Posted May 11, 2020 by Ankhrono
Hello everyone!
Another month and another progress update! In the month of April we got two new enemies added with their normal/naked sprites into the game along with a WIP new area, The Desert Path.
During the first week of May I took some time off from work and did a bit of planning/setup for the rest of the month. The result of this week was gesturing out the Side Events for both Hemmy and Selena who will each have an Intro Scene and 3 Additional Scenes across 24 images (1/7/8/8).
In addition, I gestured out the Game Over for the Desert Bandits and Rattlesnake Lamia for a total of 58 new images to complete. I still have the Khrono Tomb Enemies' Game Overs to do along with making the Boss with her normal/naked battle sprites as well which would be another 20 Game Over CGs to work through. (10 More for the Holiday Enemy Game Overs)
Overall, that would be 78 CGs for the next milestone build excluding the 10 Holiday Enemy Game Overs, 24 battle sprites, 1 boss sprite, and some additional On Map Events for the Khrono Tomb and an Area that one of the Game Overs in this segment will lead to.
Still quite a few things to work on as we move forward but a large chunk of the upcoming CGs are single character for Side Events so they shouldn't take too long, but we'll have to see how it goes.
This raises the question that has been the topic of a few forum discussions as of late: Playable Bondage/Game Over Situations.
An area has always been planned that was hinted towards the end of a Game Over that has been in since Emma's Garden. With the addition of the Desert Bandits and their Game Over it presented a good excuse to test programming for this type of situation that I have been putting off each release as we worked through the 'normal' stages. The party will find themselves in the hideout of the Desert Bandits in preparation for who purchased them during the Game Over scene that occurs if you lose to them. You'll need to figure out how to escape along with saving a Maid who is also trapped there. Currently, this is a rabbit hole that I can see becoming a potential issue as it currently breaks up the established gameplay so far. One approach to this would be having on map events occurring while exploring the map for means to escape and failing would result in furthering events towards the 'Game Over' of the segment which would result in potentially using the Ankhrono to revert to a state before you got a Game Over (Final) or even before this segment occurs.
Upon losing to the Desert Bandits, there could be a dialogue that asks the players if they want to play this segment of the game or just retry the battle they were on like usual. If a player managed to escape/save the maid as well I'm not sure if it would dump them back into this playable segment or if the option would also appear to skip it. Successfully escaping without seeing any side events would per usual unlock the scenes in the Gallery for those who don't want to 'lose' or use the Ankhrono to revert. This raises another question of offering a way for the player to get to this area without losing which would result in more combat related events to save the maid instead.
This is typically something that is established when first setting up a game overall as programming it mid stream can create all sorts of issues. I'm curious if I would be able to do something like this with the game; however, I know I am quickly approaching Spaghetti Code hell that I've been trying to avoid for the most part keeping things relatively simple for myself to work on alone. I would greatly appreciate a few opinions as this would potentially change timelines and plans but would also be a huge timesink for a feature not many are really interested in.
TL:DR - Would you want the ability to have a segment of the game where you are in a "Game Over" bondage situation and need to escape (Would add longer development for the current milestone), or just keep it all in Game Over CGs like it currently is?
I hope everyone is staying safe out there and is able to relax a bit! Thanks again for all the support and comments!