Wednesday, December 31, 2014

No idea how I should name this post

Well, I guess I'll do this as game progress status report and personal life report all together?


Personal stuff:

Anyway, lets first get the ugly things out of the way.
Originally I wanted to get right back to working again after a couple of work free holidays.
That's when my mom called me, she's been in hospital the last couple days and... it looks like she's going to die soon...
The short version is:
She has blood cancer for more than 18 years now (with chemotherapy and everything that goes along with it). It's quite impressive that she made it this far, but it really looks like this is as far as things are going.

Of course I was well aware that this day might be coming soon.
But still...

At any rate, don't worry about me!
I've gone through a lot of worse things throughout my entire life (like almost everyone else does, right?).
So I'll be fine.

It's just a bit difficult for me to concentrate on programming, so stuff will take a bit longer than expected. But I'll do it, I can do it, and I will do it!
I'm also responsible for the webcomics script and stuff, and all of those things should be fine as well.

Since I'm driving to my parents place to visit her one last time, (~1000 km throughout the country) there's a chance that webcomic pages might be delayed by a day or two!
We should be able to pull it off to release them always on time.
But just so you guys know:
There "might" be delays!
In case there are delays, we will definitelly deliver those missing pages afterwards!

 I just figured I'll inform you about those"possible" delays and the reasons behind it.
(but as I said, we should be able to release them on time!)
And yes, don't worry, I'm fine!
I'm really grateful to have everyones support, and there really isn't anything I need right now.
Thank you very much, everyone!


Game Status:

I was able to program the basic combat stuff of the "test game" before Christmas.
All that's left to do is add some enemies (Cres already provided me with the graphics) and then add the random generation stuff.
Depending on how things are looking, I'll might throw this testing game out to the public sometime in january.
(I'm not sure about this though, maybe I'll do it, maybe not)

But please keep in mind, that this game just consists out of simple graphics and placeholder graphics.
As well as a lot of sketchy stuff.
It's pretty clear that this is a "test game", never intended to be a full-game.
The games main purpose is to figure some programming stuff out.
And it greatly helped me in understanding how dynamic lighting as well as random generation works.
(well, I haven't programmed random generation stuff yet! Just read a bunch of tutorials about it. It's the next point on my list of stuff I'm about to do, so as soon as I'm able to focus on this complicated stuff, I'll get to it right away!)

Hopefully we're able to get a lot more work done on the Sion and Medusa game in january.
That one will be a "full game", and we're intending to speed developement up as much as possible.
Originally I wanted to do a blogpost on some of the game mechanics I had in mind for that one.
But I'll get to that some other time.
It will mainly be a post about "how" I intend to use the random generation, and stuff like that.

Aside from that, I wish everyone of you a happy new year!
I hope each one of you guys and girls will have a wonderful new year, with a lot of good stuff that happens to you!

See ya in 2015!

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Merry X-Mas!

We all wish you a merry christmas!


And here's a little present for you guys and girls:

Ferania: "I'm absolutely not doing this for you guys!"


Other than that, small status report:

I managed to get dynamic lighting to work as intended.
And I also improved some performance issues and other things that existed before.
(dynamic lighting is actually NOT needed for the Sion and Medusa game, I just did this because I was curious and wanted to learn stuff about it)

And I did several other things, which I experimented with in a "test game".
However, since this test game just consists out of place holders and some sketches, it's not really something I want to show.
Or rather, there's not really anything noteworthy to see.
(not sure if I release it at some point or not, it's really nothing important and I'd rather speed along work on the Sion and Medusa game)

The last couple days this year, we'll be most likely celebrating christmas, finishing webcomic pages... and... well, it's unlikely that there will be any major things happening this year.
Though I planned to do another blogpost about some game mechanic stuff this year.
But I guess that's it.

Other than that, I need to learn how to "randomly generate" some stuff.
Not entire levels!
But at least the content of each level.
That will be my goal for the next couple weeks, and yup, this is going to be used in the Sion and Medusa game.


Sunday, December 14, 2014

Status Report

I'll keep this post simple and short:
We're still working on the game, but progress is slow.
(well, it's christmas time, and things get really busy at this time of year)

And yeah, we're also working on the webcomic and other stuff (commissions) as well.


However, I've spend the last couple weeks with getting back into programming.
I've optimized and finished some of the stuff for the upcoming game with Sion and Medusa.
Mainly the CG script thingy (difficult to explain, but it's the script that is responsible for displaying CGs, effects, and text etc.) and some other stuff.

Lately I've been throwing all those things into a testing-game for testing purposes.
But since this only consists out of place holders and stuff, there's not really anything to "show".

Anyway, things are working as intended.
I'm going to do some testing and programming on dynamic lighting and random generation in the next couple days/weeks.
(dynamic lighting just for the lulz, while random generation is needed for the Sion and Medusa game)

So, don't expect any demo release in december.
But we're still working on it!


P.S:
Please tell me if you're interested in my thoughts about the stuff I'm programming and about the progress I make.
It's not much to write blogposts about.
But I might consider writing more often on Twitter about those things!

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Bandits!

The first enemy group we're working on is the catgirl/catboy bandit group.

As bandits they're mainly agile, but have lower HP than the other factions.
Overall you could say that they're the weakest of all the enemies.
But don't underestimate them!

Male bandits:




Female bandits:


There are 2 types of female bandits, they either have a bow or a whip.
Most likely we're going to swap some colours for the final version, so it's easier to tell them appart.
These are just first pixel graphics, so there might be even more changes.


We've been busy with lots of stuff in the last couple days.
But hopefully we're able to concentrate on the game in the upcoming weeks.
Well, at least we're making progress again!

As always, feel free to ask questions in the comments!


P.S:
I also swapped the "slave traders" out with the "Witch-Hunters" for several reasons.
The Witch-Hunters are part of the webcomics future storyline (they're an important part of the Deathblight world) and there are also gameplay-reasons for including them.

One of the main reasons:
As Witch-Hunters, they mainly have armor and weapons that are effective against magic users.
This makes them basically the most dangerous faction in the game, as the main characters both rely on magic.
And I figured it would be more interesting to have them as enemies, instead of simple slave traders.

Well, they'll get their own blogpost anyway, so I'll stop here.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

current game project info

Lets talk about what's planned for this game!

But before we get to that, I have good news for all of you guys and girls out there that can't wait to play a demo version of this game:
Well... we decided to release the game VERY early on to our patrons on Patreon.
(most likely, if everything goes according to plan, we'll be able to do that in about ~4 weeks? maybe in ~6 weeks... it won't be a polished version obviously... but it should contain basic gameplay and of course hentai stuff!)

We will also update it on a regular basis.
Most likely, there will also be a very early demo version made available to the public.
But this "public" demo version won't be updated frequently.
Also our supporters on Patreon will get the full version of the game, once it's done.
(well, they'll get the newest version all the time, but I still thought I should point this out)
And yes, please keep in mind, that those early demo versions are not representative of the final version of the game.

Why we decided to do that?
Well, the two main reasons are:
- more money/funds for the game = more/faster progress
(eventually more additions/bigger games in the future)
- more early feedback = more adjustments can be done in order to (hopefully) create a better game

Ironically, those two things are what we lack most.
So I hope our decision to stick with Patreon fixes that in the long run.


What's planned for the game:


I made some adjustments to the concept, and this is what we currently have in mind.
(yes, we already started working on the game)


Two playable characters:















We tried something different with the pixel style this time.
I hope you like it!


4 enemy factions/groups:

- Kemonomimi Bandits (Catgirl/boy bandits!)
- Orcs (and goblins)
- Witch-Hunters
- Demons

Each faction/group has it's own game over scene (game over CG scene with several pictures) with the heroines.
Not every enemy has it's own game over CG!
So the whole group shares one CG.
(we wanted to do a small game, and this is the only way how we can achieve this)


5 game over CG scenes:

4 for the factions, 1 for the final boss.
"Maybe" we're adding another faction, but for now we'll leave it as is.
These CG scenes are not animated, but they'll have several pictures per scene and they'll have text (narrative).


Hentai sprite animations:

Quite a lot of them actually.
They're faster to make than CG scenes, so we're delivering a lot of them.
However, only male enemies get H sprite animations!
For example, there are female Kemonomimi Bandits too, but they don't do hentai stuff with the heroines. (and nope, the heroines can't do hentai stuff with them either)
This way we have a clear distinction between who does, and who doesn't have hentai sprite animations.
If we include tiny enemies like cave-bats... well... they won't have any hentai sprite animations either.
(but I think this is pretty much obvious, still I thought I'd better mention this)

With these measures, we should be able to include ~12+ enemies into the game, while roughly giving ~8 of them hentai sprite animations.
Which is pretty much manageable, I think.

And yup, those are all "ingame" hentai animations, no game over needed in order to see them.


How will the gameplay be like?

I really want to do a rogue-lite game this time around.
So I actually picked parts of the concept of Feranias game (the last game we worked on), and decided to use it on this one.
However, there will be some more platforming, and some actual leveldesign.
Since this is a rogue-lite and not a metroidvania, there will be no backtracking etc.

Sion and Medusa will fight lots of enemies, while using magic spells (and occasionally close combat attacks).
And they'll also need to do some platforming in order to reach the exit of each "area".
I guess it's better to cover all of this in seperate blogposts, using graphics in order to explain stuff.

Anyway, expect more fighting, less focus on platforming.




I'll do more blogposts this month, depending on our progress.
Next blogpost will most likely be about the enemies.
Some concept art and pixel graphics.

And as always, if you've got any questions, feel free to ask in the comments!


Saturday, October 25, 2014

Creating new games!

I figured it would be a good idea to tell you guys and girls what we're up to.
Yeah, we're about to do a new game, and set the game with the kemonomimis (Ferania and the others) aside for now.


The reason for this is simple:

The game with Ferania is too big, and there are too many unknown things that we would have to test and explore first. Because of Crescentias arm injury we were not able to test if animated CGs really work out for what we had in mind.
And there's still some other stuff that makes this whole project pretty much a risk, as we don't know how long it actually takes or if it works out in the end.


In other words:

After ~4 months of not working on any game, we're starting with a new, smaller game project first.
We should be able to deliver this game way faster than the game with Ferania, that's why we're doing it.

Feranias game has planned to include:
- animated game over CGs
- animated grab CGs during gameplay
- 12 different enemies
- 6 bosses
- 1 final boss

which is... a lot...

Our new game has planned:
- regular CG scenes with text
- hentai sprite animations during gameplay
~5 different enemy races (Orcs, etc.)
- 1 final boss

which is, without a doubt, a lot less work to complete.

I think nearly everyone can understand that this game should be way faster to make, by looking at those numbers alone.
(and yeah, I tend to be stubborn when it comes down to sticking to the plan, which sometimes isn't that good, but it prevents me from adding more and more content that was not planned to include from the start lol)

Once we reached our goal and the game is "done", we'll look how well it's received and stuff.
Depending on the support we get, there might be room for expansions and additional enemies and things. But don't bet on it... if there's not enough support, we will simply leave the game "as is".
(and by "as is" I mean the stuff I mentioned before)

As soon as we've got some "minor" things to show, we'll hand the game out to our patrons on Patreon in order to get some early feedback and possibly more support through new patrons that are interested in the game.
(this is kinda a "bonus" to the already existing rewards, no extra reward tier planned for this, I'll cover this topic in a seperate blogpost once the time has come)


Game heroines:




Yep, it's 2 heroines this time.
The purple haired girl is named "Sion Valor" and she already had a brief appearance in our webcomic, the black haired girl is "Medusa Serpentine".
Both are magicians, and yup...
There need to be 2 heroines because of some stuff in the game mechanics that I had in mind.
(plus, other reasons... like... if we do a game with 2 heroines, it might attract more attention than a game with only 1 heroine, like everyone else does... right?)

It's still less work than Ferania, despite having 2 heroines.
Mainly because we don't need to give them different poses for casting different spells.
I mean, they both get their own graphics/sprites!
But they only need ~1-2 poses for casting magic, they don't need a new pose for each spell they cast.
(Ferania has attack combos and stuff... that's a lot more work)

I don't want to make this blogpost much longer, so I'll stop here.
I bet some of you might have a lot of questions, feel free to ask me in the comments below!
Also feel free to ask me questions about these two ladies ^^


P.S:
Ah yes, work on the new game will start around 1st november.
And yes, we WILL get back to Feranias game later on!
I have no intention of dropping that one, as I really love to make a game with Ferania.
(it's just too big and our funds are pretty much non-existing... and we only invested 2 weeks of work into Feranias game before Cres arm injury happened, so no big loss)
I really think it's better to start off with a small project rather than... well... trying to tackle something as big as the game with Ferania.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Are GoR games broken?

While browsing certain forums or randomly looking at other hentai game dev blogs or Patreon campaigns, I've recently stumbled over a lot discussions or statements about one big topic:

The "problem" of rewarding players in a hentai game by losing!



But is this really a "problem"?

I don't think so, at least, it's not really a "problem" or that big of a problem in my opinion.

Honestly, I guess I have a pretty much unique standpoint regarding this matter.
The reason for this is because I constantly have to think of the origins of game over rape hentai games.
And I think once people understand "the origins", it's pretty much clear why game over hentai games (game over rape, or short: GoR games) exist in the first place.



So, what are those origins I'm talking about?

Well, I think nearly everyone has played a "non-hentai" game with a heroine.
Some of those games have enemies that make stupid comments or do something else that implies sexual stuff.
One example would be the game "Bullet Witch", enemies in that game do stupid comments all the time, especially when the heroine is KO-ed, but instead of seeing something, you only see the "game over" screen, and hear some stupid comment from one of the enemies.

And yeah... that's pretty much it.
Those games, that don't show anything (well they are non-hentai games) but instead "imply" that something might happen afterwards are pretty much the origin.
At least that's what I think.

The reason "we" (as team) do GoR hentai games is because we want to tell the story of what happens after the heroine "fails".
It's not about rewarding anyone for playing badly and losing all the time.
It's because we want to tell a story, because we want to show what regular (non-hentai) games can't show. And yeah, it's also because it's about hentai content, I don't like the idea of showing a characters death and stuff, but hentai is okay.

I don't think that anything on this "mechanic" is broken or flawed.
It's just a way a game, or rather a story represents itself.
And looking at other hentai games sales and statistics (yeah I do that a lot), games with GoR seem to sell better than games that reward winning, but not having any GoR related content at all.
I'm just saying, people like it... so why trying to "fix" something that is not broken?


Some people might argue, that there is no "drive" for the player to actually win and succeed... but... there is!
People want to see all the game overs, which means, they have to progress in the game, see new enemies and lose against them. In the end, if you want to see the last animation/scene, you need to face the last boss, and lose to him/her.
Which pretty much means you need to get past all obstacles before the final bossfight.
And yeah... while you're at it, why not beating the final boss once in a while?

I really think, that there's no reason to "fix" anything here.
Some people like the concept behind GoR, others don't.
But that's personal preference, and everyone has a different opinion on nearly everything.


I myself actually prefer to NOT lose on purpose in a GoR game.
I like to fight as hard as possible, failing eventually, and then seeing the game over scene.
That's what makes GoR hentai games so special for me.
(unless they're way too easy and you need to lose on purpose... that's not something that excites myself... I need a really good, really hard fight, else it's not exciting)


Looking at the whole GoR from this point of view, it's pretty much like some of the "non-hentai" games out there, I mean regular games that are fun to play.
Take that, and add game over scenes to it, so the player sees what happens to the heroine once she fails. That's GoR! That's the idea behind it! That's the reason why it exists in the first place!
No need to fix anything here, it's not broken after all.

And, since this isn't enough for some people, I figured it would be good to add ingame hentai animations during regular gameplay whenever the heroine is knocked to the ground, but is not defeated yet.
This adds to the overall GoR-feeling.


But that's just my personal opinion, some people dislike GoR hentai games or don't understand the concept behind it. It's perfectly okay to do other kinds of (hentai) games.
I just thought it would be nice to voice this kind of opinion, as everyone else is constantly talking about how "bad" this whole concept is, or how "flawed" the gameplay is.

I must admit, yeah, looking at it from a game-design standpoint, it's weird to have the player "lose" sometimes on purpose, as there's some "interesting" stuff behind losing (the scenes and animations that come with losing).
But then again, the whole idea, and the roots of GoR are way way deeper.

I mean, it's not that you can "beat" the game by losing all the time.
You actually need to win (defeat the enemy) in order to progress.
So the basic principle of needing to "win" in order to "progress" is still there, right?


Well, that's my opinion on the whole matter, and I know that a lot of people might disagree with me there. But that's life, for every opinion there is, there is at least one other opinion that's opposing.

(on a side note: yeah, I don't like "victory rape" games at all... I really don't like them)


Anyway, feel free to voice your opinion in the comments below!


P.S:
I'll do a new blogpost about our upcoming stuff in the next couple days.
As I already mentioned on twitter, we'll continue working on games starting 1st november.
Also, the stuff we're up to might have something to do with chapter 1 - page 1 of our webcomic!

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

No way! O_o

The character popularity vote just started a couple days ago.
But there's been some surprises!
Aurora suddenly dashed forwards and is now second, right behind Ferania.

Also, there's some desperate words from Esmoda, our polar bear lady:
(click on the images to enlarge)




She loves challenges, and she's willing to do anything in order to win! lol


Some other important news:
The webcomic will be in colour once we start the 1st chapter with the real storyline.


P.S:
No way... this is probably my shortest post ever lol

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Popularity Voting!

I just implemented a character list of our currently introduced characters,
(requested by Trolo)
so I thought it would be a good idea to finally do a popularity voting!

[Click here to view the character list]


Please keep in mind, that this popularity voting will have NO effect on who gets into the game or not!
I'll do a new popularity voting once all 20 characters are introduced.
(currently only 11 are introduced)
So relax and have fun voting for your favorite characters.

Btw. you have multiple votes!
So vote for whoever you like most.
I'll let the voting go on for at least 2 weeks.


In the upcoming days I'll do some minor changes to the blog.
Upgrading some stuff and probably upgrading the character list as well.
And yeah, I should also rework/edit all the character introductions.
(yes, ALL of them...)

The first 3 are missing some data that I introduced with the other character introductions.
And I also feel that I should keep them spoiler free as well... (because of the webcomic)
Furthermore, I did some minor changes to some things, so not all the things I mentioned in the character introductions are up-to-date. (some information is now "false"... I'll simply edit the introductions one by one in the next weeks, and I'll tell you once they're all updated!)

And yes, I figured I might write the updated stuff at the top of the introduction and leave the "old" introduction at the bottom or something...
Or should I rather simply erase the old informations?
I don't know... I'll see about that.

Anyway, have fun voting!

In case you have questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Some random thoughts & stuff about the webcomic

I'll get to the random thoughts later in this post.

First of all I want to thank everyone who supported us so far!
Thank you very very much!
(I can't say this often enough)


1. Stuff about the webcomic
2. Some thoughts about Patreon (and our current game)
3. About the character list and (possible) gameplay changes


cowgirl (minotaur) sketch, possible character for the game


1. Stuff about the webcomic:

Currently the webcomic is very much hentai-only, but we want to change this with the next chapter.
Of course, I'm avoiding spoilers in this post.

There's one final page for the hentai scene with Claire, and then about 4 pages that "resolve" the whole situation, as we can't possibly leave her like that, right?
And yeah, after that we'll start with the official first chapter of the webcomic.

We'll jump back about 5000 years in time, into a high-fantasy setting (Orcs, Dragons, Demons, Knights, Wizards etc.), when the adventures of our main characters just started.
At first we'll focus on Ferania, Minori and Chiira, and around the end of chapter one or the beginning of chapter two we'll include Claire, Aurora and Catheline as well.
From that point on, all of our 6 main characters will be appearing in the story frequently.

Also the first chapter will pretty much contain no hentai at all.
(well, maybe a one page short scene, but that's it, and yes, I'm currently planning the details of the first chapter, the rough draft is already done)
Future chapters will contain around 2-3 pages hentai, some ecchi, some jokes and of course lots of story and some fighting scenes.
(so, from around ~12-20 pages per chapter, expect to have ~2 to 3 pages hentai, sometimes more than that)

The promotion chapter having this much hentai was pretty much an exception.
But if we manage to get more support via Patreon, it's possible that we do "side stories" like this from time to time!

I hope that this is a balanced decision, that allows us to make some progress in story telling while still showing some hentai from time to time.
In case our fans (you guys) think otherwise, please feel free to tell us!
Since we're doing this webcomic for you, we're obviously depending on your opinions.


2. Some more thoughts on Patreon:

Currently I'm thinking about possibilities to connect our game stuff more directly to our Patreon page.
(which is currently only for the webcomic)

We have not decided on anything yet.
But if we actually manage to make more money via Patreon, we could avoid using Offbeatr.
Which in turn would mean, that we'll save a lot of money.
(Offbeatr takes 30% of the raised money)
And yeah, if we get money, we would be able to add more characters to the game.

One purely theoretic thought right now is, to actually give patrons on Patreon access to alpha versions of the game. And, if we actually get enough support per month, we might be able to give out the game for free for everyone!
(yes, you heard right, free hentai games... but this only works out if we get enough money to live from it via Patreon, so it's not 100%ly free... a lot of people would get the games for free, if enough people support us)

But of course patrons would get the newest version earlier than everyone else.
(I mean, there needs to be some sort of benefit for our supporters, and this is the least we can do)


There's lots of Patreon pages for hentai games that work this way, they release free hentai games, but are being carried by Patreon. And some of them make quite a bunch of money per month.
Our main issue is lack of funds, which constantly slows down game production, as we need to look for other jobs and commissions all the time.
So if we at least manage to get a fraction of the money others get via Patreon for their hentai games, we should be able to make a lot more progress.


But well, that's purely theoretical thoughts for now.
Also it's not that simple...
I mean, just because you're able to deliver some awesome content doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get the money for it. It's all about reaching a lot of people that might find your project interesting, and getting their attention for your project.

And yeah... I guess that's something I'm not good at... I suck at marketing lol
But probably it will work out somehow, someday.

We have not decided on any of this yet, but I thought I'd share my thoughts on this matter anyway.



3. About the character list and (possible) gameplay changes:

With that many flying characters on the character list (1 dragon girl, 3 harpy girls), I thought that I should probably also change the way I think of the characters "classes" on paper.

This doesn't change anything with the characters itself, but it gives me a better overview of the whole character list. I need this because I want to have characters in the game that have different playstyles.
So I need to have a good overview in order to decide on which ones to pick.
(and yes, obviously my decisions will be influenced by popularity votes anyway)


Also I'm thinking about "maybe" doing some sort of popularity vote soon.
This will be a temporary character popularity poll with NO effect on the final list.
I'm just curious about which characters are more popular and which ones are less popular.




That's it so far.


As always, feel free to ask questions in the comments!




Friday, September 12, 2014

Character list & current status



Crescentia drew this as a reward for our patrons.
(only the patrons get the high-resolution version)
Thank you very much to everyone who supports us on Patreon!



Plans for the character list:

As I mentioned before, I thought about adding some more characters to the "possible characters" list for the game.
These characters would also get a proper character introduction.
I'll just give you a small overview of who's on the list already.

Introduced characters:

- Ferania (wolf)
- Aurora (wolf)
- Chiira (cat - cheetah)
- Claire (wolf)
- Minori (wolf)
- Catheline (cat - liger)
- Esmoda (polar bear)
- Grizelda (grizzly bear)
- Sanura (cat - panther)
- Shiwa (wolf)
- Chrysoula (harpy)

Characters that still need to be introduced:

- Stella (dragon)
- Zahra (jackal)
- Saraswati (cat - tiger)

Characters I'm thinking about adding to the list:

- 2 minotaur girls (cow girls)
- 2 harpy girls (bird girls)
- 1 fox girl
- 1 bunny girl

A total of 20 characters on this list should be enough.
I think it's pretty much clear that not all of them will make it into the game.
But hopefully some of them will.


Status report:

I thought it would be a good idea to inform you about how things are currently moving along.
So far, Crescentia is able to work at about 50-66% of her "usual" capacity.
Depending on how the next ~3 weeks are going, we're going to increase this to about 66-75%.
Which means, yeah, we're on a good way to pick up our old working pace!

If everything works out as planned, we will get a lot of commissions done in the upcoming weeks.
After that (probably sometime in october), we're finally going to be able to work on the game again, and hopefully we'll make some major progress.

Why we're not getting to the game right away?
Well, the thing is, Crescentias arm injury was going on for about 6 months now, and during that time we lost a lot of our savings.
So basically we're going to build up some savings again, and then get back to working on the game.
At least that's the plan.


As always, if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments!

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Current plans

As I already mentioned on twitter: @Wolfenstahl

We're pausing character introductions for probably (at least?) 2-3 weeks.
The reasons for this is mainly because I need to work on the background story for those characters, as well as coming up with ideas how I can implement those into the game.
(some stuff simply doesn't work out in a game, and probably I need to adjust things later on anyway... however, the most important thing is to have an idea first... which I currently have, but it needs to be fleshed out)

Another reason is, this way Crescentia can focus on delivering the rewards for the Patreon campaign:
http://www.patreon.com/deathblight


As well as making some progress on commissions.
(she still can't work with 100% efficiency right now (still about ~30-40%) so things are going really slow, and yes, she still needs to take commissions as the first Patreon goal hasn't been reached yet)
(The webcomic is still going to continue as it's first chapter is being sponsored by BazookaDre!)

If we're lucky, we "might" be able to finally get that CG animation for the game done in the upcoming weeks.
And based on how it works out, we might be able to make some progress on the game.
(no promisses)

As things are looking right now, Cres needs to focus on stuff that earns her money until her arm is 100%ly healed, so yeah, until this finally happens, progress will be reaaally slow.



Our current plan is to actually add to the character list a couple more characters.
Obviously, it's impossible that all of them make it into the game.
But we thought about adding some to create more diversity (and making the choice harder... lol).

The previous list had 14 characters on it, all those that had been introduced (11 characters) plus:
- Stella (dragon girl)
- Zahra (jackal girl)
- Saraswati (tiger girl)

Now we plan to add:
- 2 cow girls (minotaurs!)
- 1-2 more bird girls (harpies!)
- 1-2 dragon girls
- 1 wolfgirl (there are so many of them, I know)

Well, I need to think this through.
But this is the rough plan.


As usual, if you have questions, feel free to ask in the comments!





Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Hentai webcomic starts!



Please support our Patreon campaign to ensure we can continue to make the webcomic:
http://www.patreon.com/deathblight

If you can't support us financially, please consider spreading the word about the webcomic and the Patreon campaign! The more people hear about it the better!
Thank you very much for your support.

You'll find the webcomic here:
http://deathblight.tumblr.com/

 

This week there will be no character introduction, as we've been busy setting the Patreon page up, as well as preparing the first few pages of the webcomic.
(Hopefully we'll be able to continue character introductions as usual starting next week)

Originally we planned to stop the "promotion chapter" of the webcomic after releasing page 4.
And continue on with the original story once the Patreon goal is being reached.
But good news is, BazookaDre (from Hentai Foundry) is sponsoring the remaining "promotion chapter" pages!

You can thank him here:
http://www.hentai-foundry.com/user/BazookaDre/profile


The "promotion chapter" is focused on Claire Schwarzfels.
Once all the pages of the promotion chapter are released, we will continue with the regular storyline of the webcomic "if" the first milestone goal of our Patreon campaign is reached!

We'll be releasing more pages of the webcomic promotion chapter in the upcoming days, so stay tuned!


P.S:
Yes, we decided on naming the webcomic "Deathblight", as well as the whole universe.
("Wolfenstahl" is simply to confusing as it's my nickname, the teams name, as well as Feranias last name)

P.S Nr. 2:
I've also got Twitter now. I'll use it to write about updates and random thoughts about our game projects and the webcomic, also about the characters and other stuff.
@Wolfenstahl


Thursday, August 21, 2014

Character introduction: Shiwa

I bet some of you waited for this a loooong time?
Well, here she finally is: Shiwa, the demonic wolfgirl!




Name: Shiwa
Type: Wolfgirl – Demi-god
God allegiance: Hellwolf
Team: Renegade (no Team)
Rival: Ferania, Claire, Aurora
Height: 1,65 meters

Hobbies:
Annoying other people, loving pets, watching anime, reading manga, getting really obsessed with anime characters.
Hand puppets and voodoo dolls.
Collecting jewelry and other valuable stuff.
Stalking other people.


Purpose/Job:
Bringing destruction and madness to the world.

Strengths:
Superhuman strength.
Cursed flames.
Asura

Weaknesses:
Her abilities drain her MP very fast.


Personality:
Shiwa can be pretty much described as "yandere", which basically means that she has a nice and sweet personality, but she can be super-obsessed with someone, and depending on the situation she can be super creepy and super violent.
(btw. Ferania is more like a "tsundere")

Other explanaitions for the term "yandere":
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Yandere


She's very obsessed with Ferania and Grizelda, who are both strong, independent, and a bit violent.
If she could, she would like to make them all hers, but obviously they don't like that idea.
So the least thing she does is stalking them all the time.
Usually Shiwa tries to get Grizeldas attention, but Grizelda is often annoyed by her, chasing her away. Ferania on the other hand, usually attacks Shiwa right away, so it ends up in a fight between the two of them most of the time.

This is because Ferania is way more aggressive compared to Grizelda, as well as the fact that she's viewing Shiwa partly as an evil demon.
That's because of the things Shiwa usually does.



Shiwa: "This is my playground..."

Shiwa views the world as her "playground".
She does her job, by destroying things, and by bringing madness to the world.
In order to achieve this, she usually offers very ambitious humans to make them more powerful.
Seducing them by giving them more power, if they'll have sex with her.
(well, she seduces people not only by offering them more power lol)
Some time after they had sex, the humans get automatically cursed by Shiwa.
War paint appears on their bodies, they become way more powerful, but at the same time they gradually grow more and more insane.
Consumed by power and madness, they'd slaughter other beings, until they are either killed by someone or until they die from exhaustion, as the curse slowly eats their life force away.
Depending on their mental strength, they would either only kill their enemies, or maybe even turn against their former allies, in case they turn totally insane.

Shiwa on the other hand, gains more and more power through those cursed humans, as she gets their energy after they died. This whole curse thingy only works with non-demonic beings, as she practically turns those humans into demons.
(or rather like, she grants them demonic powers... in exchange for their energy...)
So, this whole curse thing doesn't work on demonic enemies.

Also, Shiwa likes to seduce a lot of men.
She usually isn't doing it with everyone, but at times she's not that picky.


Aside from all this, she likes to fight the other demi-gods, especially the Hellwolfs followers.
This is mainly because she wants them to be captured by demons, so she can have all of the Hellwolfs attention for herself, and prove that she's the very best of all of them!
(yeah she's wicked at times)

However, she can get along with the others, if it's really necessary.
It's just that she's sometimes mentally unstable, turning on her allies, or doing some other wicked stuff.

Shiwa: "You're not going to leave me behind... are you?"


Shiwa is usually arguing with Claire about anime stuff and anime characters.
And Aurora doesn't like her, because she despises Shiwa for turning humans into demons.
Especially all those poor, good looking guys, that she (Aurora) might need to kill because they're demons now...


To say a few words about her hobbies:
Yes, she likes to annoy Grizelda and Ferania quite a lot.
(mainly by trying to get their attention)
But she also annoys other people, and she likes doing that.
She kinda loves to have all the attention, either because people think she's awesome, or because they think she's annoying... whatever works best.

She loves ALL kind of animals, even the creepy ones.

And her obsession for anime characters is... well... she wants to keep them all in her basement... tied up of course. But she knows that they're not real... but if they would be real, she would keep them tied up in her basement...
(that's how she would like it)

And yup, she loves to collect valuable stuff.

Shiwa also likes to create hand puppets that look alike her demi-god sisters, and she also loves to "play" with them. If everyone else ignores her, she also likes to talk to her hand puppets. 
She sometimes even does some voodoo stuff with them, but it doesn't work at all.
(it's just creepy, that's all)


Shiwa: "Aurora, you can't be serious! Shiwas boobs are the best!" Oh why, thank you Ferania!
Yeah... Shiwa and her handpuppets... roleplaying Ferania totally out of character.
(drawing requested by Merikle)



Abilities:
Aside from her supernatural strength (comparable to the other wolfgirls strength), Shiwa has the ability to control cursed flames.
The cursed flames are not as hot as regular flames, but they gradually suck the life out of other beings.
She can also control the trajectory of her cursed flames, enabling her to attack her enemies from unexpected directions.

Her special ability is called "Asura".
When using this ability, her body is being covered in war paint markings, and she becomes nearly invincible. (she can use this because she takes all the energy from the cursed humans, in the game she simply uses MP for this ability)
Most attacks that hit her, only deal greatly reduced damage.
And her body cannot be cut by anything.
Her cursed flames and regular attacks also gain a slight boost.
However, her strength can't keep up with Grizeldas or Esmodas strength.
So this is basically the ultimate defensive ability, making her nearly invincible for a short time, while also boosting her offensive abilities slightly.


Shiwa using her Asura ability


This special ability (combined with the "curse" stuff) is what makes most other demi-gods consider Shiwa as a demon herself... and she's not denying it!



I hope you enjoyed reading about Shiwa.
In the upcoming days we'll present you some sample pages for the webcomic/manga, so stay tuned.

And as always, feel free to ask questions in the comments!

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

About the webcomic

Currently we're trying to get everything set for the webcomics Patreon page.
That's why talking about various things regarding the webcomic is very important right now.
(thus the frequent talking about it)

Once those things are out of the way, we'll talk more about the game of course.

So, first things first, the poll states that you guys and girls wish for a hentai webcomic, and so be it.
Of course it won't be hentai all the time.
Sometimes there will be a bit ecchi, sometimes a joke, but the webcomic will also contain hentai.

Roughly said, we're aiming for about 20-25% hentai and ecchi "content" (mainly hentai), as we still want the story to move on.
There might be times where 1-2 chapters have no hentai at all (but most likely ecchi and perverted jokes), and then another chapter is full of hentai, while other chapters might contain a few pages of hentai, but the rest is regular storyline.
(just to give you a rough idea of what we have in mind)



Furthermore, we're currently thinking about one thing:

In the webcomic, we want to have the demon hunter demi-gods as main characters.
(in other words, some of the characters of the current game)
This means we can either tell their story from the very beginning, which means: medieval times!
(High Fantasy, with demons, dragons, knights etc.)
Or we could tell the story behind the game, which is an apocalyptic future.
At any rate, we want to tell the story of the medieval times, sooner or later at least.

It's just the question if we do the "future story" first, at least for a few chapters...
Or if we simply do it sometime else.

Currently we're favoring the medieval story, and we thought about designating stuff with date stamps.

Like, the medieval story starts at "year 50" or something.
Then there might be a time-jump at some point to "year 104" etc.
And the future story would be "year 50XX" etc.
So all those eternally living characters don't confuse you too much, because you actually know how much time had passed.

Anyway, all those time and date things are not important right now, since we're focusing on one thing only, and "someday" we'll move forward.
And when that day comes, I'll make sure to properly explain what's going on.
(mainly through the webcomic of course)

So, lets say we'll do the medieval story (as I said, we're in favor of this at the moment).
The webcomic would then focus on the demon hunter demi-gods, Ferania, Claire and their teams.
When they started out doing their demon hunter job, and all the other stuff that happened.
Other demi-gods will also appear from time to time, for example Esmoda, Grizelda or Shiwa.
This way the webcomic will cover their background story and past.

I'm not doing a poll about this one, so please feel free to discuss this matter with me in the comments.


Thursday will be the next character introduction.
We're just missing 4 more characters, then we're done.
And in the upcoming days we'll present you some "sample pages" of how the webcomics quality will be like.

If you've got any questions, feel free to ask in the comments!

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Character introduction: Chrysoula

This weeks character introduction is about Chrysoula, the harpy queen!





Name: Chrysoula
Type: Harpy (eagle bird girl) – Demi-god
God allegiance: Phoenix
Team: Independent (belongs to the Phoenix)
Rival: none
Height: 1,71 meters

Hobbies:
Playing violin, singing, dancing, reading books, discussing important topics.
Getting to know about other cultures and people.

Purpose/Job:
Protecting life, and defeating beings that threaten life.
Immortal queen of the harpies.
Carrying out the Phoenixs will.

Strengths:
Superhuman strength (slightly weaker than most other demi-gods)
Wind element
Is able to fly

Weaknesses:
Her close combat abilities are slightly weaker than the others.


Personality:
Chrysoula is a very noble and elegant lady.
Though she seems to be haughty and slightly arrogant, she doesn't look down on common people.
It's just that her personality is this way.
In fact she is very interested in the everyday life of the common people and other cultures.
And she's constantly trying to improve other peoples manners and intellect, as she thinks it's in everyones best interest to help them to become more respected and well educated.
One of Chrysoulas personal goals is, to spread her ideals and lifestyle to as many places as possible, in order to improve other peoples lives.

She has been created and raised by the Phoenix god-creature (who's one of the ten god-creatures), with the purpose of being one of her first agents.
The harpies view her as their queen, as she's the oldest and strongest of all of them.
She lives in a castle with lots of harpies serving her, so she's used to a life full of luxury and responsibility as queen of a country.
However, Chrysoula still does a lot of things on her own, and she's also often leaving the castle, travelling around her country and carrying out the Phoenixs will.


Since Chrysoula is one of the oldest beings on the planet, and because she's been the harpy-queen right from the beginning, she kinda set the standards for etiquette and manners of nobles.
Some historians even consider the harpy-kingdom to be the very first kingdom that ever existed.
(some historians... lol)

When the mortals started forming kingdoms themselves, several kings and nobles started adopting the etiquette and manners from the harpy kingdom.


Oh oh... the queen is looking at you!

Her visual appearance isn't like that of a typical queen.
This is because Chrysoula doesn't "really" distinguish between nobles and commoners.
She would like to turn everyone into "nobles", and she doesn't believe in "royal blood", as initially there where no people with "royal blood" in the beginning.
Chrysoula believes that everyone should be able to become a noble, regardless of their heritage.

When speaking to commoners, Chrysoula sometimes gets frustrated about the way they talk or act, and tries her best to teach them to act and talk more like nobles, despite them being commoners.
She thinks, that not just nobles should talk and act politely, but also common people.
This leads to a lot of weird situations, where the harpy-queen tries to force commoners to act more like gentlemen or ladies.

When traveling alone, she often has troubles to adopt to the life of common people.
Leading to a lot of confusing and funny situations, since she doesn't know how to use certain things, or how to respond to certain situations accordingly.
(at least, if those are everyday situations for common people, that she usually doesn't experience herself)



Chrysoula feeling embarrassed

Because she is a nice and mercyful queen, Chrysoula is a little bit naive when dealing with bad people.
If they plead and promise to not continue their evil ways, she's letting them off the hook.
However, as she's not stupid, she won't fall for the same trick twice (usually...).


In the future there are no kingdoms anymore.
But Chrysoula owns a large company by that time, and she continues to live a wealthy life.
While continuing her job as one of the Phoenixs agents.
Because of the apocalypse that happens in the game, Chrysoula is joining the fight against the demons and monsters.


Abilities:
Physically she's way stronger than regular mortal harpies, but she's still a little bit weaker than the other demi-gods.

Her power to control wind however, makes her a fearsome opponent, as she can summon a devastating tornado.
She has also the ability to summon small spirits.
Chrysoula is very agile and with her ability to fly, she can dodge most attacks.



I've got the feeling that something in her personality is missing.
So probably I'll slightly rework her at some point.

Anyway, if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments!

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Webcomic with hentai?

While the progress on the game is slow, and we're currently mostly occupied with doing commissions in order to earn money for our everyday needs (food and stuff), we came up with the idea of doing a webcomic/manga instead of doing commissions.
We would also fund the webcomic via Patreon, so there would be no need to do commissions.
(This doesn't mean that Cres never does commissions again, however, the "need" to do commissions would be a lot less)
This would allow us to continously work on something that we can present to you, while still earning money with it.

Anyway, that's the short version.
I'll spare the details for the Patreon stuff.
(if there's something you want to know, feel free to ask anyway, I'll answer it in the comments, I just wanted to avoid a long wall of text this time)


Webcomic with hentai?

So the big question is, do you guys want a regular webcomic without hentai? [all ages]
(like, no hentai at all)

Do you want hentai "jokes", but NO hints at that it actually happened? [jokes]

Maybe you want "hints" at hentai, but no actual depiction? [hints]
(like a character walking out of a cave after a fierce battle with demons, covered in some weird fluids, while her clothes are damaged, which "hints" at what might have happened, but you don't get to see the actual thing)

Perhaps you prefer ecchi (depicted hints and nudity, but not actual hentai)? [ecchi]
(like, not the full depiction of what's going on, but it gets partly displayed what's actually happening, and yeah, mostly naked bodies without much interaction)

Or you want the real thing? [hentai]
(hentai scenes with full depiction that occassionally happen during the story)


The overall hentai content would not exceed ~25% of the webcomic/manga content.
(which means, basically every 4th page or so, has some hentai or ecchi in it, sometimes more, sometimes less)

I know that there are several adult-webcomics out there, and honestly we planned on doing one ourselves.
But still we're interested in your opinion, because you guys and girls are our fanbase (kinda) and we want to make this webcomic/manga for you!
I'm well aware that there's no way that we'll make everyone happy.
But we're trying our best to go with what the majority of our fans like best!


The next character introduction will be delayed.
I'll post it on thursday instead of wednesday this time.




Sunday, August 10, 2014

Minori old vs new

As some of you noticed, we did some major changes on Minori.
So, as part of the explanation I'll tell you a little bit about how I'm working on characters, personalities and background story.


First of all, this was the old Minori:

old version of Minori



And this is the new Minori:

new version of Minori


There are major differences between those two versions.

The reason behind this is as follows:
When we did the initial version of Minori, she already had a lot of her characteristics and personality.
But the problem was, that something important seemed to be missing.
She appeared to be way too perfect, strict, and "boring".
So we needed something to fix this.

After I put some thought into the matter, I decided to make Minori a little bit clumsy.
Also, I figured that despite her being almost perfect, she could easily panic when things don't work out as intended.
And as consequence, she could make everything even more worse.

With these changes to her personality, we figured that her old appearance doesn't fit any longer.
That's why we changed her.
(This, plus the thought that we would need a couple cute characters anyway)


So simply put:
1. There was the rough idea about her personality.
2. The sketch had been made according to this.
3. We changed parts of her personality.
4. Her appearance has been adjusted.

And yes, this is a common procedure when creating a character.


Speaking about reworking and evolving characters:
Shiwa gets a remake too!
But her introduction will most likely be in a couple weeks.
(next up is Chrysoula the harpy)


P.S:
Progress on the game is really really slow.
"Probably" we'll be able to show some animated CG soon.
Though we're thinking about buying Emote if this makes animating CGs easier.
(Emote should help especially with the faces and stuff, but we still need to look into it, it's just an idea right now, nothing decided yet)

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Character introduction: Minori

So todays character introduction will be Minori, the demon-huntress wolfgirl from japan.
(well, technically the countries from "our world" don't exist in the wolfenstahl-universe, but she would be from japan if it was our world, in the wolf-universe it's simply a country that resembles japan, kinda)

If Cres arm doesn't act up again, we're hopefully able to present you some preview stuff about the webcomic/manga soon.
(still mainly focusing on commissions)

And yes, for those who payed attention:
Minori looks a lot different than before.
I'll do a blogpost about character developement and changes in the upcoming days, showing what happened to Minori and why it happened!




Name: Minori
Type: Wolfgirl – Demi-god
God allegiance: Hellwolf
Team: Team Schwarzfels
Rival: Aurora (not really, but they compete in martial arts occasionally, kinda)
Height: 1,63 meters

Hobbies:
Training her martial arts abilities, doing sports, drawing manga characters etc.
Reading books, learning about new stuff, meditation.

Purpose/Job:
Demon-hunter

Strenghts:
Superhuman strenght (like most of the other demi-gods)
Gravitation control

Weaknesses:
Her gravitation control abilities are only very useful against certain enemies.
Against other enemies they have only limited usefulness.


Personality:
Minori has a very high degree of self-discipline, and she's constantly training very hard.
She has a clear mind and conscience without any unnecessary selfish or evil thoughts, and she's very humble and gentle towards other people.
Her honest and straightforward personality earn her the respect of other people.
And she's trying her best to act as honorable and respectful as possible.

She would never step on an opponent that has already been defeated.
And she would do her best to protect those who are too weak to fend for themselves.

Minori is very brave and would prefer death instead of retreating in dishonor.
Though she understands the concept of retreating in order to be able to fight another day.
But she's not afraid of fighting a battle that's already been lost, as long as she can achieve something.

Because of all this, she's the most respected of all the demon-hunters.
Some people even view Minori as their idol, though she's humbly stating that she's only doing her job.
Aside from all this, she has a very sweet and cute personality.


Since she's constantly hard working, she often also tries to encourage her team members, especially her team leader (Claire), to be more productive.
Sometimes Minori even scolds Claire for being lazy, and to some degree Claire even does as Minori says.


Minoris biggest weak point is that she's a little bit clumsy and easily panics when things aren't going as planned.
For example: If she's frying something with oil in a frying pan, and the oil starts burning because she didn't pay attention, it's most likely that she panics and tries to pour water into the frying pan.
Which obviously makes things worse... so the next thing she would do in her panic attack would be to throw the burning pan out of the window... and to make things even more worse... it lands in a container full of cardboard and paper.
So it all starts burning uncontrolably, and Minori is facepalming herself for doing what she did.
(she knows that it's not a good idea to pour water into burning oil... but when she panics she doesn't think, she just acts... mostly doing something stupid)

It's not that she's dumb, she's very smart, but whenever something doesn't go according to plan, she easily panics and reacts in a dumb way.
Which leads to the situation getting even worse.


Minori spotting something disturbing

In her free time, Minori likes to draw manga-style characters and stories.
She's a very skilled doujin-manga artist, though she doesn't have enough time to draw full time, because of her demon-hunter job.



Abilities:
Minori is a skilled martial artist, her fighting style is karate.
Contrary to Aurora who uses different chinese fighting styles, Minori focuses only on japanese karate fighting style, constantly training this one fighting style in order to achieve absolute perfection.
Since she's one of the oldest beings in the world (in the wolfenstahl-universe that is), she more or less is one of the early founders of this fighting style.

Minori won't back down!

Aside from martial arts, Minori has the ability to manipulate gravity.
She can slow down (and slighty damage) her foes by increasing the gravity around her a lot.
And she can also summon a small black hole that pulls her enemies toward it and cause a lot of damage to them.
Though this technique costs her a lot of energy, so she uses it only occassionally.




I hope you liked reading about her.
(Personally I love her a lot!)

As always, if you've got any questions, feel free to ask in the comments!


P.S:
I totally forgot to say her nickname is: Mimi