Black Garden [Fantasy Adult RPG]

[FeyRing]

Thank you all for the feedback, I'll try to address some of the issues mentioned.

OK, finally found some time to give it a proper play for a bit- not extensively, just for an hour or so. I see you're taking this game and the feedback you get for it very seriously, so I'm going to give you some quite extensive critique of my initial gameplay experience. Please note that this will mostly be CRITICISM, because picking out the things I don't like and think need to be improved will be much more productive for you than tongue-bathing the game with praise. So firstly for the record, I think this game is very impressive, the graphics and art are gorgeous particularly for an older RPGmaker game, it has possibly the most potential of any porn game I've seen in quite some time and if you can manage to get it to live up to that potential it may be an all-time classic. Now then...

Thank you! I only had myself and one other person as play-testers of this game for many months so criticism is important so I know what people actually want to see in the game!

Firstly, probably my biggest issue with the game is one I've seen other people in this thread bumping up against, but haven't quite put into clear terms, so I'm just going to say it: it's too hard. Now this is a very subjective thing and one that a lot of people would disagree with, but you've made the game tooth-achingly complicated simply because you could. The bewildering array of skills that need to synergise with each other is enough to make your head spin, especially as not only will they define your gameplay experience, but you have to make the decisions about them almost blind. Yes, if you read the helpful books they will make it clear to you that you need metal mining to get materials for artifice and smithing, crystal mining for alchemy and stone mining for construction, but how would you know starting out which of these are actually going to be in any way useful?

I plan to add more Helpful Manuals to explain the crafting professions more in depth. I think a significant problem that I didn't fully anticipate is that like you mentioned, people wont know in the first play-through what they will find useful. Since I knew what everything does in advance I didn't fully comprehend the perspective of someone playing the game for the first time.

I started out with metal mining and artifice, intending to craft jewelry to give as gifts for the pretty girls I wanted to woo, but found out on reaching town that the only gift I can offer the goblin girls are new clothing, so I SHOULD have started out with tailoring or whatever the clothes-crafting skill is called and whatever skill you need to harvest materials to make cloth instead. Oops!

I'll fix this by detailing the Gift system in one of the manuals and explaining which skills are best for it. In reality the better skills for it is Agriculture so you can gift them flowers. Though in your case you can take Geology and give them Gems that you occasionally dig up. The Clothes Gifting is mainly used to make them wear new clothes (change sprite appearance). To give a [Gift] item to someone, you have to first click it in your inventory, and that sort of places it in your hand, then when you talk to the NPC it will ask if you want to offer the Gift to them. I know it's not very intuitive and should have been explained better in game. (Incidentally, that's also how you "pickpocket" NPCs, you have to select your "guile" skills manual in your inventory and then interact with an NPC so an option pops up asking if you want to Pickpocket them... I'll need to put an explanation for this in game too though).

Also, I didn't take any combat skills at all, intending to play a non-violent Casanova-type character who fucks his way through the game (it's a porn game and I'm here for the porn, so sue me), only to discover that I can barely even stand up to so much as the tiniest rat as a result- my only weapon is my pickaxe and the rats are incredibly tough to hit and I do PATHETICALLY low damage, making it almost impossible to take them down before they chew me to death, even when they only attack every second turn (I think these have to be the toughest starter rats in any RPG in history).

Attribute points in Toughness and Strength make a very significant difference to combat, even 1 point is a big difference that snowballs quite fast if you stack some attribute giving accessories. The Pickaxe is also a pretty horrible weapon as it decreases your chances of hitting. I will lower their HP pools though and make it so they don't automatically attack you when they touch you, that way you have to physically attack them and they can't sneak up on you while mining.

Also Saffron wants honey for a quest that I apparently have to get as a drop from giant hornets or something- but I'm fully aware that I have absolutely no way to fight them.

They are only slightly tougher than Rats but I get your point. For a non combat character you are better off buying Honey from the Goblin Merchant when it is available instead. There is also a chance of acquiring it from Food Baskets but they themselves are a random drop from chests so its a very RNG heavy approach. The Goblin Merchant is the best option. Alternatively, there are beehives in a meadow across from the broken Bridge, but you need the Foraging specialization to loot them.

In general, there are some consumables like spell scrolls and bombs that can be used by non-combat characters to take out even the tough enemies like Wolves.

Snuffles isn't very helpful, which should tell you how tough this is.

Pets and Sidekicks will be more of a combat support in game. Snuffles does decreases the chances of you being targeted by an attack by 50% while alive and has pretty decent dodge chance. Snuffles can also lead Wolves or Werewolves away so you don't have to fight them if they ambush you, assuming Snuffles has enough HP left that is. Snuffles also has 2 Accessory equipment slots so you could technically get their strength value to 3 with accessories and they will start doing decent damage.

How am I supposed to make money, just picking up whatever junk I can find and flogging it to the merchant? I can't work the brothel because my morality is too high and the idea of winning fights is laughable.

Morality shouldn't be able to hold you back too much. You can lose your Virginity to some Goblin when flirting and then rake in a few Goblin Fetishes and that will easily be enough to bypass the Morality for it. Each Goblin specific Fetish level decreases reluctance quite significantly. You could also get drunk of Beer (few bottles) but that's more of a thing if you chose Noble+Arrogant at the start of the game.

...Again I should probably explain this better in game as well!

can't do the spiderweb cleaning quest for the mine foreman because I need a sickle for it and I got a pickaxe off the thief instead, but I can't get a sickle, and beating the rats is impossible.

You can actually buy a Sickle of the Goblin Smith... but that wont solve the problem because you also need the Foraging specialization to clear Webs. Both quests were mostly designed to rake in Reputation points, though with your character set up you are better off doing that through flirting and the brothel.

That's another big thing, the game is also grindy as hell- why VP, the stat you use to do ANY physical action (including sex) and would in any other game be called stamina or energy or fatigue, also double as my HP?

Well combat is a Physical action for the most part, so it seemed like a good idea. For a combat oriented character, taking out a Rat or a Hornet might be only slightly more draining than Mining a mineral node (or less if they focused heavily on combat).

I have to spend over half of every day sleeping because I run through my VP and WP so fast, but because I went for the Noble background (with no idea what that would mean) I have reduced recovery because of my poor bed (with NO way of getting a better one) and am constantly racking up more unwanted Morality.

I'll do a better explanation to Backgrounds in game. I'll also modify the sleep penalties a bit for the cheap beds (you can buy better beds from the Goblin Merchant sometimes). On a side note, I'll give a quick explanation of bonuses from Backgrounds.

"Noble" gives a bonus to customer satisfaction in the Brothel, +2 to Persuasion and Seduction Rolls and -2 to Haggle Rolls, Large penalty to sleeping on cheap beds.
"Commoner" gives +10 bonus to starting Vitality and a Small penatly to sleeping on cheap beds.
'Street Urchin" gives a +1 bonus to Pickpocket and Lockpicking Rolls as well as no penalty to sleeping on cheap beds, for more prude races you may get a negative roll to you Persuasion/Seduction rolls in the future once they are implemented).

As for Morality, there is no way to regenerate it so I actually assumed people would be happy if it regenned from sleeping, I can remove this though.

I started with the Beautiful Voice trait, which cost a whopping THREE Memory Points, only to find that it only affects my singing voice, not my seduction abilities and charm, and I have no idea how singing works at all yet (or even if it's implemented at all)- BIG mistake.

It affects more than just your Singing! It gives a +4 bonus to all Persuasion, Seduction and Haggle rolls, as well as a slight bonus to customer satisfaction in the brothel! Singing itself has limited uses though, you can Sing for the Demon Queen at the start instead of Seducing her for a lower affection gain and no Sex Scene. There is also an opportunity to Sing for one of the Goblin Clients in the Brothel to raise her satisfaction. All in all, Beautiful Voice is a pretty good Perk for what you are trying to play.

Summing up my point, this is the reason I roll my eyes whenever the Dota 2 players insist that Dota 2 is a better game than League of Legends because it's more complicated and therefore deeper. No, Dota 2 is HARDER than LoL, much more inaccessible with a massively higher skill floor, but complexity =/= depth. NEVER make a game more frustrating and difficult to enjoy than it absolutely has to be in the name of illusory "depth". Ultimately, the biggest problem with the game is that I'm stumped as to what I should actually be doing to make any real tangible progress, rather than just spinning my wheels, and I feel like I'm making blind mistakes all the time.

Hopefully, some of the stuff I mentioned above can help you progress. Otherwise, I hope the changes I make in the next release will be enough to decrease the difficulty and make it more enjoyable.

The issue is more than just the game not really signposting to you what you need to do and being very frustrating if you make the wrong decisions. The entire skill system is, while interestingly in-depth, honestly rather irritating. You can only get a VERY limited pool of skills to start the game with, and apparently acquiring more is a quest unto itself. What the skill system ends up doing is giving you a game with a vast amount of varied content, and then going out of its way to segregate most of that content away from you on each playthrough. Oh, you can see a character up that cliff which you could reach by climbing those vines? Too bad, you didn't start with the climbing skill, better luck next playthrough!

To be honest, that Adventurer up on a cliff was meant to be missable. Him, the guy imprisoned in the tower and the Demon Queen sex scene, are really the only three things which can be missed entirely. I thought it would be interesting if certain things at the very start varied based on the play-through so not everyone would have an identical start. I didn't really intend for it to cause frustration. With the Demon Queen it is only possible to bed her if you took Seduction, or either the Handsome or Gorgeous perks, in all other instances she will turn you down.

You've created a game with a lot to do in it but given us control of a character who can't do most of it. This is where I worry that you're being overambitious, because you seem to want to make the next Skyrim (including Sexlab) as a game with massive amounts of replayability and variety, but I imagine most people are just looking for a fun RPG with hot monstergirl sex in it.

I will tone done the stuff that can be missed in game, but I don't really want to make the game too linear where none of the choices really matter in the end.

The keyboard control is, as already mentioned, a giant load of ass. I managed to tolerate it, but I really hate having to use the fingers of my right hand to control directions- I'm right handed, but as a gamer movement is traditionally controlled with the LEFT hand, whether it's WASD with the fingers or the D-pad/analogue stick with the thumb. You've said you're looking into that, which is good, but that feeds into my final major issue: the game is just very clunky in many different ways. For example, having the game track your stats is very good. Having it do so by a variety of different items in your inventory is not. I'm hoping all those crappy diary items are just a stop-gap measure until you can work out the menu system properly, but there really should be a proper stats screen where you can just look at all this stuff.

Well initially, that's how I planned to keep it, but I suppose I can wrap up a lot of those items into one. The upside of the way it is now, is that you can bind certain ones to your Hotbar and open them with a click of a button, like to pen the screen for your "Goblin Reputation" or for your relationship with Saffron. This way you can choose which ones you care about the most to track and have them easily accessible from the Hotbar. But I suppose a better UI for that stuff would be better.

Likewise, exacerbating the problems with the skill system, having to create your character by repeatedly using a bunch of different items was just a new level in awkwardness.

It sounded like a neat idea when I first thought of it, but I guess it didn't translate well to practice! I'll try to think of something to make the character creation in general smoother.

Speaking of stats, why the heck are morality and corruption, which are very key stats, hidden in the items menu? I literally only just found them now while I was writing this. I can't work out how to lower morality, which is annoying because it's preventing me from working my sweet little tushy off in the brothel, and it keeps rising every time I sleep for some reason I don't know.

I'll put them in the UI once I make it, I just haven't messed around with it enough to know how it works yet so for now I assigned them to the Item menu.

Why do there have to be 3 different types of EXP, 2 of which you have to combine into a 4th?

Because I thought it wouldn't make sense if a person who gets their EXP from sleeping around was able to use it to raise his Magic or Agriculture levels. So I divided them into Intellectual, physical and Sex pools.

Apparently Combo EXP needs to be used to level up some skills, but which ones?

Perception is leveled through Combo EXP. It's a completely passive skill which is used automatically to reveal stuff around you. I suppose I can make it that to level it you will need equal amounts of Craft and Battle EXP, it's just using a 4th category made it a bit neater in the level up screen.

Considering the game runs on a 24-hour day/night cycle and time management is of pivotal importance, why is the clock on the menu rather than the main screen

You can have it in the main screen too, you just have to press the [T] key on the keyboard to toggle it's visibility as was mentioned in the controls!

and why don't I know how long some actions take before I do them (such as talking with goblin girls)?

I think I just forgot to put it the text in a few places, I'll try to be more consistent about it.

OK, I imagine crafting an hourglass might resolve that- but I can't CRAFT an hourglass because there's no way I can get the ingredients.

Hourglass is just a material that sells for decent money, it has no physical use of it's own. There is an item called "Copper Watch" that lets you skip time in various hour frames, useful if you want to wait out a few hours to night/day quickly without needing to sleep.

Also, there are NUMEROUS things that are in the game despite not having been implemented yet, like skills and items that do nothing. Don't do that. If something isn't properly implemented, leave it out.

For some of the Items, I left them in because of how the crafting system works in backend of things. It's a bit hard to explain but the reason is to make things easier on myself when sorting through the recipe script when adding new recipes and its material ingredients in. I was also hoping to have all of them fully implemented within a release or two.

There's absolutely no reason for things like Cache Detection Speciality to be in the game when they simply don't work- no, nobody is going to take them so they can take advantage of them in a later build once they are implemented without needing to restart, especially since you seem to have designed the game to be replayed multiple times over anyway.

I'll take the unimplemented specialisations out in the next release. I left them in as a spoiler for future content but I guess they just get in the way.

Now that's all done, just a few more minor things. I do like the art as I mentioned before, and the fact that I was actually able to seduce the demon queen on my first encounter. I wish the seduction system was properly implemented- as I'm able to deduce so far, all I can do is flirt with girls and hope they randomly feel like a fuck.

It's actually not random, and your Seduction skill does play a role in their decision to fuck you! The exact calculation for it is as follows: Roll 1d20, +5 if Handsome, +10 if Gorgeous, +3 if Beautiful Voice, +1 per Charisma Level, +2 per Seduction Level, +5 for Goblin Layer Title, +5 for Goblin Breeder Title. IF overall value is above 18, she will ask you for Sex.

Since there are a limited number of actual goblin girls in the game, I think it might help if they all at least had personalised names, to give them some more personality, even if they aren't all tracked individually in-depth.

The generic NPCs were mostly designed to represent populations rather than single individuals. Another problem with giving them names is that it wont be as informative on some of your stat cards. For example, your virginity was taken by... "name". it wont be very informative if other species share name lists. Another thing I want to note is that a [Goblin Virgin] gets upgraded to [Goblin] or even [Goblin MILF] if she gets pregnant from sex with you (or some slave). A [Goblin MILF] gets rarely upgraded to [Goblin Breeder] if impregnated, and this minor system will need to be discarded altogether if they start having individual names.

I may track the identities of the generic NPCs more in depth later, if I figure out a decent way to do so, but for now I would prefer to leave them as is.

It's annoying how when you're trying to smelt ore you repeatedly have to choose to smelt one at a time, over and over, rather than just choosing to smelt a bunch

You can smelt 1, 5 or 10 at a time, the other 2 options remain hidden unless you have the quantity required for them, namely 10, or 20 ore in your inventory. I guess i can make the Options Greyed out rather than invisible so its more informative.

(what else are you going to do with your ore?)

You can grind it into Iron dust using a Mortar & Pestle and then use it in Alchemy!

and kind of odd that smelting ore doesn't actually consume VP (although I'm not complaining about THAT one as too many things are competing for my limited stock of VP already).

It did initially... but then I thought that having the VP requirement for Mining is enough as is!

But all those things having been said, I hope you take them onboard and work to improve this game. It looks gorgeous and the concept is really appealing, you just need to make it more polished and less... well, difficult to play and enjoy.

Thank you! I have some ideas that may significantly lower the grid. I may even introduce a "Difficulty Mode Selection" where the difference between the two modes will primarily be in how much EXP is awarded for actions.

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The problem with crafting is the number of mutual dependencies - e.g. if you want to make a sword, shield or all kinds of armor, you have to also have leather. Good luck acquiring that.

I'll remove the Tailoring Skill requirement for making Leather in the next update, you will be able to process it with just a knife or something.

A tip about smithing: the Iron Mace is the only weapon that can be forged from iron ingots only.

You can also make a Shiv with only iron and it is a pretty good weapon too!

Anyway, I think I figured out the random-chests-and-people system and it's one of the things that finally made me give up on the game for now. Do I understand correctly that there's a limited pool of slots for things and to get them to respawn (and travellers to appear) I have to clear out the present spawned resources?

You are partially correct. There are a limited number of things that can spawn per map and will remain there until collected. However, travelers are not one of them. There is a chance per map that a single traveler will spawn, then a check is made to determine which traveler is spawned. Travelers get erased the moment you leave the map or load game. Junk items on the forest floor only compete with other junk items, they don't compete with chests or plant resource nodes. Plant resource nodes only compete with themselves (Trees are permanent and don't compete with any nodes, neither do Mineral nodes). Chests also only compete with each other, so it is possible, that after some time, all chests will be turned into locked ones. You can still open them with an "Open Lock" spell scroll, they have a lower spawn rate then normal chests though and have a better loot table.

The other major problem is that a lot of stuff can spawn in areas that are not accessible to the player, e.g. the beehive meadows, or on the top of cliffs, with the same effect - lowering the chances of chests and meeting travelers.

This is indeed the case. I think this will become less of an issue as more maps are added to the game for people to gather stuff in. As a side note, not many may have noticed but there is a secret glade to the left of the forest road. It's located about half way up the map and can be accessed by walking through the trees, there is even a fruit Tree there. If you havent found that place, then some of the randomly generated stuff could have accumulated there.

Another possible problem is with agriculturally inclined characters - once they get seeds, they are likely to start farming them and won't bother with foraging in the forest.

Not everything that can be found in the forest can be grown or works the same way. For example, forest plants grown on your farm will never yield any seeds aside from their own, while ones in the wild have a chance to drop seeds for various plants and flowers. Plants harvested from farms also yield less EXP then ones harvested from the wild.

In short, as of the current version the game seems to be somewhat playable for only one starting build - a warrior build who can climb wines, forage and perhaps also farm. Everything else results in varying degrees of frustration. This renders the extensive character customization process in the beginning mostly pointless.

A Mage with Lockpicking plays pretty smoothly too. I hope that expanding the playable area will help give more value to some of the other skills to make them more desirable.

As a side note: If it seems like people are coming down on your game pretty hard, don't take it too hard. It means people see a lot of potential in it and want to see it optimized. If it were irredeemable, no one would even comment on this thread. It's actually a good thing that people are tearing it up as much as they are.

I think so too! While I can't say I agree with absolutely everything, I will try to take on board as many of the suggestions as I can!

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I like the concept of the game. I'm always looking for decent femdom games and your plot and ideas so far seem like they could make for an interesting one. Although it is kind of a grind and the hornets seem to very rarely drop the honey required for the quest (I gave up on this quest because of it), I can see myself keeping track of your updates and progress.

Thank you so much! The drop rate is 1 in 10 for Honey, I will decrease the required amount for that quest from 20 to 10 in the next build.

I started my character as a noble, though, and only managed to drop my morality down to 80 by seducing the Demon Queen prior to the goblin village. I notice every day after sleeping, I automatically gain 1 morality but how do I go about decreasing it enough to work the brothel?

You can bypass it by stacking up some Goblin related Fetishes from having Sex with the girls in the village for free at first. Getting Drunk also works, but the Fetish route is cheaper on the wallet.

I figured I'd lose morality by pickpocketing (I failed anyway) and perhaps by escorting the prisoner to the brothel when I had agreed to help him escape instead but neither of these actions lowered the value.

Yeah those only lower your Reputation, but if you get sent to Jail to pay the fine with your body it might lower it if you are still a virgin.

It's kind of difficult getting gold without having to grind the rats and hornets for their drops and learning how to mine or smith is expensive.

The best way at the start is to either open chests or work in the brothel if you have no crafting or gathering skills. Monster drops have rather mediocre value.

 

[Jash]

As a side note: If it seems like people are coming down on your game pretty hard, don't take it too hard. It means people see a lot of potential in it and want to see it optimized. If it were irredeemable, no one would even comment on this thread. It's actually a good thing that people are tearing it up as much as they are.

Exactly. And the reason there is SO MUCH criticism is because the game has SO MUCH content to criticise. Fortunately FeyRing is taking it all in good humour, so hopefully the game will come good eventually.

Now to address FeyRing's responses:

I plan to add more Helpful Manuals to explain the crafting professions more in depth. I think a significant problem that I didn't fully anticipate is that like you mentioned, people wont know in the first play-through what they will find useful. Since I knew what everything does in advance I didn't fully comprehend the perspective of someone playing the game for the first time.

Please, no more manuals! The inventory being cluttered with those things is enough of a pain already! Just add a Help menu to the stats screen to lead to an in-game encyclopedia, like most other games do.

I'll fix this by detailing the Gift system in one of the manuals and explaining which skills are best for it. In reality the better skills for it is Agriculture so you can gift them flowers. Though in your case you can take Geology and give them Gems that you occasionally dig up. The Clothes Gifting is mainly used to make them wear new clothes (change sprite appearance). To give a [Gift] item to someone, you have to first click it in your inventory, and that sort of places it in your hand, then when you talk to the NPC it will ask if you want to offer the Gift to them. I know it's not very intuitive and should have been explained better in game. (Incidentally, that's also how you "pickpocket" NPCs, you have to select your "guile" skills manual in your inventory and then interact with an NPC so an option pops up asking if you want to Pickpocket them... I'll need to put an explanation for this in game too though).

Yeah, that system is, uh... can't we just have a "give gift" option when we talk to them? Like, you already have "Normal approach" and "Special approach" options for individual NPCs to determine whether you want to interact with them in their capacity as a merchant/mine foreman/blacksmith etc or just chat to/flirt with/give clothes to them normally like any other NPC, why not just add more interaction options, including ones like Pickpocket?

Attribute points in Toughness and Strength make a very significant difference to combat, even 1 point is a big difference that snowballs quite fast if you stack some attribute giving accessories. The Pickaxe is also a pretty horrible weapon as it decreases your chances of hitting. I will lower their HP pools though and make it so they don't automatically attack you when they touch you, that way you have to physically attack them and they can't sneak up on you while mining.

I was quite shocked to realise long after the fact that my character actually started with only 1s in all his stats, particularly after the game stated that the standard human baseline for all stats is 2. How did this loser ever graduate from the Hero Academy? You'd think that the only way to start with 1s in any stat is if you started the game with a Flaw that reduces it. Speaking of Flaws, I didn't even bother looking at them- you did a very good job of convincing me that they were absolutely crippling and far more trouble than they were worth and only for masochists seeking an even harder time than normal, especially since they're apparently only worth a measly 1 MP!

They are only slightly tougher than Rats but I get your point. For a non combat character you are better off buying Honey from the Goblin Merchant when it is available instead. There is also a chance of acquiring it from Food Baskets but they themselves are a random drop from chests so its a very RNG heavy approach. The Goblin Merchant is the best option. Alternatively, there are beehives in a meadow across from the broken Bridge, but you need the Foraging specialization to loot them.

The optimal way to complete a fetch quest should never be "buy the item from the merchant". If you're trying to get 20 Bear Asses, your standard response should not be looking for someone who sells bear asses.

Morality shouldn't be able to hold you back too much. You can lose your Virginity to some Goblin when flirting and then rake in a few Goblin Fetishes and that will easily be enough to bypass the Morality for it. Each Goblin specific Fetish level decreases reluctance quite significantly. You could also get drunk of Beer (few bottles) but that's more of a thing if you chose Noble+Arrogant at the start of the game.

...Again I should probably explain this better in game as well!

It should be able to... but unfortunately it does. I lost my virginity to the Demon Queen, with the accompanying -20 Morality cost, and picked up the Pointy Ears and Green Skin fetishes (which took a LOT of effort because even with my dedicated seducer build only about 1/5 goblins is interested in fucking), but my character still refuses to whore himself at the brothel because of a combination of Noble background (the main advantage of which is supposed to be working the brothel) and not being able to lose my anal virginity yet. I have no idea where I could find beer (the merchant doesn't sell it) and my Morality continues to increase every time I rest, which is on average about twice per day.

You can actually buy a Sickle of the Goblin Smith... but that wont solve the problem because you also need the Foraging specialization to clear Webs. Both quests were mostly designed to rake in Reputation points, though with your character set up you are better off doing that through flirting and the brothel.

You know, I didn't even realise that I wouldn't be able to use the Sickle. This just ties back to what I was saying about exclusive content. If that quest is simply impossible for my build (or any build that didn't take Foraging), it even being in the game is merely frustrating.

Well combat is a Physical action for the most part, so it seemed like a good idea. For a combat oriented character, taking out a Rat or a Hornet might be only slightly more draining than Mining a mineral node (or less if they focused heavily on combat).

Combat really does seem like an all-or-nothing deal- you're either a combat character, or you're not and shouldn't fight at all. If you're a non-combat build, the costs of even basic combat are so high as to be completely prohibitive- the one time I managed to kill a rat, I'd burned so much VP (I'd been reduced to literally 1 point) that I wrote it off as a bad trade and reloaded my last save instead. Maybe engaging in combat should have a fixed VP COST per fight (reduced for fighter builds), but making it your actual HP? That just discourages combat-based characters from engaging in any physical activity OTHER than combat unless they want to get knocked out in short order if they take on a challenging combat encounter.

I'll do a better explanation to Backgrounds in game. I'll also modify the sleep penalties a bit for the cheap beds (you can buy better beds from the Goblin Merchant sometimes). On a side note, I'll give a quick explanation of bonuses from Backgrounds.

"Noble" gives a bonus to customer satisfaction in the Brothel, +2 to Persuasion and Seduction Rolls and -2 to Haggle Rolls, Large penalty to sleeping on cheap beds.
"Commoner" gives +10 bonus to starting Vitality and a Small penatly to sleeping on cheap beds.
'Street Urchin" gives a +1 bonus to Pickpocket and Lockpicking Rolls as well as no penalty to sleeping on cheap beds, for more prude races you may get a negative roll to you Persuasion/Seduction rolls in the future once they are implemented).

As for Morality, there is no way to regenerate it so I actually assumed people would be happy if it regenned from sleeping, I can remove this though.

That's the kind of stuff that really should be included in the game proper, as those recovery penalties are HARSH (especially as relying on being able to buy ANYTHING specific from the goblin merchant is a bad bet). Also I don't know why you think players would want to regen Morality- we're having a hard enough time getting RID of it, because in a porn game it's a handicap. Surely Morality and Corruption should be governed exclusively by our actions and choices?

It affects more than just your Singing! It gives a +4 bonus to all Persuasion, Seduction and Haggle rolls, as well as a slight bonus to customer satisfaction in the brothel! Singing itself has limited uses though, you can Sing for the Demon Queen at the start instead of Seducing her for a lower affection gain and no Sex Scene. There is also an opportunity to Sing for one of the Goblin Clients in the Brothel to raise her satisfaction. All in all, Beautiful Voice is a pretty good Perk for what you are trying to play.

That's good to know, because that's what I was hoping it did. But the skill description mentions NONE of that aside from the singing bonus.

Well initially, that's how I planned to keep it, but I suppose I can wrap up a lot of those items into one. The upside of the way it is now, is that you can bind certain ones to your Hotbar and open them with a click of a button, like to pen the screen for your "Goblin Reputation" or for your relationship with Saffron. This way you can choose which ones you care about the most to track and have them easily accessible from the Hotbar. But I suppose a better UI for that stuff would be better.

While I can't speak for anyone else, I can't imagine them being so desperate to keep track of their relationships with certain NPCs or factions that they'd need to bind their stat tracker to a hotkey. Just give us a couple of menu trees and cut out the items. The inventory is already hard enough to navigate with hundreds of different materials, ingredients, consumables, pieces of equipment and all the other stuff that's in there.

It sounded like a neat idea when I first thought of it, but I guess it didn't translate well to practice! I'll try to think of something to make the character creation in general smoother.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Just give us a simple menu screen where we can allocate points or pick out skills we want, rather than having to filter through all the different items and use them one by one.

Because I thought it wouldn't make sense if a person who gets their EXP from sleeping around was able to use it to raise his Magic or Agriculture levels. So I divided them into Intellectual, physical and Sex pools.

It's true that it makes a bit more sense that way, but then again that also draws attention to how little sense it makes that you can gain Craft EXP from, say, mining Iron Ore and spend it to increase your Agriculture skills. Again, you don't need to reinvent the wheel- either let players level up with universal EXP and gain skill points for each level they can assign at will, or just let individual skills level up separately with use, so you get better at each individual skill by practicing it. Having to keep track of multiple types of EXP and then spend it manually is kind of the worst of both worlds.

Perception is leveled through Combo EXP. It's a completely passive skill which is used automatically to reveal stuff around you. I suppose I can make it that to level it you will need equal amounts of Craft and Battle EXP, it's just using a 4th category made it a bit neater in the level up screen.

Oh that's a nuisance- I don't have Perception, so all the Craft and Battle EXP I combined to experiment with it is completely wasted...

You can have it in the main screen too, you just have to press the [T] key on the keyboard to toggle it's visibility as was mentioned in the controls!

Forgot about that. I'd suggest you have it be on by default. Until I finally turned it on, I didn't even realise the game was counting in actual realtime, not just with every action I did.

Hourglass is just a material that sells for decent money, it has no physical use of it's own.

Again, that is not apparent. I would be quite upset if I jumped through all the hoops necessary to craft one, only to discover I'd made an elaborate piece of vendor trash.

It's actually not random, and your Seduction skill does play a role in their decision to fuck you! The exact calculation for it is as follows: Roll 1d20, +5 if Handsome, +10 if Gorgeous, +3 if Beautiful Voice, +1 per Charisma Level, +2 per Seduction Level, +5 for Goblin Layer Title, +5 for Goblin Breeder Title. IF overall value is above 18, she will ask you for Sex.

Unfortunately, that's still random, because it's in the hands of the dice roll. Oh sure, it's easy enough to make it a guaranteed thing if I stack up enough of those bonuses (especially the titles and the Gorgeous trait- incidentally, I didn't even SEE the Handsome and Gorgeous traits when I was going through character creation, otherwise I probably would have taken them) but for the time being I'm supposedly the village bicycle of a village of horny, frustrated nymphomaniac shortstacks with a universal pregnancy fetish, and most of them aren't taking an interest in my cock even when I'm overtly coming on to them. At my current level I think I need to roll at least a 12 to get one in the sack, which is pretty strict.

The generic NPCs were mostly designed to represent populations rather than single individuals. Another problem with giving them names is that it wont be as informative on some of your stat cards. For example, your virginity was taken by... "name". it wont be very informative if other species share name lists. Another thing I want to note is that a [Goblin Virgin] gets upgraded to [Goblin] or even [Goblin MILF] if she gets pregnant from sex with you (or some slave). A [Goblin MILF] gets rarely upgraded to [Goblin Breeder] if impregnated, and this minor system will need to be discarded altogether if they start having individual names.

I may track the identities of the generic NPCs more in depth later, if I figure out a decent way to do so, but for now I would prefer to leave them as is.

There's no reason you'd have to discard the "Goblin [attribute]" system if you named the NPCs. Just add the name on, such as calling one "Kelly, Goblin Virgin", who gets promoted to "Kelly, Goblin MILF" once you knock her up. It would actually make the data on the stat cards a lot more meaningful if you remember exactly WHICH Goblin MILF you gave your first time to. You could even just include a pool of names in the game somewhere and have it use a random number generator to assign a name to each generic NPC at the start of every game, to make the experience more unique for every player! I was just inspired to suggest it when I was thinking about the classic RPG Ys: II, where you could transform yourself into a monster and talk to the other monsters in the game- every single one of them had a unique name and bit of dialogue to give them some character! I'm not saying you need to go THAT far, but I think personifying the NPCs would add a lot to the game, considering what the game is all about. Yeah, it'd be a lot of work, but I think it'd be worth it, especially once you've spawned a few kids off the girls.

You can smelt 1, 5 or 10 at a time, the other 2 options remain hidden unless you have the quantity required for them, namely 10, or 20 ore in your inventory. I guess i can make the Options Greyed out rather than invisible so its more informative.

...can't we just have a "select how many you want to craft" option...?


Well, all that said, I'm definitely looking forward to the next version anyway. Do you have a projected development cycle? How long are you intending to have between versions, or is it just going to be a "whenever it's ready" sort of release schedule?

 

[PlacentaSalad]

I feel like there could be additional options to further decrease morality other than having to, as a noble (with no flaws other than submissive), constantly interact with the goblin girls around the village. I'm a little confused because I'm not entirely sure how "stacking" fetishes lowers morality anyway, is the idea that my submissiveness stat and fetishes to goblins will eventually get so high that they'll stop giving me a choice for sex after flirting and will be forceful and this will decrease morality? I notice the defeat to werewolves will cause a loss of WP so maybe being defeated and raped can be a sort of morality loss as well, even if just small. You can add some sexually frustrated, assertive goblin scouts who will also ambush you throughout the forest or goblins who can be found throughout the village who aren't interested in your friendly chatting until they are sexually satisfied, and perhaps if you have the fetishes and the submissiveness to goblin girls and/or the low WP, your character is less likely to resist or fight back. Along with capturing humans and forcing them as slaves to goblins, I feel this would be an immoral action given your character is human, betraying his own kind. Speaking of the scouts who drag you back to camp, perhaps there could be a chance they may have their way with your body as well, just for some extra H-content. Your goblin girls seem pretty nice so far but surely there exists some who would take the opportunity for an easy, free lay with the male sent to serve them. Especially if he's some gorgeous dude who has become popular at the brothel.

Back to morality, I've already spent many in-game nights sleeping around, to the point I was even able to acquire enough sex EXP to level up my sex skill (which I'm not sure what this yet). I don't see any decrease in my character's overall morality at the end of the day when sleeping with the few goblins I can, given my permanently lowered WP from sleeping with the demon queen and losing to werewolves a few times as well. Which brings me to another question, how significant is WP loss to the game? Is it really something we should avoid losing or is there going to be special content associated with characters who might have low willpower? Sometimes goblin girls will say a girl at the brothel might try to enslave you as her "personal breeder" if you don't keep your willpower high enough. Is this just random dialogue or an actual mechanic?

I think you mentioned the possibility of an easier difficulty setting. This would probably be nice.

 

[Jash]

Back to morality, I've already spent many in-game nights sleeping around, to the point I was even able to acquire enough sex EXP to level up my sex skill (which I'm not sure what this yet). I don't see any decrease in my character's overall morality at the end of the day when sleeping with the few goblins I can, given my permanently lowered WP from sleeping with the demon queen and losing to werewolves a few times as well. Which brings me to another question, how significant is WP loss to the game? Is it really something we should avoid losing or is there going to be special content associated with characters who might have low willpower? Sometimes goblin girls will say a girl at the brothel might try to enslave you as her "personal breeder" if you don't keep your willpower high enough. Is this just random dialogue or an actual mechanic?

...wait, you can lose maximum WP by being defeated and raped by werewolves? I haven't encountered werewolves yet, and I assumed losing 20 max WP to the Demon Queen was a story-based one-off event, but having your character permanently crippled as a REPEATABLE penalty for combat loss? That's completely unreasonable, particularly as recovery from rest is apparently %-based, not flat, so if your max WP is reduced enough you eventually won't recover jack.

That sounds like a VERY bad idea.

 

[FeyRing]

Please, no more manuals! The inventory being cluttered with those things is enough of a pain already! Just add a Help menu to the stats screen to lead to an in-game encyclopedia, like most other games do.

Helpful Manuals are actually the only thing that stacks, so adding more will not actually add any new items of clutter. Every Manual in the stack just adds an extra topic to read when selecting the stacked Item, they are the closest thing the game has to the encyclopaedia at the moment.

Yeah, that system is, uh... can't we just have a "give gift" option when we talk to them? Like, you already have "Normal approach" and "Special approach" options for individual NPCs to determine whether you want to interact with them in their capacity as a merchant/mine foreman/blacksmith etc or just chat to/flirt with/give clothes to them normally like any other NPC, why not just add more interaction options, including ones like Pickpocket?

You would still need to select the Gift item beforehand even in that system, otherwise I would have to create a massive list of Gifts currently owned after selecting the "Give Gift" option and that's tedious and wont be as easy to use in game. That said, I may change it in the future as I'm not 100% set on how some social interactions work in game yet.

I was quite shocked to realise long after the fact that my character actually started with only 1s in all his stats, particularly after the game stated that the standard human baseline for all stats is 2. How did this loser ever graduate from the Hero Academy? You'd think that the only way to start with 1s in any stat is if you started the game with a Flaw that reduces it.

You were drained of your soul and levels technically, so it shouldn't be too surprising that you start off with such low stats.

Speaking of Flaws, I didn't even bother looking at them- you did a very good job of convincing me that they were absolutely crippling and far more trouble than they were worth and only for masochists seeking an even harder time than normal, especially since they're apparently only worth a measly 1 MP!

They change how much freedom you have in some options, for the most part they introduce restrictions or significant de-buffs for certain play-styles. But they can sometimes have positive effects too. The "Greed" Flaw for example actually helps you a bit in bypassing Morality when wishing to work in the Brothel, so does "Submissive".

The optimal way to complete a fetch quest should never be "buy the item from the merchant". If you're trying to get 20 Bear Asses, your standard response should not be looking for someone who sells bear asses.

Then how are you supposed to acquire the above mentioned Bear Ass, if it's owner refuses to part with a crucial part of his body despite your high "Persuasion" skills? There should be some way for non-combat characters to acquire monster drops, whether its for a quest or as a crafting component. Having the merchant sell them on a rare occasion for hefty sum of coin doesn't seem like a bad idea to me personally.

It should be able to... but unfortunately it does. I lost my virginity to the Demon Queen, with the accompanying -20 Morality cost, and picked up the Pointy Ears and Green Skin fetishes (which took a LOT of effort because even with my dedicated seducer build only about 1/5 goblins is interested in fucking),

I'll lower the difficulty check on them asking for Sex in the next release.

I have no idea where I could find beer (the merchant doesn't sell it) and my Morality continues to increase every time I rest, which is on average about twice per day.

It is sold by the Brothel Madam in the Brothel. If you lower your will power to the minimum required for working there, by say talking/flirting beforehand it should also help a bit. I'll add some more ways to lower Morality in the next release.

You know, I didn't even realise that I wouldn't be able to use the Sickle. This just ties back to what I was saying about exclusive content. If that quest is simply impossible for my build (or any build that didn't take Foraging), it even being in the game is merely frustrating.

It is only a repeatable mini quest like the Rat clearing one, it has a similar reward for it.

Combat really does seem like an all-or-nothing deal- you're either a combat character, or you're not and shouldn't fight at all. If you're a non-combat build, the costs of even basic combat are so high as to be completely prohibitive- the one time I managed to kill a rat, I'd burned so much VP (I'd been reduced to literally 1 point) that I wrote it off as a bad trade and reloaded my last save instead.

You can close the advantage gap with gear, fighting practically empty handed and with no combat skills should be hard in my opinion. The Rats will get their HP reduced by a third next release though.

Maybe engaging in combat should have a fixed VP COST per fight (reduced for fighter builds), but making it your actual HP? That just discourages combat-based characters from engaging in any physical activity OTHER than combat unless they want to get knocked out in short order if they take on a challenging combat encounter.

A combat only focused character wont be able to engage in most other activities regardless, as they don't have the skills to even begin the Mining/Gathering events. Once they do pick up skills or if they went for a more hybrid approach they wont actually have much problems with doing both in the same day, especially if they have gear. Though it still boils down to how many and of what encounter you want to squeeze into one day.

That's the kind of stuff that really should be included in the game proper, as those recovery penalties are HARSH (especially as relying on being able to buy ANYTHING specific from the goblin merchant is a bad bet). Also I don't know why you think players would want to regen Morality- we're having a hard enough time getting RID of it, because in a porn game it's a handicap. Surely Morality and Corruption should be governed exclusively by our actions and choices?

I figured that not everyone wanted to slip into depravity even in a porn game. Corruption is actually not the corruption you are thinking of, its Transformative corruption that will turn you into an Incubus eventually, giving access to demonic abilities. Its generated primarily by having Sex with demons. That sad, since Lapis is the only demon in the game for now, you can't actually increase it above what you got for sleeping with her at the start.

That's good to know, because that's what I was hoping it did. But the skill description mentions NONE of that aside from the singing bonus.

There is a very limited amount of space in the flavour text box of each item. I'll try to find a better way to relay exact effects to people.

While I can't speak for anyone else, I can't imagine them being so desperate to keep track of their relationships with certain NPCs or factions that they'd need to bind their stat tracker to a hotkey.

I did this! Though, I admit a significant reason was to make it easier to play test the systems which change those stats on the fly.

Just give us a couple of menu trees and cut out the items. The inventory is already hard enough to navigate with hundreds of different materials, ingredients, consumables, pieces of equipment and all the other stuff that's in there.

I'll try to find a way to simplify this, it will take some time though.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Just give us a simple menu screen where we can allocate points or pick out skills we want, rather than having to filter through all the different items and use them one by one.

I don't know how to make one at this very moment. I will need to learn Ruby first, so this will take time. I do want to do this but I can't tell you how much time this will take to accomplish.

It's true that it makes a bit more sense that way, but then again that also draws attention to how little sense it makes that you can gain Craft EXP from, say, mining Iron Ore and spend it to increase your Agriculture skills. Again, you don't need to reinvent the wheel- either let players level up with universal EXP and gain skill points for each level they can assign at will, or just let individual skills level up separately with use, so you get better at each individual skill by practicing it. Having to keep track of multiple types of EXP and then spend it manually is kind of the worst of both worlds.

Universal EXP is something I'm pretty adamant against for now. I initially wanted to level each skill when it is used, but it didn't work for some skills. Perception is passive so it generates no actual EXP, you wouldn't be able to increase it at all if you couldn't funnel EXP from other sources into it. Black Magic and Athletics both receive EXP from combat encounters, I would have no way of telling which one was used to win the encounter, and hence no way of assigning EXP to either fairly. I wasn't actually re-inventing the wheel either, I got inspired by Fable's system which had three EXP pools as well, one for Guile, One for Magic and one for Might. The EXP that you got from mobs there depended on what skill category was used to kill the enemy.

Oh that's a nuisance- I don't have Perception, so all the Craft and Battle EXP I combined to experiment with it is completely wasted...

I guess I can make it so it can be split backwards too, maybe not at a 1 to 1 ratio though...

Forgot about that. I'd suggest you have it be on by default. Until I finally turned it on, I didn't even realise the game was counting in actual realtime, not just with every action I did.

I'll see if I can stick it on by default. In the future I want to replace with a more "pretty" graphical one, once I make a better UI for the screen.

Again, that is not apparent. I would be quite upset if I jumped through all the hoops necessary to craft one, only to discover I'd made an elaborate piece of vendor trash.

I'll change the description so it seems less misleading.

Unfortunately, that's still random, because it's in the hands of the dice roll. Oh sure, it's easy enough to make it a guaranteed thing if I stack up enough of those bonuses (especially the titles and the Gorgeous trait- incidentally, I didn't even SEE the Handsome and Gorgeous traits when I was going through character creation, otherwise I probably would have taken them)

You can get them from the Mirror after you pick up the trait manuals. They are SUPER expensive though, Handsome is worth 4 Memory Points and Gorgeous is worth 8. Gorgeous in particular will attract unwanted attention and can increase chances of enslavement Game Overs. There are some minor changes to initial dialogue with many of the NPCs if either trait is taken and they give significant bonuses to customer satisfaction in the brothel and with social interactions with female characters. Giving gifts when you are either Handsome or Gorgeous also gives a boost to reputation for general NPCs and Affection for Heroines.

but for the time being I'm supposedly the village bicycle of a village of horny, frustrated nymphomaniac shortstacks with a universal pregnancy fetish, and most of them aren't taking an interest in my cock even when I'm overtly coming on to them. At my current level I think I need to roll at least a 12 to get one in the sack, which is pretty strict.

I'll lower the difficulty check significantly, but they do have jobs they are supposed to be doing technically!

There's no reason you'd have to discard the "Goblin [attribute]" system if you named the NPCs. Just add the name on, such as calling one "Kelly, Goblin Virgin", who gets promoted to "Kelly, Goblin MILF" once you knock her up. It would actually make the data on the stat cards a lot more meaningful if you remember exactly WHICH Goblin MILF you gave your first time to. You could even just include a pool of names in the game somewhere and have it use a random number generator to assign a name to each generic NPC at the start of every game, to make the experience more unique for every player! I was just inspired to suggest it when I was thinking about the classic RPG Ys: II, where you could transform yourself into a monster and talk to the other monsters in the game- every single one of them had a unique name and bit of dialogue to give them some character! I'm not saying you need to go THAT far, but I think personifying the NPCs would add a lot to the game, considering what the game is all about. Yeah, it'd be a lot of work, but I think it'd be worth it, especially once you've spawned a few kids off the girls.

The NPC attributes are already randomly generated. While I personally would like to do this, it will be rather difficult and will require me to rewrite a few systems. It will also lead to significant other issues. For example, you spend your days happily with your adorable waifu Kelly, who you gave your first time to and have a nice family with... then one day you walk into the Brothel and you see that she is fucking a random slave there... I am pretty sure you will be "mildly annoyed" at best. The reason I say this, is because it's how the system currently works, when you have slaves in the brothel and you walk in at night, sometimes their sprite will be on the bed getting ridden by a Goblin sprite. Because the Goblins are only identifiable by their attribute currently, there is no reason to believe that the [Goblin Milf] fucking that slave is the same one that you have your lovey-dovey family with. However, if they start having individual names, then the ones fucking in the brothel will draw from the same name pool as the ones walking around in the village and this may start upsetting people. Which will lead to people asking to have options to disable brothel visits for specific generic npcs, which is going to be even more work.

Another significant issue of this approach is that over time, all the NPCs in the village could become Milfs or Breeders, which means I will have to disable the scenes for normal Goblins and Virgins in the brothel, leading to a decreased variety of scenes and customers there as the game progresses.

So while I like the proposal, I don't have a very good idea on how to deal with the above two issues that will instantly arise.

...can't we just have a "select how many you want to craft" option...?

We could I suppose, I'll change it and see if it works better.

Well, all that said, I'm definitely looking forward to the next version anyway. Do you have a projected development cycle? How long are you intending to have between versions, or is it just going to be a "whenever it's ready" sort of release schedule?

It's a bit hard to predict, since some things are much easier and faster to make than others. Graphical elements like new enemy sprites and defeat CGs is the most time consuming step. Releases that don't add them will thus be faster. Hence I'll say that "Whenever it's ready" probably describes it best in this case.

I plan to add some of the changes discussed here recently in the next day or or two. The release will mostly be quality of life and bug fixes though and not everything discussed will make it in as some of it will require a lot of work. The control scheme for WASD will definitely be in though.

I feel like there could be additional options to further decrease morality other than having to, as a noble (with no flaws other than submissive), constantly interact with the goblin girls around the village.

I'll add some in.

I'm a little confused because I'm not entirely sure how "stacking" fetishes lowers morality anyway, is the idea that my submissiveness stat and fetishes to goblins will eventually get so high that they'll stop giving me a choice for sex after flirting and will be forceful and this will decrease morality?

Morality is kind of like the Difficulty Check number. Say you have 100, then your DC for agreeing to work in the brothel is 100. Each Goblin specific Fetish lowers this number by a certain amount, as do some Flaws/Traits, status effects and mental exhaustion. Things like Noble background, Virginities and Flaws like Arrogance increase the number instead/ When the calculation is done and the number reaches Zero, your character will agree to work in the brothel.

I notice the defeat to werewolves will cause a loss of WP so maybe being defeated and raped can be a sort of morality loss as well, even if just small. You can add some sexually frustrated, assertive goblin scouts who will also ambush you throughout the forest or goblins who can be found throughout the village who aren't interested in your friendly chatting until they are sexually satisfied, and perhaps if you have the fetishes and the submissiveness to goblin girls and/or the low WP, your character is less likely to resist or fight back.

The defeat scenes generating decreases to morality is something I have been mulling over as well, I'll probably do just that! Enemy Goblin NPCs could be possible in the future too.

Along with capturing humans and forcing them as slaves to goblins, I feel this would be an immoral action given your character is human, betraying his own kind.

Since you can technically let them go before you hand them over, I think capturing them probably wont cause morality to drop, but handing them over will!

Speaking of the scouts who drag you back to camp, perhaps there could be a chance they may have their way with your body as well, just for some extra H-content.

But you wont be able to see that H-content in that case, since you are knocked out!

Your goblin girls seem pretty nice so far but surely there exists some who would take the opportunity for an easy, free lay with the male sent to serve them. Especially if he's some gorgeous dude who has become popular at the brothel.

I mean in general the idea is not bad but, it kind of forces people who don't want to have sex with Goblins (the AUDACITY that such may exist), into having a threat of it happening even when fighting things unrelated to the Goblins. I'll keep it in mind though.

Back to morality, I've already spent many in-game nights sleeping around, to the point I was even able to acquire enough sex EXP to level up my sex skill (which I'm not sure what this yet).

It mostly increases customer satisfaction, or in general sex satisfaction. It also increases the number of +1 Will and +1 Vitality points that you can buy.

I don't see any decrease in my character's overall morality at the end of the day when sleeping with the few goblins I can, given my permanently lowered WP from sleeping with the demon queen and losing to werewolves a few times as well.

Initially I planned that only significant actions would lower it, but I'll add more ways of decreasing it.

Which brings me to another question, how significant is WP loss to the game? Is it really something we should avoid losing or is there going to be special content associated with characters who might have low willpower? Sometimes goblin girls will say a girl at the brothel might try to enslave you as her "personal breeder" if you don't keep your willpower high enough. Is this just random dialogue or an actual mechanic?

It's an actual mechanic, you can get a Game Over if your Will power is too low and you do a little too well in bed in a certain encounter. Will power is also used for Brothel actions, Social actions and for casting Magic, if your pool for it is too low, these things will be difficult to do.

...wait, you can lose maximum WP by being defeated and raped by werewolves? I haven't encountered werewolves yet, and I assumed losing 20 max WP to the Demon Queen was a story-based one-off event, but having your character permanently crippled as a REPEATABLE penalty for combat loss? That's completely unreasonable, particularly as recovery from rest is apparently %-based, not flat, so if your max WP is reduced enough you eventually won't recover jack.

That sounds like a VERY bad idea.

That permanent WP loss is capped at -20 as well. Also, you can permanently increase your WP and VP with EXP. When buying skills up, there is symbol that has a little blue brain with a plus sign and a red heart with a plus sign, those are permanent +1s that you can buy to increase your WP and VP pools.

I should probably also point out, that Werewolves become permanently stronger the more children you have with them, so if you don't want them to power up, bring condoms when fighting them.

 

[futatiger]

as a suggestion for a way to make combat easier for non-combat builds maybe you could have it so that Lapis offers you the ability to keep maybe your armor or weapons but in keeping with your theme of tradeoffs your character would have to take a debuff or a cursed piece of gear like a magic collar the increases femdom fetish or a chastity cage that can only be unlocked by the goblin's stand in chief {forcing you to do tasks for her or work in the brothel in exchange for temporary release} or a magic cockring that makes you crave sex

 

[FeyRing]

as a suggestion for a way to make combat easier for non-combat builds maybe you could have it so that Lapis offers you the ability to keep maybe your armor or weapons

She technically already does this, she offers you one of your weapons, an accessory, a pet or a your bag of coins. To be honest, I don't really think that a person who didn't take combat skills should find combat to be anything but very difficult, after all a person who didn't take Mining can't even interact with a mineral node. Certain crafting professions allow you to craft gear and consumables to substitute for lack of combat ability already (or enhance it if taken together with combat skills), you can also find these as drops in chests. Enemies are not essential to the plot so interacting and fighting them isn't really necessary at the start of the game, and later on combat skills can just be acquired from the sources I mentioned earlier or proper gear equipped.

On a side note, Cursed Gear is planned for this game!

 

[futatiger]

does the merchant sell wolf pelts? I have a non-combat build and need 4 for a quest

 

[FeyRing]

does the merchant sell wolf pelts? I have a non-combat build and need 4 for a quest

No, I forgot to add them in to her list of wares, they will be added in the next release.

If you can get your Strength to 2 and toughness to 3 and equip a shiv, you might be able to kill one if you have no consumables... in case you don't want to wait for the update.

 

[atar]

Definitely prioritize adding WSAD.

Create a method whereby all skills can be trained up.

Make it less grindy, and don't use grind as a placeholder.

 

[Al Gore]

I'm pretty impressed with your in-depth responses to intense criticism. I know you've gotten a lot of questions about willpower and morality and I was curious if there will ever be a way to lower permanent willpower losses from things like werewolf losses, like maybe beating werewolves in battle could lower the werewolf debuff. I know you can boost willpower with skills but it'd make sense if there was a way to remove debuffs as well. Also I'd suggest that some tweaks get done with morality like having more things lower morality and adding things besides sleeping that gain morality, like helping people or questing or something.

 

[FeyRing]

Definitely prioritize adding WSAD.

Create a method whereby all skills can be trained up.

Make it less grindy, and don't use grind as a placeholder.

To be fair, I never found it to be grindy myself, so it was a bit of a surprise to me when that was raised as one of the biggest issues. Hopefully I can tweak the numbers enough to make it acceptable for everyone!

I was curious if there will ever be a way to lower permanent willpower losses from things like werewolf losses, like maybe beating werewolves in battle could lower the werewolf debuff. I know you can boost willpower with skills but it'd make sense if there was a way to remove debuffs as well.

At the moment the loss is capped and upon reaching the cap, you get a "Title" for being their chewtoy, and in the near future, this title will make them nonhostile at night (unless you physically ask them for a fight). I have been considering the possibility of implementing ways to remove that debuff too as well as ways to remove Flaws that were initially picked at character creation. Though it is unlikely to be something as simple as beating the Werewolves, because they actually are quite weak if you have armour and decent stats from accessories.

Also I'd suggest that some tweaks get done with morality like having more things lower morality and adding things besides sleeping that gain morality, like helping people or questing or something.

Already on it! There is slight mini-quest in the game where you can hand over the Thief you take as a prisoner to the Soldier traveler, I think that it would make sense if that increased Morality too. More ways to increase it will likely come as the area expands, though I can think of a few actions that should increase it even with the current set up. Naturally more ways to lower it will also be added in the next release... which will hopefully be today and in the worst case tomorrow.

 

[FeyRing]

I usually try not to double post, but I have updated the game to version 0.1.1 for both Patreons and Public. Link is the same as before.

https://feyring.itch.io/black-garden

This version contains some bug fixes as well as a significant amount of Quality Of Life features and changes that were requested. The most prominent of which are the splitting the game into two game difficulties and the reassignment of controls for a more commonly used WASD movement layout, read bellow for a more detailed change log.

I have not extensively tested all of these changes, so I advise backing up your save files just in case.

• Changed control layout: Movement is now bound to WASD, confirm/interact bound to SPACEBAR and Menu/Cancel is bound to Esc, remember to unbind WASD on your hotbar if you have it bound to anything!
  
  
• Added Ability to Toggle Always Sprinting On and Off. Simply bind the Item "Sprint Toggle" to you Hotbar on any key desired.
  
  
• The amount of Honey required to complete the Honey Quest in the Goblin Tower has been reduced to 10 from the initial 20.
  
  
• Drop rate of Honey also slightly increased from 10% to 12.5%.
  
  
• The Construction Skill level requirement for fixing the Bridge in the Emerald Forest has been reduced from 2 to 1.
  
  
• Tagged certain items and locations as [NOT IMPLEMENTED] to better indicate playable area.
  
  
• Tagged Certain Items as [GIFT], they were already gift-able but were missing the description tag (Gemstones and Quartz, etc).
  
  
• Added a bit of text dialogue to Lapis when asking about your job, she mentions that Gifts can be given to motivate the girls and that you have to select them in inventory beforehand.
  
  
• Victor has now been fixed and should no longer freeze the game when told to run etc.
  
  
• Rats no longer attack you if they touch you, instead you have to interact with them to start the fight.
  
  
• Decreased Rat VP pool from 30 to 20.
  
  
• Made the Hourglass description less misleading as it is not a tool nor is usable to measure time.
  
  
• Decreased the Difficulty check when Flirting with Goblins from 19 to 15.
  
  
• Implemented an "Easy" mode, selectable at the start of the game and ONCE when loading your saves.
  
  
• Easy Mode gives +50% More EXP for most actions (Does no affect Bonuses like EXP earned for losing virginity).
  
  
• Separated EXP gain into Tiers and narrowed down the range by upping the minimum amount in both game modes.
  
  
• Wolf Pelts will now be sold by the Goblin Merchant whenever they raid a Hunter's Camp.
  
  
• Sleep Penalties for sleeping in cheap beds have been decreased.
  
  
• Smelting Ore is now done through manual number input at the Forge instead of in stacks of 1, 5 and 10.
  
  
• Leather can now be acquired without the Tailoring skill. A Tanning Knife has been introduced for this purpose.
  
  
• Tanning Knife can be crafted with Smithing or purchased from the Goblin Smith.
  
  
• Sell Price of the Iron mace has been adjusted to no longer yield profit if ingredients were purchased rather than mined.
  
  
• Added a note to Talking/Flirting with Goblins that indicates that the action will take 1 Hour.
  
  
• Additional ways to lose Morality have been added, Getting Used in prison -5, Loss to Werewolf -5, Donate Slave to Household (including to Saffron) -10, Bring Student Slave instead of Spell Scroll For Saffron Quest -10, Donate Slave to Brothel -20.
  
  
• Additionally attacking Victor or Soldier and Merchant Travelers decreases Morality by 5, attacking the Priest decreases Morality by 10.

• Giving Thief Prisoner to the Soldier Adventurer to arrest gives +10 Morality, Releasing Furo also gives +10 Morality.
  
  
• Rewrote Morality Requirements for working at the Brothel, significantly increased the value of each Goblin themed Fetish in its role for overcoming inhibition.
  
  
• Background Selection now gives an outline of bonuses for each one.
  
  
• Added an Item called [EXTRA OPTIONS], allows for toggling of various game options like turning On or Off of the Loading Screens and Fancy Map Names.
  
  
• Added a blocker to prevent completely unimplemented specialisations from being taken.
  
  
• Added reminder to toggle the clock with [T] just after you are teleported into the forest and it becomes relevant.
  
  
• Added 3 more Helpful Manuals to highlight the Relationship/Gift System, Crafting System and Morality/Fetish System a bit better.
  
  
• Chopping Table should now be possible to place down in your home!
  
  
• Milfs from the Goblin Gangbang in the Brothel should now correctly add themselves and their Pregnancies to your Faction stat sheet.
  
  
• Sulfur node now correctly awards Sulfur upon mining and not Quartz!
  

 

[Proto042]

I have enjoyed what's playable so far and look forward to future additions. However I have some issues with the current version.

First, The controls being wasd based is not a good idea for rpg maker games. That control style is more favorable for right hand mouse usage as using wasd and then ijkl for other buttons can feel cramped on some keyboards as opposed to arrows and zxc for other buttons. Please consider either adding a choice between the two or allowing players to fully remap their controls to their liking.

Second, the game has some grind/ item economy issues. It is real easy to get walled by a few items or drops. Mainly glue and varnish are difficult to get because of the complete RNG of getting oil/dandelions. Which is a problem because most construction projects require one of them. as for the grind right now silk is a good example of a problematic economy on it. you need 20 spider webs to make 1 silk thread, 6 thread for 1 silk, and anywhere from 2 to 8 silk to make any thing that uses silk. now if run those numbers you need anywhere between 240 to 960 spiderwebs per item. This is compounded by the bottle neck of only being able to get 6 spider webs a day. which means you need to spend between 40 to 160 days to make one item which is just way too much grind. This isn't the only Issue of to much grind I ran across just to easiest and most quantifiable. I am also aware that some of this will be addressed by adding more areas, but having a more stable shop or at least some way to influence what will will be sold could alleviate some of this.

Third, Combat has some issues of balance mainly the difference in the fire power between physical and magical sources. some of this comes from techs not having as much firepower as magic right now despite taking longer to use due to tp generation. However the other side of this is that a smart player can easily avoid the penalties of having low wp so there is no real danger to using spells that are more accurate and hit harder than your weapons. Especially, since all magic has a free follow up attack to do even more damage. Though as a side note you need to stop the player from just casting the follow up as it is free damage with no cost right now.

The last thing I have issues with is item management. I won't get to much into it as I have seen a few other comments talking about it but it needs some work as setting down furniture is a pain right now (a system for that would be nice) and the skill manuals feel clunkier than if they were their own menu tab. Also it kind of annoying that skill books vanish on use but cooking recipe books don't.

I look forward to seeing how this game develops and good luck with development.

 

[Jash]

First, The controls being wasd based is not a good idea for rpg maker games. That control style is more favorable for right hand mouse usage as using wasd and then ijkl for other buttons can feel cramped on some keyboards as opposed to arrows and zxc for other buttons. Please consider either adding a choice between the two or allowing players to fully remap their controls to their liking.

Oh god, we just spent a page and a half telling him we don't like the arrow controls and prefer WASD, why you gotta muddy the damn issue by insisting that you don't like WASD and prefer the arrows?

I don't think RPGmaker can be configured to allow players to fully assign their own controls (although I could be mistaken), but I'm pretty sure you can set up 2 potential control schemes and allow the player to choose between them on the options menu. That's probably the best compromise we're going to get. Although personally I'm still holding out for controller support.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Is there a reason the actions can't be mapped to both buttons? I'm fairly sure I've seen that done before.

 

[FeyRing]

I have taken a rather extensive look at allowing more than one key to correspond to the same action, and I have not found a way to do it. This could be due to my limited knowledge of Ruby Script and may change in the future as I get more proficient with it.

Second, the game has some grind/ item economy issues. It is real easy to get walled by a few items or drops. Mainly glue and varnish are difficult to get because of the complete RNG of getting oil/dandelions.

Oil should be possible to grind out from seeds using a Mortar&Pestle, I don't think it requires any Skills. I'll consider adding Oil and Varnish to a vendor as well!

right now silk is a good example of a problematic economy on it. you need 20 spider webs to make 1 silk thread, 6 thread for 1 silk, and anywhere from 2 to 8 silk to make any thing that uses silk. now if run those numbers you need anywhere between 240 to 960 spiderwebs per item. This is compounded by the bottle neck of only being able to get 6 spider webs a day. which means you need to spend between 40 to 160 days to make one item which is just way too much grind.

Silk was meant as a more of intermediate material, there aren't many recipes for it. There is going to be a more manageable way to farm it and grow it on a Silk Spider farm.

having a more stable shop or at least some way to influence what will will be sold could alleviate some of this.

I'll try to think of something. I'm a bit worried that a shop that's too predictable will erode away at any reason to have crafting skills though.

Third, Combat has some issues of balance mainly the difference in the fire power between physical and magical sources. some of this comes from techs not having as much firepower as magic right now despite taking longer to use due to tp generation. However the other side of this is that a smart player can easily avoid the penalties of having low wp so there is no real danger to using spells that are more accurate and hit harder than your weapons. Especially, since all magic has a free follow up attack to do even more damage. Though as a side note you need to stop the player from just casting the follow up as it is free damage with no cost right now.

Might abilities should have a follow up attack as well, unless its just a weapon skill like "Slash". The follow up attacks hardly do any damage, their main function is to possibly inflict a state on the enemy. I agree that the balance needs some looking into though. I'm planning to add some Magic resistant enemies in the near future to see how that influences the power balance between Might and Magic abilities.

The last thing I have issues with is item management. I won't get to much into it as I have seen a few other comments talking about it but it needs some work as setting down furniture is a pain right now (a system for that would be nice) and the skill manuals feel clunkier than if they were their own menu tab. Also it kind of annoying that skill books vanish on use but cooking recipe books don't.

I'm hopefully going to iron out some of the clunkyness as I progress and get better with Ruby Script so I can move further away from using events and make actual scripts to handle some of these things.

The reason Skill books vanish is because you can get another copy of them, and using it again will grant you a large boost to EXP associated with that skill, while Recipe books can be sold after use to get a bit of money.

I look forward to seeing how this game develops and good luck with development.

Thank you!

====================================

On a side note, it was pointed out to me elsewhere that the "Extra Options" Item doesn't work right now, I will fix it in the next release...

 

[Jash]

I STILL can't work the brothel! Despite 2 ranks in Green Skin fetish and 1 in Pointy Ears, my 92 morality (which is still increasing every time I rest), Noble background and anal virginity refuse to let me work there. How am I supposed to lower my morality? I can't capture slaves (non-combat character, remember?), running out and throwing fights to Werewolves just to lose it doesn't sound like a good idea (I tried anyway, but immediately proved my suspicions right as I was instantly jumped by an actual wolf in the dark of the night while looking for werewolves and brutally torn to bits in 3 hits while futilely attempting to flee- not going to bother doing THAT again), and I don't even know what "Getting used in prison" refers to, but I'd prefer not to be imprisoned for what it's worth. Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if the entire Morality system isn't going to just be a ball and chain that causes more frustration than anything else. What, if I might ask, is the system actually for?

 

[PaterNoster]

If you go down in a fight, but Snuffles makes it through, you can just keep playing as normal (haven't tried spending VP on anything in that state).

Putting Snuffles back into the basket will give you an instant standard Game Over ;-) (with the standard screen, as opposed to the fancy skeleton CG I got when a wolf ate me).

Sleeping won't revive you - you stay at 0 VP (while it does revive Snuffles, I'm pretty sure), and I'm not sure if there even are any revival items, as it seemed like it's not a state you are ever supposed to be in.

To get back to normal, I had to go fight something that won't trigger a Game Over (like a rat) and wait for Snuffles to get wiped out that way.

 

[FeyRing]

I STILL can't work the brothel! Despite 2 ranks in Green Skin fetish and 1 in Pointy Ears

Those two give the lowest bypass value, the Fetish for "Goblin" has 3 times the value and "big tits", "large asses" 2 times the value.

How am I supposed to lower my morality?

If you lower your current WP to 20% or less of your maximum it will have the same effect value as losing an extra virginity, getting drunk is also the equivalent. I am honestly a bit stumped, since you should have 80 WP and not 100 from fucking the Demon Queen, this also adds a massive bypass value. In your current situation your morality is only adding a +20 to the DC and all the things I mentioned are giving a -20 each. Lowering you morality to Zero is equivalent to being Drunk or at 20% WP. If neither of those work I would probably need to rethink how the inhibition system works in general...

I can't capture slaves (non-combat character, remember?),

On a side note, not all of them need to be fought to be captured, the Student can be Intimidated or knocked unconscious when using an Invisibility potion and Barbarian can be poisoned with Fly Amanita Mushrooms.

running out and throwing fights to Werewolves just to lose it doesn't sound like a good idea (I tried anyway, but immediately proved my suspicions right as I was instantly jumped by an actual wolf in the dark of the night while looking for werewolves and brutally torn to bits in 3 hits while futilely attempting to flee- not going to bother doing THAT again)

Werewolves are on the other map, if you take the first turn to the right you shouldnt run into any Wolves on the way there... that said it's probably not an ideal way to fix this.

and I don't even know what "Getting used in prison" refers to, but I'd prefer not to be imprisoned for what it's worth.

If you get caught Pickpocketing or breaking into houses at night you will be sent to Prison if you can't pay the fine.

I'm starting to wonder if the entire Morality system isn't going to just be a ball and chain that causes more frustration than anything else. What, if I might ask, is the system actually for?

It's supposed to limit some decisions in the future content, the whole Brothel thing is actually not affected by it that much as it only has an effect if you have Virginities and even then it only adds a 20% (10% for first kiss) of its value to the DC which is set by you max WP now instead. I think I might need to add a few more factors to lower the DC in the calculation.

===================================================================================

If you go down in a fight, but Snuffles makes it through, you can just keep playing as normal (haven't tried spending VP on anything in that state).

Putting Snuffles back into the basket will give you an instant standard Game Over ;-) (with the standard screen, as opposed to the fancy skeleton CG I got when a wolf ate me).

Sleeping won't revive you - you stay at 0 VP (while it does revive Snuffles, I'm pretty sure), and I'm not sure if there even are any revival items, as it seemed like it's not a state you are ever supposed to be in.

To get back to normal, I had to go fight something that won't trigger a Game Over (like a rat) and wait for Snuffles to get wiped out that way.

The game should end if you ever hit 0 in a fight against Wolves, I will take a look at this bug and have it fixed in the next update!

 

[PaterNoster]

The game should end if you ever hit 0 in a fight against Wolves, I will take a look at this bug and have it fixed in the next update!

No, it happened against a rat - just pointed out that the wolf had a fancy Game Over screen^^

Snuffles beat it after I went down, game went on as normal after a victory with me dead.


Also, after grinding way too many rats, I finally got 100 combat XP and learned Arms 1 (I had Athletics -> Climbing from character generation), and in addition to Focus, Rage and some physical ability that I can't use (maybe I need another weapon?), in combat I saw it also gave me Fire II.... which deals about 500 damage.

 

[Proto042]

Oh god, we just spent a page and a half telling him we don't like the arrow controls and prefer WASD, why you gotta muddy the damn issue by insisting that you don't like WASD and prefer the arrows?

I don't think RPGmaker can be configured to allow players to fully assign their own controls (although I could be mistaken), but I'm pretty sure you can set up 2 potential control schemes and allow the player to choose between them on the options menu. That's probably the best compromise we're going to get. Although personally I'm still holding out for controller support.

While I respect that you have your preferences for controls I have to say wasd is terrible for RPG Maker. There is a reason that arrows are the standard for 2d and 2.5d games and wasd is the standard for 3d. Wasd allows for the player to use their no dominant hand for broad movement whith more precise and finite movement controlled by the mouse. However, this has the problem of limiting the availbilty of keys as your left hand is effectively tethered to wasd and can't stray far from it thus limiting the keys you can use and it not generally intuitive for a player to use the other half of the keyboard. furthermore most laptop keyboards don't have number pads so that isn't an acceptable option for some players.

Now arrow keys may not feel right to predominately wasd based players however it offers a more benefits as a result of 2d games not needing to deal with camera control and mouses in general. The first obvious advantage is that it opens all of the keys that you can comfortably reach for input. I used asdfg as a quick bar of items particularly for my watch, seeds, and coin bags. this allowed me to both use items while moving and quickly navigate menus without having to move my hands that much. the Second benefit of the arrows keys is the space between my hands as it gets really annoying when I have to do a ton of inputs that I am crossing over my hands when I am playing. If you don't believe me try playing a fighting game with movement mapped to wasd and punches and kicks mapped to uio and jkl . it is not directly commparable but it shows the issues of long sessions in a short amount of time.

Now for RPG maker there is a little issue with the current wasd control setup primarily esc being menu as left shift is sprint. There is no comfortable way to pull up the menu while sprinting which is a problem when you are running from wolves and need to use an item from your menu so you don't die. It also makes it hard to setup a good hotbar for on the go.

I understand that you are not used to arrow movement and it feels wierd but once you get used to it. It is so much better and more comfortable for general use. There is a reason it is the default for RPG maker controls.

 

[FeyRing]

No, it happened against a rat - just pointed out that the wolf had a fancy Game Over screen^^

Snuffles beat it after I went down, game went on as normal after a victory with me dead.

That's rather strange, I'll take a look at all of the encounters just in case then!

Also, after grinding way too many rats, I finally got 100 combat XP and learned Arms 1 (I had Athletics -> Climbing from character generation), and in addition to Focus, Rage and some physical ability that I can't use (maybe I need another weapon?), in combat I saw it also gave me Fire II.... which deals about 500 damage.

Ah yes, I think I set it up that they need specific weapons, like "rapid slash" needs bladed weapons as it wont make sense for it to work with a Mace etc... also that Fire II skill shouldn't be there I forgot to take it out when I was testing to see how certain variables effected element damage... I'll have it removed in the next update!

===========================================================================================

While I respect that you have your preferences for controls I have to say wasd is terrible for RPG Maker. There is a reason that arrows are the standard for 2d and 2.5d games and wasd is the standard for 3d. Wasd allows for the player to use their no dominant hand for broad movement whith more precise and finite movement controlled by the mouse. However, this has the problem of limiting the availbilty of keys as your left hand is effectively tethered to wasd and can't stray far from it thus limiting the keys you can use and it not generally intuitive for a player to use the other half of the keyboard. furthermore most laptop keyboards don't have number pads so that isn't an acceptable option for some players.

Now arrow keys may not feel right to predominately wasd based players however it offers a more benefits as a result of 2d games not needing to deal with camera control and mouses in general. The first obvious advantage is that it opens all of the keys that you can comfortably reach for input. I used asdfg as a quick bar of items particularly for my watch, seeds, and coin bags. this allowed me to both use items while moving and quickly navigate menus without having to move my hands that much. the Second benefit of the arrows keys is the space between my hands as it gets really annoying when I have to do a ton of inputs that I am crossing over my hands when I am playing. If you don't believe me try playing a fighting game with movement mapped to wasd and punches and kicks mapped to uio and jkl . it is not directly commparable but it shows the issues of long sessions in a short amount of time.

Now for RPG maker there is a little issue with the current wasd control setup primarily esc being menu as left shift is sprint. There is no comfortable way to pull up the menu while sprinting which is a problem when you are running from wolves and need to use an item from your menu so you don't die. It also makes it hard to setup a good hotbar for on the go.

I understand that you are not used to arrow movement and it feels wierd but once you get used to it. It is so much better and more comfortable for general use. There is a reason it is the default for RPG maker controls.

The [SHIFT] key doesn't let you sprint anymore! You have to actively bind the "Sprint Toggle" to a key now instead, people didn't like having to hold down a button for it in general.

Personally either control layout would be fine by me. What I might do is keep the WASD one for now and see in general how many people want the arrows back. Then I might make a poll for it and if there are significant numbers of people on each side I might just have to release 2 versions of the game, it will be rather tedious though.

 

[Proto042]

The [SHIFT] key doesn't let you sprint anymore! You have to actively bind the "Sprint Toggle" to a key now instead, people didn't like having to hold down a button for it in general.

Personally either control layout would be fine by me. What I might do is keep the WASD one for now and see in general how many people want the arrows back. Then I might make a poll for it and if there are significant numbers of people on each side I might just have to release 2 versions of the game, it will be rather tedious though.

Got to say the sprint toggle not being shift and is instead an item is a little annoying to me as someone used to RPG maker games and would normally be part of an options or config if not directly mapped to shift. Second if you are using the keyboard script it looks like you are. you should be able to map it so it accepts both wasd and arrow keys as directional input and the classic RPG maker setup as well as the new controls just separate each entry in the array with a comma.

 

[futatiger]

I was looking forward to this new update but the comments make the controls sound like a clusterf%$k. is it worth downloading or should I just play the old version?

 

[Jash]

I am honestly a bit stumped, since you should have 80 WP and not 100 from fucking the Demon Queen, this also adds a massive bypass value. In your current situation your morality is only adding a +20 to the DC and all the things I mentioned are giving a -20 each. Lowering you morality to Zero is equivalent to being Drunk or at 20% WP. If neither of those work I would probably need to rethink how the inhibition system works in general...

Hang on, what does my WP have to do with my Morality again?

Also, I tried buying beer. An entire friggin' silver piece per bottle?! I was hoping I could work at the brothel to MAKE money! I really am going to have to reiterate: the game's economy is fucked.

It's supposed to limit some decisions in the future content, the whole Brothel thing is actually not affected by it that much as it only has an effect if you have Virginities and even then it only adds a 20% (10% for first kiss) of its value to the DC which is set by you max WP now instead. I think I might need to add a few more factors to lower the DC in the calculation.

See, here's that recurring problem again: I ask what purpose the morality system is meant to serve, and the answer is "to limit your available options". Really, I understand the appeal of "your choices have meaningful consequences" in gameplay design, but the main consequence of a morality system like this is "you have to play through the entire game at least twice to see everything". And to be completely honest, playing through games (especially LONG games) multiple times isn't something I find particularly appealing these days, because I have so many other games to play at all times.

While I respect that you have your preferences for controls I have to say wasd is terrible for RPG Maker. There is a reason that arrows are the standard for 2d and 2.5d games and wasd is the standard for 3d.

Well that's your opinion. In MY opinion, primary movement in games is ALWAYS controlled with the left hand, unless it's mouse-controlled with click-to-move controls (e.g Diablo or League of Legends). This is how it's been for me ever since the days of the NES.

Got to say the sprint toggle not being shift and is instead an item is a little annoying to me as someone used to RPG maker games and would normally be part of an options or config if not directly mapped to shift. Second if you are using the keyboard script it looks like you are. you should be able to map it so it accepts both wasd and arrow keys as directional input and the classic RPG maker setup as well as the new controls just separate each entry in the array with a comma.

Have to say, I concur with this one though. This is another one of those cases of reinventing the wheel- why did you need to change sprinting from holding down a button to an actual usable item? It really was fine as it was. Hotkeys be damned (you seem to be REALLY in love with that hotkey system, while I really don't want to mess with it), that is simply not NECESSARY. RPGmaker is supposed to have an option for you to set whether the default movement speed is walk or run, allowing you to use the run button to either speed up or slow down depending, but only giving you a single toggle (one you have to EQUIP) is just clunky.

 

[Proto042]

Well that's your opinion. In MY opinion, primary movement in games is ALWAYS controlled with the left hand, unless it's mouse-controlled with click-to-move controls (e.g Diablo or League of Legends). This is how it's been for me ever since the days of the NES.

Unfortunately you seem have misunderstood what I meant by standard. That's my fault I wasn't clear. I was referring to industry standards for PC controls. In fact if you load up almost any 2d game that doesn't have a mouse component you will have it default to arrow key movement. I checked defaults controls for quite a few games just to make sure I wasn't crazy there were only a few that supported wasd as an option on default and two that were wasd based (costume quest 1 and 2). However, the majority of the defaults were arrow movement only. The fact that this is the default means that is the best developer intended way to play the game.
To make sure that this hasn't changed much over the years I checked a game made in 97 (atomic bomberman) and it is still used in mega man 11's keyboard controls (but a controller is much prefered for this). The point here is this keyboard movement is arrow based by default on any game not using a mouse. If wasd is supported it is generally in addition to arrow movement.

On another note the hotkey system really needs to be reevaluated as it is really only useful for farming and using the pocket watch. It really doesn't have much use outside of that as most items are too rare to use often or have limits on their use like gifts. most instances of item uses currently in the game would be better from a gameplay stand point to be menu based or have a dedicated key (which could be useful for pickpocket). Honestly having menus when I need them is much easier for the player to deal with than digging a cluttered in inventory to find the one item I need.

 

[cadmium]

Do I need Perception->Stealth Sense to find the thief that the soldier is looking for? I have found the soldier several times, but never the thief, which is odd if they appear at the same time. I really want to get Guile skill, because right now every single chest is locked and new ones do not appear.

 

[FeyRing]

Do I need Perception->Stealth Sense to find the thief that the soldier is looking for? I have found the soldier several times, but never the thief, which is odd if they appear at the same time. I really want to get Guile skill, because right now every single chest is locked and new ones do not appear.

You don't need Stealth detection to find him... though that might be an interesting thing to add in at some point, not for the Thief maybe but for some new NPC.

Thief and Soldier don't appear at the same time, each map only has a chance to spawn one Traveler NPC per day so you had to have caught him on some other day before hand and kept him as a prisoner.

=============================================================================

Got to say the sprint toggle not being shift and is instead an item is a little annoying to me as someone used to RPG maker games and would normally be part of an options or config if not directly mapped to shift.

Have to say, I concur with this one though. This is another one of those cases of reinventing the wheel- why did you need to change sprinting from holding down a button to an actual usable item? It really was fine as it was.

It was something that was suggested, either here on Discord so I added it in. I can change it back I don't mind, I liked the holding down of the button as well.

Second if you are using the keyboard script it looks like you are. you should be able to map it so it accepts both wasd and arrow keys as directional input and the classic RPG maker setup as well as the new controls just separate each entry in the array with a comma.

I have attempted this but it did give me an error, I am not really proficient at Ruby yet. I can link you the script if you want and if you can show me what to change in it I would really appreciate it.

I was looking forward to this new update but the comments make the controls sound like a clusterf%$k.

But it were the controls that were requested!!

Hang on, what does my WP have to do with my Morality again?

I changed the system to make it easier, now the DC is set by your total WP pool and Morality only effects the value that your Virginity offset this buy. 5 points of Morality only raises the DC by 1 point per Virginity (10 points per one for first kiss). So at 100 points each Virginity Raises it by 20. A "Goblin" fetish lowers the value by 30 per fetish level, "Big Tits", "Big Asses", "Impregnation" lowers it by 20, "Green Skin" and "Pointy Ears" lower it by 10, "Drunk" lowers it by 20, Being bellow 30% WP lowers it by 10, being bellow 20% lowers by a further 10. Your "Noblility" background also increases it by 20. With your 80 WP pool from losing 20 to the Demon Queen, your Number to beat should be 120, if you get -120 from above combinations your character will sign up to whore themselves.

Also, I tried buying beer. An entire friggin' silver piece per bottle?! I was hoping I could work at the brothel to MAKE money! I really am going to have to reiterate: the game's economy is fucked.

You need more than 1 to get drunk of beer... but yes the economy needs looking into. Some of the price numbers will need changing for sure. That said working in the Brothel does generate 80 copper per shift on average.

See, here's that recurring problem again: I ask what purpose the morality system is meant to serve, and the answer is "to limit your available options". Really, I understand the appeal of "your choices have meaningful consequences" in gameplay design, but the main consequence of a morality system like this is "you have to play through the entire game at least twice to see everything". And to be completely honest, playing through games (especially LONG games) multiple times isn't something I find particularly appealing these days, because I have so many other games to play at all times.

But practically every game has this. For the most part, the choice doesn't really go away, you can just come back to make it later. Like the Brothel where you can choose to work every time you enter it rather than having the doors close on you permanently the first time you refused.

Hotkeys be damned (you seem to be REALLY in love with that hotkey system, while I really don't want to mess with it), that is simply not NECESSARY.

On another note the hotkey system really needs to be reevaluated as it is really only useful for farming and using the pocket watch.

Absence of the Hotbar will make Farming or consuming low restorative items like nuts completely unusable. It's one of the things that I wont be removing unless a better equivalent system is found. If I wont find a way to map two keyboard configurations I would probably just release two versions of the game instead.

 

[Proto042]

I have attempted this but it did give me an error, I am not really proficient at Ruby yet. I can link you the script if you want and if you can show me what to change in it I would really appreciate it.

To be honest I haven't used ruby a ton personally. I just have a Comp sci degree and have familiarity with coding as a whole. I searched for a script that would allow rpg maker to function in such a way simliarly to how it does in you game (allowing it to use more inputs makes controllers unusable and makes directional control perform differently as it iterates through the directions in a specific order and then stops when it find a single input). This is a link to the script I found.

http://himeworks.com/2013/07/full-input-keyboard/

You might be able to find some use for part of this script.