Eromancer – Malise and the Machine InProgress 0 03 and 0 0352

Malise and the Machine is an adult RPG for the PC, and is being created using a heavily improved version of RPG Maker VX Ace. The project has already been in development for over a year, but now it is time to expand the project and get players involved (that's you!).
One of the major goals of the game is originality in as much as possible. Characters, enemies, artwork, the story, tilesets, and even the soundtrack are being custom made for the game. If you've been waiting for a H-game with virtually non-stop combat-oriented H content that draws on gameplay aspects from classic RPG greats such as the classic Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy series, then you should care!

Is the gameplay any good?

The gameplay is good! A key element is the custom active time battle system that features fully animated enemy sprites and unique, highly detailed character artwork for every action. Characters have access to different outfits and weapon types that will modify their stats, play-style, and most importantly how battle H-content gets carried out.

Here's a brief summary of gameplay elements that are either integrated already or are being planned/designed:

A fast paced active time battle system featuring a party of two with real-time H-content
Complex skills, status system, balancing, and actual challenging gameplay (gasp)!
Quality AI
A fleshed out story told through events with detailed character artwork
An array of armor types for each character with their own unique visuals and play-styles
Crafting
Armor and weapon upgrade system
A whole lot of loot to feed the crafting and upgrade systems
Non-linear story/quest/progression elements
A custom user interface designed to maximize effectiveness of the biggest feature: H-content

What's special about the H content? What will this game feature?

This is where the game really shines. The design goals of this project aim to overcome the design drawbacks of many of the H-RPGs that have come before it. Instead of H-content feeling like it has been tacked onto the gameplay, this game is being heavily designed around the H-content.

Many games demand that you lose to see H-content. While it situationally makes sense, it is completely counter-intuitive to what makes a game fun: progression and overcoming challenges. Discovering a new enemy only to have to wait for a game over screen to collect H-content simply isn't that fun.

In this game, you are rewarded with H-content by surviving. Most of the H-content occurs during battle scenes, and does so using a completely original system. The game features a struggle system not unlike many RoR titles (Shinobi Girl, Witch Girl, etc.) built within the active time battle system. This opens up a whole new realm of gameplay possibilities such as skills and stats designed to affect the outcomes of the struggle system, as well as story/event battles designed completely around this system.

While there are a ton of details I could go into (and yes, many details left to be fleshed out as well), here's a basic summary of the H-content elements that are being designed for the game:

Real time battle H-content that is strongly influenced by characters' armor, level, and stats.
In-battle H system that combines the best aspects of RoR titles with traditional RPG H-games.
Unique clothing destruction system.
Unwarranted amounts of happy jelly.
Highly varied enemy types (humans/androids/robots, beasts, insects, tentacles, and more!)
Beasts, tentacles, insects, vore, and more will be included.
A ridiculous amount of highly detailed artwork
A gallery system to view higher quality versions of the ridiculous amount of highly detailed artwork

Different armor and outfits huh? Explain!

A lot of games in the past utilize picture overlays to simulate different clothing/outfits. In Malise and the Machine every outfit truly has its own unique artwork, and every single H attack has different artwork for each character and outfit (and many times the attack changes entirely!). In addition, each outfit type has a unique progressive armor damage pattern that affects how H attacks play out!

The artwork looks unique! How is it being made?

As I mentioned, the game has been in the early development stages for about a year. A big chunk of that time was devoted to experimenting with art styles, programs, and processes.

The art style I've settled on uses pre-rendered graphics made from 3D models. I'm using a highly customized set of shaders and post processing combined with hand painting in Photoshop to achieve this style, and the result is that I can create highly detailed artwork relatively quickly without being a master 2D artist. This route also allows me to pay to license models/parts from artists and customize them to my liking for use in the game. This isn't a magic button that does the work for me by any means as a lot of customization goes into everything, but it is the next best thing to having a team of artists working with me.

Who are you? Have you made any games previously? How many people are working this?

I'm a professional programmer, but this is my first game. I also have a background in various mediums of graphic design and music, and have pushed my creative abilities to new levels to lay the groundwork for this project.

I did much of the early work by myself, but the development team now consists of myself, a full-time programmer, and a second part-time artist. Due to the nature of the game content and the specific skill sets required for making the artwork (and coding my ambitious ideas) the pool of candidates is very small. Naturally I can't expect such talented people to work for free, nor would I want them to.

Changelog for V0.03 -> V0.035 (Public Demo 1)

MENU OVERHAUL
AltairPL has completely rewritten and overhauled the menu and title screen. We've
designed it to improve functionality, performance, and to facilitate future system
mechanics. The following are some of the changes made:

- Rewrote the various menu scenes and related code to improve transitions and performance.
- Replaced the 'Skills' menu with the 'Tetra' menu. You can inspect skills and items that
are equipped to your characters' various Tetra panels (the command panels shown in battle)
from this menu. While using an ARIS unit, you can equip new skills and items as well as
change their positions on the Tetra panels. Note that skills can no longer be used
outside of battle.
- Added armor damage icons to the menu and Status menu. Sections of these icons transition
from white to orange as a character takes damage. Once a section of the armor is orange,
it can be broken by certain enemy skills if the character's lust is high enough. Broken
armor sections are shown in red.
- Gear can now be changed in the Equip menu. Note that the Body slot can only be
accessed while using an ARIS unit.
- Redesigned and activated ARIS unit menu.
- Added a new entry to the Options screen to change the layout of the menu between 'Side'
and 'Centered' layouts.
- Improved menu scene transition animations.
- Menu elements are now mirrored and symmetrical between the two characters.
- Added color coded icons for equipment and items.
- Redesigned list windows to use "tiles" that show an object's icon, name, and additional
parameters based on the object type.
- Improved equipment list display conditions.
- Added icons to denote if a character has a certain piece of gear equipped.
- Added dynamic control notes to the bottom of various menu scenes.
- Added scrollbar functionality to list windows.
- Improved the layout and design of every menu scene.
- Added various confirmation prompts for Save/Load/Options scenes.
- Improved wallpaper background to remove banding and fix visibility issues for elements
on the lower portion of the screen.
- Improved particle effect behavior and performance.

The following are some examples of performance improvements since V0.03 using AltairPL's
PC as a test rig. Note that the FPS cap has been increased to 120 for these tests:
Main Menu: 90 FPS -> 120 FPS
Load Screen: 77 FPS -> 82 FPS
Save Screen: 88 FPS -> 98 FPS
Item Screen: 85 FPS -> 120 FPS
Status Screen: 60 FPS -> 105 FPS

OTHER MODIFICATIONS
- Malise has been added to the Access Tunnels content for the Public Demo. She doesn't
affect the story/dialog, but is compatible with all enemies' H attacks.
- Rebalanced enemies for a party of two characters.
- Chest rewards have changed for the public demo.
- Significantly improved battle performance. A comparison test on AltairPL's rig shows
an improvement of ~20 FPS from V0.03 (~70 FPS up to ~90 FPS).
- Added pause graphics for both the battle and map scenes.
- Enemy skills that summon spawns/appendages now have a unique skill name (for the
Fleshfather, the 'Constrict' skill has been renamed to 'Tentacle') to differentiate it
from the initial H skill that the spawn or appendage itself uses.
- Improved various mechanics related to enemy spawns/appendages.
- Added ARIS unit graphics for Malise.
- Controllers are supported once again.
- Pressing the Up arrow key while selecting a target will now confirm the action usage.
- Pause can now be assigned to a controller button.
- Changed 'Swap Character' key from 'C' to 'S' (for changing character graphics during the
map scene).
- Added a 'Quick Swap' feature for quickly trading turns in battle. Pressing the 'S' key
will cancel out of any process and immediately trade turns with the opposite character,
under the condition that her turn is ready.
- Item names are now highlighted in dialog and in loot messages.
- Removed content from V0.02 and prior. No worries, this content will make a reappearance
later in an improved form.
- Added various system and script related mechanics to facilitate future features.

BUG FIXES
- Fixed a bug where pausing during dialog scenes would cause some abnormal behavior.
- Fixed a bug where enemy spawns/appendages would sometimes initialize incorrectly, causing
them to lose a turn.
- Fixed a glitch that could result in the wrong pose being displayed for a character during
the battle victory scene.
- Fixed a discrepancy between displayed HP and HP recovered during character revival.

Fixed rare crash on the Tetra menu screen
Fixed rare crash when holding enemy is killed during auto-struggle
Fixed rare ATB glitch related to breaking hold with auto-struggle
Fixed a glitch where the guard + damage character portrait would be displayed inappropriately
Reorganized Options screen to improve readability