The end of 2020

Season's greetings

I can't stress enough how humbled I am with your patience with me.

I am still very much working on V3, and I can hopefully deliver it in the coming year. The extreme amount of time spent on V3 has happened because of a mess of trial and error gameplay coding I had been doing to improve the overall experience, combined with the usual problems with writing. Fortunately updates should come much quicker in the future, since I feel confident that I won't have to fiddle around with the guts of the code or the gameplay in a while. One messy writing thing I've been struggling with is deciding what characters to focus on. Juggling between creating new stuff and expanding existing characters is difficult, since basically all characters have their advocates that wish more content for them. Regardless, I will do my best to round off all the characters in a way that doesn't leave them dangling narratively. The stream theme experiment has yielded good results for the long term development of the game in the form of backgrounds, sprites and inspired writing that often takes place after the streams. The fruits of the streams will not be seen in V3, but they'll have an effect in all of the future updates. I've once again created a new super pack of all the stream art for your convenience. It's a poor replacement for V3, but I wish my commitment to the regular streams will uphold the trust necessary for such a long project.

Stream art super pack download

Irregular Blogposts

 

Art

Posting irregularities

This is more of a proof of life post, v3 is still being worked on, (also make Proventus a mod).

Biweekly update #7

 

Art

Giant human brute

Subni hustle

Subni gather

Subni smooth

Subni look space pony

Dev spotlight

Subtember

Subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni subni.

Still working on V3.

Biweekly update #6

 

Art

Double teamed at shore

Dev spotlight

Stream TU stuff

The idea of drawing TU backgrounds and sprites on my Picarto stream has been a big boon. I've collected the backgrounds and sprites that have been produced during the streams here. Note that this doesn't include concept art or other full color images created during the streams. All of these pictures and the missing ones are available in the stream picture dumps that are posted on my Twitter and Patreon.

Weird postcard

All of these sprites and backgrounds could be fully usable in the game with some detailing and finishing touches. The streams based on the locations in the game world have also created good palettes and concepts for different ideas to source from when working on those locations. These streams have been such a valuable thing for the development of the game and the world that they're probably here to stay.

Biweekly update #5

Art

Happy to see you

Dev spotlight

To anyone wondering why there was a long pause between the blog posts, I was just on a vacation. In hindsight it wasn't that smart not to notify about it on the blog as well, since my Patreon page and the blog probably have some differences in audiences. I'm back now, and I'll be doing the normal weekly and biweekly things as before. And yes, I am still working on V3.

Contributor help hardships

Some people may have noticed that I've recently had trouble responding, or just didn't respond to emails sent to me. It's actually caused by a rather unfortunate issue of time, energy and value.

When I started developing Teraurge, I naively thought that I could help other writers and vet their writing just by having them send me their stuff via email. This did happen for a short time, but it soon became evident that even a small number of writers is just too much work to handle for me, because of the uneven quality and amount of learning needed from the writers, and my lack of time to coach them properly.

I did persevere with a few writers in the beginning and tried to push the things they were writing to completion, but I either lost contact with them, or the writers became disillusioned/stressed/uninterested in the writing process and their writing projects never got finished. After several of these writers abandoned their efforts despite my help and critique, I became disillusioned with the process, as the opportunity value spent on helping writers became very, very slim. It seriously sapped my own enthusiasm about the idea.

For a long time I wasn't sure what went wrong, or what I was doing wrong. Eventually I did realize what the issue was, but I ignored it in hopes of making it work. But in the end it's simply a logistical issue of a single person trying to do too many things at the same time, and dividing their attention between many complex tasks. 

Anyone of you who did write and send emails to me and never heard back; I appreciate the interest and I wish I could have worked with everyone to put content into the game, but it just wasn't realistically possible. As it stands I cannot help contributors over email but I would still like to implement possible contributor content if it has already been finished and meets the guideline standards.

Biweekly update #4

Art

Boob monsters

Dev spotlight

Still working on V3.

Combat cards

Teraurge V3 will have a rejiggered combat system, and one of its main features are the different cards player can obtain. The overall system has not changed from V2. You use your attributes as fuel for your cards and you whack each other on different turns as usual.

Getting new cards by equipping weapons/items or with training is the main way to become more proficient in combat in TU. Getting resistances by equipping armor/items is another. 

The general idea is to avoid number inflation, so to keep the numbers as low as possible in terms of damage dealt and the hitpoints of combatants. For this reason it is actually impossible for the player to gain more hitpoints beyond the starting amount gained from the endurance attribute. This "number minimalism" also extends to the combat cards. The card damage values start from 1 and go from there. This will make balancing less of a headache, and I find that adjusting hitpoints is easier than adjusting the damage cards deal.

Because of how the resistances work (they just deduct the specified amount from the damage type), very low numbers still have a large effect on the overall damage output. It also means that exotic damage types are more valuable than more common ones, so one point of fire damage can be more useful than two points of slashing damage, because the slashing damage is more often resisted by enemies.

I also want to avoid leaving in an "ideal strategy", where a single deck configuration can beat all enemies in the game. The resistances and damage types are there exactly for that reason. Really tough encounters should require the player to specifically tweak their deck to win that fight.

PS: Combat card graphics are a strange beast. It's very different from the normal character/scene painting I'm used to, since it needs to communicate an action in a more symbolic way. I think I need some more practice with the style before I'm happy with them, but for now V3 can suffer the simple card art.

Hmm yes, blue fist, red fist, and blue leg.

Biweekly update #3

Art

Very round shapes

Dev spotlight

Sketch pictures

Most of the TU gameplay time is spent in the default view, which is the familiar screen where the character stands on the right and speech bubbles appear on the left, or on the overmap. But, TU also has sketches or "story pictures", that are used when the writer wants to visually represent a detail or an action that default view can't show. The sketches are used for the sex scenes, and pretty much all of the lewd pictures (aside from nude character sprites), are represented with the sketches.

The sketchy, "unfinished" style for these pictures is a deliberate choice from my part. This is mostly because of the amount of pictures needed for the game, and the effort needed to produce higher quality replacements for them would require far too much development time. Consider that V2 of Teraurge has 500+ sketch pictures in it already, and you'll understand the decision. The abstract style also allows me to use colors in an evocative way to convey emotions through the visuals. This strategy can easily be seen in the case of pinks and purples, which are used to represent feelings associated with sex, affection, pleasure, and Greens being used for unpleasant smells and sickness.

The sketches and the text descriptions are supposed to be complementary and they are used to explain different aspects of the scene. For example, if the player finds an object with a complex shape, the sketch will illustrate the shape and the text will convey other qualities not explained by the sketch. I often edit out text descriptions that duplicate what the sketch picture can already answer, since the text descriptions usually over-explain the scene before the sketch pictures are added.

Smells purple. Relevant detail on the right and empty space on the left. The sketch pictures might sometimes seem incoherent in terms of shapes, but the player seeing the character sprite before the sketches usually fills in what the shapes are supposed to be.

If anyone's wondering, the sketch pictures are drawn in Corel Painter. I make them with three layers: background canvas, color layer (overlay blending), and the black line layer. I sometimes use line layer for color highlights to get very vivid colors, but normally I constrain them to the overlay layer. The line art for the sketches is made using a pen brush (with max grain) with the tilt feature enabled. The tilt feature lets me create large strokes without touching the size slider or changing a brush and it is generally cool to use.

The tilt feature is really cool.

The sketches usually follow a format where the main detail is on the right and left side of the picture is either left blank or is ambiguously rendered. This is because the left is normally partially covered by the text description boxes.

Biweekly update #2

Art

Hydra butt

Purple tiddy

Dev spotlight

Character workshop series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 4.2

Part 5

Character workshop, part 6: Player attributes and where to use them

Since TU is an RPG, or something resembling one, it uses abstract numbers to represent player character's abilities. The PC can't be good at everything, as in the usual RPG fashion there's only a limited number of ability points to be assigned at character creation.

The main thing attributes are supposed to do outside combat is to reinforce a character archetype(s) for the player. The player mindset sees low attributes as a negative and regards events that get triggered based on the low attributes of the PC as failure states. People who play games often see character attributes as a way to get ability and control instead being limited by them.

How do PC attributes relate to writing Amnukhel?

Charisma
This one's easy. You get cooler flirt options and snappier comebacks when talking to people. On the low end you might be too stunted and awkward to actually understand some of the things she's suggesting to you.

Will
Often manifests in dialogue choices as blunt, spiteful or rude options that cut through conversations. An example, after some small talk: "So do you wanna go fuck or do we keep talking for for appearances?". High will stat often just excludes these options from the conversations.

Intelligence
Dialogue options that are enabled by the intelligence stat often dive into topics that include specific knowledge/out-of-the-box thinking. For example, an intelligent player could have a conversation with Amnukhel about the number of mugs of rolli required to get oneself drunk based on their body mass.

Agility
Agility is probably the easiest physical stat to use in normal conversations. Doing party tricks with your hands, catching falling objects or just not falling over when drunkenly staggering through hallways. If the player minmaxed their agility away I'd just make them a huge klutz and spill their drink on Amnukhel.

Strength
As with all physical stats, strength too is used more in actiony scenes or in combat than it is in normal dialogue in a bar. Maybe mr. Slab Bulkhead crushes a mug with his hand to impress Amnukhel. Then again, if she falls asleep on a Twig Nomuscle, he can't get her huge body off of him and has to sleep under the drooling/snoring mutant duck monster.

Endurance
Endurance is probably the least used stat in normal conversations, but it comes up more often in action scenes, and it's pretty useful for fights. Endurance does actually improve your sexual stamina, mind you. Although it only makes you last longer, as it doesn't actually make you better at it.

(Fitness)
This thing is derived from all of the three physical stats (agility, strength, endurance) and it just measures how athletic the player looks like. This is actually very easy to use in dialogue since characters commenting on player's bod is pretty easy to do in flirty dialogue.


The mental attributes (charisma, will, intelligence) in 90% cases, add dialogue options that the player can take, but physical attributes usually do not add dialogue options. The success is usually resolved after the dialogue option that relies on a physical stat "(Crush the mug)" is taken. Weak player can attempt to crush the mug the same as a strong player character, the strong character just succeeds while the weak character fails (dumb jock stuff, like crushing a mug is probably behind a will attribute requirement as well).

Biweekly update #1

Art

What a weird culture, but hello I guess.

Dev spotlight

I have decided to harness the awesome power of weekly streams to directly further the development of the game. This probably doesn't speed up the process that much, but it does give me a larger library of art detritus that I can use for the game. It also gives me a weekly obligation to flesh out different areas and aspects of the world, while providing a small window into different parts of the game world for those interested in the game.

Weekly update #38

Weekly updates update

The weekly updates will become bi-weekly updates, beginning now, this change will hopefully give me some breathing room in terms of blog update content and TU dev time. The streaming schedule will not change and the weekly streams will continue.

Weekly update #37

Dev spotlight

No dev spotlight this week either. 

I might have reconsider the weekly blog updates. I use a lot of time just to come up something for the weekly update, and often I merely flounder with a topic and don't manage to create anything post worthy. The constant stream of blog updates also buries the more worthwhile blog posts with these ones that basically a weekly excuse how I have no real content for the blog.

Even with the character workshop I have trouble just formatting or presenting the writing process without just simply repeating what I've written of the character. The writing process becomes quickly monotonous from an outside perspective because you can only plan/design so much until process is just write, edit, write, edit, write, etc.

Still working on V3.

Weekly update #36

Art

Antenna head

Dev spotlight

No dev spotlight today. Doing weekly updates (even with minimal content) is pretty hectic sometimes. Still working on V3 if you're wondering.

Weekly update #35

Art

Two legged ones. One ready to be tickled and one ready to tickle.

Dev spotlight

Character workshop, part 5: How to think like a character

Motivations
What does the character want? Amnukhel has a very simple motivation in this case. She's horny and wants to bang the player character because she thinks the player character is sexy. I just have to answer the question of why she thinks the player character is hot. The human shape could be something that Amnukhel finds exciting, or Amnukhel's interest could be based on the player's fitness attribute, ("fitness" is a thing that's calculated collectively from the character's physical stats to reflect how fit the PC looks, more about it here: http://teraurge.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Attributes) which would indicate that she's impressed by the player character's physical fitness. Either one would work.

So Amnukhel would approach the player character as a possible fling in a bar. She can tolerate a boring conversation if it results her getting some, so she'd have low expectations for it and kinda "sleepwalk" through the dialogue if the player doesn't challenge her in the conversation.

Quick writing pro tip: Never make characters act against their motivations, even if it makes writing some of the scenes easier. This often means that the characters may actually act against your own planned plot because there's an unsolvable conflict of interest between the character motivations. But that's fine, just make them fight.

Background 
Amnukhel has other background characteristics that affect her behavior. She works at the tavern, so she's friends with Bykaas and feels more confident while there. Amnukhel lives in the tavern, but because she is part-time traveler of the rivers, she has a thin relationship with the people living in the village and mostly just knows them through Bykaas. One of the reasons she pounces on the player is probably the fact that she thinks they're not someone living in the village, so there are less strings attached to a one night stand.

Making Amnukhel an employee at the tavern also makes them usable as a side character for other things, so their utility as a character is not limited to this specific interaction.

The background of the character also affects what they know, and that in return affects how they think and act. In this case Amnukhel would be very sociable and quick to make friends because she has visited many places and lives her life partially on the move. She also tends to disappear quickly, and leave relationships behind. She would probably have a streak of cynical opportunism in her, which would endear her to Bykaas and make them friends.

Weekly update #34

Art

I was thinking about changing some aspects of Amnukhel's design, but I don't know, it's a weird fucking design.

Dev spotlight

Character workshop, part 4, episode 2: Revenge of the Prose

It would be too easy and maybe a bit lazy to describe my inability to write as procrastination, but I feel it's also terribly non-descriptive. In my case I often have too little material of the character inside my head in the beginning to proceed, but that material is also developed while writing them. Eh, better get to writing I guess.

Just creating the scripting is easy enough. This fairly short piece of scripting essentially describes 90% of all sex scenes in the game, if you ignore the prose.

Different PC sexes have separate sex scene scripting, this one's for male PC. The middle part is basically on autopilot if there are no player choices inside the scene.

But at what point the sex scenes become a rote repeating thing and what makes them worthwile to actually click through? Can I just repeat the same thing over and over again and just change the pictures? The obvious answer is the contex. Context changes what the sex scene actually feels to our thirsty rat brains. Creating that context is the thing that rattles my poor writing brain, and the context consists of the cool characters and the cool situations, before, during, and after the sex scenes happen.

Huge pet peeve tangent, because writing is hard

It's reasonable and normal to offer the player an option to completely rebuff the situation through dialogue, if the situation allows it as a realistic possibility. This can be a situation where a NPC asks the player to go on an adventure with them to find treasure, and the player character going "Eh seems dangerous, I'll stay here." It's easy to just end the "quest" there and do nothing, but this seemingly natural and reasonable interaction PC has taken means that the player has deleted a chunk off the content from the game.

Rejecting Amnukhel here just cuts out the whole interaction with her. Does this actually make sense in terms of an interesting narrative vs providing sensible options for the player? Furthermore, what would even the rejection cause that would be compelling and reasonable for an alternative narrative?

...Or that's how it's often described by other game creators. There's a simple fix to this thinking. Make the decision of not acting, into a branch in the narrative. If the player doesn't go on the treasure hunt with the NPC, then the world reacts to player inaction and continues to a new point without the player. The NPC doesn't stand there eternally with a question mark above their head and reheat the "quest" with an obnoxious, "Did you change your mind?"

This strange approach to "questing" also means that the "quests" cannot be important to the overall structure of the game, because you cannot facilitate the importance of the quest if you cannot make player to cooperate with it in the first place. You cannot rely on the plot if the player doesn't participate in it and do the plot points. Teraurge is from the very beginning written as not having a "main quest" or a traditional plot structure that the player needs to be shepherded through, as it is just supposed to be a collection of interactions. This sounds like a lazy approach of writing anything, but it also frees the player from the expectation of performing the part of the main character to advance the plot, and it provides flexibility to the branching narratives of separate stories.

Weekly update #33

Art

Mudder gremlin

Dev spotlight

Character workshop, part 4: Actually writing

Actually getting to the meat of things and writing can be hard after you've created a plausible outline for the character. This is the part that actually defines if there's anything interesting in the thing you've planned.

I don't have any good ideas on how to proceed from here. My go-to method is to write a linear but otherwise complete interaction with the character and leave possible deviations or other branching as possible player responses, and then filling those out later. The latter part often sees a lot of scrapping because sometimes the branching can lead into an untenable amount of depth or deviation. Maintaining a reasonable scope for the character interaction is important.

Shouldn't be hard, just a flirty alien coming onto the player, a conversation and a possible sex scene. It seems almost dull and uninteresting to write after all that planning.

I usually try to get into the head of the character and then try to play as them. Coming up with player responses is often easier because the player character is essentially the player and is fairly empty characterization wise.

I find this fourth part of the character writing process the most difficult one. I've been having hard time writing this character during these the two weeks since the workshop part 3. It's mostly because getting into the mindset of character writing requires large uninterrupted blocks of time for me. It's usually preceded by a lengthy session of daydreaming about the character dialogue and interactions, which then later gets translated into writing. I haven't had these necessary blocks of time to properly enter that creative state and I have found myself mostly floundering around with uninspired and flat dialogue.

While pressing buttons to make words appear on the screen is very easy and cheap, It's still terribly difficult if you want to make those words to be able to engage other people.

Flirt, flirt, u so weird alin banana, huh. We shud fuk, ye. Cok in bagina, beeg nut. Ha ha porn gaym.

Weekly update #32

Art

Drippy bugs

Dev spotlight

Sometimes my schedule is too tight to write dev spotlights in a timely manner, this is one of those times. 

Here's an updated collection of all my stream and blog art however.

Weekly update #31

Art

Amnukhel is equal amounts of unsettling and goofy. I sometimes render a 3d environment for the background and finish it with an overpainting. This whole thing is still unfinished and very dead looking.

Dev spotlight

Character workshop, part 3: Dialogue layout

I have a preference for a particular shape of the dialogue tree when writing my characters. The basic pieces are: 

• Intro: This is the first piece of dialogue and story the player experiences when they meet the character. Basically an unavoidable meet and greet. This is where I usually force the player and the character to divulge their names to each other so there's no continuity problems when NPC or PC use the names. The intro usually leads directly into the main conversation hub.
• Conversation hub: This is the "Default" state of the NPC. When the player visits the character after the initial intro I dump them here after a quick hello. This hub also contains the [Questions] prompt and anything else immediately relevant (player reporting how a quest went, etc).
• Questions Hub: A place to store lore or further inquiries about the character or other characters the player can come up with. Basically anything that the player could plausibly ask from the character. A lot these questions are just random lore filler or semi serious hijinks, but I often use the player's questions as triggers for other content.
• Loops: These are the conversations that the player has with the NPCs that eventually return to either hub. They're ideally multi-ended things that sprawl into different directions based on the dialogue choices, affecting the player's relationship with the NPC.

In this case I've broken the story layout into four phases. Note the collapsible script language stuff.

You might notice that nothing in this scripting connects or makes sense as a sequence. I usually write random dialogue snippets that I want to include in the character interactions first, and figure out the rest later. These snippets often unfold as the player asks questions about the character or as the character comments about something with possible player responses keeping the topic of the conversation alive.

The general concept in this case is fairly straightforward and simple. The character comes up to the player, there's casual conversation and flirting from both sides and at the "end" there might be sex. The concept doesn't need to be any more complex or subtle than that. Subtlety and complexity come from the details of the dialogue and the writing. Making a simple outline for the interaction is a good way to start the writing, so you can get to the meaty and interesting parts.

Weekly update #30

Art

Amnukhel is actually banana shaped. This is some awkward locomotion going on here.

Like a demonic spawn of a duck and an elephant.

Dev spotlight

Character workshop, part 2: How to start a character

Most of the inhabitants of the world of TU are invisible bystanders. They're usually only mentioned as a part of the description of an environment or they are implied to live in the random houses player sees on the map. In short, they exist only as a theoretical concept.

So what is the difference between these conceptually existing characters and the fully fleshed out characters with their own sprites and dialogue? Engagement. The character engages the player, or the player engages the character in some way, creating a bond between them.

Engagement
A situation must be created organically either by the circumstances of the event or through the player's choices where in the end the player interacts with a character. You could just make the character bump into the player on the street randomly and initiate dialogue that way, but if neither the character nor the player have a reason to interact with each other the conversation has no purpose, and it will taint the character from the get go. If the reason for this character existing is an exciting adventure hidden somewhere in the mundane questions you can ask from them, you should lead the interaction with that instead.

Lead with the reason to engage: If player talks to someone it should be done with intent from either the character ("This human person looks shady, I should go over and ask some questions") or with intent from the player ("I need to find this person, they might be able to help with the thing"). There are basically three different ways to approach this:

1. Character engages the player.
• Character reacts to the player, (Vuisul)
• Character is interested in the player, (Shyni).
• Character wants to small talk, (Punflen)
• Character is a barrier to progress, (Taulsol/Tornoth).
2. Player engages the Character. 
• Character is a shopkeeper, players seek out shops for utility purposes, (Bykaas/Tornoth).
• Player is directed/introduced to the character by another character, (Miggpli, Uum, Nkaanmykiunsuns, Subni, Noidu).
3. Circumstances force/encourage engagement between player and character.
• Player meets someone on the road.
• Player spends a lot of time within the vicinity of a character without a direct reason to engage, (small talk excuse).
• Player is interested in the character. You would need to introduce the character first by some other means for player to have this approach (Player going up to a character to flirt in a bar, etc).

So what the fuck am I supposed to do with this obnoxiously colorful thing I doodled in the last blogpost? I wasn't approaching this from the angle of a specific story beat or a character idea, so now I'm stuck with a character sprite I need to reverse engineer into a character (not a particularly new circumstance for me).

So... the character will be situated somewhere in the current playable area. Making the character into a feral would be super easy, so I'm not gonna do that. Let's do it the hard way instead.

-and it's at this point I stop for several days. I can't figure out how to introduce the character. The character doesn't have enough substance for me to speculate what could happen that engages the player with this character. So I started procrastinating with the writing by fiddling with the visual design instead because I thought the initial design was sloppy (they always are).

I removed the dangly bits but might bring them back, eh. I made buncha things more defined but some adjustments still needed.

I guess I should figure out what to do with the character. Ehh... let's transpose the possible player initiated engagement to the character instead. The character comes up to the player at the bar to flirt with them. There we go. It's a tiny notch above "You bump into this character on a road" but there's not really a reason why someone wouldn't do this.

Notice the script language highlighting "counter" because I thought using a simple word for functions was a good idea.

So this introduction tells us that the character thinks the player looks flirtable at a distance (Yes, we're creating this character's personality retroactively based on the way we introduce them). Great, now we have a premise and a single piece of personality to build on.

Weekly update #29

Art

Imagine these concepts were considered for the dev spotlight workshop character.

(They weren't really, they're just something I doodled afterwards)

Dev spotlight

Character workshop, part 1: The setup.

In this multi-part dev spotlight feature I will demonstrate how I create a simple character for TU. This character will be included in the version 3 of Teraurge. This content will also be different from other story content I have planned for V3 because most of this character will be discussed and dissected during this workshop. So if you don't want to be spoiled on this character before experiencing it yourself as intended in V3, stop reading now.

I have tendency to do my work in a messy and ass-backwards way, which then usually evolves into something decent/bearable. Don't do what I do, just treat this as a day in the zoo.

Name

Names are one of the most useful useless things. I don't think about character names much. My main concerns for a name are: How alien it is, no apostrophes, how easy it is to remember.

How alien it is: I could name a character "Jack" but that would hit player's sense of immersion hard. It's perfectly realistic (but unlikely) that aliens would use same sounds/wording for names as us, but I will avoid naming my characters with normal human names. (Google the name too, so you don't accidentally pick a name of a known/famous thing you didn't know about).

No apostrophes: This is simple, no apostrophes. Dumb cliche that makes names more complicated and elvish.

How easy it is to remember: A writer always feels a pang of shame when a reader doesn't remember the name of the character they're talking about. Not being able to remember names of characters when experiencing the writing also makes the story more confusing and harder to follow for the person experiencing it. This can sometimes be lessened in games by just giving a "Who was that again?" option in dialogue for the player, but in general I write content assuming players can remember characters when they're mentioned. Short, simple and distinct names are easy to remember. If there's a character with a long and complicated name, take into account how shortenable it is. I wouldn't want everyone to refer to Nkaan as Nkaanmykiunsuns all the time. (I don't take the pronunciation of a name into account when I create it. Your pronunciation is just as valid as anyone else's).

How to come up with the name? Just write weird words and add/remove letters from them until it feels less like a random mess of characters. Amnk... Amnuh-  Amnukhel. There we go, that's the name, Amnukhel. Sounds vaguely Egyptian but we can't tell for sure. I just have to make sure there are no Egyptian styled design elements in the character's design to avoid making it too familiar and less alien. Additionally it can be shortened to just Amn or Amnu. Great. I don't usually spend more than 2 minutes on a name. The name itself doesn't matter, the character itself will define the name through their interactions with the player.

File setup

Next, I'm going to make a folder named "Amnukhel" into the database/characters/ (Remember not to use UPPERCASE characters).

Poof! Easy.

And then I'm going to create two new txt.files and a folder, and then name them "diag", "stats", and "pictures" respectively. 

Badaboom! Done.

Then I'm going to copy the default list of attributes I have on hand into the stats.txt. 

Imagine intense copy/paste action here.

The default environment doesn't have to be defined from the get to, the game will load a placeholder grey thing if it's not set properly here. The color settings are just white for bubble and black for text. They're set as hex colors and if you want to be efficient/lazy you can just google that shit.

Yes, you can just google that shit.

To finish the setup of the character to be ready for content, I'm going to copy the most basic script structure in the world into the diag.txt.

This will be super riveting and erotic at some point, I hope.

I still need a "character.png".

At this point I have a very vague grasp about the character that I won't elaborate here. To help with the creative process I'm going to doodle a picture of the character so I can do a thinky during the drawing. I used to draw character sketches on a blank background, but I find it faster to implement them into the game if I just use the perspective template I use for drawing backgrounds for this purpose.

I wasn't sure what I was going for, but this one's good. A colorful frog alien thing that rests on it's belly with droopy ears . I wasn't going to render it this much but I got carried away. The ominous human scale shadows are harmless.

After some doodling, I export the character layer as a "character.png", and put it into the character's folder. After all this setting up I can boot up the game, press ctrl + d and open the character from the debug menu. (You might need to activate the debug function for your installation to be able to do this, see the file "debug_functions_plz.txt" in your database folder for the instructions on how to do it).

Amazing what you can accomplish in an afternoon of fucking about.

Weekly update #28

Art

End to End

Dev spotlight

Here's the FAQ.

I'm going to answer few more specific questions that are not addressed in the FAQ page, here:

Release ETA?
No. Refer to the new FAQ for more information about this.

Will Naigad return/have more content at some point in the future? 
Yes. Not in V3.

Can you give us hints to decode the sock mystery.
Stop messing with the sock.

How much more explorable area in V3?
On the world map there is a small cluster of tiny islands above the peninsula which will become accessible. There will be something else as well that is not seen on the map.

Are majority of the characters built like humans?
The shapes will definitely not be limited to standard bipedals.

Any plans to make a gallery, or a way to replay sex/romance scenes?
Currently, no.

Can this question be in the FAQ?
No.

Please post more simple line art sketches, they are fun to color in.
Okay.

How much of the update is going to be centered around the characters already in the game?
Half and half.

How big is V3?
Probably too small for people waiting for it, but too big for the person making it.

What kind of combat and weapons will we have access to?
The V3 update brings some needed changes to the combat mechanics to mix things up a bit, but it will generally remain as 1v1 and turn based outside more elaborately designed and scripted battles. The weapons will mainly be melee focused, but more advanced/ranged weapons will be included later.

Does this game close off content depending on the sex you pick?
Yes. The characters react differently to the player character depending on their sex, so this means that female and male player characters will continue having mutually exclusive content.

New art? I mean, more detailed lewd scenes?
New art, yes. More detailed lewd scenes, no. The sketchy style of the art is a deliberate production decision to make creating art for the different scenes quick, because the amount of pictures in the game is and will be fairly hefty. Creating art is not a problem for me but writing/coding/scripting needs the saved time.

Will Tornoth ever be a gay romance option?
No.

Will there be more Sulie or other snake girls?
Maybe.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the next version coming out?
When it's done. I've tried several times to make estimates for ETAs on the previous updates but they've all been terribly wrong. Because of this I've adopted stance of not giving ETAs to anyone. If someone says they know the release date, they're wrong. This is about practicality and stress management for me, so I'd rather keep things this way.

How much is done for the next version?
I don't know. If I knew, I could predict ETAs. Tasks vary in difficulty and my available time to work on them varies as well.

Can you show a preview from the next update?
Yes and no. I will only give out previews/teasers for content unrelated to the story or the characters, which includes code/UI/other improvements.

Why don't you do content previews?
I don't like giving out spoilers of any kind.

Is there going to be a way to increase our attributes and stats?
No. The character attributes act the same way as the player character's sex, they create a character with definition that reacts with the world in a believable way. A player tweaking their character's attributes actually means they lose definition as a character. You can improve your ability to fight by learning new combat cards and acquiring new equipment, but the base attributes will remain unchanged.

Is there going to be more gay/lesbian/etc content?
Yes.

Is there going to be more feral content?
Yes.

Will *character here* get more content?
If the character's story/arc feels unfinished it probably is, and more is on the way. Note that some characters will get less content than others because I simply cannot consistently update all characters as I keep adding them.

Will you make *fetish here* content?
I do not approach writing from the starting position of including specific sexual acts or fetishes. I am unlikely to cater to specific fetishes other than xenophilia. Possible contributor content might include specific fetishes but I curate contributor content the same way as my own content, so characters that act as simple fetish content dispensers are unlikely be included.

Will pregnancy be part of gameplay/mechanics?
No. Pregnancy is a story/writing thing if and when it happens. Depending on the specific circumstances of the pregnancy it might mean that the story has reached an ending for that player character.

Can you make *character here* gay/hetero/bi/other content?
The characters in the game have their own sexual preferences and I am not inclined to change/tweak those if requested by anyone for whatever reason.

What does the sock tree mean?
Stop messing with the sock.

Weekly update #27

Art

Knuckle draggin

Purple butt

Dev spotlight

Still working on V3.

I will be compiling a FAQ for the next weekly update, which will also be added to the blog as a page. If you think you have a possible Frequently Asked Question, do post it in the comments and I will take a look at it.

Weekly update #26

Art

Pointy Booby

Dev spotlight

Still working on V3.

I've taken two screenshots from my V3 changelog file. What you see does not contain all the changes that will appear in the update. The changes present on this list are usually large collections of smaller tweaks and additions, so the actual workload may vary wildly between each entry.

The changelog screenshots are provided as is, and I won't be elucidating any weirdness or things that are spoilered in them. These are just my own notes on the progress of the update, and they aren't necessarily meant for public consumption. I'm only presenting them here to reassure people that the project is still very much alive, and that I have a plan for the additions I want to do for each update.

Different bullet points in the "Character" section of the changelog can actually represent environments with complex player interactions or several different characters that are intertwined in a single story arc, so counting the lines won't give you an accurate count of the new faces that are planned for the update.

"V" Means the feature is work in progress. This can mean anywhere between 1% to 99%
"✔" Means the feature is done and works.