Quick summary for people who are new here. We have a Weekly Progress report in the secret lab section of our forum. The monthly reports will be a summary of those weekly reports, excluding the exclusive stuffs.
Anyway, let's continue with the report!
Game Status
The battle system is still not finished yet, unfortunately. We lost one week due to computer problems. My laptop was really slow so I format it and reinstall everything. It took much longer than I thought - around 3 - 4 days, including buying an external hdd, backing up everything, install the OS and restore what I backed up. This delay not just Kemo Coliseum, but also my IRL job : /
Game Design
I worked more on the battle flow. It's going to affect skill design, as well as it's important to know this before I can code. Currently, the flow is as follows :
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Begin Phase
- Refill [Action Symbol] back to three.
- Activate the effect of Status Effect
- Decrease status effect counter by 1
- Check Status Effect counter. Any Status Effect that has zero counter will be erased
Main Phase
Player can do the following in any order
- Swap two gems
- Make a match of 3 -> 1 [Action Marker]
- Make a match of 4 or more -> ½ [Action Marker]
- Make no match -> 2 [Action Marker]
- Spend [Resources] to use [Skill] -> Depending on the skill
Dealing damage to enemy have many outcomes. They will also change the [Action Marker] cost of your action.
- Block -> 1 [Action Marker]
Damage is reduced by some percentage.
Randomly happen with Physical attack.
Happen with some special effect against Magic attack.
- Critical -> ½ [Action Marker]
Damage is increased by 50%
Only work with Physical attack
- Armor Break -> ½ [Action Marker]
Destroy enemy’s armor part.
- Nothing special -> No change to [Action Marker] cost.
Order of effect
Block > Critical, Armor Break > Nothing
Example 1: You swap a match of 3, aiming at the enemy's head. This result in breaking his heard guard.
Swap 3 -> 1 [Action Marker]
Armor Break -> ½ [Action Marker]
Result : Your attack cost ½ [Action Marker]
Example 2 : You swap and make a match of 4, attacking the enemy's body, but he blocks it.
Match 4 -> ½ [Action Marker]
Block -> 1 [Action Marker]
Result : Your attack cost 1 [Action Marker]
After each action is performed, the game will check if there is any [Action Marker] left.
If there isn’t, the turn is switched to the other player.
End Phase
Check for any until end of turn effect and end that effect
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One issue. Making a free swap cost 2 [Action Marker] However, when you have only 1 [Action Marker] left, should free swap be allowed? I'm leaning to 'no', since it will force you to make a match and that could make the game more interesting. Currently, I'll allow it for now and maybe change it later when I write more codes.
We talked about the Quality System. We think that putting parameter bonus into the quality would over-complicate things, so we will try from something small first. Quality will let you learn new skills only. Each Quality come with something around 3 - 5 skills. You will be able to see all the skills available from that Quality, so that you can plan which Quality you should raise its level to gain the skills you want.
Talking about parameter, we're still thinking about how should we go with character creation. I think this would take a lot of play testing and balancing. For now, for each level, you'll get 2 points to spend on any parameter.
We don't want this game to be too difficult or too easy. And we don't want to put difficulty level in there either. I think with event expansion, we could satisfy those who look for erotic contents by adding erotic events or quests that don't require intense battle later.
Programming
I went back to the code and start designing the system of the game. Then it struck me that if I were to do a multiplayer feature, maybe I should investigate that early on. Otherwise, I might start coding in the way that I have to redo it again in order to make it work with online multiplayer.
I spent a week researching about all the available options, as well as coming up with a design that would require me to change the code as least as possible should I implement the networking feature later on.
The options I found are :
1.) Unity Master Server
Unity allows you to use their server for free, but it's unreliable and they're not guarantee it's gonna be up all the time. This might not be a problem at first, but it might be in the future, if we think of scalability. They also provide their server software that we can install on our own server later. Problem is, we don't have our own server yet ( at least not the one that we can install 3rd party software)
2.) Smart Fox Server http://www.smartfoxserver.com/
Tried this and it's really really easy to work with. Would definitely be my choice, however, it requires a server, and free version allow upto 100 users at the same time. Might not be a problem though.
3.) Play.IO http://playerio.com/
I havne't tried this, but people said it's easy to work with. If anything, it shouldn't be that different from SmartFox except that it doesn't require us to buy our own server for free version. Still, they allow less users ( 25 - 50, I think) And if the usage go beyond what they allow, they'll charge us at least $25/month
4.) Direct Connect
Let players host a game by using their computer as a server, and tell other players their ip to connect. This doesn't require anything but it will be cubersome for players. Without port-forwarding or hamachi, you can only play against other people in the same network.
As you can see, the easy options require us to buy or rent a server, which is quite costly. So I think I'll go with direct connect for now, just to test things out. If the game works great and it turns out that there's a demand for better network play ( like a game lobby, chat room, etc.), I'll start accepting donation to buy a server. For now, one could start an irc channel as a chat room/lobby. Then use port-forwarding or hamachi to host a game and let other people join in.
Anyway, after I've played around with networking, I now know what to do and how to design the architecture of the program. I'll keep working on the battle system and make it playable as soon as possible. This networking thing took longer than I thought, but I'm glad I did it so that if I want to implement network multiplayer later, I don't have to code everything again from scratch.
Arts
NG was busy with his work and his commission, I think. So there weren't many rough sketches this month. Nevertheless, here they are!
This guy is one of the 'punisher'. Who is he punishing, I wonder?
Prince, why can't we see your mouth?
Besides the erotic scene sketches, here are some graphics of game interface
New interface and new gem designs!
Donation Report
April $660
May $266
June $465
June $465
Thank you for all the donation! Some of these are from people who donated already. It really means a lot to see that people care about what we are doing.
Many of you might know already that we won't get sponsorship for Touch and Tease anymore, and we didn't get a sponsorship for the latest one. While this mean there's less funding for our team, it also mean we'll have more time for Kemo Coliseum. And we will also have more time to work on Touch and Tease and polish it or add whatever we want.
Many of you might know already that we won't get sponsorship for Touch and Tease anymore, and we didn't get a sponsorship for the latest one. While this mean there's less funding for our team, it also mean we'll have more time for Kemo Coliseum. And we will also have more time to work on Touch and Tease and polish it or add whatever we want.
Reminder
While Kemo Coliseum will be a game that is free to play, it is definitely not free to make. If you can, please help support us so we can keep working on the game, make it better, and finish it faster :)
