Public Release: MKM version alpha 0.1b

Download Link: MEGA

[CHANGELOG]

Added 3 new full grab/ero animations (grabing loop, ero loop 1, 2 & 3, climax and climax loop).

• Lazy Starfish (beach stage)
• Naughty Barnacles (beach stage)
• Spit Bud (forest stage)

Implemented the audio system framework, adding 6 music themes and over 40 sound effects.

• Many of those SFX are placeholders/temporary, and they will replaced or improved upon in terms of equalization and volume, etc.
• There are still SFX missing from this release, such as menu navigation for instance.
• Also there is no voice for Maya as of yet. I want to commission a VA in the future and have a good range of voices both for normal gameplay as well as for the ero animations.

Designed the 1st half of the proper forest stage.

• The other half will lead to the boss when it's implemented.

Can now cycle trough zoom levels during ero/grab animations, by pressing the CAMERA key (default C key)

• 3 zoom levels: normal, zoom x1, zoom x2

Fixed controls that couldn't be configured because the game was unpausing when trying to rebind the keys.
Couldn't use the SHIFT keys to bind controls.
Now when binding a key, if that key is already bound on another control they are swapped automatically.
When the player falls into a pit, movement input is now forbidden for a short while after re-spawning.
Display the stage name when switching between stages.
Added better slash effects when hitting enemies.
Fixed a soft-lock state when pausing immediately after a scene load.
Fixed a soft-lock state when returning to the title screen while an ero animation is playing.
Drastically reduced the rate at which health is drained during grab/ero animations (system will be redesigned in the future).
An effect is now played when the player is released from a grab.
Greatly shortened the intro story, removing many lines and summarizing others.
Moving platforms now have spikes underneath them, to signal danger to the player if they stay bellow.
Small parallax effect on the backgrounds for the first level of zoom on the Z axis.
Water bodies now react to objects movement.
Created new options menu: Advanced Options, where the player will be able to toggle some preferences.
Added new advanced option: Turn ON/OFF slowmotion and zoom effect when armor breaks.
Added new advanced option: Turn ON/OFF automatic zoom in during grabs/ero animations.
Lots of minor undocumented fixes/changes.
Removed bulge.

Progressing with development of the next version

Milking the plant

The new ero animations are now properly implemented into the game.

I've also managed to fix all the bugs that were reported and I also added some new stuff and improved on others.

So with those things out of the way I can now move to the next step:

• [ok] Ero animations for all the current enemies in the game.
• [ok] Bug fixes and improvements.  
• Implement the sound/music system.
• Design the proper forest stage.
• Create the 1st boss fight of the game.

Implementing the basic sound system will be relatively easy as there won't be anything fancy for now. Mostly some proper music themes for the title screen, intro and stages, as well as some basic sfx like sword hits, enemy skills, etc, just to set the framework.

So while I work on that, I will begin to organize the patreon poll in parallel so that by the time I complete the sound system and level design, the 1st boss has been decided.

New project page for MKM, and current development

Maya's pet is a bit too playful

I've set up a dedicated project page for Mystic Knight Maya which you can access on the bar to the right.

That page will hold all the basic information of the game, such as gameplay details, types of adult content, future plans, etc.

Of course I'll continue to post progress updates here in the main page as usual, but that project page will be useful to have all information about the game in one place.

Currently I'm working towards another release to make the demo a bit more fleshed out, so it will include:

• Ero animations for all the current enemies in the game.
• Implement the sound/music system.
• Design the proper forest stage.
• Create the 1st boss fight of the game.
• And some other fixes and QoL improvements.

I already have some animation previews on my patreon, and the type and fetish of the 1st boss will be voted for by the supporters.

Hopefully the next post will be the updated demo release.

Until then!

Mystic Knight Maya - public release Alpha0.1a

So little time, so much left to do... but enough is enough. Here it is:

Download link: MEGA

Let me know if you need a different file host. I might upload it on google drive as well.

I setup a patreon page too. I made some public posts there as I go into more details there about the game and why I choose to start a patreon campaign.

During the patreon launch I'll be posting the game here and there on different forums and I'll stay active during those couple of days, so feel free to ask me any questions and give feedback about what you liked/disliked in the game.

Cheers!

"It's Saturday Leviosa, not Fridayosa"

Hermione is not amused

Hey everyone! Just letting you know that the prototype's release date is still tomorrow, Saturday as it has always been since the beginning ok? Alrighty then, see you soon k thx bye.

When I count to 3, this spell will make you believe what I just told you: 1... 2...

Nah, I'm just joking of course. 

I'm sorry for the inconvenience everyone, but I have pushed the date to tomorrow because I had completely forgotten to add the save system. Since I was just playtesting with the prototype in debug mode, I had just coded the basic scraps of the system and left it aside to develop other things.

As I want to give at least a decent presentation of the demo, I felt like having at least the basic save/load working is needed, thus the delay to tomorrow while I finish it.

Again, I apologize. Thank you for listening.

See you tomorrow!

Releasing the prototype this week! Finally!

Mystic Knight Maya - Main Menu

Wait a minute, has it really been 4 months already since my last post? Holy shit, sorry for the blue balling everyone!

But honestly, the reason why I didn't post any updates was simply because I wasn't able to work that much on the game during most of this time period, therefore I didn't have much to show to you.

The good news is that during this month of October I got a lot of free time and thus was able to put in a good amount of work into the game, basically making up for all the time that I had lost, so I just waited to get the game more or less to a presentable state to make this blog post. It was so refreshing to have so much time to work on the game that I managed to finish developing almost 90% of the systems and things that I wanted to include.

Now there are still a couple of base systems that are not yet implemented, but they are the easiest ones as I decided to focus first on the most difficult things. Regardless, I've made up my mind: I'll release the current version of the game this week.

I'm not sure on the exact day, as I'm still finishing some of the sprite animations, but I can guarantee you this: at the very latest I'll release it on this Friday, whether the sprites are completed or not. But if I manage to complete them before that, then I'll release it earlier.

So what I'm saying is that the next blog post is coming this week, and it will of course have the early version of the game available for download. Also in that post I'll explain and go into more details about some things:

• What is already in the game that you can test out and play around.
• The systems and mechanics that I will implement during the course of development.
• How to tackle the fact that I don't have much free time to work on the game.
• Whether or not I'll do an open or closed alpha/beta development.
• The possibility of keeping a more consistent devlog and updates here in the blog.

That's about it for now. I just wanted to make this little post to let you know that the early demo is finally coming this week, now that I have a solid base game to play around as you'll be able to get a good feel of what I'm going for and how my game making skills evolved since Pixie Panic Garden.

Thank you for your time and support. See you soon!

Mystic Knight Maya, building the stages and future goals

The beginning of the game (WIP)

I have finally started the process of building the proper game. Above you can see the beta version of the starting area which will teach the player some basic movements and mechanics. From there the player will arrive at a hub area allowing for the rest of the game to be explored.

Right now I'm creating the enemies for the beach stage, then next I'll set up the main hub (already half done) and the forest stage (also half done). During this time I'll be mostly tuning things like enemy/item placement, difficulty, platforming, etc until there is a decent gameplay balance. At that point, I'll release a demo version and continue working on the rest of the game.

As I mentioned before, gameplay will be a 2D platformer/metroidvania lite. That is, there are going to be special skills, item progression and non-linear level exploration, but not to the extent of fully fledged metroidvanias.

Main Menu (WIP)

The game will be called Mystic Knight Maya. While I'm still finalizing some elements of the full story, basically you will be playing as Maya, who boards a ship to go on an adventure, until it sinks in a storm and she washes up in the shores of a mysterious island. Her initial plan is to figure out where she is and how to leave the island, but as the adventure progresses she will learn that there is more nefarious things to worry about.

In the video above I show an early version of the main menu, mostly to showcase the language selector since this time around I'll support translation to more languages. Also, the player will be able to turn off certain fetishes that they don't enjoy.

The fetish configuration will be important because like it was in PPG, MKM will have lots of different fetishes. While at this point in time I don't know exactly the full list of fetishes, it is safe to expect more or less the same types as it was in PPG with some additions, as well as more variations.

So that's about it for now. Slowly but surely I'm getting there. See you next time!

Cloth Destruction, Ero Grapples and Stamina

Initial cloth destruction mechanic

Hello again!

So the basic logic for the cloth removal is done. On the top left corner you can see the health bar, the armor durability bar, and the stamina bar.

For now, the formula is pretty simple: When the durability reaches 50%, her armor is removed, and when it reaches 0% her underwear is ripped apart. But I'm going to change it so that instead of the clothes being destroyed only at set numbers, there will be a scaling chance of them being ripped as she takes damage, to make things more interesting.

Also the main character behavior changes as her clothes are removed, which is reflected on the sprite animation. She gets more and more embarrassed by being exposed. This will probably have gameplay consequences such as maybe reducing her movement speed and/or damage done to enemies, among other things.

When she is exposed, the enemies will take advantage of her...

The basic ero system is also completed. There is going to be a struggle mechanic that will take into account the strength of the enemy, the current stamina level of the main character and the player's input by mashing buttons. There are many different ways to implement the player's input and how the grab affects the characters, so I'll try different ideas during alpha testing.

Stamina (or Mana/Spirit Power) will be used for special skills and for when the main character is captured. I'll go into more details in the next update when I have some basic skills created, but basically skills are gonna cost a flat amount of stamina to use, and it has a base regeneration rate that the player will have to manage.

This is all for now everyone, see you next time!

Dialogue System and Translations

NPC Dialogue

Hey, long time no see!

I didn't have much spare time to work on the game these past 2 months. But in the sparse time I had I managed to get a lot done, mostly regarding the game's underlying systems.

So now almost all the fundamentals are there: a save/load system, story flag logic, npc and key items that trigger game events. I also did some general improvements to the game engine such as smoothing and improving the camera movement and tuning the game's physics.

What I can show for now is a preview of the dialogue system, mostly showcasing the different languages and ASCII characters that it can display. For this project I'll make all the dialogue into easily editable text files. This way translating the game will be very easy, and you will be able to translate basically to any language and use any type of ASCII characters.

See you next time!

Background Parallax, Target Dummy and Items!

Colorful items and shooting flowers

The background now has some nice parallax scrolling, both horizontal and vertical. It really does change the feel of the game compared to static backgrounds. But since the video is of potato quality and only 30 fps the effect is less noticeable.

I added a couple of target dummies to test damage values and special skills when I create them. Also created a shooting plant because why not? This was basically to see if my enemy framework was ready to receive new enemy types, and it seems like it's working fine as I can easily add new enemy behaviors.

Now the barrels are breakable and I've finished the container framework. That basically means that I can now put chests/barrels/whatever in the game and configure what items they will hold/spawn. Which also means that some early items are also implemented. Quartz will be the "money" of the game and for now there are 2 types of potions.

Lastly there is now a camera "look up" and "look down". It kinda feels like some recent indie 2D platformers are forgetting to include this simple mechanic. Not good when you're on a very vertical level and need to check out what's bellow you.

Moar platforms!

Pass through platforms and moving platforms

A good amount of progress was made this past week on the base framework of the game. I made the player state machine more robust in order to implement platforms that the player can jump trough from bellow, and fall down from above if they wish.

Another staple of platform games, moving platforms were also implemented. It can't really be seen in the video, but the physics interactions of the platforms and other objects turned out quite well, and will help me design some nice puzzles and challenges once I start creating the proper levels.

Also I updated the sprites of the basic enemy, and worked more on it's basic AI. I can now set their life and defense values, and they can now have different types of behaviors such as just wandering about or chasing the player. It even does a simple trick now where when it sees the player coming towards it, it turns into a ball to hurt the player.

Overall, lot's of "backstage" progress being made, and I'll keep up the pace!

Damage System and Enemy Interaction

"Buffered" damage system

In the video you can see the new basic attack animations (3 combo standing, 1 jumping, 1 crouching), some damage counters, health bar, enemy physics interaction (pushing the player).

As for the damage system, on the huge majority of 2D platformers the system is quite simple:

1. The player object collides with enemy object
2. The player receives a certain amount of damage
3. Checks if the damage was enough to kill the player 
4. If it was, play the death animation on the character, remove control from the player, game over
5. If the player still has health remaining, play a short "staggered" animation on the character
6. Make the character invincible for a couple of seconds and rapidly flash the character sprite
7. the player continues playing the game

Coding player damage

Visual Studio C#

Hello!

New year, new game! After a little holidaying, it's time to start going full speed ahead! I want to release a demo/prototype ASAP, and I'm aiming to release this game complete this year, the earlier the better.

I'm now developing the basic framework and systems such as the player object interaction with enemies, hazards, items, etc. Pictured you can see an ugly alpha spaghetti code of one the functions that will handle the logic when the player gets damaged and other behaviors.