June 2024 Update: Hey You Have To Do A Lot Of Coding To Make A Game It Turns Out
Happy June, everyone! It’s been unseasonably cool here on Canada’s west coast, but I know that definitely hasn’t been the case the world over - I hope you’re all staying hydrated and comfortable through the summer months! Let’s get into it!
Monstrous Liberation Work
As implied by the title of this e-mail, my work this month has involved taking a break from writing script (in GDocs) to writing script (in Ren’Py). Programming is not really the sexiest topic (unless you’re a REAL pervert) but there IS a lot of it to do and there’s simply no getting around it - especially with Monstrous Liberation, with which I’m making a concerted effort to make noticeably jazzier presentation-wise than Opportunity. (Opportunity was, feature-wise, about as bare-bones a kinetic novel as it’s possible to produce so you might be inclined to retort “well that shouldn’t take much” but I promise I’m also trying to make it look slick by some kind of objective standard.)
A big part of that enhanced presentation was planning for and implementing a handful of “special screens” - that is, screens that are not technically part of the standard-issue screens included with all games built in the Ren’Py engine. These are a map screen (where the player will (eventually) be able to choose which of the city’s districts to liberate, in any order), a character screen (which will feature short biographies & headshots of all the game’s major characters, as well as hints for what to do next on each character’s path), and a gallery screen (for replaying sex scenes). Getting these screens working (after receiving the art from Julian, our wonderful UI artist) was about half of the month’s work on the game for me.
The other half of my work was implementing the full 63-page prologue of the game! Script implementation is always an exciting stage of a project - it’s quite possible to have 80% of a game (in total written script and created assets) while at the same time having 0% of a game because none of it has actually been put together yet, so it’s always something of a relief to assemble everything and see that, thank god, there actually is a video game here after all.
I haven’t actually timed a playthrough of the prologue, but I’d estimate it comes in at around 45-60 minutes, and is essentially a kinetic novel section with some very light tutorial elements before the sandbox portion of the game opens up to the player. Further on the presentation front, Monstrous Liberation features a lot more in the way of text effects (things like different colored text to highlight important concepts, as well as actual text animations via some plugins I got working) and screen/sprite animations (things like screen shakes and flashes, and zooms, bounces, and wiggles for the sprites). Nothing amazingly dramatic, but as Monstrous Liberation is meant to be set in a more exciting world filled with magic and action, it feels appropriate to be putting in that much extra effort in order to make the experience feel more dynamic.
The last part of my work this month involved doing a LOT of hunting for low-cost/free music assets. I wanted Monstrous Liberation to have a somewhat more unified musical soundscape than Opportunity, so a majority of the music you’ll be hearing in the game comes from an artist I found on Itch called alkakrab, but you’ll also hear selections from prolific royalty-free musicians like Kevin Macleod and Rafael Krux.
While Pacha has been busy this month with travel and familial obligations, she did complete the first of two sex scenes for our slime, Drizzle. Above you can see the beginning of said scene - the heat within Drizzle’s bakery often leaves the poor slime in a much-reduced dehydrated state, so Sasha is kind enough to help look after the bakery’s front counter while Drizzle recuperates. However, the delirious slime decides to take matters into its own tentacles and go hunting for sources of moisture…
Adult Analysis Anthology #2 Progress
All of the essayists leapt into action following the success of the AAA#2 fundraiser! Two-thirds of the essays have had their final drafts approved and the essayists have been paid (thanks again to those who contributed and shared!) and the remaining third of the essays are in their final round of edits. There’s a ton of good stuff coming your way in this issue, I can’t wait to show it to you!
Once all the essays are done, everything will once again be in my court for formatting. I also have a couple of things of my own to write for the anthology - one introductory essay, and the adult game review I’m obligated to write as a result of the “Buy My Opinion” perk from the fundraiser being claimed. I’m actually still playing through the game that was chosen for the review, and I’m hoping to power through the remainder this weekend. I’m not going to reveal what the game is or what my overall opinion of it is just yet - at least, not beyond observing that the review is likely going to be considerably longer than the minimum of 1,500 words promised by the perk.
Wrapping Up
That does it for June’s updates! Lots of progress being made, and hopefully we’ll have lots more for you coming in July! See you then, and once again, thank you so much for following BP Games and enjoying the things we make!