History and Progress

Here's some of the progress that's been done lately. In this video you can see a few updates, such as the crates, the cheat menu, Alraune's attacks, and Golem's level. 

The crates didn't had precise collision when Voms was stepping on them, and they wouldn't break with Ground Pound. Now they do.

Alra has more constant attacks and shoots 5 projectiles. Originally she had only 2 projectiles and she wasn't very challenging as an enemy.

Golem's level had an experimental double camera (just like Slime Girl Red), but that was slowing the game's framerate. We went back to just 1 camera and the overall fight and the presentation is much better. 

Also, I get hyped listening to the new music!

Of course none of this came easily, as there were many delays on many fronts. My new plan regarding my programmer also failed. I suggested that I pay for an Airbnb for him to stay for 10 days and focus on the game, but that wouldn't work for him. He had a counter-proposal where he could find a few extra days to work... let's hope it would work. Otherwise I would have to start looking for other GM programmers.

Sadly, the delays have no end and I have mentioned this in the past few entries. The progress is there but it's very slow. It is by no means a cause for celebration, but July was this blog's 9th birthday. I'm embarrassed of how long this project is taking to be completed. But I don't know what else I could have done differently. 

Besides the programing delays, if I can try to justify my part, it's because there are 6 playable characters. This is like making 6 different games that overlap in one big complex setting. And every character has story, cutscenes, puzzles to solve and additional details (nudity, sex scenes, Rudy has 3 transformations, etc). The game design was challenging from it's inception. 

Thanks to player feedback we improved the game by adding a map, cheat codes, guides on the map, teleport rooms and more. And even more were added by pledges, such as sex scenes, map scenes, custom Npcs, Survival mode, Time Attack mode, Galleries, Safe mode etc. None of these things were in the original plans, but we had to add them. So, looking back, these extra additions make the game a more complete experience and I'm glad they exist. 

At this point, I need to mention that Titan is a great programmer. He might be slow regarding deadlines, but he was able to do pretty much everything I asked of him. And many of these things were almost impossible to pull. For example, he figured out that the sex scenes can only be shown through a video plug-in, made specifically for Hyper Light Drifter. That solved the white screens a few years ago. As a result, Titan always says "thank you Hyper Light Drifter" when he deals with new sex scenes. Pretty random and funny.

 

- A short history -

Titan, the game's main programmer, contacted me by DeviantArt back in 2013. Soon after we started working on a demo of MoGi Origins, based on characters from my card game MoGi CardFight. Voms was a character we both designed just for this game. Then we started this blog.

By August we had our first demo and by Spring we had a very successful Offbeatr. We wanted to make a small game at first, and in our excitement we promised things that we thought it would be easy to do. But soon reality settled and we realized that we ended up with a mountain of things to deal with.

The original deal was that I would do all the graphics and Titan will be working on everything regarding GameMaker. At first I was designing levels and Titan was tiling them in the game by code! I don't know how that it's possible. Very tedious work. Later, the game showed problems with white memory screens and video playback, but that was thankfully solved. Overall the game was mostly working fine, but it needed a lot work.

2 years later Titan started having personal problems. And from 2015-16 until today the game's progress is very slow. I tried to work around this, so after talking with Titan, I spent a lot of time looking for GM programmers to help us with our project. The process was painful. Everyone I contacted had to pass Titan's test first, to see if they got what it takes. Many were lazy or fakes. And Titan wasn't often available. We had programmer's steal money from us, or doing terrible work (while being expensive), or just wasting our time over and over. Details of all that can be found in this blog.

In 2016 we decided to add an extra attack for Voms, because his gameplay felt flat. That attack was the Ground Pound. In 2016-17 we added 7 sub-weapons and the Swing move that repels enemy projectiles.

In 2017-18 we paid to have level artists do the tiling and programmers to deal with various aspects of the game. This was GM work, so Titan was overseeing this. I wasn't satisfied with the end result. Most of the people working on this were doing the bare minimum and making changes was costly. At least we finished the level naming which was a burden for years.

In 2019 and 2020 I invited Titan to fly and stay with me, in order to finish the game. I insisted that he won't pay for anything during his time here, as he was my guest. A huge chunk of the game's code was finished during Titan's visits, so it was worth it. In any case, some of these solutions worked well, some didn't. This is what they call "development hell". And I live in this hell for far too long.

With all that behind the scenes, it was hard to remain focused and creative. But by 2020 all MoGi (sprites, programing, sex scenes and map scenes) were finished (except Golem and Stheno). Also all playable characters are designed and playable (except Ninjuco). Details for all the above can be found throughout this blog.

During the game's development, little by little, I had to compromise and take on more responsibilities. The graphics were always my department. I gladly took on music and voice acting, even though it needed a lot of research and attention. This blog was Titan's idea but after a while it became my thing as well. Patreon too. Videoposts too. The level tiling in GameMaker is now also my job. So yeah, everything ended up being on me. Furthermore, Titan for personal reasons, forfeited his rights to this game. But he promised to help whenever possible. I'm sure I am missing a few other things that we had to sacrifice for the game's development... oh yes, one other thing is that I had to remove Vor as a playable character. And the seagulls! I made an animated seagull to give some life to the static backgrounds but... I have to let go and focus on the necessary additions until the release.

All that may sound negative but there is a bright side. The game is still going. This may not seem like much, but I can see here in the blog's sidebar that other gamedevs haven't posted anything in months or even years. Furthermore, I had to learn GM and do the levels on my own. Thanks to that I'm not limited by other people's skills, and I also added simultaneous vertical and horizontal parallax to some levels. So, I don't have to burden others for any nitpicking details! And I might have removed Vor, but naked Alice is added as a secret character!

I want you to know that I do the best I can with what I got. For now I have to balance quality with quantity and finish the game with as few compromises as possible, while making the game feel complete and fun.

There's one more thing, if any of you have any info. Does anyone knows how can I get an ITIN or a Ben-8? They are forms I need to fill in order to get MoGi Origins to Steam. I better prepare for this now, than having to wait in yet another thing in the future. 

Thank you all for being around.
-Veins