D.E. Vane's Domain

I've updated Orval Creep n' Hammer to version 0.95. What's new? Better map icons Cheats (well, just one for now, actually) Tweaked minigame grind Added a way to actually beat the game (lol) Download links (mega.nz): Windows 32-bit Linux 64-bit Check the README or the manual for info on the cheats. I've also been poking at FGAME's script, getting it written piece by piece, though there hasn't been much of note going on otherwise.

While I'm mostly done with Orval Creep n' Hammer, there are a few things I wanted to do with it before entirely moving on to other things.  I've got a short list of things that need to be tweaked, but the big issues are technical in nature. First, I'd like to change the way videos are played.  While the current system works , it's not ideal and given the quality of the videos, the file sizes are just too big.  For what it is, the game just weighs too much, you know? Secondly, the Android port.  While I have technically ported an SDL2 project to Android, it was a bit of a process and the project itself was very, very small in scope.  It was basically just C++ with bits of the SDL2 "standard library".  This game, while not tremendously complex, is quite a bit larger in scope than that earlier "test project," so I'm not sure how all of this would play out in an attempt to port to Android. So what are my options? Option A is to simply do ...

It took a while, but the game's finally finished. I present to you:   Orval Creep n' Hammer . Alright, so I'm not great with names.  Believe it or not this is the best iteration that myself and three other people could come up with. Features: Stars four women Multiple animated sex scenes Wood paneling There are currently a couple of known issues, both particular to the GNU/Linux version.  Basically, typos that I forgot to correct before uploading the files.  Oops.  😢 It's a simple enough game, give it a download and try it out (approx. 700mb). Links: Game manual (PDF) Win32 mega.nz Google Drive GNU/Linux x86_64 mega.nz Google Drive Screenshots Spycam watching Alyson bathe Laptop's store page Madeline doing you a favor l33t She doesn't remember you!?  The insolence.

I've got most stuff nailed down by this point.  Currently working on 'post-production', i.e., seeing which filters are the best at making my stuff look less crappy. Probably a few more days of this, then a few minor changes to the code, then the last-minute stuff and an initial release.  I'm planning on a simultaneous Linux / Windows release, with Android to come at some point in the future assuming it isn't too much of a pain in the ass to port. Obligatory picture:

I've been in a bit of a rut for the past few weeks, and progress has slowed to a crawl.  Luckily, even at a snail's pace you'll make progress eventually, so I'm glad to say that the main 'sex' videos are about finished, other than post-production (i.e., adding SFX and probably not much else). After that, it's a matter of a rather large number of comparably simple static images, finishing off the dialogue, a few bug fixes and BOOM.  Project done.  I've also started work on yet another thing, though it's text-based and I've only just started laying out its development.  Won't post much about it yet, other than maybe "Hey, if you want to play yet another text-based porn game, check back in several months." Anyway, here's a random watermarked screenshot. If I had to give another woefully optimistic ETA, I'd say about 3 weeks.  Maybe 4.  Who knows, check back.

Don't worry folks, the game hasn't died just yet.  The characters are as done as they're going to get and we've been busy putting together and rendering videos for the past couple of weeks, in addition to playing a lot of Stardew Valley on my part. I'd estimate that, at least by sheer numbers, we're about 40% finished with the 'raw' renders of the videos.  There are quite a lot more to go and a bit of post-production to do on all of them, but the project's still chugging along. Unfortunately, it's taking a lot longer to get these done than I had anticipated.  I've been kept plenty busy in Blender without having touched the code at all for weeks now.  At this pace, I would be amazed if it wasn't at least mid-February by the time it's all finished. Oh well.  It takes as long as it takes.

I've been working on modeling the characters for the past two or three weeks, now.  I'm still some way from being completely finished, but I've got the main bits down and they're at the point where I don't see them changing dramatically between now and when the game is released. I've had a third party helping me out a bit with the actual character design, since I'm really quite bad at that sort of thing, though I've been kept plenty busy turning the drawings into 3D models.  Initially, I wanted to go with a 'pixar' style for the characters, though it turns out that it's actually pretty difficult to pull off without looking like 100% shit.  As such, I've fallen back into a style that's about 20% pixar, 80% pseudo-realistic.  It's not what I wanted at the outset but it's what I'm going with for now, since I don't want to spend a year and a half on this thing. For those curious, here's a render of our female leads...

Finished another girl's dialogue.  Holy shit, it always surprises me how damn long it takes to write this stuff.  There's not even that much of it, but goddamn, accounting for every one of a small number of possibilities means you're still covering a lot of bases. Oh well.  That's me half-finished with all the game's dialogue, so I can't whinge too much. Other than that and finishing off a few other minor locations, the biggest bit of progress has been more or less finalizing the design of the main character and, in so doing, deciding on an art direction for the project. This is our hero, ladies and gentlemen!  His name is Orval and he's every bit as sleazy as he looks.  Soon enough, with your help, he'll be able to wet his dick in a handful of as-yet-to-be-designed women. I'm hoping to have this released by about mid-to-late January of 2017.  I had initially planned for a December 2016 release, but it turns out that making a gam...

The last week has been fruitful, at least in regards to the quality of the sex scenes in-game. The previous system consisted of a bunch of still frames (jpg) packed into a binary file and forming a very crude type of animation.  It worked, but it was slow to load and a brute-force effort at best. I've since updated the system a bit, though, finally figuring out how to successfully play video files with SDL2 in a useful way.  After that, it was a matter of tweaking the structure of the bin files that contain the animations (cleverly named 'VID' files, go figure) and re-writing the tools and scripts used to create said files. I also tweaked the in-engine system for handling the scenes to make that a bit less crap, as well. The results are dramatically better and far less resource-intensive (less VRAM used, less disk space for the VID files, etc.).  What this means to the end user is that the game will be slightly less obviously shitty, so that's nice. How the in...

A cursory glance at the post history of this blog should tell you that I haven't been updating the VN very often recently.  Truth be told, I put it on hold a while ago and haven't touched it for months.  I couldn't tell you why exactly, other than to rail off excuses as to why I keep dropping projects that I've become bored or frustrated with. Some of the VN was good, some of it wasn't, and I'm just too lazy to go back and fix what needs fixing at the moment.  I intend to resume progress at some point in the future, but it won't be for another several months at least. Why so long?  Because I started work on yet another title, of course, and I don't want to split my efforts just yet.  This new game started 'production' months ago.  The earliest modification date in its 'docs' folder is September 7th, but I'm almost positive it's been longer than that.  It feels like it's been at least twice that long. I haven't posted...