Enemies Mockup

Hey peeps, just wanted to say ...
Lawd it's already December and I can't even see the finish line! Sometimes I keep questioning myself whether I could even finish this. Maybe even this project this is too ambitious. Dangit.

Anyway, I've spent the past week creating mockups of a variety enemies for Labcoax. When creating the mockups, I also have to plan for the enemy's attacks so that it is easy to manipulate ready-made spritework to make them (I'm lazy like that). Here's a couple of mockups compiled:-

Mockup of enemies

*Fanart monster 'Russa' by Tacokurt pixelized!

More mockups

EDIT #2: More mockups added

I might add to this post as I made more, but in the meantime, if you guys & girls thought of an enemy or monster that would fit in the Labcoax world, suggest them in the comments below!
...

Parasite in City

There's a japanese H-developer that is recently making waves on the scene, and there ain't no better time than to do it during the holidays. Parasite in City has just been released a couple of days ago by developers Pixel Factory.

by Pixel Factory

In the game you play a heroine who wakes up one day to find that everyone has turned into sex-crazed zombies (how convenient!) in her city. Stumbling out of her crib, she encounters an undead cop, and promptly falls into a manhole after a short tangle with said cop. It's a shitty start, but it gets better (for the player at least).

The game isn't very long and is split into three stages in total. You have to do complete runs of each stage as losing in one will send you back to the beginning of chosen stage. The game paces slowly, and continues the pace until Stage-3 where you have to suddenly move and act quickly or become overwhelmed by the zombie horde that trails you.

Throughout the game players can unlock 7 animated hand-drawn CGs (frames are not many) in the gallery and omake for in-game sprite sex.

Omake - house of sprited-sex

The art, everything from the in-game sprites (heroine, enemies, background) is phenomenal by H-game standard. The platforming is quite polished, though clunky but I believe the developer intended it. My only complain is the length of the game;- it is quite short and offers very (very!) little replayability for the hefty game price.

I shall stop now.
...

Back to Labcoax

I've conceptualized some number of enemies that might be in Labcoax but I haven't compiled them yet. The concepts are sprites, and I will continue to sprite a few more so I'll have the concepts put up soon as a blog update. One week tops!

That's all I have for now. Keep checking this week!

Oh and a Happy Thanksgiving day to you dwellers of the New World!

Bogged down

Hey y'all.

I know it's been forever since my last post and I apologize for that. Responsibilities and work load is currently at an all-time high so I'll be bogged down with RL for a little longer before I could resume work with Labcoax. Whilst busy, I did get a thing or two nearly done, such as one of the intro images (there's a total of 12 images I believe, making a sprite depicting a little event) for Labcoax below:

LBCX Intro under construction

As you could see, it's still lacking shadow/shading and hair! You may think that I've got it all figured out, but figuring out what hair to give characters has always taking up lots of time for me. So there's still long ways to go.

On the bright side, user tacokurt @ Furaffinity.net recently (actually it's been a whole month) made a fanart featuring the heroine of Labcoax and a monster creation of his/her own! The art style is pretty distinctive so check it out at tacokurt@furaffinity. Site contains furries (doh).

I'll answer to questions in the comment section regularly so that it won't seem like I've fallen from the face of the planet.

Damsel Quest

Another western developer AzureZero has recently released a stealth-based hentai platformer Damsel Quest! just about a week ago on both his blog and DL-Site.

[Image removed in compliance with Blogger terms]

The game features a princess who was captured and imprisoned by dark forces in a castle. Player takes control of the princess and help her escape (or not) the dark forces that seek to do explicit things to her should she be captured. So check out the demo of Damsel Quest is available at AzureZero's blog and support if you wish to see more from him!

Away for the Weekend

It seems Labcoax won't be seeing much coding & spriting action this weekend as I've got to be some place else, which means I'd be without a computer. But that doesn't mean there won't be progress! I'll take the opportunity to complete and  hopefully clear out the plot holes. Remember that there's no written text in-game so the story's gonna be told visually.

And that's pretty much all I have this time. Kinda tired actually.

Pendulum || LoL H-doujin

Alright prepare yourselves for a post to raise awareness of western developers/artist in the hentai scene.

Pendulum - Tower Climber by CheshireCat

Pendulum - Tower climber H-game

A week has passed and I've missed quite the bit in the H scene. A game called "Pendulum" has just been released a couple days ago on the 30th August by CheshireCat.

What is "Pendulum"? In short, it is a tower-climber platformer where you play a bobble-head of a character (let's call him 'Pen') and try to jump to the top of each level featuring monster girls and polar bear facts. Your direction should always be upwards although you'll find yourself falling to your doom often.

As Pen attempt his climbs, there will be naked monster girls randomly placed on platforms and will not hesitate to make his day much harder on him. Monster girls come in 5 forms, Arachne and Wasp being the first two.

Each level has a BGM and theme of their own and as you beat each level on Normal, you unlock H-scenes in the gallery as a reward for reaching the top. After completing each level on Normal, you'll want to up the difficulty to Brutal because beating them also unlocks a different (and better) H-scenes, up to a total of 12 scenes.

Lava bad? No kidding

There are checkpoints within each level, first one at the 180 height, then 600 and gets progressively further. This game is tough as nails, like bloody NES kind of tough but as soon as you reach the top, the satisfaction makes you forget about the hentai in the game. Then you are prompted a H-scene unlock, reminding you, doubling the satisfaction.

Pen caught with pants down

If you need a strategy, listen to the voice when they say lava is bad. Take your time as you climb. Sometimes I do a short jump just to push the view up a little so I could see higher. Then hope girls don't spawn in impossible places :)

I'd say Pendulum is very well made, complete with a very prim & proper menu and game design, and comes off as very presentable in my opinion. So check out Pendulum, try the demo when you get the chance and support if you wanna see more from CheshireCat.


P.S: As of now there's only a PayPal option. DLSite is still processing and will release there soon.


Twisted Intent (Volume-1) - LoL hentai doujin by OptionalWorks


If you remember of Hidden Eden, the artist of said game in development has recently finished an 11-pages parody of League of Legends (LoL) hentai doujin.

The doujin is fully-colored, very nicely drawn featuring Katarina and Warwick Rengar. I'd say it's really worth that you out Optional's work as he/she is very passionate about the trade but is having a hard time to make ends meet.

You can support the artist by buying his/her work at OptionalWorks so there can be a Volume-2!

That's all I have in today's post. It was just mainly to get word out on the involvement of western developers/artists in the hentai scene.

Labcoax development is progressing as usual on my side, occasionally hitting snags but nothing major!

Messy scenes and other things

So ... I heard people wanting messier scenes. I had intended to add the cum effect since a long time ago but figured I get other important mechanics working first. Anyhow, finally sat down to program the effects:

 Splishy-splurt!

Development is progressing the usual rate I suppose. Since the last release, I've been putting the game loading & saving functionality together, alongside that, programming event controllers e.g. cutscene handling and things like doors opened should stay open (save state). Still some kinks here and there.

Only things on my mind right now would be to continue to fix the kinks, create more in-game cutscenes, creating some few new enemies, and improve the sloppy looking start screen UI. If all goes well, next release would likely showcase simple cutscenes, loading and saving.

Tis' all fer now.

July Update - Release v0.4

Procrastination got the better of me but I managed to slap a couple of test areas together and hopefully presented what I wanted to present in v0.4 nicely. Now that's left is just to upload and hope I didn't miss anything out. If I did, I'll come back to re-upload and edit things.

O hai there rat! - LBCX v0.4

Release v0.4 serves to showcase improved tileset texturing, non-dynamic lighting and ammo-changing (there's only one other ammo to change to currently).

Edit #1: Re-uploaded.
> Fixed fat rat hitbox, now no longer float between gaps in platforms.
> Fixed player stuck in slopes after H-animation. Still feels floaty though.
> H-animation no longer obscured by idling enemies.

Edit#2: Added few mirrors to link.
> Flash effect not appearing during climax scene. Fixed.

Download Labcoax v0.4 from [MEGA] [RapidShare] [DepositFiles].
パスワード | Password is the usual 'dtny'. Link also posted to the 'Downloads' section.

Couple of notes:

• When entering pause screen, you will see things disappearing momentarily. It's a new change, still tinkering. The pause HUD still looks like shit though.
• Choosing difficulty makes no difference, function not done.
• Pressing 'L' key disables the screen filter in the lower area.
• If you found a bug, tell me in the comment section below!
• It's still July!

Oh and I've also updated and included links to new developers of H-games on the right-hand side, newest links sorted at the top, so be sure to check them out!

June Update

With June drawing to a close, I want post a screenshot or two on how the game would look like with some non-dynamic light, shading and improved texturing:-

Red zone in Labcoax world. Ignore the guidelines.

In the the game there'll be multiple zones in which players will visit in their journey on discovering what happened in Labcoax and "stuff". The idea is that each zone have a certain theme (thus its own look and texture) and the enemies are to follow those themes (e.g. flora or mecha), but I think I've said this before.

Sub-ammo & alternate ammo fire.

A number of 4 ammo-types is planned for Labcoax, each ammo type will have a primary and alternate fire (think differing shot angle, spreadshot and consumes a form of resource like 'hearts' in Castlevania), so you could say 8 different types of syringe shots.

Well I know it's not much but that's all I can put up now. If you have questions you can post them in the comments section below, and I will answer them (as best I could of course :P ).

I expect release Labcoax v0.4 in July!

"Eroico" and the May Update

Labcoax - Texturing MAY-hem

I tried to stop myself at the heading. Believe me.

Okay I've been slacking. Well not really. After drawing tilesets in the past weeks, I thought I've drawn enough to start putting together a whole zone/area(there will be multiple colour-denoted zones to traverse) in the game. I did draw alot, but they all lack texture.

So basically I've been putting together some very uninteresting looking area. Didn't like it so I went back to the tilesets and fiddled  some more. Refer below picture:

I had no clue how to texture, initially.

Of course I SHOULD know (texturing) this before I start making a game right? I knew, but I didn't know it would be taking so much time (I may be inefficient). Being frustrated at my slow texturing progress, I decided to play ..

Eroico - a mini-H-platformer game by Kyrieru

Before I start, I just want to point out something first:

Learn this 'move' and learn it well for it is your friend.

And don't forget to use the shield.

Eroico, a 2D-ero-platformer was released by Kyrieru a few days ago, so I'm actually late to playing the game. I'm sure many have already played the game to oblivion but in case you haven't played it yet, go to his blogspot and try the demo (then buy the game via PayPal, or wait a little more for it to be released on DLsite).

So I've played Eroico and I think Kyrieru managed to capture the atmosphere of an 'Adventure that promises the player many a great ride'. The animations were fluid & had transitions, and the background music fits very nicely with the drawn background, giving some feeling of 'immersion'.

Combat controls are responsive, but Eroico's combat was designed such that there's a start-up delay to all the protagonist's attacking moves so players will often find their attacks coming out slower than the quick-footed catgirl.

Upgrades are always fun. You use the sparkly bits that come off the enemy girls to obtain sword and ranged-magic upgrades. The upgrade pedestals are placed around the levels (if you miss them, you can still beat the game, but why would you not want a burning sword?):-

 Step on the pedestal and be bestowed the burning sword of Ero.

I prefer to use 'burning' because.

The upgrade gives extended attack range but not attack power.

I have to say that the platforming part of the game is actually really challenging and fun. You'd think you would be doing a lot of jumping around, but what you're really doing in Eroico is a lot of jumping around, dodging, attacking and messing up, all at the same time.
There is a sense of achievement for  Playing on normal, you'll have very few chances to make mistakes as a few can mean starting the level over if you haven't gotten to the checkpoints. There are only 2 checkpoints in each level and the first checkpoint can only be found at about halfway through the level.

Lastly, not forgetting the hentai, there's a total of 15 enemies in the game. Each enemy girl in-game has its own sprited H-animation and a respective quality CG. I have to say Kyrieru definitely improved his drawings of CGs.

Back to progress report

I don't always write reviews. The reason I brought Eroico up is because I wanted to point out that a nicely put together background and tileset can really go the mile in bringing out the 'life' in a game. From the screenshots above, one can immediately feel the 'colour' of the game.

What I'm really saying is that that's what I'm trying to do in Labcoax. I haven't achieved a satisfactory level with the texturing yet but I think I'm getting close to it (that satisfactory level). I want to do at least this before I release anything because first impressions are important afterall!
...

And before I forget, I was actually doing the "intro story" to Labcoax before my attention got diverted to adding tileset textures. Here's the sketch:-

Labcoax intro - concept and sketch

I'll just leave that here for now and the rest of the story to your imagination (let me hear/read it in the comments!). I apologize for not having a new release for Labcoax this time around. I couldn't get as much work done as I thought I could.

Q: If you've played Eroico, what were the few plus points you think it has?

April Fool's Update

...
I bet you were totally expecting a release didn't you?
Nope, just dropping a post to highlight the recent additions to Labcoax, but first a screenshot:

Truth be told I haven't done much in the past few weeks. The only things I've managed are:-

• Forward dash
• Back-hop
• Ammo-change system

I plan to have both the forward dash and back-hop to be as obtainable upgrades from beating mini-bosses. Additional ammo types for the ammo-change system would have to be obtained from beating the main bosses, very much like Megaman stealing the powers of the main enemies he defeated. Each ammo type will behave differently. The only concern I have is making all of them useful.

Back-hop (ignore the red lines)

When is the next release? I can't really say, but maybe 3 weeks to a month from now? Note that I have not started on any bosses or enemies just yet. I'm really just trying to get the new game intro set up for now.

Character portrait

I thought I'd post something up in case people start to think that I forgot about Labcoax. I'm still working on it, but no longer on a full-time basis (other job in the morning, Labcoax in the late evening), which should explain the slow progress.

Fired up photoshop once again to try and sketch character portraits for possible use in-game. Here's one.

I'm still not certain about how the heroine should look like, reason because I can't seem to find a consistent style I could stick with. For now, I want to try to stick to this style.

Anyway over the past 2 weeks I've been trying to think of how the new game intro should be like (probably some simple still pictures and in-game cutscenes), prepping up the starting room and testing out some text function. I think I might add NPCs and text interaction too, afterall those cutscenes would need some sort of  text. Eng-jap translation would be a pain.

In any case, I hope to finish the starting/new game room and set up the different ammo-type system before I release the next update.

Mediafire woes, thus v0.3

EDIT#2: My Mediafire link has been disabled. It's Mega for me now.
EDIT#1: Added Mediafire link alongside Mega in downloads page. Grab it while it's still up!

You know you're in for a fun day when you get an e-mail from Mediafire (MF). Well, make it 2 e-mails. Sigh ...

If you've noticed, the MF links to both the v0.2 and v0.2 re-up have been removed due to violation of MF's terms of use. I only wished they tell me exactly what the violation was. So there's that, I don't see a better time to try out Mega Beta.

Unfortunately I didn't keep a copy of v0.2, so I'd have to release v0.3, which is unplanned for. What you would see in v0.3:-

1. Tileset testing (Ignore the red dots, they're there to serve as reference for me).
2. Just 2 extra sprite frames for 'getting-up' animation.
3. Drop-through jump-through platforms by pressing 'Down + Jump'.

At the same time, I'll also be having a separate .exe "v0.3 Debug". This version is for those who had previously failed to run v0.2 re-up. What is different in "v0.3 Debug" is that there will be no dynamic memory allocation, because I think that's where the problem lies. What that means is, Debug won't have:

1. The pause menu.
2. Leveling-up menu. (You'd still level-up, just that you can't allocate the stats)

The results of the poll showed that 16 out of 278 people encountered issue(s) with v0.2. Try the debug version. If it still doesn't work, it could be that GM:Studio exports just isn't working for you. GM:Studio is still getting bug patches and is recently able to export stand-alone .exe. Trying out this export for v0.3.
Notify me in the comments if you are getting the same error.

I apologize about the lack of updates but things are going really slowly at my side.

Here's the Mega link to both versions of v0.3: Labcoax - Alpha v0.3 + Debug
Password is dtny.
Also posted to downloads page.

Notify me in the comments if Mega links doesn't work for you.

Month-end Update - January

Development is progressing but the process has slowed a whole lot since the last month, as you might expect. In the past few weeks I've:

1. Prepared the main menu template where you can navigate between new game, load game and exit game (but of course, the functionality have not been implemented).
2. Boss-room, the background and a boss, no H-animation yet.
3. Heroine now able to drop-through jump-through platforms by pressing 'down' and 'jump'.

And problems! These are the few known issues regarding Labcoax v0.2 that affect some people:-

1. Game errors out and requires closing when game is launched.
2. Game launches but resources could not be loaded, giving only the background on screen and nothing else.
3. Pressing 'enter' key to bring up the pause menu crashes the game.

I need more feedback to estimate the extend of these problems so I've added a poll to the right, where you can vote and tell me if v0.2 worked just fine or is experiencing one of the problems above. I hope it's not extensive but hey, surprise me.

EDIT#1: Feel free to list down any other issues that I might have missed in the comments.