Wednesday 16 September 2015

AoA - Demo v0.8



Triple teamed!
Download v0.8
DepositFiles

File size: ~12MB
Password: aod

*try this first (if possible), a 3rd-party plugin for Dropbox for DL count tracking

I present you v0.8! Sorry this took so long. I went back and forth with trying to make BGMs and as a result, I had backlogged lots of things. Unfortunately I still couldn't make a satisfactory one yet, so no BGM still. The 3rd H-animation took lots of time because every enemy has 3 different sprites and got me kinda burnt out. Clearly lacking in front facing positions, I went with the position above. I liked how the animations turned out, hope you peeps enjoy it too!

I've also tweaked the enemy spawn progression. Introduction of new enemy types should make sense now, following the increasing ROUND. As always, I'll be counting on you all to help me test them out!

Release Notes - v0.8
  1. New 3rd player H-animation.
  2. New enemy Brute.
  3. Rounds go up to ROUND [41].
  4. Enemy spawn progression tweaked. Spawning should make sense following the round levels now.
  5. Change in Pause Menu UI.
  6. You can now 'Restart' and select rounds with Pause Menu (ESC).
Note:
  1. Nothing happens after ROUND [41]. Restart via Pause Menu (ESC).
  2. Still no BGM!  =(

Known Bugs
  1. You might run into a fatal error (game will abort) stating "instance cannot be found". I have applied some codes to curb this error but I might have missed some parts.
  2. Shield throw sometimes immediately hit the same enemy more than once.

Controls
Movement - Arrow keys
Attack - 'C' key
Activate skills - 'A', 'S', and 'D' keys

Space - Zoom-in/out
F2 - Restarts game
F4 - Full-screen/Window mode

Game Menu
Enter - Skill Menu
ESC  - Pause/Save menu

Extras
Numpad 0 - Trips the player (or press Ctrl)
Numpad 1 - Gives you 3,000 gold
Numpad 2 - Spawn "bats from cave" effx
Numpad 5 - Spawns more random enemies (or press '0')
Key '7'      - Enable/disable debug text

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If you got a feedback, let me hear it in the comments below!

26 comments:

  1. If you want to track downloads, just use something like goo.gl.

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    1. Hmm I forgot what was my reasoning for using OrangeDox. I believe it was because the download counts are made public or something.
      I might use goo.gl for the MEGA link.

      Speaking of which, did the demo run properly for you?

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    2. Yeah it runs fine. I noticed you started using goo.gl. I use it for the mods I make these days (http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/showpost.php?p=709283&postcount=1382)

      If you care about feedback:
      1) I think you are doing fine
      2) Your work would be a lot better if you clearly depict penetration. Boobs can always use some bounce.
      3) There is no obvious hook (similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_%28music%29) to the erotic portion of your game content. You can think: What fetish is this scenario supposed to appeal to? How can I capitalize on that scenario to make it more intense? What should I avoid because it will dilute the fetish?

      ^ All of these are purely subjective opinions

      My stab at fetish and scenario: This game can appeal to both sadists and masochists who view the protagonist as somebody to subjugate for arousal (sadist) or to try to save and inescapably fail (masochist) despite best effort which causes arousal. In both cases, you can string along arousal by appealing to those fetishes. They both can be addressed by having the protagonist subjugated in order to "win". That can be things like being unable to escape an encounter, gaining health from completed encounters at the expense of something like willpower in the end. Having the NPCs run a train on the protagonist in certain scenarios could capture the arena setting better. Perhaps I have been too vague, I am mostly trying to stay as open ended as possible so you can draw your own conclusions from my suggestion.

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    3. Forgot: I'd really like to see a game where if you have your back to a NPC and they are in grab range, they can just start fucking you without a knockdown.

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    4. Hey Anomaly,

      Thanks for the perspective and feedback.
      I leave it to the players but I think what fetishes players might draw from AoA is battle-fuck, rape, mmxf,and stuff. It has no pinpointed fetishes but rather a very general blanket on them, meant to be entirely subjective.

      In any case, as I continued making AoA, I too realise the H aspect is very weak. There's a struggle between smooth gameplay and sexing as experiencing one will but a complete halt to the other; sexing completely stops the swordplaying. I haven't a solution for this. I didn't "mini-game" (struggle system) the H parts for exactly the above reason too.

      I'll keep in mind your bouncier boobs and showing penetration suggestions for future animations. I admit it gets very difficult to show on the low resolution when you put 3 other enemies on top of/shadowing the heroine.

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  2. I got to play through the new release today! I really like the new enemy and the new animation is awesome! Ran smoothly, never ran into any errors or hiccups. Also, I feel that the tweaks you made to some of the enemies were well done. I like that armored soldiers take more hits now, and their shields do as well. Felt like a good change. It's also great having "Restart" as an option from the menu. Was great fun!

    I only have two concerns. One, I felt that stages 1-10 were REALLY easy. Maybe that's intentional now. I guess I'm just too used to the old way, but it felt almost too easy. Especially when only one enemy shows up for an entire wave. That's just my opinion though. It may be fine as it is, just feels a little strange going from the ol' way to the new way.

    Also, I've noticed that once in a while, enemies with shields don't show the shields. They look like they're only holding a weapon. This most often occurs if you attack an enemy as he's spawning on the level, forcing him to block before he's completely out of the trap door (Or whatever it is they spawn from). He'll only look like he's having a weapon from now on, but he'll block as though having a shield for a while. 'Til you kill him or it breaks. This also occasionally happens to enemies regardless of whether you attack them at the beginning or not. Not sure what causes it then. It's a minor bug, but still kinda annoying.

    Anyway, great work, as always. Loving it, can't wait to play it some more, and really can't wait 'til next release! Will enjoy this for a while in the meantime. Keep it up!

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    1. Good to hear! Now the armoured grunts they'll chase you down if you aren't facing them and tries to cut you off. It's getting tougher to animate because I have to fit the enemies in there without completely obscuring the heroine.

      The previous versions were more of testing purposes. Now I'm attempting to put proper progression in place now and gradually get tougher. Introduction to the game shouldn't be so tough!

      Spot on for the shield bug. I know its there but couldn't get to fixing it yet. I better get right to it later. Thanks for the in-depth feedback!

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  3. I found a graphical mistake. right after the defeat the boss, the protagonist's celebration pose shows blinking black dot right between her foot. :D beside that, everything seems to silky smooth. btw money farming was kinda annoying since those skills are too expensive :3

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    1. Omg I forgot to remove that dot. I'll get to it the first thing I get back. ;/

      If you press numpad(1), you get 3000 gold! I'm still trying to figure out the drop rates, I think I should increase it a little bit. Too much, it might make it all trivial.

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  4. I almost miss some of those early levels with scads of bad guys... my favorite round was Round 9, when I would just run around cutting my way through those poor shieldless bastards. :P

    The progression is much better, though. It shouldn't take 30 minutes to get to the first boss, so the current iteration is pretty well-paced. I'd encourage you to sharply reduce the starting gold, and make all the skills cheaper. Especially with the slower ramp-up in bad guys, it makes sense to give the player a little while to choose what skills they want, and make it easier to start with little and buy more. As it is, I start the game, buy everything I want (max. move speed, "survive against the odds", and after-clash move speed) and basically never buy anything else.

    I honestly haven't used the active skills much; the shield-throwing one was cumbersome enough in an earlier version that I basically stopped using 'em. I remember trying the immunity to damage skill, and it didn't seem to work (also in a much earlier version) or I was using it wrong, and so I've just been playing with passive skills.

    Really digging the game, though. It's coming along really nicely! :)

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    1. Haha you're right about the previous ROUND [9]. I don't know if I should implement a Free Spawn modes where players can spawn their own mobs. It I do, it'll be post-V1.0.

      Darn I forgot to reset the savegame.ini to default, starting with 0 gold and 0 skills. I see where you're coming from regarding "progression to skill upgrade costs". Initial levels should be rapidly available as the player try out the skills. I can't believe I didn't see this earlier.

      Ah the immunity skill should work properly now. I thought the "Endure" active skill would be useful since the last upgrade actually let's you heal 2 HP over time. Also do try out the Shield Throw once more since I made some changes to the aim mechanics. For example when you press "left" during aim, it will rotate following the shortest path (clockwise or anti-clockwise) towards west.

      As always, thanks for your testing and feedback!

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    2. I'll have to give it another couple of play-throughs to test out the other skills. I gotta say, I was originally following the side-scroller project, and I wasn't too sure about this new project at first. But while the game's mechanics are pretty simple, the actual gameplay has enough variety and depth to keep me coming back. The art is good, the animations are, uh, pretty engrossing... Keep up the good work! Now, I'd better get back to "playtesting"!

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  5. Hey Datanony, I just wanted to tell you I really like your clothing rape scenes in Labcoax.

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    1. Thanks anon! I remembered that one was pretty new and fun to animate. Although looking back now, it actually looks kinda weightless?

      I hope you've tried out AoA too!

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  6. Would there be any way to make gameplay a bit quicker? Right now everything feels kinda sluggish. The game works great and feels pretty good though!
    The skill that allows you to heal might be a bit overpowered? Although I do like it how it is...

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    1. It's still only v0.8 so there's still room to and can be subject to change. Tweaking game speed will affect many things. For example, player will move past attacks way easier so enemy projectiles have to keep up too.

      Yeah the healing skill is kinda OP. It may change slightly going forward, like maybe increased cooldown.

      Thanks for the feedback! Did you make it to ROUND 41?

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  7. Demo worked perfectly, got to lvl 34 and died there many times over, became frustrated and quit trying. Came here to see if there was a round select available, could have sworn there was on an older version. After closing and reopening it to find I'd have to take on 30 levels again to get where I was is very frustrating.

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    1. Okay good to hear! Which windows 7/8/10

      There is round select but only in multiples of 10 and up to the last boss you beat. You access it via the Pause (ESC key) > Restart, or by losing the round.

      Currently to save progress you have to Pause > Save & Exit. What I'll do for next release would be to save after defeating a boss. Apologies for the inconvenience.

      Alternatively you can just edit the savegame.ini file under User/AppData

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    2. Thank you for the reply and advice, it worked and I was able to do more testing. The whirling barbs are extremely effective at pushing me off the stage, but I did beat stage 41 on my second try. I think maybe they'd be both more fun and less frustrating if they spun in medium sized circles instead of long lines. Combining their pattern with the arrow's straight lines and the cultists targeted bombs creates a more engaging interplay between their areas of influence. It sounds like a lot of fun to me!

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    3. Having the barbs whirl in circles sounds interesting. They could be another variant of the barbs, I'll note that one down as it makes for a programming challenge too.

      Thanks for testing it out!

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    4. I second that. Straight-line barbarians are either super-easy to avoid, or wind up killing me almost immediately; it depends entirely on what I'm engaged with at the time. Also, since they have a pretty long aggro range, they can start their whirling attack from off-screen.

      And if you're doing variants, I'd like to vote again for having that earlier version of the slime--the one which blocked attacks--possibly pop up sometimes to just deal stun damage. :)

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  8. So far its amazing... just needs a gallery mode or something cause i honestly only ever get like 2 animations and id love to pick what 3 have they're way with her...and im sure its in the works but a rape animation for the Slime boss on 30 would be amazing as well but so far i love it

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    1. Gallery mode in the works, although it'll likely be finished as v1.0. Gotta get to adding other content like enemies, bosses and skills first!

      To clarify, in the gallery, the player will be able to pick the animation as well as what enemies are doing the heroine.

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  9. I like the combination of the charge attack and the "don't die from falling off the edge" skills. :) Like a deadly, spiky, sword-wielding pinball.

    It might be a good idea, though, to limit the use of "throw shield" to people who actually *have* shields. :)

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    1. Personally haven't tried that combo myself. Sounds like absolute fun to lush enemies off the arena.

      Initially the shield throw did require a shield, and loses the shield each time, but it really limited the utility of the skill. Too much realism might make for dull gameplay :/

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    2. Maybe you could have the player throw an *enemy* into somebody. :P

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