itch.io

1. It's been a while since I've had this first game fully in my head, but if I remember right, early on removal of the clips actually disables battlesex. After enough defeats though, it doesn't do anything: the battlesex and scenes play out the same. If the clips are ACTUALLY off, they should disappear in battle, but they'll be on for the actual scenes regardless.

2. The gallery should not be unlocked by default. I checked, and it looks like it was a mistake on my part, I left the gallery file set to unlock. I've fixed and reuploaded: 1.0.4 should start out locked now. Won't bother to increment the version number as this was a minor and silly mistake.

3. Due to recent censorship crackdowns, there's no way these games can go anywhere near Steam. Visa, Mastercard and advertising partners dictate morality for the major platforms, and what's acceptable becomes slimmer and slimmer by the year. If you had told me in 2010 that words like "Kill" or "Murder" would be banned on Youtube I would have thought you were crazy, but this is the world we live in now. The real world becomes worse every month, and our freedom to accurately and honestly discuss it (or in the case of these games, escape from it) becomes less and less.

More to the point, the game can also be "bought" by joining the SubscribeStar at $10 for a month, same price, but my understanding is that Russia is pretty much cut off from everything at this point. It IS technically possible to pay for SubscribeStar via a number of cryptocurrencies now as well, but that's a lot of complexity and effort, and I understand if you're unable or unwilling.

4. There are five chapters planned. CS is 1, GT is 2, and 3 is currently in development.

5. The only official places for the game are here on Itch, and my FA (which was pre-existing, I realize it's obscure). Social media is cancer. I don't say that just as a personal preference, but as a practical judgement: trying to maintain a presence on Twitter, Discord etc would be time and energy consuming and ultimately unsustainable. I've seen it destroy way too many creators. Fans will sometimes discuss the games elsewhere, share fanart and so on, and I have no problem with that. But I'm not setting up shop there.

Glad you're enjoying the game so far though! If there really is absolutely no way for you to buy GT, let me know and I may be able to just gift you a copy. I've always said I'll have to be more strict on that if people abuse it, but so far that hasn't been a problem.

Currently, this first game has been translated into Japanese, Chinese, and a preliminary Russian translation is being worked on as well. I have some basic quality standards I want to have met before fully endorsing a translation, and in the case of the older ones I just need to do some final checks and reorganize some things so that they're more obvious on the front page, but for now they can usually be found by digging through the old dev logs for the game in question or, in the case of the Russian translation, the message board for GT here on Itch, as it's easier to have longer discussions there. Use at your own risk at this point, as I haven't had time to review it yet, aside from a basic function check.

Excellent! And thanks for your patience with how particular I am. But after several games and several translations, I have a pretty good idea of what I need when it comes to this stuff. Incredibly grateful people are willing to donate their time to do it though.

Good to hear.
IMPORTANT NOTE to change for your next release: DO NOT recreate/redistribute the full game for a translation patch. This isn't as serious an issue for the first game, as it's free anyway, but it's still not desirable for two reasons: 

1. It's way too much redundant data. The patch should be a few tens of megs, not several hundred. Translator++ should make it easy to package JUST the files needed and nothing else.
2. While I'm not accusing you of anything, it's general best-practice to stick to just the translated files as those files are just data files, and largely inert. In other words, if someone wanted to distribute something malicious, it's much harder to do in a text-only translation patch  than a full copy of the game that includes the exe. 

ALSO: Be sure to list the version number of the game your patch is for in the file name. This isn't likely to be a huge issue in CS or GT, as those games are more or less in their final form now, but for some time after release my games are often getting updated, patched, adjusted and so on, so it's important to note what version the translation is for in case something breaks or new content isn't covered. In worst-case scenarios, it also allows people to grab an older version of the game if they have to and match up translation and game to make sure they work together.

As for posting, it's a three tier process. Tier one is where you're at right now: You make a thread, you post it, people can download it if they see it. Tier two, once I've had a chance to do basic testing, is that I make a post announcing it, but say "use at your own risk, unofficial" and keep it here on the thread for now. Tier 3 is listing directly alongside all the other downloadable files for the game: this only happens once I've had a chance to do a FULL play through,  which is going to be a while, especially considering there's a Chinese translation already in line ahead of you, and that I'm definitely not getting to either until the first release of Chapter 3 is out, which is going to be a while. We can still get what you make up to tier 2 at least though.

As for GT, happy to send you a code/key for a copy once I've had a chance to verify this translation works on a basic level and doesn't have any big, immediately obvious problems. So probably once you've got your revised version up and I've had a chance to look at in in the next couple days.
 

I should add some info, as it may be relevant. By default, surprisingly, RPGMaker MV has no wordwrap for its text boxes. This is because Japanese doesn't need it, as Japanese has no spaces andiswrittenalllikethis. So RPGMaker cuts up "words" (strings of text) when they hit the edge of the textbox, but spaced words throw it off. This is why almost every  non-Japanese RPGMaker creator uses a plugin and inserts "<WordWrap>" at the start of every messagebox text string to get it to wordwrap correctly. 
The fact that wrap is broken for you here probably means either 1. You ended up deleting/overwriting the "<WordWrap>" when you changed the text or 2. This text was juuuust short enough in English that I left it off here, but it's needed in Russian. In general, it can't hurt to have <WordWrap> on the front of text, so when in doubt, slap it on. You may be aware of all this already and just make a simple mistake, but I thought I'd explain the background just in case.

Excellent, and thanks for the clarification then.

Wow, you got that done quick, congrads! You can put it up here: I generally recommend catbox.moe , but any basic, non-ad-infested hosting is fine. And then just link it here. My schedule's pretty full right now, so I won't be able to do a full test playthrough, but once it's up I'll at least doublecheck that it's good on a basic level and let everyone know. Thanks for the hard work putting this together!

"Machine translation was only used as a base for MY new translation. Almost all the phrases were translated by me personally, so most of the text is my own."

I should also ask for clarification on what this means. Machine translation is fine as it's better than nothing, but I do always want to be clear on the degree it's used, as it will always be worse than an actual fluent translation. And there's obviously a wide range you can use it for, from nearly everything to minor things. Were you just using it to look up hard words or phrases here or there? Or fully machine translating to start, and then editing the result into something that sounded more natural and fitting in Russian, cleaning it up essentially? 

Fairly likely.

Hey, no worries, this works well too!

You can update here for now. If you finish, feel free to make your own thread here, but if I don't reply after a while you might have to reply to one of my posts here to get my attention: sometimes notifications for forum stuff here seem to be a little off.

Wow, lot of art just now! Love it. You're free to try to do a translation, but I'd recommend starting with the first game to ease yourself in. There's a lot more text in these games than people realize. Also, although you CAN just edit the text files directly, I always recommend Translator++. Not for the machine-translation features (I recommend NOT using those), but simply because it integrates directly into RPGMaker's file structure, helps you keep track of what you have and haven't translated, and helps avoid accidentally deleting or overwriting formatting characters while doing an edit. 

Aw I love it! A really fun little framing for the scene. And I'm glad it snuck up on you, that's always the ideal circumstance for stuff like this. Especially with the looping in the first game, since there's some fun potential that people will expect it to just be the same again. 

"Hypnovember prompt challenge (yes it’s July…)" Sounds like about my pace (though the game art for 3 IS coming along, finally). But thanks for the art! I've said this before, but it helps, especially on these long dev cycles, to be reminded people are still thinking about, playing, and enjoying the games. 

Also, should I take this to mean you haven't played GT yet? If you enjoyed CS this much, GT should be quite a ride.

You've broken the pattern! Oh well, was fun while it lasted.

In general, you want to be smart about alternating between the multi and the single attack. Sometimes it makes more sense to just finish someone off with an instant single than bother waiting for the multi to recharge.

The exact amount of damage you do per-hit, per-attack is randomized within a certain range, depending on the attack. There is the possibility for crits as well, yes, which can bump it up a bit as well. Fairly standard RPG stuff. Makes it a little more interesting than doing the exact same damage every turn.

Could you be more specific? Damage may change in certain situations, but in general it's pretty straightforward. What are you referring to?

Ravioli Fettuccini Focaccia Genovesi?

The Chinese translation is available here. It looks like the link expired, so I've re-uploaded it; the link in the main post should work now. I apologize for this being a bit buried, but for me to officially list it on the front page I have to play through most of the game with the patch on and make sure it works and I'm more or less happy with the translation, which I unfortunately haven't had time for. From preliminary testing though, it should work well.

The short answer is that nothing has changed in GT since the last update, and I haven't touched the Mahir fight in much, much longer than that (aside from updating the fight music). 

The longer answer goes like this: The Mahir fight, like a lot of my boss fights, has a "gimmick" to it. It is possible to win the fight without using the gimmick, but normally this should be very tedious, which should in turn cause the player to wonder if there's a better way. However, due to rng sometimes people just get fairly lucky and win without gimmick or tediousness. That's probably what happened to you the first time. 

The gimmick for Mahir is that he has "fake" attacks: you have to pay close attention to the icons during the windup. There are also other tells if I remember right. You have to figure this out and use this information to attack when he winds up one of the fake ones. This becomes more tricky because, again, if I remember right, the fake ones are only fake IF YOU CALL HIS BLUFF. If he winds up a fake one, and you attack INTO it, it will never land. But if you DON'T, if you just defend, it WILL attack, so you'll be stuck defending for ages and doing almost no damage.

To be clear, there was never a demo for part 2. The source of the confusion is that, looking at the GT page, there is a "demo" listed. But this is not actually a demo, it's one of the translations (and only the translation files). I experimented for a while with using the "demo" feature on Itch to distribute translations, as I wanted to be sure people could access them for free, but eventually stopped, for a simple reason: If someone needs to download the translations, they probably own a copy of the game already, and thus should be able to access translation files listed under the "paid" section without issue. But no, there's never been a GT demo, and there PROBABLY won't be for chapter 3 either. Visibility is limited on paid adult content on Itch now due to censorship, so I may eventually put SOME little thing out for free associated with 3 to raise awareness that it exists, but we'll see.
As for a German translation, all translations are fan-done, so a translation will happen when someone decides to do it. The required files are all there, nothing is encrypted in the release. Alternatively, RPGMaker MV can be fairly easily "hooked", using one program to capture text as it streams out, and another to translate that on the fly. It's not perfect, but it's certainly serviceable; machine translation has improved a LOT in the past decade.

The file should work, as many people have used it at this point. Make sure that:
1. You have the most current version of the game.

2. You do not have the game on your system drive (the one Windows is installed on), an external/usb drive, or an especially deep directory structure (folder inside a folder inside a folder inside a-) as these can create issues occasionally. 

3. Try restarting the game and retrying a few times. If this doesn't help, try a full "fresh install" by extracting the zip in a new place, copying over your save files (and Datacrystal file if needed) and moving the gallery unlock file into place on THIS new install.

4. And of course, double-check you're moving the unlock to the right place: js\plugins. You can also just open the Gallery file in js\plugins to check, it's just a text file. Everything in '' should be a 1, 0s represent locked gallery entries. If you see zeros, you did something wrong. You can edit the file directly, but be sure to ONLY change 0s to 1s: added spacing or other characters will break the file.

5. If none of this helps let me know. It is possible I've changed something in an update that broke this somehow, though I don't think this is the case.

Puritanically Involved Zealots for the Zoroastrian Agenda?

World Of Warcraft? 

Fair enough, but this won't be the one you're looking for in that case. There are a lot of other options for that. Also, please use real words and punctuation when commenting here. This game (and comment section) is for adults only. You're allowed to write out "fuck". 

Oklahoma?

Aw, well thanks! Good to hear.

As far as adding more, it's important to manage scope on these things. A lot of stuff isn't carried over by design, because it makes balance and managing various things overcomplicated. I decided on 3, for example, to just stop scaling Mezz's level every game because the games aren't really ABOUT that and balance rapidly becomes over-complicated. I'll also usually have a particular special skill, and battlesex mechanics for each given game, and not carry them over so each has room to breathe on its own.

Well thank you! Glad you're enjoying the games so far. I've always felt that people leave a lot on the table when they make explicit games; there's so much more you can do with an interactive medium than a simple graphic novel or a fighter that shows you a few mediocre cg when you lose or whatever. For a while, the Japanese were KILLER at this, and really inspired in terms of the fun a person could have if they cared. So if I've been able to capture and bring along at least a little of that, I'm glad.

On saves, you're correct! There are two saves with the game, the normal RPGMaker system, and an extended system I call "Data Crystals". In your game folder for GT, under js\plugins, you will find a "DataCrystal.js". This is, at first, a default placeholder. DataCrystal has an "inbox" and "outbox" location for each game (except the first, obviously, where it only goes out). When a game is finished in one of the survivable endings (where Mezz continues on one way or another), DataCrystal.js is written to the MAIN game folder (next to the exe). This contains certain details about how you played the game. You can then take this file and place it in js\plugins for the NEXT game, overwriting the placeholder file. When you start up the game (say GT) and start a new game, it will read this file and, depending on how you played the PREVIOUS game, unlock certain new scenes around Haven. The idea is that depending on how you play each game, certain corruption side-plots open up around Haven. Alternatively, if you avoid all this, you get a "pure" subplot, starting in chapter 3, where you get to date Scratch (NOT in the initial release, but will be there eventually). GT, like CS1, will also write a DataCrystal file to its main game folder on completion, which can then by carried over to Chapter 3 in the same way. As far as what matters for this, it's mainly how many times Mezz was defeated in the main "defeated by mobs" loop that each game has, though certain other things are tracked as well.

Oh it's both. My understanding is that the raw, emergency backup of the forums is going fairly well at this point, and will almost certainly be done well before the forums go offline in six months, but the community is also in ongoing talks and planning to set up a new long-term base of operations. And it's been heartening to see that they GET it: Discord isn't a replacement, raw archives aren't a replacement etc. It has to be something that can show up on google results so people can use it as a casual resource as well as going hardcore and actually participating in the forums directly if they want. There's been some talk of opening up sub-sections for other engines as well, as MV and MZ won't last forever (especially with GGG effectively giving up on them), but that's a small part of things at this point. 

There is, though it's a little buried far back in the dev logs. Take a look. Off the top of my head I don't remember which 5 is, but glance at that and see if anything sounds like something you haven't done yet.

To be clear, this isn't an "Ew straight sex? Evil!" thing. I'm bi. But this series has always been male/male themed. That's the brand.

Plugin creators do come and go a lot. I'd offer some further help, but if you're set up on Godot already there obviously wouldn't be much point. Hope it works out well though!

The problem with Godot, and really all the alternatives, is that you have to do everything from scratch. It's a general purpose engine, not an RPG engine. That CAN be powerful eventually, as there's more freedom to optimize, but you end up sinking a LOT of time into re-inventing the wheel on things that are already pre-packaged and just work in RPGMaker. 
As for plugins, depends on the one in question. Have to make sure they're for the right version, and yes, sometimes have to do some work to get them to play nice together. As long as you're careful with your stack and try not to make it too massive it's usually fine though. I've also taken to starting to make my own for small things at this point, as it's more targeted, and thus less chance of overlap and conflict with other plugins.

The good news is that it looks like there will be/is a substantial effort to archive, so as I said most of the content will probably end up being saved in SOME fashion. But that's still only of limited use of it's difficult to find on a search engine, and if there's no ongoing community hub for NEW discussion and content. They are working on that as well though. We'll see how it goes.

Nope. This is gay-focused series.

Good to see. At the very least, a LOT of the raw material is going to be saved by the time things close down, if they close down on schedule. The issue then becomes whether it will be made accessible in a meaningfully useful format (searchable, intact links and forum structure etc), and what happens to the community going forward.

Petitions don't actually accomplish anything. When dealing with government entities formalized complaints SOMETIMES do, but even that is an extreme longshot (Stop Killing Games for example got EXTREMELY lucky, and they may still get nowhere in the end). But GGG is not a government entity. 
What does work, to some degree, is direct communication on whatever platform they're actually paying attention to. There has been a LOT of that on the new, crappy forum, and they have responded to some degree: supposedly they're looking into archival possibilities at the very least. But we'll see.

There IS some AI nonsense built into the new forum they're trying to steer everyone toward, but I think it's just out of sheer laziness/lack of caring: ie, the platform just came with it and they didn't care.

So far a lot of the community is in the early stages of planning a new self-hosted forum, but it's not a trivial thing. The cost isn't much for a big company, but for ordinary people it is a pretty big ongoing expense, a lot of time to maintain, etc. But we'll see.

There are other options out there, but none of them come close to the established history and community of RPGMaker. Anything at all you might want to do in terms of a basic RPG has probably been tried there, discussed, programmed around, etc. The community and decade of documented experimentation IS the product, as much or more so than the engine itself. Which is why this is such a blow.