Getting Closer

Still working on the project diligently. 

Tonight I just finished coding a function that scrolls through equipment/spells/etc. and retrieves eight things, to a page, at a time.  This should avoid the possibility of having 100 items displayed on one page, which would mess up things badly.

I might as well throw up some screenshots of progress.  :)

Here is the main menu...

Scrolling through some non-working magic spells.

The play menu, and a randomly generated lake.

 

Needless to say, I'm very happy with the direction this project is taking.  Heh.  I need to wrap up a few things before demo is launched.  Originally I intended to launch it as soon as possible, but I figured since it's taken much longer than expected, I might as well add more playability to it.

Some quick comments on coding.  The bigger the project gets, the harder it is to keep track of everything.  I tend to find myself getting lost at times when searching for variables in notepad++.  I'm aware that some of the better programmers keep things better organized in modules and metatables, but I'm just not too used to using them yet so I will leave room for better organization later.  I threw in some small bits of comments, mostly for myself, in case I forget what certain functions do or what things are for.  It should help later. (or at least I hope)

Tomorrow I'm planning on getting the "view" function working, so that it displays, terrain, objects, items, and characters when you scroll over them with the keyboard.  Oh and in case I didn't mention, all the interaction in game will be done through the keyboard.  Having a mouse won't be necessary to play, only a keyboard will be required.

Last week, I worked on setting up a function so that the map is displayed in layers.  It works like this,

Top Layer - Characters
Second Layer - Items
Bottom Layer - Terrain

More layers will be added later on.  Things like furniture, objects, equipment, etc. will come when I get to it.

Some potential game modes I thought of with my spare time,

Hero - You play as a hero fighting seduction driven monsters in a randomly generated world.
Heroine - Same as above but play as a female vs male monsters.
Harlem Onslaught - Survive as long as you can against waves and waves of monsters.
RTS Mode - Like normal game, except that it happens in real time.           

The hero mode is the priority right now.  Once that's done, the others shouldn't take very long to make.  That's about all the new stuff I've been working on and planning.  I'm hesitant to try and predict when the demo will be finished again.  All I can say, is that it seems it will be ready soon.
 

Seduction Quest - Pending demo

A demo was aimed for last week, but there were a few setbacks for good and bad reasons. 

I'm not so good with time management, and wasted a lot of time doing other stuff.  Other thing I learned was that my skills at estimating how long a coding portion should take isn't that accurate, especially when it's coding something I'm not familiar with. 

Alright so you see, for the main menu I was experimenting with a title layout since the feel of SQ will be very ascii based, and I wanted to have ascii art as the main title image.  Yea, yea, and?  I started to go through old paintings (like 100-200 years ago, that are public domain) and convert them into ascii.  At first, I had to convert each line into strings manually, which was long and tedious.  Then after trying a few, I decided wouldn't it be cool to have an ascii image for each type of creature, but to do so many different images would have to be converted into ascii.  The manual way of doing it was too long, so I needed to experiment with file manipulation.   (and learn a few gimp tutorials!)

Lo and behold!    

After some experimenting, I got it to work.  The title screen looked awesome.  I even found a few kick-ass fonts to go with the theme for the menu options and the title font.  But something was amiss.  When you load the program, it just shows the title screen instantly.  No special affects, no animations, nothing.  Sooooo that was a little too bland for my taste.  My next goal was to scramble the ascii title image, so that the ascii characters slowly fade into view at random.  I'm still working on it, but I'm modifying a shuffle algorithm to get it work.  Almost have it down, but not quite.

Things that are finished,

Health System
Title Menu
Terrain Generation
Ascii art converter (converts ascii images into strings for love)

What's left,

Shuffle Algorithm (currently working on)
UI
Basic AI
1-3 Different Enemies
Combat System
Music?  (maybe, maybe not)   

Hentai Game Update

So after getting done with a week long family vacation, I'm back.

I've decided for now, I'm going to try and focus on getting the hentai game assembled and a demo ready.  Progress on Void Nexus will have to wait.  A lot of the coding parts of the hentai game, can be used for Void Nexus later on,which is good.  Things like, terrain generation, inventory system, health system, and other stuff (excluding all the hentai sex stuff) can be utilized for Void Nexus. 

This is what I am aiming for in the demo,

• Working title screen
• Basic terrain generation
• Functioning UI
• Simple battle system
• Working Enemy AI
• A few different enemies

Of course, this is just to test things and get it working.  Eventually I am going to make things more complex and advanced.  So far, I've got the terrain generation working.  The title screen and menu is almost done.  I've got the UI mostly planned out.  Enemy AI is going to be very dumbed down for now, (zombie-like follow, and attack tactics) but I will make it more strategic as more battle system mechanics are added.  I was aiming to release the demo today, but I got caught in a bunch of other stuff with my free time.  Hoping to have it finished and ready by Wednesday or Thursday.

And I've 70% decided upon this name for the game... "Seduction Quest".  I think it fits the theme nicely of what the game is about.  One problem I do see is the discreteness of the name, compared to others.  If someone sees you downloading a game called Monster Girl Quest, it isn't instantly assumed it's a porn game, but if they see Seduction Quest, it's definitely going to imply porn, or something of that nature.  Oh well.  I like the name, and unless I think of a better one, I will stick with it.  :)        

Expect the demo soon!