I made, but after taking a few hours off, and then returning to the programming, I finally did it.
So... taking a break once in a while isn't wrong I guess.
(uh... yes... currently I'm actually working full-time on this, since I'm a workaholic, I can be quite a fanatic at times)

Anyway it's working now!
I just need to add some more h-attacks to it, then combining some of them.
After I did that I guess there's nothing that can stop us anymore.
I'm just glad the Grab-System works as planned.

So what's left to do is adding overall stuff, finally doing the levels and of course the voice acting.
Doing the levels is pretty easy (currently we just have our testing stage), the hardest part is comming up with some riddles or other stuff to make the game more interesting.
But we already came up with some things, so what's left is to implement it.

When I release a demo version at the end of may, the basic system will be working.
But I guess it won't be the full sewer stage, not all the enemys will have all the hentai-attacks they'll have later on, not all CG's will be done etc.
At least it will have all the core parts of the game, but it's still a beta-version.
I won't bring out new demo-versions regularly, because most of the changes won't be noticed that easily, so I only bring out new ones when there are major changes.
(which means, every 2-3 weeks maybe)
But let's look forward to the end of may... with a bit luck we might even be able to do more stuff than planned.


Amelia is currently practicing for the actual voice acting of Verdani.
 Up til now the game has no sound an no voice, not even music.
I must admit that I'm no expert for music, but I learned several instruments for several years.
So I guess I'll be fine, somehow.
I have some software to do the music, but I haven't had the time to work with it that much.
And it looks like I'm missing the right soundfonts.
I seem to always chose the wrong ones which never sound harmonic when combined... so if someone could help me with selecting the right soundfonts for such a game, I would be extremely grateful.
(a set of soundfonts which sound harmonic would be nice)


So when Amelia has done the voice acting, Verdani has her voice... but there are some other female characters in the game as well.

The good news is:
Our team just got a new member, and I'm reeeaaaally happy that I got to know her.
She'll do the voice acting for Neamera, which is pretty important to me, since this character appears in several games... but I won't spoil the fun now... thehehe ^^
(haven't said much about this character, and I still want to leave her in the shadows a little while longer)



Another good thing for all the japanese people out there:
Our new team member is translating the game into japanese, so I hope we'll have a japanese version.
I guess the menu can stay in english?
But at least the dialog and the scenes should be in japanese.
And of course, the CG's for a japanese version must be censored.



So as promissed some information on "what's different than planned".
I'll keep this short, since this post is pretty long already.

We just wanted to do a pretty simple game... just like Doubledragon, regarding the levels/stages and the fighting.
But now we worked on the whole system to have some interaction with the surroundings.
So for example in the sewers, you can jump down into the water, or jump out of it etc.
(some controls may seem a bit unnatural, but I'll do a tutorial for the demo, there I'll explain everything with pictures and text)
We also implement some stuff like collecting a key to pass through a locked door, or other things you have to do, in order to proceed.
So it's no plain "fight yourself from the left side of the screen to right one" anymore.
There are different passages you can go through, and some might even lead to a game over, if Verdani messes something up.
So it has some exploring content, but I'll try my best to not make the riddles too hard.

I think this even makes the game more enjoyable, and it doesn't feel that short either.
(doing the graphics takes so much time that I think it would be wasted, if I won't do a good and enjoyable game out of it... anyway, since I'm only the back-up artist I have plenty of time for programming)


What's unchanged:
- the Grab-System
- Fighting style
- having a boss at the end of each stage/level
- having 4 different enemy types (and a few subtypes)


Last but not least, I'll present a draft from a tentacle scene:

The lineart as well as the coloring has already been done.
All that's left to do is adding some variations, like it's usually done on CG's.
(like having the same CG but with different facial expressions, and some different details)
Currently we plan on having about 30 different CG scenes.
Which means 30 completely different CG's, but they'll have some variations/different facial expressions... like usually done on CGs.



~Wolfenstahl~

Tentacles incoming!

Based on the stuff we did so far, I guess we can proceed to the hentai-content.
This means the Grab-System, as well as some other little additions.
I should cover in my next blogpost some details on "what's different than originally planned".

Since our artist took some time in animating all the stuff, I kinda programmed more than planned.
So the time wasn't wasted, and it should add something to the overall gaming experience.
As you can see in some screenshots, I did a 3D-like platform system.
I must admit that it's not 100%ly perfect... there had been some issues, but I found some solution to solve it.
Overall it improved the game quite a bit, and it offers some special options and gameplay style.
I thought about adding a subway stage later in the game.
And with the stuff I already programmed it's rather easy to set this up.
I guess it's best to explain this a bit more based on screenshots when the demo release is near.
Just words won't do it, it's too hard to explain.

We will also start animating the tentacle stuff now.
It might also be the first stuff to be used in the Grab-System.
Anyway, I'm going to bed now and I'll write a report on what's different in my next blogpost.



~Wolfenstahl~

Finally some screenshots

Today we put again a lot of effort into the game.
We sorta finished the title menu for now.
(we still have to implement some functions into it, but that doesn't matter now)

The HUD has been finished, and we also worked on some other stuff.
Don't worry, we will add more details to the levels/backgrounds.
So the sewer won't look that boring.

The hentai stuff comes with the Grab-System, but I implemented a game over picture anyway.
As you can see on the screenshots, you can walk on 2 platforms.
But you can move upwards and downwards on a platform, just as you like.
(but this has no big effect right now, not sure if I should do something bigger out of it... since it's pretty time consuming and all, and I never planed do work this 3D-like system (with 2D graphics) out too much... except the Grab-System, this is where I want to put the focus on mainly)

Right now, walking inside of the water doesn't do much either.
But Verdani will be less mobile (can't run while inside of the water) and she also might have some other disadvantages while walking inside the water.
I'll save the details on this for later.

And yes, there will be some sort of level-design.
At least it will be a little bit like a maze, with dead-ends, rooms filled with surprises etc.
It's not hard to do that, and I think it add's a good variety to the game, without consuming too much time.
(I'm even thinking about adding some traps that could assist the Paperheads in catching Verdani... but... yeah... it's too much to talk about now)

Before I write even more text... I should rather present you the screenshots.
(the screens are all 800x600 which will be the main-resolution for the game, but if possible I'll add an option for smaller resolutions, I'm just not sure if I can do it, and if the text is still readable...)
I hope you'll like what you see.

I hope the screenshots gave some first impression on what the game will be later on.
Of course a demo-version would be better than any screenshot.
We will work full-steam ahead, towards that goal.
But now, it's time for me to go to bed.
Stay tuned!




~Wolfenstahl~