Part 2 Sponsorship

Crowd Funding has now closed at Offbeatr. Thankyou everyone who supported us. It was touch and go for a while, but we made our base target with minutes to spare. :O

http://offbeatr.com/project/redemption-of-the-crimson-empress-part-2-67812055153

Saturday 31 August 2013

A Quick Update

The Crowd Funding has officially closed. For small project like ours, Offbeatr keeps 25% of what they collect (not what was pledged) so we will get the rest in about a month when their credit card processor pays them. At this stage, it looks like we will receive around $3,000 from them.

Malo has been giving our prospective artists the background material they need to get the idea of what we are after and we will be getting some commissions out in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile I am back working on the code. I have done major work to the scoring code, revamping it so it is more straight forward and fixing some of the bugs.

To those of you who said that the instant win scenarios we coming up too often, you were absolutely right. The detection code for 4 pairs was written by someone who ... Well, lets not go into that, it is fixed now or at least it will be in the next release. (You know I am annoyed with myself when I started talking about myself in the third person.)

Somewhere else in the code however, I have broken save game. I have been tweaking the event system for Part 2 and I broke it. I am trying to work that out right now and will get back to it when I finish this blog entry.

Release 1.4 will not be backwards compatible for saved games sorry. But, if you are one of our $100+ sponsors, you will have cheat mode. Release 1.4 should be out this weekend unless the save game bug is worse than I think it is.

I am aiming for 1.4.1 next weekend which will have a bit more of the setup for Part 2. It will be the last little bit before you start testing your card playing skills again. :)

The first version of this update recommended you go have a look at eroticartzone to see the galleries of our prospective artists. The real site seems to have disappeared in the last 12 hours or so and been replaced by something I would not trust. 

EroticArtZone.com is back. Go and take a look at some of the art, especially our own Malo.



Monday 26 August 2013

You did it! We made it!

OMG, OMG, OMG we got $1,500 in pledges in the last 12 hours of the Crowd Funding putting us over the top. I am still in shock.

A huge chunk of thanks goes to our Platinum Sponsor Randomguy664. Also a huge chunk of thanks to Gold Sponsor Mornox who was watching when a pledge was cancelled in the dying minutes and got us back above the goal.

Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou to everyone who pledged. We won't let you down.

The team is now getting on with planning things to make best use of the money that has been entrusted to us.

$20+ sponsors should now have their Visual Novel. If you are having problems downloading it, let me know and I will give you an alternate download address. IE's Smartscreen seems to be objecting to it for some of us, but it likes the identical version on my Dropbox?!

Apologies to the $100+ sponsors. I am still getting your first version ready. I am trying to nail the instant win bug first.



Friday 23 August 2013

If you don't have a credit card!

A few people have said to me that they would like to support us, but they don't have a credit card. This seems to be a common problem on the internet, but surprisingly enough, it does have a simple solution:

You can pay with a gift card. I sometimes use them on sites I am not sure about on the internet. You don't even have to use your real name or address.

I use Mastercard branded gift cards from Woolworth's supermarkets here in Australia (the green ones that say they are for online shopping). The card costs $4 and you can load them up with as much cash as you want. You use them as a normal debit card but with a fair degree of anonymity. I have used one at Offbeatr to back another's project successfully.

Caution: The Offbeatr folks tell me that some US issued gift cards do not work for purchases outside the US and Offbeatr's credit card processor is in Europe.

PS. Part 2 will have bad ends. Good thing you have checkpoints. :)

To misquote Python. "You don't so much fly as plummet."

PPS. For those who have not noticed, there is a new link on the right hand side to "A Servant of the Empire". This is the origin story for one of the main characters in the game. I wrote it for a story contest and well, the winner did note it as a story that he really liked. Maybe you will too. :)

Thursday 22 August 2013

A Very Welcome Addition

A few people have asked if we could have a slower Male to Futa transition in the game. GoldenDawn from TFGamesSite went one better and asked can we please have a slower Male to Futa transition and can I do it?

After picking myself up off the floor and having a look at GoldenDawn's gallery I said YES ABSOLUTELY. I later found out that GoldenDawn is using the same 3d art software as Malocula and I so that's a huge bonus and will help us keep continuity.

The new sequence will be incorporated as part of the dialog tree meaning that you will see either the new or old transformation based on your responses to the situation.

While this is GoldenDawn's first contribution to the project, it will not be the only one. She will be helping out with other art in the game as well.

3D Art is very time consuming so please don't underestimate what sort of commitment this is. So please join me in saying:

Welcome GoldenDawn to Team HanaFudaFuta.

Sunday 18 August 2013

Last Week for our Crowd Funding and we need help

Our crowd funding ends on 26th of August in just 8 days and it is looking a bit grim at present.

I am in the process of posting prompts around a few sites which you may have seen. Some of the rewards are strictly once off chances such as access to the version with built in cheats.

Without your help it will be hard for us to maintain the quality of the art established in Part 1. We have a lot planned for Part 2. The game play gets much more interesting and there is a lot more variety in what is going on. No more more train, train, train. You know the card game now. Now you get challenged to use what you know and adapt it to new situations.

We have new features coming that will allow you to mitigate some of the randomness in the card game at key points. Save up your spell points so you can peek at the opponents hand or maybe even steal it from them. Charm your opponent so they play to lose.

You will still be challenged. There won't be enough spell points to use them all the time.

The balance of sex scenes vs story scenes will be higher. Pillow talk will be a key way in which you will gain information to Redeem the Empress and earn spell points.

Please help us so we can do Part 2 justice.

http://offbeatr.com/project/redemption-of-the-crimson-empress-part-2-67812055153

Thursday 15 August 2013

Nemesis, thy name is Avira

For the last few months, Avira antivirus has been giving us what seemed to be and what I am now sure is a false positive. None of the mainstream AVs had a problem and Avira is known for its false positives.

Avira has been known for complaining about Renpy games and it even rejected the SDK for a while, so I had put the problem aside until I had more information to go on and then someone told me that none of their other Renpy games were being reported any more.
 
To cut a long story short I have finally narrowed it down to the one file in the game that Avira does not like. Would you believe, it is the game icon.

This little 16x16 pixel icon seems to be the problem. If I include it in the build, Avira complains. If I don't it doesn't. Interestingly enough, Trend Micro House Call thinks it is ok, but if I include the Mac version of the icon in the build, it complains.

Anyhow, I have been scanning using VirusTotal.com which has a 64Mb limit so I have been using a cut down build without all the images. Could someone who has Avira please check the following: http://www.mediafire.com/download/ia05zdpm4c470zn/ROCE-R1.3.0S-all.zip

The game will now use the default icons instead of the custom ones. As near as I can tell that should fix everyone. Oh, and this is a full build so it is 300Mb sorry.

Just heard from one person Avira is still complaining. Can someone confirm?

Sunday 11 August 2013

First Navigation Screen

Bailey is wondering what she should do. Should she go back to bed and dream of fun things or should she actually get out and try and do some of the things she is dreaming about. Decisions, decisions ...


Wednesday 7 August 2013

Pitching a Tent

The last few days I have been working on one of the core screens around which Part 2 will take place. Bailey's centre of operations is her apartment, but she can't be on the go all the time, sometimes she will need to rest, sometimes even by herself.

That does not mean that she won't be dreaming of other things though. It has taken me a couple of days to get the graphics software to drape the sheet the way I like it, but I think it is pretty close now.

PS.
On the fund raising front, we hit 54% and we have had our first Gold Sponsor. With 20 days to go we still need to raise another $2269 or we get nothing and all the money is returned. If you have not donated, please consider doing so. The money will be going to people who can do the above much better than I and do it in a lot less than 2 days. :)


Saturday 3 August 2013

Bug fix for 1.3

A bug has been found in 1.3. If you happen to score Honour of the Court while Kal is taking Bailey on the bed after the first time, the game can crash.

The new patch is here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/685gro3ow6zam3n/ROCE-R1.3.1-patch.zip

It is cumulative with 1.3, so you can install it straight overt the top of 1.2.3.

There is still a known bug with getting 0 points in some of the instant win scenarios. I will have a fix for that in the next few days.

Friday 2 August 2013

Release 1.3 (Really Release 2.0 minus 0.7)

Well, I finally have the first draft of the images done for the intro sequence to Part 2. There is no game play yet, this is just a straight story fragment.

You can download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/lvy5kh9rp2fkvke/ROCE-R1.3.0-patch.zip, but it is a patch on Release 1.2.3 so you should download that first if you don't already have it.

To install, just copy it over the 1.2.3 version, overwriting any clashes (all 1400 odd of them).

There is still one more sequence to go before you get into the game proper, but this should start to give you an idea of the main game setting.

As always, I love getting feedback, so please tell me what you like and what you don't and what's broken.