Animated CG test

Here's a sketch of an animated hentai CG.
Since this is a sketch, and only a test to determine if we did everything right with the layers, this is in no way representative for the final quality.
(obviously... lol)

Most things in this animation are just quickly put together, so there's a LOT of room for improvement.
Well, we felt it would be unnecessary to put too much work into a simple sketch.


So the plan is to implent these animated CGs (with a resolution of 1024 x 768) for game over CGs into the game.
As well as when the heroine falls to the ground and an enemy touches her, there will be a screenwide hentai animation, not just small pixel animations.
(that's the "grabs" in the game, and yes, the heroine can break free from the grabs)

Well, that's the "plan"...
We need to test things step by step, and in case this doesn't work out, we need to do other things instead.
Having this much animated CGs in the game "could" cause problems.
And yeah, we need to carefully test stuff in order to avoid having those problems.
(also, if we encounter problems, we need some time to figure out a solution)

Whatever, I hope you enjoy the CG sketch and of course I'll keep you informed!

Good vs Evil

In the comments I stated that I would write another blogpost about one of the games bosses, and that there would be another futa enemy (aside from the corrupted harpy).

The first boss I'm going to write about is a female mutated monster with 4 arms, 2 dicks, and on top of that, it's actually an evil version of one of the heroines.
(I just want to point out that Ferania is actually for now the only playable character that is planned to be implemented, but other characters (like Catheline) might be implemented later on)

The name of this monster is "Failure", since it's basically a failed clone.
Scientists tried to clone Catheline, since she's very powerful and they wanted to use clones of her for military purpose.
But they failed in creating a clone of her, and ended up creating a monster instead.

very old sketch of "Failure"

"Failure" is larger and "physically" stronger than Catheline.
Though she doesn't have Cathelines special abilities, so in this regard she's weaker than Catheline.
(In the end they are both about equally strong, each with their own strenghts and weaknesses)

Catheline

Catheline is a "Liger-catgirl" (Lion + Tiger), and she's about 1,80 meters tall.

old drawing with Catheline and Failure

Here you can see the rough size comparison between the two.


Anyway, that's one of the games bosses.
(and one of my most favorite ones)

I guess the upcoming blogpost will contain more ingame related stuff.
Maybe some more ingame screenshots, or enemy pixel art or maybe an animated CG sketch.
(whatever we get done til the next blogpost)

Corrupted Harpy vs normal Harpy

In the last post I said that I would write a seperate blogpost about this matter.
I guess this blogpost is more lore-related, so it might not be interesting for everyone who follows this blog.
(feel free to skip this post if you're not interested in the story-elements)

First of all, in the wolfenstahl-universe (I'm working on that for about 8-9 years now) it's pretty normal to have animal-human-hybrids like wolfgirls, catgirls, birdgirls, dragongirls etc. (and their male counterparts of course).
Yes, I reaaaally do love kemonomimis!
If you look at our "real" world, there are myths and legends and stuff about several creatures.
Especially in greek mythology.
Stuff like harpies, minotaurs, centaurs, chimera etc. etc.

So yeah, I basically like to pick those terms and slightly change some stuff when I include it into the wolfenstahl-universe.

This means, a "minotaur" is no classical minotaur, it's actually a cowgirl (human girl with cow ears, tail and horns) or in case of the male version, a guy with horns, ears and tail of a taurus/bull (male cows), and yes, the guys are extremely muscular, while the girls have big boobs.

cowgirl aka "minotaur" in the wolfenstahl-universe

When it comes to the "harpy", it's simply a birdgirl (bird-people).
They have non-human ears, as well as bird-wings on their backs.
Other than that, they look pretty human-ish (human-like?).

birdgirl aka "harpy"

On a side note:
Yes, this means there are no "other" minotaurs (with the cow heads) or harpies (monsters like in the greek mythology) in the wolfenstahl-universe.
It's just (good looking) animal-people, as well as some corrupted versions.

corrupted harpy - futa enemy

Compared to the "regular" harpy, you can see that the corrupted version looks more evil, and more beastlike/monsterlike.
The corrupted version has no human-like hands and feet.
Also, it's a futanari, not a regular female.

Some of you might wonder, if the "regular" harpy shown above, could turn into a corrupted one?
Well, if she would be a mortal being, it could happen.
Which means, "that" particular harpy up there, is not mortal, while others are mortal... that needs an explanation that's a bit longer I guess...

Maybe I should go more into the "good vs evil" aspect of the whole matter first?
Originally I thought that in the wolfenstahl-universe there is no real good, and no real evil.
Which means literally everyone is at the same time good AND evil, depending on the point of view.
Humans do crimes and evil stuff, Demons do crimes and evil stuff.
(as well as all other races)
But at the same time there are also good beings in ALL races.
(even good Demons, yes)

In the game this might be depicted by a "safe zone" (shop) that's run by demons.
They don't attack the player, and they sell you some really good stuff in exchange for HP (maybe?).
(other shops are run by humans, and they take money instead of HP)

So since there is no real good and real evil usually, the different races "clash" with each other because of having different interests etc. without being "evil" by nature.
(the main reason for wars in our world, as well as the wolfenstahl-universe)

But in this game, I thought I'd make the demons and monsters overwhelm the humans, kinda tipping the balance between everything.
Some of the demon leaders and kings (there are several) get a bit too greedy and things start to go out of control.
Since the gods themselves don't interfere (not even the god who owns the demons, he's simply watching as his followers do whatever they like) with the world affairs, the only ones who are fighting are the gods agents/substitutes.

Those agents of the gods, are all immortal (at least they don't age, that's what I mean).
And they are classified as "demi-gods".

That's actually the classification that this one particular "harpy" shown above falls into.
(other harpies are mortals, without special powers etc.)
She's an agent of the Phoenix (the god of life), and she's a demi-god who's fighting on behalf of the beliefs and ideals of the Phoenix.


Other characters like Ferania, Catheline etc. (basically all wolves, cats, bears, and other fluffy predators) are agents of the Hellwolf (the god of death).
They are also demi-gods, and like other demi-gods they have supernatural abilities.
(not all wolf-people, cat-people etc. are demi-gods, just a chosen few are)

Despite them being agents of the Hellwolf (who "owns" all the demons, actually) they still fight demons, because all the gods (including the Hellwolf himself) believe that balance is important, and they were assigned to fight demons if necessary.
And this massive... uh... apocalypse... is actually tipping the balance, so I'd say it's really necessary.


Anyway, all that stuff won't "appear" in the game, basically because there's no text.


The characters demi-god superhuman powers are depicted in the game in that way, that most enemies can be obliterated without much trouble.
There's just a lot of enemies, so that's one of the problems the player needs to deal with.
As well as some really strong enemies, while they're no challenge in a 1 vs 1 fight, it's harder to deal with them when you're also being attacked by several weaker enemies.
And yeah... then there's the challenge of dodging and blocking attacks, because even if the heroine is stronger, the healing items are rare... so you can't afford to get hit by attacks too often.


Regarding the demi-god powers:
They've got a lot more strength than humans and most demons have.
Which means they can punch/kick really really hard.
They also have abilites like shooting lightning, casting ice-storms, shadow attacks or other stuff.
(imagine like... fighters with magical abilities? something along DBZ but not that over powered)

I guess the only enemies in the game that over-power the heroine, will be the bosses.
Everything else is weaker but comes in higher numbers.

I just realized that I got kinda carried away with this blogpost once again...
Anyway, I hope some of you enjoyed the little insight on my thoughts about this stuff.
See ya next time!

Enemies (Part 2)

Here are some sketches (and below a pixel art) of some enemies.
Please note that some stuff can still change, since we're in mid developement.
The werewolf will be more like a shadow werewolf (dark werewolf), and thus his appearance will change a bit.

Some of the upcoming monsters will also be even more grotesque/bizarre than these.
And yup, some mutated sleazy brutes will be appearing too.
(maybe I'll do an enemies part 3 to show some more stuff)

zombie

ghost

werewolf

corrupted harpy

Those are a zombie, ghost, werewolf and a corrupted harpy.
It's a "corrupted harpy" because there are actually non-corrupted ones too.
Harpies that don't look ugly and evil I mean.

And btw. to clarify the term "harpy" when it comes to the "universe" (wolfenstahl universe? I guess I call it that way) that our game plays in:

Harpies are actually "bird-people" (in the wolfenstahl universe), they are animal-human-hybrids just like cat-people (Catgirls/Catboys) or wolf-people (Wolfgirls/Wolfboys) etc.
But they usually have a less beast-like expression than the "corrupted harpies".
Same as with the cats and wolves, the regular harpies have special ears (feather ears, like the corrupted harpy has).
And instead of a wolf/cat tail, they have wings.

A "regular" harpy has human arms, hands, legs and feet.
(the "corrupted" one has beast-like arms, hands, legs and feet, as you can see in the sketch)

I guess I'll just do a seperate post about this in the upcoming days.
It's easier to see the differences on a sketch/picture.


Anyway, corrupted and mutated humans, monsters, undeads and demons will be the enemies in the upcoming game.


Here's a pixel art of the corrupted harpy:

Customizable controls

Part 2 of the enemies (with sketches or pixel art samples) will come in the upcoming days.

I've read all the comments so far, and while I didn't initially plan on having human enemies, I hope that "mutated/possessed" humans will be okay?
The basic thought behind this is, that it should have an apocalypse like setting, and that humans should be considered "good" civilians that you might have to rescue.
So, having different human types that are good or evil "could" be confusing.
And making the evil ones look "evil" kinda goes along with making them look mutated/possessed (whatever).

I think it's better to have the player easily recognize what's "good" and what's "evil".
Though there will be one kind of trap-monster that disguises itself as a civilian.
(those will be reaaaaally rare though, and if you pay attention you should be able to distinguish them from civilians)

At least that's the theory behind it, and well... we'll see how it fits in the game.
(if stuff seems to be too frustrating or too confusing, we'll change it)
 


Customizable controls:

This time I thought it would be a good idea to include customizable controls into the game.
I tried including gamepad support too, but it seems that this is a bit more confusing to include...
So the best option would be to use JoyToKey if you like to use a gamepad for the game.
(I haven't used JoyToKey myself, but I've read/seen a lot of other games recommend it, I'll try it out myself during developement, but haven't done so yet)

"Maybe" I'll include full controller/gamepad support later on, but I'd say the chances are low that I actually do this.

Customizable keyboard controls are almost done, once I get to work on the menu they will be customizable in the options.
After that, all I need to do is to test it on several systems if it "really" works as intended.
(by that I mean... I'd better test it on several different PCs, notebooks etc... just to make sure it REALLY works... and yup, that will take some time, since I need to ask some friends of me to do the testing, and this is always time consuming)



To inform you about the controls:

ALL menu navigation is "mouse-controled".
It makes navigating the menu (as well as the programming) and a lot of other things considerably easier.
Besides that, you control the character with the keyboard (or gamepad with JoyToKey) only.

Following buttons are required:

- up
- down
- left
- right

- jump
- attack (close combat)
- special (ranged attack for Ferania; "if" we include several characters, there will be other functions too, depending on the character)

- pause
- menu (ESC)


The difference between "pause" and "menu" is, that pause will simply pause the game with a small "pause" notification (not in the middle of the screen).
While "menu" will pause the game and open a menu where you can choose to "save + quit" etc.

I guess I'll stop here, and go more into the details in a seperate blogpost.
Anyway, those are the "basics".

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

The upcoming blogpost will be most likely "Enemies (Part 2)", with sketches or pixel art.

Enemies (Part 1)

I thought about doing a part 1 and 2 for this one.
Basically part 1 is the discussion about the monsters, and part 2 will include some actual pixel art.

But before I get to that, I thought it would be a good idea to talk a bit about the "perma-death" aspect of the game, that occours when the heroine goes game-over.
By this I mean, if the heroines HP drop to zero, it's game-over.
You get a big animated CG with voice acting, and after that you need to start from the beginning.
While this might sound frustrating to some people, please read the rest of this post!

To be honest, I've never been a fan of perma-death games up until a few months ago.
I kinda dislike the feeling of having to start all over, losing all progress etc.
And I really don't like it, if I can't progress in the game because of this.

But when I played games like FTL or Binding of Isaac, I actually didn't feel frustrated at all.
Why's that some people might ask?
Well, I think it's because of the random generation aspect, as well as the fast progress you actually make.
You quickly find new skills, new weapons etc. just to lose at some point because you made some stupid mistake or actually underestimated an enemy.
The more often you encounter enemies, the better you learn to deal with them.
And each skill/weapon you find helps you to deal with different threats.
Since you also encounter different enemy types and bosses at random, you actually get to see a lot of different things the game has to offer, even if you always fail during the first 2 stages or so.

And I think this is the reason, why it doesn't feel frustrating.
You get new stuff all the time, you can actually encounter (nearly) everything the game has to offer during the first few stages.
So losing doesn't feel that bad.
And yeah... of course you kinda want to beat the last boss, so you have a reason to fight til the end, instead of losing on purpose all the time.

At least that's the way I feel about those games now.
And while the game we're working on is entirely different in comparison with FTL and BoI, I hope we succeed in making a game that feels similar fresh and challenging each playthrough, while not being (too?) frustrating.


About the enemies:

The game will actually be about our modern world being thrown into an apocalyptic scenario.
So there will be lots of mutated or possessed humans, demons, shadow creatures etc.

What I mainly wanted to talk about was:
Do you guys prefer disgusting enemies?
Or rather not so disgusting monsters?
Are there some monsters you'd like to see in the game?
Or maybe are there some monsters you'd rather not see in the game?

I know that this is totally something that everyone has a different viewpoint on.
So this topic is actually quite hard to discuss.
But lets talk about it anyway.


While I like disgusting monsters, there's also some kind of line that shouldn't be crossed.
But having an apocalyptic scenario with... I don't know... handsome zombies (lol) would simply be weird.
(I know, Geisterhands zombies were a bit "weird" too... this time the zombies/mutants will really look like zombies/mutants and thus at least a bit disgusting)

To give you guys some example, I actually liked the disgusting enemies in the game Bullet Witch.
And I think that's something that isn't too disgusting?
(but then again, that's personal preference/taste)

Next time when I'll do a blogpost about the enemies, I'll show some pixel art.

Ingame screenshot

Too much happened the last days, so we couldn't make any good looking screenshots earlier.
There's still lots of the tileset missing, but at least some stuff is done.




Most of the game will be taking place on a more or less flat surface.
There's the street where the heroine walks on most of the time, but you can also jump on cars, street lamps and other stuff.
And then in some areas, there's also the sewers right below the street.
It's nothing too fancy, basically you fight your way from the left side to the right side.
So the gameplay isn't centered around platforming, it's mainly about fighting different enemy types.

 If everything works out as intended, there should be around 12 to 15 regular enemies in the game.
(bosses are extra)

Random thoughts

We're currently in the middle of implementing the fighting system and stuff.
Maybe, if nothing bad happens in the upcoming days we can show some ingame screenshots this weekend.
But I can't promise that...




So, what I wanted to talk about today is the pros and cons of implementing more than one character into the game.
I guess I should point out, that I can't say for sure if we implement another character or not.
At least not at this point during game developement.
(still I thought it would be better to talk about this stuff instead of not doing any blogpost at all)

This means, that this whole topic is PURELY theoretical, no promisses, no guarantees.

Anyway, lets get to the pros and cons.

Pro:
- different characters would mean different gameplay possibilities
- more hentai content
- higher chance that a player would find a character that appeals to them

Con:
- considerably more work (which means "more cost")
- doesn't guarantee that the difference between income (sales) and expenses (work time) balances out
- if done wrong, the workload could "explode" without having a great impact on the content

Possible solutions:
- the hentai content per character could be limited
- crowdfunding via offbeatr (to add more characters to the game)
- careful planning of the implementation of new characters



So, lets go more into the details:

Cres is currently practising animation of the CGs, which means we won't include "CG scenes" (several pictures with variations) but we would include animated CGs (with voice acting).
We thought about giving each of the bosses their own animated CG that appears when the heroine goes game over, as well as giving each "Stage" one animated game over CG.
Giving every enemy their own CG is out of the question, since the workload would explode, even with one playable character alone.

To compensate for that, we came up with a different plan, that "should" work... at least in theory...
According to this plan, we do ingame-grab-animated CGs (yes.... you heard right... and I hope we didn't underestimated the workload...).
But! There's one thing to it...
There will only be 3 different poses for the heroine that get used over and over again.
Each enemy will only get 1 animation, and yes... the good thing is, those 3 poses need to be only drawn (and animated) once, and then the enemy (tentacles or whatever) gets swapped out on each scene.

So it's basically 3 animations, just with swapped out enemies.
That might sound lame...
But that's actually the most cost-effective approach I could come up with, and hey!
It's high-rez animated CGs!

At least in theory this should work out, without being too much work.
Can't promise that this will really work out as intended, but that's the plan, and I believe that it will work.
We will find out in the upcoming weeks, if this really works out.



With this methode, we should be able to maximize the amount of hentai content with as less "extra work" as possible.
And this means, that we could include more playable characters later on.


Offbeatr:

I can't say for sure if we really do this, but there are several things that actually support the possibility of using offbeatr.
First of all, a lot of people stated that they can't use DLSite to buy the games we make.
But as some of you know, we can't do our own "shop" for reasons I've stated about 100 times already in the past.
(so lets skip that)

So actually the only other "legal" way to "sell" the game, would be offbeatr.
And that's a huge plus for offbeatr.

Second, we could use offbeatr to collect money in order to implement more characters.
The game would be a "full" hentai game with only one playable character, but having more characters is always a nice thing.
There's just no guarantee that this extra work would pay off... well, with offbeatr we could kinda "avoid" this risk, since we can actually see if people are interested in the game, and we can also see how much "worth" they think it is.

Third, offbeatr charges less money than DLSite.
If I'm not mistaken, offbeatr takes about 30% of the money, while DLSite actually takes 50% or more.
(officially DLSite takes a minimum of 45%, but actually they take 50% by giving you less money via slightly cheating with the YEN <--> USD exchange rates...)

Anyway, as you can see there's some high chances that we will be using offbeatr sooner or later.
Most likely once the game is done (or nearly done), so we can also offer a playable demo-version that depicts the gameplay and hentai content "as is".
Coupled with instant-access after the crowdfunding campaign is done.
This also means, that we will go with a funding goal of 500 $ (or whatever is the lowest goal possible), and yeah... since the game will be done (or nearly done) it's of course "guaranteed" that we deliver it.

In this case, there will only be stretch-goals for the implementation of more characters.
(at this point I think there will be no other extras, just new characters, nothing more)
Well, the new characters themselves should be enough "extra content", since they'll have their own animated CGs, and they all play differently from each other.

Whatever, this is just purely theoretical stuff, but this is what we actually planned to do.
High chances that this will work out, but we can't guarantee that things will work out this way.
(there's always something happening that requires to change stuff... I just hope no "radical" changes are necessary)

Hopefully we can show some ingame screenshots this weekend!
We're trying our best to get stuff done til then.