Plans and progress

I got a bunch of good news:

Titan will visit Veins for 2 months, around January. Until then, we won't release any Betas, to focus on work and also because we are too close to finishing the game.

Due to life problems, Titan hasn't been working on the game as much as we would like to and we need to go pass the development hell phase by any mean necessary. I certainly don't want to have this project on hold for another year. 

His 2 month stay doesn't leave any room for errors but it's the best thing we can do. These 8 weeks need to be treated surgically. 2 weeks to finish Voms timeline and double check all his maps/riddles. Then 1 week to finish the riddles, story, dialogues and bosses for each of the 6 other playable characters. And of course something always goes wrong, so we need to be prepared for anything. This sounds like a close call but we have to remain positive as Titan works really fast and efficiently under the right conditions.

That said, we might need to sacrifice some luxurious choices we announced early in development, such as several save slots and Vor's prequel level, to try and ensure as much quality as possible for the main game. Vor's story however, will be told even as a cut scene, if necessary.

Regarding current progress, two more Mogi sex scenes are done (Golem and Succubus 2). The game is getting closer to the finish line.

Art missing from the game:
1) Stheno art/sex scene
2) Blue sex scene
3) Ucogi art
4) Alice art/sex scene
5) Vor art/sex scenes
6) Cutscenes
7) Elf art/sex scene
8) Okami art/sex scene
9) Bosses
   • Iron (Alice/Vor)
   • Cactus (Chibi)
   • Spaceship (Ninjuco)
   • Scientist (Alice)
   • Stheno (Voms/Vor)
   • Golem (Vor)

Queens W.I.P. video

We made a video to show you the progress so far with the 3 final Queens of the game (it contains visual spoilers).

Not much else to report this month, apart from the fact that Titan will visit Veins once more, to finish the game. Not sure when this will happen at this point. We aim for December. According to what we have discussed until now, Titan will try to stay for 2 months, and hopefully that's enough time to complete everything.

Sprite Scenes completed!

Veins finished all the Sprite scenes for the game. All 9 hostages can be discovered and collected by Voms in all the different areas of the game (Docks, Forest A, B, C, D, Farms, City, New Labs, Tunnels) except for the Old Labs, where he won't have access. 

Each of these areas will have several copies of each Sprite Scene, and the players will have to find them all to unlock the animation for the gallery. Hopefully, this mechanic will expand the exploration and add more replayability to the game.

For as long as you play with the SFW option switched on, all Sprite Scenes will be replaced by the Orange Slime. Sneakingly though, you will be unlocking the actual Scenes!

Sneak peek of extra levels

This month, we want to share with you, some of the more exotic places of the MoGi island. These areas are accessible by characters other than Voms, because of their unique moves.

Only Ucogi can access and enter this building. The spaceships indicate
that the entire area will be swarmed with hostile soldiers!

Alice is the only one who can go through the electrical hazards of the old labs,
as she tries to find out about her past and get revenge.

Chibi, Alice and Vor can survive the heat of the melting labs,
as they find the very core of the explosion that started it all!

We hope we can release a new beta soon. Apologies for the huge delay. As we said before, a lot of work has been done, but we try to make it presentable and playable for you to enjoy. Thank you for your patience.

Golem and Labs

Veins here.

Summer, heat, people visit... it wasnt a productive month for me. Not as much as I wanted anyways. I haven't been on vacations for over a year and this slows me down. In any case, I try to keep my chin up and work with as much enthusiasm as I possibly can.

This month I finished Golems animations. Golem is one of Voms final bosses and although she doesn't have much of a story, I hope in the end she can add something new to the table. Voms cannot beat her, but another character can hopefully put up a fight against her. I do like the idea that Voms won't be able to do everything on his own and the other playable characters will be around to assist him in their own timelines. She is one of the 3 giant Queens, along with Cyclops and Stheno.

Titan was super busy during July, but he told me a few days ago that he has worked on the levels. Almost all of them are linked but he still needs to set their riddles, hazards and mechanics. There are a lot of these additions that we haven't been able to share, so perhaps it's time to show some of them.

This is one of the many new rooms with new mechanics and animations. Voms will be able to climb on moving platforms and try to avoid toxic clouds, exploding pipes and goo eruptions, as the Chemistry Lab is falling apart! There are 3 Labs that form a big riddle and Voms has to solve it in order to proceed with his adventure. Like the City and the Tower, the Labs serve as a break from the horizontal platforming and enemy fighting, to focus a bit more on the puzzle elements of the game.

Enemy development video

I made a video of the progress we have done regarding enemy programing. In the video you can see the progress of Vampire and other enemies, even Ucogi and Alice as bosses. Most of their programming is there, but the art still needs to be finalized. A few enemy animations in the video have placeholder art, such as the giant Golem, that uses Troll's sprites as a reference.This is why we can't release a beta yet... we have done a lot of work behind the scenes, but it's not yet presentable.

FairyGirl Vampire is done, with her programing and her sex scene recently finished. We will post her sex scene on Patreon soon. Pixie's sprite scene is also completed, getting closer to finish the game.

Art missing for Voms timeline:
1) Stheno art/sex scene
2) Golem art/sex scene
3) Blue sex scene
4) Succubus 2 sex scene
5) Vampire sprite scene
6) Ucogi art
7) Alice art
8) Vor art
9) cutscenes

We will get next beta out when we feel confident that everything works good enough for a decent release.

General Progress Update

For a while now, a lot of things have been going on behind the scenes. 

Titan here, what I'm programming is mostly level and save related. We plan on releasing the game once Voms' story is complete and later on, release extra content afterwards in the vein of Ucogi's playthrough, Chibi's playthrough, and so on and so forth.  This means the game needs to be future proofed on a technical level.  

Right now, whenever you start a new beta you'll need to start a new game because instance IDs (which saves things), might have shifted around. For instance, if you move a barrel, save and go back to see the barrel it should be where you moved it. Every new beta however, we add new objects and instances and that changes around the IDs of all these objects in GameMaker. This is part of the reason why you must start a new game whenever a new Beta comes out. Currently, switching out all interactive instance IDs with custom ones, and an ID search function so I don't use the standard that comes with GM. If I do everything properly even new updates won't need new saves. I know this sounds familiar, but it's because I still haven't finished doing it yet. 

This is time consuming as we have a lot of interactive objects. I had made some progress on this front earlier but while adding new levels I saw some vestiges of the old system still being used and I am currently ironing everything out. Thankfully, we don't have any more memory issues as of now. 

Veins is half-done with Ucogi's sprites. He also finished Pixie's sprite sex scene and he is about to finish Vampire's sprite sex scene and Vampire's sex scene with Voms.

We are also linking the levels that were previously created to this version of the game, while fixing any issues that may have existed in them. Things like invisible platforms not existing, audio glitches in the wrong use of invisible platform, camera motion not focusing on the right area, and enemy placement glitches.

Other than that, we want you to know we are still around and we are doing our best to make a game that will make everyone happy!

After the break

Team Erogi took a break during February but now we are back, refreshed and recharged. We needed some time away from the game, not only to rest but also to distance ourselves a bit, in order to see the game with fresh eyes upon our return.

There's quite a lot of fine-toothed things that our team needs to work on:

• All the normal monster enemies are programmed and their sprites are fully animated. We can't however tell which MoGi allies they synergize with and which they don't, so we do need to tweak them until they feel satisfying to fight against. (For example, Rockgirl Stone used to just be immortal to attacks until she left herself open when she attacks. If you paired her with any other Mogi like Neko for instance, it didn't feel satisfying to wait for her to attack before hitting her back. After testing and discussing about her, we decided that she needs to have higher defense when she blocked, instead of being immortal.)

• Troll's sex scene and Erubetie's sprites were finished recently. Only 2 Hostage scenes are remaining (Pixie, Vampire), 2 Queens (Stheno, Golem) and 4 Sex scenes (Stheno, Golem, Vampire, Blue) for Voms' timeline. Okami, Elf, Iron and Cactus will be shown in other character's timelines.

• Titan's making sure the specific Keys to certain puzzles are unique. (Everything the user interacts with, modifies the savefile. We need to be extra careful about this because the gamemaker's ID system reuses IDs after some time, and this can create programing conflicts. This is the main reason why people need to restart the game from start in every beta update. And since we are planning to add more content after we finish and release Voms, that system needs to be made to take updates.)

• Last but not least, Titan's making sure the final boss for Voms, feels right to play against. (She'll make you use all of your abilities and should give a very challenging fight. A lot of this work isn't directly visible, but we are working towards at least one more beta before a Voms game release.)

Aftermath of Titan's trip

After 2.5 months of hard work, Titan returned home and he is no longer living with Veins. Our main goal was to finish Voms timeline, or at least, as many things as possible. We had a board for our plans and deadlines (1) and another board keeping track of what actually happened (2).

You may not understand a lot because those boards were made for personal use. But you can see some of the dates we took a break, the weeks that Veins planned to finish Ucogi and Alice but he had to deal with the level design instead, and the final days where we both were exhausted. The map system was done from scratch, a few errors and glitched had to be fixed, a ton of level hazards were added and the list goes on and on regarding everything we added in the game.

We reached a point were we had to work so fast that we didn't even had the luxury of turning back and double check our work. We finished all the MoGi enemies, program-wise and graphic-wise (except Erubetie), as well as many MoGi Queens, but there was no time to test them excruciatingly. Our level guys managed to finish all the 59 remaining levels but we haven't played in them in order to do any corrections. Designing all these levels and adding all the new objects took a huge chunk of Veins time, and they have still a long way to go, but knowing they are almost done, it's a fulfilling milestone.

Veins draft sketches: Alice's Dungeon, Stheno's Castle and Ucogi's Temple.

Most of the work is done but we need to check what we have done in detail before we can show something concrete. We do want to release a new Beta soon, but first we need to go through the time consuming process of finalizing everything we can, which always slows us down a bit.

Now that Titan and Veins are separate again, Team Erogi will be working to tidy up the game and make it ready for presentation. Unfortunately we didn't get to finish Voms timeline, mostly because Ucogi, Alice and a few cutscenes and MoGi need to be completed as well. That said, we did a REALLY good amount of work. The entire island is done visually, and every map exists in the level editor. This was a really large hurdle for us, and it's cleared.