Lipucd's Adult Zone

Well, I had planned to update people on how things where going sooner, but sadly Comcast kind tossed a hissy fit that we where too much overdo for too long, and shut us off till we paid it down. So while a few days later then desired, all the more reason to go forward.

So first and foremost is the regards of money this month. It was a little more tighter then expected, but the artist who got paid is at least welcomed for the current allotment, and the rest went to covering Comcast for now to ensure my net's still up and running. Thanks to that, the food budget didn't really suffer much, if at all, ensuring we're rather stocked up this month then we have been in the last 3-4 months or so!

I had taken the internet downtime to prod a bit more at RPG Maker's more baseline scripting as well when I noticed a few things in it's formula's that where not documented in any resources I had at the time. Once the net was back and I could double check some stuff, I've at last found a very selective puzzle piece that had always been then, but I never knew about that solves SO many issues before hand.

To go into greater detail, up till now when a someone declares an attack ( towards any target but itself ), there's been no way to have that attack give the attacking subject a status effect that I could use as an anchor point going "OK, this person just attacked, so I can use a common event to track who attacked, and who got attacked, and do things based off of the results". Though today I am the proud learner about "a.addState()", a rather undocumented command that allows you to literally give an ID'd status effect onto the attacker, as they attack. This changes so much, and it'll be seeing a lot of use already as it allows me to:

-Update Makoto=Nanaya in Egg Assault to now gain stacks as she attacks. No more -needing- to charge up for them! ( But she'll still keep her overdrive for obvious reasons! )

-In turn make the Resin bots more 'direct' as they no longer have to have one of them 'set up' before moving into the attack. Though I might keep this logic for balance reasons if people think otherwise...

-Able to do something very cool with a new foe in Project QB that I was mentally struggling on how to do with this limitation. (You'll all see soon enough!)

There's some other stuff as well, but this really does streamline the workflow for something so utterly simple and part of the baseline options that...isn't honestly explained in any of the help documents or talked about much between people elsewhere. So on one hand I feel stupid that this powerful commands been here this entire time and I've never known about it, but on the other hand not as much as apparently not many other people know about it as well :'D

Beyond that, work on Project: -QB- has started in earnest once more. As I type this out, it's just a little before catching mo2 so we can finish up another image set for the Queen Q-Bee to have done for another foe ( this time the worms, making her up to date with everything outside of the tentacles! ), while I've been sitting down re-implementing the 'conversion' common event ( This one is what's used to change your drones into foes mid battle, ensuring it's using the right image based off of nude or clothed before conversion, and that it doesn't try converting a battler slot already in use ). I'll be working at this piece meal though, impermenting foes from the easiest to work on ( The Latex ) towards the hardest/most complex ( The Worms, and the 'New' foe are kinda tied ). I did have a ponder if I should perhaps do some streaming of me working on this, bt I've always questioned if watching me click a bunch of menus, and type in a bunch of junk would be 'entertaining' enough, and I've never found my voice to be that enduring ether, but maybe you guys can chime in and let me know? I've been carting strong off of your guidance and support this far, I'd think I'd take your suggestions then hearing out my own mental thoughts a lot more in earnest.

Pretty much the nets dead. We've been trying to pay down Comcast for a while now, but that Bill at a st came towards a head. So we're offline for a while. At least till Tuesday in earnest. Sadly can't give any updates till then.

So, first and foremost, i do have to say thank you, towards everyone. I was really taken back by the genuine support I've gotten from everyone, including with my own inner demons biting away at me saying I wasn't really much better then some 'other' projects that have happened in the past thus far, and my own insecurity kinda bubbling out publicly.

But let's talk game projects, as there's a bit to honestly talk about. For starters, just retorting from last time, back in June steam kinda glitched on me, and before I knew it the game data had been reverted back towards being a 'New Project' all together. Thankfully for something like Egg Assault, not much was really lost (Set back a little, but not lost!). For something like Project QB though that was in it's 5th revision because I was struggling to make VX Ace NOT kill itself as I swap party members left and right doing a single battle event, that was where the blow came the hardest. A lot fo that work was still experimental, not really set in stone, so I wasn't backing it up like I should have been. This costed me quite a few months of said experamenting too without much to honestly show for it ether. Though I stand at an interesting cross road as well.

As it stands there's one of 3 routes I can take, and I'll be asking for your input on how I should approach this. The first one is to take something that's already in working status, and just polish it up more. Egg Assault had some undesirables still adrift in it's released version (Plant's too strong, resin can still cause a soft lock, some people still never got to fight the boss...) and some things at the time I just didn't finish adding (A Free Battle mode, more equipment, more foes [even if their status attacks wouldn't be added...]). As such working on this would be to fix and add these things into it for a more enjoyable and refined experience, but not much else at this stage. There would not be much as far as new art assists or status go, but there would be at last be one thing, the 'correct' implementation of the first boss in full!

The next route would be to just 'Bite the Bit' as it where and to continue back on Project QB. As it stands, I had been working on redoing the core game concept from the ground up in many ways given a lot of fan suggestions and input. What I'm going with now is that you're in the center of the hive, and each sector's been overtaken by a selective corruption of beasties to overcome, to eventually be able to escape outright before everything's lost. This route allows the player to pick and choose what type of foes they want to fight (that more follows in line with the type of game I would like to offer), more less just feels more logical then the endless runner I had in previous demos. What I chances are will do is release it in chunks, focusing on one foe type at a time, instead of all of them at once like I have been before. Though in turn, I do want to tease with one new thing me & mo2 had crafted up...Let's just say mimic chest have a big brother...

The last thing would be to sit down, with the art assists I have from Codename Progressive, and to use those in an attempt to make a working system under MV. I've obtained MV a while back thanks towards a few friends, but I've not yet had time to really sit down and dabble with it much more then a surface glance. MV, due towards it's more Java and web wrapper format, would be it wouldn't just be Windows operation systems it could work on, and it in turn could work on phones, Mac's, really anything as long as you could use HTML4/5 from what I've understood. As such it might be worth working under that at long last instead of struggling with VX Ace in some ways. With this idea, it would be taking the main route everyone seemed to love the most, Tyament's exploration around the living latex suit factory. None of the artwork would be updated or enhanced mind you, and it would be mostly for redoing this to be more 'up to date' in game mechanics more then anything else, but it is an option, and I figured I'd offer doing it then not.


Regardless of witch you choose, you can vote here to give me input on where we should go next.

There is one other project that I'm working on regardless...

First off, I'm 30. yay. Second off, I updated the links towards mega.nz. If for any reason those go dead...well, that's chances are all she wrote at this point.

Long and short? I'm pretty defeated at this point. I've not said anything public due towards my rantings isn't something I felt was something people should -have- to deal with or bare with. As long as I could push content out, that's all that mattered, right?

Well, I ended up failing on that matter, stress getting the better of me, mistakes made, progress on reworks all but lost, time and time again working only showing how dumb this 30 year old really is after all. Can't get a job anymore at this age given I never could score any work experience, and given I went to college, but didn't graduate, that just put a black mark on me that's never gone away. At this point, for me to get anything 'new' out, I would predict it being months from now after the fun that was watching all of my projects revert as if I just made them the day before. Even then, with how poorly done I still was having issues on charater swapping in Q-Bee not causing all sorts of weird crashes, or how poorly handled the menu system for Egg Assault has been where trying to clean that up's just been a bigger mess.

I wanted to do good things. Apparently I'm just fated to struggle at everything and not have much to show for it. So this is me saying sorry, for wasting many of your time and interest. There's far better games being made out there like Lewdest Dugion and Malice and the Machine that have ether been able to show high quality work, or to show progress at the rate people want. I've failed on both accounts.

In earnest I might just such that patreion down too. Even if I get something out months from now, it wouldn't matter. Nothing I've been doing really matters. I'm just some guy who screws up at everything.

Well, today starts the first of what I hope is a full telling of how I am going about redoing Project: -QB- both to be useful for others who are trying to make such games and the like to see what I'm doing and going about it, more less to keep people breasted at how fast I work and progress on these things, and the head aces and struggles that will ( more then likely ) happen along the way.

So first and formost: Why?
The answer is pretty easy in that. Back when I started the project, it was mostly a proof of concept situation. I didn't take steps to keep things organized nor clean in any fashion, and it shows utterly.

The maps where a mess, the common events where a mess, the triggers, everything was all over without any real good way to keep track of everything. This in and of itself is some pretty hard knocks on my own self, but this wouldn't be such a matter if not for the big issue at hand: Updating older features to work better started breaking everything else. I had learned a lot from working on Egg Assault, and I wanted to bring a lot of those updates and improvements over here to better my workflow, but alas due towards just how disorganized it really was at the end of the day, I've had to drop that build and start anew.

So, what goes into starting one of my game projects then from scratch?
The first tibit is the scripts, as without those, I've got nothing. Of course, the scrips I use....

...Come from the one and only CP, or Neon Black. As anyone who's followed me the last year or two would know, CP's stuff allows me to do everything that I do. From the battle system that changes images based off of status effects, towards the ability to 'stack' said status effects in turn towards worse and worse levels, CP's content has given my games the backbone to work off of time and time again. Out of all of them, I've only done a fix and edit towards one of them, the Custom Battle, in where it had a serous game crashing bug and error, and it took me well over a year to trace down the exact issue and learn how to patch it up for good. Ever since that fix though, these have been my go-to, and there's not been anything else on the market that gives me the type of control nor options I need for my products. CP might have gone off towards greener pastures, but I still carry and respect the work he's done, and am ever grateful for it.

So today was mostly about shifting over all the scripts I'll need to use into a new project, more less art assists and the like. In the last iteration of Project: -QB-, I used RPG Maker's default AI scripting. This is just it rolling a dice and seeing what attack goes off on whom, with me able to fiddle around with it ever so much via Varables or Switches, or if it's HP is in Selective ranges, but nothing else. Overall it's rather limited in function, and disallows a mot of creative ideas, or preventing attacks going off on targets it should not ( like targets that JUST recovered from status effects, so you don't get 'stun locked' ). Egg Assault was the first take on using CP's AI script, passed down by one of the more helpful assistance's a while back when trying to better my games, and as anyone who plays it shows, the AI is a lot more smarter and can really focus down a player in key situations if you don't disallow them to. That's because such AI lets me control whom it can and can't target based off a number of different pointers, being health, status, or even if they are being attacked! That kind of greater control lets me make far more smarter foes that try to set up onto the player, and it'll be on the player to ether try to counter that strategy...or let it go off...;3

As an example of how the AI works, here's a snapshot from the Resin bot:
Skill_Use_AI: 159
Required_Switch: 98, OFF
Remove_If: t.state?(16)
Select_Default


Skill_Use_AI: 161
Required_State: 16
Select_If: t.state?(26)
Select_Random


Skill_Use_AI: 160
Required_State: 16
Select_If: t.state?(303)
Select_Random


Skill_Use_AI: 160
Required_State: 16
Select_If: t.state?(306)
Select_Random


Skill_Use_AI: 160
Required_State: 16
Remove_If: t.state?(19)
Remove_If: t.state?(22)
Remove_If: t.state?(31)
Remove_If: t.state?(26)
Remove_If: t.state?(20)
Remove_If: t.state?(21)
Remove_If: t.state?(25)
Remove_If: t.state?(23)
Remove_If: t.state?(24)
Remove_If: t.state?(30)
Select_If: (t.hp_rate * 100) <= 25
Select_Random


Skill_Use_AI: 160
Required_State: 16
Remove_If: t.state?(19)
Remove_If: t.state?(22)
Remove_If: t.state?(31)
Remove_If: t.state?(26)
Remove_If: t.state?(20)
Remove_If: t.state?(21)
Remove_If: t.state?(25)
Remove_If: t.state?(23)
Remove_If: t.state?(24)
Remove_If: t.state?(30)
Remove_If: t.state?(252)
Select_If: (t.hp_rate * 100) <= 50
Select_Random


Skill_Use_AI: 126
Remove_If: t.state?(6)
Remove_If: t.state?(19)
Remove_If: t.state?(25)
Remove_If: t.state?(26)
Remove_If: t.state?(20)
Remove_If: t.state?(21)
Remove_If: t.state?(303)
Remove_If: t.state?(306)
Select_Random


Skill_Use_AI: 1
Remove_If: t.state?(19)
Remove_If: t.state?(25)
Remove_If: t.state?(26)
Remove_If: t.state?(20)
Remove_If: t.state?(21)
Select_Random


Skill_Use_AI: 7
Select_Default


...that's a lot of text huh? But you can chances are make out a few key factors of it if your savvy enough, even without knowing exactly what all each number is referring towards. For example, there's 4 different listings for the Skill #160, one of them can only work if the targets 25% HP or less, another is 50% HP or less ( but notice it has one more status effect the previous one did not as 'do not target' ), and then the last two only list it being able to work if a target has a single status effect. These refer towards the Resin drone able to coat someone in resin, and as you can guess, pans out from "At 25% HP as long as not under another status, 50% as long as not under Aiges Shard ( and any previously listed status ), and at any point and time a target is under Hypno/Hypno (Droned)". The order is also important to note, as the script reads from the top down, so whatever becomes the first 'valid' attack, it will always do before anything else under the list. Controlling that though is with creative use of limits ( don't attack if person doesn't have status/is under status ) more less if the foe can even legit use the attack ( not enough MP/TP usable to use the attack ) at the time.

Well, that's a good place to stop for now. If you guys want to have me explain other points in detail, or want to see selective parts being worked on, do chime in and let me know! Questions and the like are also welcomed!