Hi, guys.

I'm finishing working on the build. Only minor tweaks and re-writing text are left to do. After that it's when Lyk finishes fixing grammar of the text. Then the release happens and the short updates basis follows, as planned.

The first build will cover the game until the first crossroad before Old Corona Village + one map to the left, where fisherman is located. I think it's a good starting point for building up updated content on the game.

Examples of updated content you can see bellow the “Work Progress Report” warning line, if you don't mind spoilers. If you do, then the warning line is as far as you should read this post.

There was plenty of work being done since the previous post; the build had a lot of problems. About 90% of everything was remade or edited in some way, mostly because of issues with coding and with old assets that didn't work with bigger resolution (plugins, UI, some in-game logic and such). Also, my drawing skills had improved over the years, which made the old drawings and the new ones look weird when combined. So I had to fix almost everything there too.

All-in-all the game's shaping up great. Nothing seems out of place, the graphics are adjusted, every new added feature harmoniously complements gameplay, and all the gameplay scripting makes more sense now. The new TDLT makes previous versions look outdated as hell. So get ready for the new one.

If no force majeure occurs, I expect the build to be released at least this or next week.

Take care of yourselves, guys.

Work Progress Report, SPOILERS AHEAD

Following spoilers include: Artwork, skill animations, gameplay mechanincs. 

In this section I will list the big stuff and what I would like to bring to your attention.

- The “Once upon a time, above Olypmus” text isn't an image anymore, so that translation enthusiasts could translate it as well.

- The intro cutscene was re-made to fit the new resolution. The background was changed, and the characters were placed higher on screen so the text window won't overlap them. The old and the new version:

These screenshots also show a downscaled comparison of the old and new aspect ratios.

- Rapunzel's look went through a bunch of edits, you know if you followed my site. She got some more edits since my last post there; this is the final version, next to the previous build version for comparison:

- Hades was remade; I didn't do him justice with his bulkiness the first time. Now he doesn't look skinny. Comes with a bunch of different poses I won't display here.

- The forest nymph has been redrawn anew

- Robbers too + different poses

- Added some details to Stabbington Brothers (had to go with animations, cause next to each other changes seem badly noticeable on these)

- Fisherman got fixed.

- Captain of Guards got some minor fixes too, not worth showing off.

- As well as the rabbit in the cage.

Again, these are about remaking or adding more details so they look better after re-sizing, to fit the new game's resolution. And about fixing some mistakes along the way.

- Also the chameleon was added.

- All the maps before the Old Corona crossroad got edited. Forest locations mostly.

These screenshots convey the gist of what was done: The road was fixed and the grass became less plain. Also I got rid of the black outline that emphasis every rock and cliffs, cause it makes maps uglier. Not sure why I started doing this, but after hundreds of maps being made it was too late to reverse it. The reboot gave a good opportunity to derail that.

- The new aspect ratio broke position of text windows, so I had to spend time trying to figure out how to change their sizes and how to move them around along with the choices height (the engine was stubborn with giving away how to do that).

I tried to calibrate positions of every text containing window you will encounter during the game. Trying to find the sweet spot for comfortable perception of the whole composition. It came out good enough, I reckon.

After playing Akabur's Star Channel 34 game, I noticed that he rarely goes for more than 2 rows when he displays text. It pays off with going through the text easier when you read it. I'll steal this trick. I'll leave space for 4 rows though, just in case.

- I fixed some coding issues concerning Skill Tree. + I re-organize the icons, so a player could navigate on it easier, using controller/keyboard.

The result isn't ideal, but it works.

A few words about pacifist walkthrough. Since TDLT is an alternate universe sequel to Princess Trainer (the game that didn't have much fighting in it), I think that providing a pacifist route is justifiable. So now it will be possible to play the game without fighting once.

For that you need to focus on the third skill tree. Figuring out which skills you should learn first in order to avoid fights later.

- Speaking of battles. I finally did a thing I wanted to do since day one – I swapped the places of enemies and main characters.

The way RPG Maker makes it by default rubs me the wrong way. I read from left to right, the commands panel is placed on the left, our hero's HP/MP and stuff is located on the left, the transparent speedup-battle button is on the left. All the additional information, items, skill and magic are being listed from left to right, as well as its descriptions.

It's like our base of operations is there. So it makes sense seeing our chars appear on the left too, during battles. And the right half of the screen should be enemy territory.

I assume original placement was based on the fact that the engine was created for making JRPGs. Most of JRPG games I've seen tend to place heroes on the right. Even if the game is in 3D, the camera usually takes an angle that displays heroes on the right side.

I don't know why it's like that, there are probably reasons for this. But the way I do it works for the game better. And it plays well, as if the engine been like that by default.

- There will be two skills available from the beginning of the game. 1 for Magic and 1 Special Attack. I had to place Multislasher and Fire from Bellow lower down the skill tree, cause they're too strong. 

Every Magic and Special Attack skill can be upgraded up to 3 levels in the Skill Tree section. Initially, I wanted every upgrade to be about increasing damage values. But I had an opportunity to made every upgrade differ visually, so I did that.

Here's what these two skills will look like at the moment, non-upgraded and maxed:

- Choosing difficulty. I guess, this one can be considered as a failed addition. It works, I set it up, it was ready to be embedded in the game, affecting database values, but I had to cancel it after all.

Because at the moment I don't know how to properly balance numbers in this game. I tried to write schemes, calculating the difference between the enemy and player strength values. Tried to predict which enemies you will encounter, and how many. An amount of Exp you could get at different episodes of a walkthrough. And I came to conclusion that I need to have at least 1/4 of the game to balance it somewhat correctly.

I'm currently designing the game around Normal difficulty, with a focus on giving players more power rather than limiting it. So, before I find a proper way to balance numbers, you will probably end up being OP. I'll try not making it an absolute walk in a park. But at the moment the main thing to me is to be sure that right now you won't stuck, playing the game.

I'll talk to RPG Maker veteran devs, who might be experienced enough to be able to give me a hand with balancing this thing at early stages. And maybe then choosing difficulty will be implemented. But that's for later.

Alright, I'll wrap it up here. There are numerous edits and tweaks I didn't include into the report. But all the main stuff is covered, if I didn't miss anything (after re-reading the post, I noticed that I missed mentioning reputation system, but I better cover it when it will affect the gameplay (meaning reaching Old Corona village)).

Untill the next post, guys, which will be the release of the build.

See you there. Take care!

One of the reasons I'm hyped to get back to work is Stable Diffusion - the AI thing that generates images.

I want to share for which areas of development I will use it. Sort of a “work planning” post. Maybe it can give someone an idea about the use of AI, or at least encourage someone to look into this tool. Anyway, I'm excited and I'd like to share with you why, guys.

My game format is different from regular RPG Maker games. Aside of many subtleties, I use older size standards in the newer engine with a larger aspect ratio, which makes the game look zoomed out. This makes lack of NPC crowds in public places noticeable.

To avoid settlements look like ghost towns, I prepared hundreds of NPCs to include.

It's not necessary to make all the non-important NPCs look different, in a game. But, since this is a game with an important sexual factor, I wanted to have a variety of chicks to check out if they have a hot profile pic, in case the outfit on one of them interests you or something. Shamelessly honoring the basic impulse of human interaction.

With different women, men also had to look different, so you won’t find two civilian NPCs looking the same in the game, unless it's intentional (or overlooked).

Initially, I planned to leave drawing their portraits for later. Because wasting time on 200+ faces to draw - I got other shit to do. But then AI got released! And, shortly after, Akabur's lora got released!

These are examples of random faces you'll be seeing in the game. The result still requires some fixes, but overall, it's better than I'd ever wished for from a program. With Akabur's permission received, you'll be having no such thing as looking at mere text when talking to somebody.

AI can't replace me from drawing everything (yet?), but still it's like having a second guy who helps you occasionally by throwing-in concepts or even improving stuff you draw.

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It's not all that smooth, to be frank. Almost all the results it gives require fixing - this thing isn't perfect. Like, I had to construct the sword from pieces of few sword results it gave me. And I edited the new helmet significantly so it would look like old self more.

But every edit rarely takes more than 10 minutes.

That's pretty much it: It gives me poses for dialogue busts, it gives pics for randos and it upgrades my old shit. I'm sure I'll find other uses for it in future. All in all, AI is a godsend for a project like mine.

Some say it's iffy to use it. Yeah, I'll be iffly using the tits out of it. There are concerns some artists/writers/coders are expressing that “AI will take our jobs”, along with battle of versions about how AI will actually turn out.

People tend to afraid a new thing. But, ultimately, they're right to be worried if they want things to stay the way they are. Progress is relentless.

I think, eventually it will all flow into us adapting to this tool, using it everywhere where it can be incorporated. Speeding up workflows. It's its secondary primal purpose, I believe. The first one is to generate boobs.

Speaking of boobs, let's get back to building you a game now.

It's great to be back! Didn't know I missed this so much.

See you soon, guys! Take care of yourselves!

Hello, you awesome people! A janitor accidentally hit the switch on my hibernation pod.

Glad to see that someone is still here. I can't imagine what made you stay, but I'm grateful beyond words. To those who left: Thank you for standing your ground for as long as you could.

You are stars!

Before writing this post, I gave a deep thought about what am I getting back to? Let's be honest: This thing stuck. I put myself in situation of those devs who chose a development format that doesn't suit them. The approach I've taken about "building a huge update as a big ol' foundation" is not working for me.

If I'm going to come back, then something needs to be done about it, so that I don't step on the same rake.

So what now? I'm changing the format of this whole thing. Even more fundamentally than I planned before. I think that's something that devs in this situation should consider. If I'm going back to how it was, it will defeat me again, I'm sure.

So, what's going to change:

1. Updates change to “bit by bit” basis. Meaning, as soon as several workable implementations are made (map, quest, characters tied to the quest, etc.), the game will be updated, regardless of how significant they are or not. That way feels more fitting to me. Now players can control how much content they want in the build, waiting over a few updates by themselves.

2. I'm rebooting this thing. I mixed a lot of finished and unfinished stuff in the game, if I'm switching to “quick updates”, it has to be rebooted. It sounds like a big deal, but actually I expect the game to catch up to the current state relatively quickly. Because the heaviest assets are mostly ready.

Right now it's a big raw, unfinished alpha. With a lot of assets (ready, semi-ready, yet to be made) not all being implemented, practically all over the game, including the beginning.

Releasing it in this state, and then update it like that, won't do good, I reckon. If you remember I tried that before, when I released a build with plenty of additional locations and added intractable stuff to it later. This ended up getting me negative feedback from new players who didn't know that some areas of the game were under construction. I think it affected ratings in some cases, scaring off players. I guess, the “game is under construction” warning wasn't that eye-catching.

So, the new approach to development sets me up to rename the game to TDLT Reboot or something, and work on finalizing the assets, updating the game from the very beginning, gradually adding everything.

3. The development will be more open. I'll be dropping-in posts about what I am currently working on. I like how I did it on my website previously, but since the site is dead, I'll be doing it here. It won't be the same, cause Patreon isn't Twitter, it can't do short unobtrusive posts, but I'll try to organize something.

If you worry about spoilers, I'll give warnings, but personally, I consider only showing writing and CG scenes to be spoilers, you won't see these here.

Probably I'll be hiding that under “patreon-only” posts sometime later. We'll see.

These are all the changes considering the game's development.

🚧

Now these are about Subscribing:

- Subscriber rewards have been changed on access to polls and access to patron-only posts, for now. The previous rewards weren't too popular anyway. Now my patreon moved closer to being a mere donation page, with some little perks and privileges. I'll think on something desirable to add later. Everyone who signed up before, counting on previous rewards, may receive them, of course.

- My payouts are blocked. Due to sanctions, I receive no money from here. Patreon tech support says they don't mind if someone abroad can receive payouts instead, who can redirect them to me. But I don't know anyone who'd be willing to do that yet.

So, if you want me to actually get your donations, which is extremely important now – the bills are piling up. You can do that via these alternatives:

https://subscribestar.adult/logan
https://boosty.to/loganid

But if you're willing to support me only on Patreon, you might want to know, that this is also helpful, because you invest in my future relocation abroad. I plan to find a quiet unsanctioned place to continue working without problems. But for that this page has to accumulate $1k per month at least, so I'd have something to back me up there. I'm sure my project is good enough to achieve that, so I'll be working hard towards that goal.

Alright, that's all I wanted to cover with the post about changes.

I want to talk about AI next, but I'll move it to another post, that will appear in a minute.

See you there!