Eroge Eroge (Weekly Update #7 & #8) (Patreon)

Plot

Five years ago, the legendary dragon Bahamut ravaged the magic empire of Ceres. The Ceres army fought valiantly, but the dragon ultimately prevailed. After rampaging in the capital, it flew off never to be seen again, leaving the Ceres empire both in shambles and chaos.

Lyon Hawk was a carefree student Magic Knight. Enraged after learning that he lost his family and hometown to Bahamut, he vowed to slay the dragon. As soon as order was restored in Ceres, Dragonhunt, a military order was created solely to hunt the dragon. Lyon immediately enlisted and devoted himself to the cause.

Thanks to the power of Clairvoyance, Bahamut's lair was discovered and the hunters quickly set out on an expedition. They found themselves in an island crawling with hostile flora and fauna, making it impossible for the hunters to head straight to the lair.

The hunters established a foothold on the island, slowly conquering the island for the inevitable battle against Bahamut.

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Characters

Like I said in the previous post, the characters will be retained (Miranda Crowe, Eleanor Moon plus 1 other who I haven't revealed yet) but they will be rewritten to fit the story. For now let's welcome Shannon Kruger!

Shannon Kruger

An energetic adventurer. Unlike most hunters, Shannon doesn't have a history with the Dragon. She joined the hunt purely to test her strength and for the fame. Some people dislike her insensitivity to those who suffered the dragon's attack, but everyone agrees that she's a formidable fighter.

She is a thrill seeker who loves throwing herself on the face of danger. Outside of hunting, she is often seen prowling around camp in search for food or playing pranks(?). 

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She's the youngest of the heroines but before anyone asks, she's not a loli. Also, just want to put it out there, there will be no romance-able lolis in the game so I'm sorry if you're expecting a loli character. Supporting characters sure, but I don't lewd lolis ヾ(･ω･`)

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Gameplay

I recorded a bit of what I have right now and I'll let it speak for itself because a picture is worth a thousand words or so they say. Naturally this is a massive Work-in-Progress, don't ask why I'm using my profile pic for the character.

Youtube Unlisted link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39c8TITU3NQ 

(alternatively, it's test.mp4 in the attachments)

It's not featured on the video because I didn't make it in time, but essentially you will be taking quests from the Camp and slowly unlock the world and events from there.

I do want to talk about the stats because they changed from the previous one. Here's an overview of how I'm planning to implement them:

 - Strength: Allows you to defeat monsters, move boulders, carry heavy items.

 - Charisma: Helps you convince people more easily.

 - Finesse: Helps in stealth, and general maneuvering of terrain (like scaling walls and obstacles)

 - Magic: Allows you to learn rare spells.

 - Luck: Higher value = higher chance of accidentally undressing a heroine or finding a peeping hole or... just kidding lol (or not) :P Luck is increased by items not by quests.

 - Spirit: Not completely sold on this one yet, but basically it's like a gloominess-cheerfulness scale. Lower means depressed disposition = allows you to talk to equally gloomy people. On the other hand, being cheerful attracts more people. Now that I think about it, it's gimmicky so I'll probably change it or scrap it entirely.

 - Fatigue: Another experimental stat. Performing actions/stat checks increases fatigue. You receive penalties if you don't meet stat requirements. Let's say pushing a Boulder requires 5 STRENGTH and 10 FATIGUE. If you have less STRENGTH, the FATIGUE is doubled (or multiplied by the difference in stat). If max FATIGUE is reached, you fail the quest you're in and sleep for an entire day to recover. I'm thinking of using this to balance things and a way to structure progression.

 - Renown: Unlocks quests. Higher Renown = More difficult quests. Also a progress tracker, higher renown means you're closer to the end of the story.

Lastly the day cycle. There are now 4 time periods per day; Morning, Noon, Night, Midnight. Time advances when you move to another location in the map. Time doesn't flow when you're in a location unless an event forces time to pass. Naturally, some events are triggered by time of day.

I'm still debating whether I should add an "in-game deadline", like if you reach 100 days in-game, the dragon awakens and fights you whether you're ready or not. Personally, I don't enjoy deadlines in games but I can see how they are used to structure progression. Thoughts?

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Closing Thoughts

I've done some major amount of progress in the past two weeks, it's mostly back end stuff but I'm happy nonetheless. The goal for next week is to reveal the final heroine and finish rewriting the character profiles so that on November all I'm going to do is create actual story content. I still want to try to meet the December 14 deadline for a short/introductory demo. I've already spent way too much time on this and I don't want 2018 to end without a demo, that would just break my heart.

AND NO MORE CHANGING STORIES lol. I'm going to stick with this one. So done redoing shit.

Anyway I guess I should talk a about why I changed the story. The biggest reason is that the Magic School (Ceres Nova) story doesn't have a strong plot and it resulted to poorly conceived characters (as in their motivations are not well-defined and they're mostly there to fill a job) I know I'm probably making it seem harder than it really is, but I think I just can't write a story if it doesn't have a clear goal.

See, compared to the Magic School, this Dragon Story has a simple but well-defined plot: Dragon kill people -> people hate Dragon. I can extrapolate so much from that like motivations and ambitions as opposed to: Magic people can do magic -> go to school. I'm simplifying things but hey my brain likes simple things, it likes seeing clear points so it can connect the dots.

Incidentally, I got the idea for this dragon story as I was writing a scene about Miranda studying a fabled magical artifact (Miranda is the dark magic instructor and magical artifact enthusiast in Ceres Nova)

2nd big reason is that, I wanted to crazy with character designs. A school setting needs uniforms and I don't know why but uniforms are so hard to design. It probably has something to do with my dislike for schools in general :P

3rd is that I wanted to do an adventure story. I mean I guess could make the magic school more adventure-y but at that point, why limit it to a school setting?

Anyway those are the reasons. I'm honestly relieved that I changed the story because it's a lot easier for me now, at least in the thinking department. The workload is still the same, maybe even more, but at least I'm not constantly questioning the direction of the story.

I think that's all for this update. It's a very long post but I felt the need to do it because I missed last week's. I just felt so bad. Anyway let's hope everything goes smoothly from now on. Thank you for reading this and hope you look forward to future updates! As always, feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments~ 

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