Hi, I want to give a quick update.

Last week, I finished and tested the difficulty settings and the bonus system. It seems to work fine, but now the game feels quite easy, lol. That's okay, we can tweak it more, later. I'm happy with this functionality.

I also looked into some UI changes, to give it a more Sci-Fi feel, but I didn't really find anything I liked. I didn't put much effort into it, though. I might give it another go next week.

Next week, I'll either work on the UI and sound effects, or I'll try to unlock all the outfit parts in the game.

Lastly, I also found a gnarly bug in the game, where basically officers with a relationship level over 5 won't pay you more. I fixed it (I think), but because of this bug, I think I'll make another public release at the end of this month.

Cheers!

Hi All,

I wanted to give a quick update.

I thought about the bonuses, and here is what I thought of. I might tweak them or add new ones later on. I think they're pretty easy to implement and understand, but hopefully they'll have a big impact on gameplay.

1. 50% more income from missions starting in industrial stations.
2. 50% more income from missions starting in research stations.
3. 50% more income from missions starting in security stations.
4. 100% more income from missions starting in the Headquarters.
5. 100% more income from missions starting in the Starport.
6. 50% more income from Officers with a Friendly personality.
7. 50% more income from Officers with a Sleazy personality.
8. 50% more income from Officers with a Stern personality.
9. 50% more income from Officers with a Relationship Level 2 or less.
10. 50% more income from Officers with a Relationship Level more than 2.
11. 50% more income from Officers with a rank of Captain.
12. 100% more income from Officers with a rank higher than Captain.

A playthrough will get 2 of these bonuses randomly, and you can re-roll them before starting the game. They'll stick with you for the whole playthrough.

I also started adding a difficulty system. You start a playthrough as easy, medium or hard, and you cannot change it afterwards. Here's what they look like:

1. Easy: Officers have a 100% chance of giving a mission, and you have 7 days to make each repayment.
2. Medium: Officers have a 80% chance of giving a mission, and you have 6 days to make each repayment.
3. Hard: Officers have a 60% chance of giving a mission, and you have 5 days to make each repayment. (same as the current game)

This way, you can choose the configuration that appeals to you the most. Easy makes sure that you always have a mission, and it's your choice that matters. Medium keeps the risk of a mission not being available, but at a much safer rate than right now. Hard is there for anyone who just wants to see how far they can go.

Next week, I will continue implementing and testing these changes. They're not yet complete.

Lastly, here's what the bonus and difficulty levels look like in the new game window:

Hi All,

I wanted to give an update on what I've been working on last week.

A week ago, I mentioned I would work on two things.

1. Add morning scenes in the beginning of that game, that should succinctly explain ranks, how pay scales for missions, and hopefully give the player some direction and things to think about. Right now, I don't think what the player can do is being signaled well to the player.
2. Add some labels for officers. Currently, there are 6 personalities that affect morale, pay and scenes. By giving them labels, it should help the player make more informed decisions.

I've pretty much finished both of them.

For the first 8 days, as the main character leaves the hanger in the morning, she'll have a short scene which explain the basics of the game. The summary of these explanations are also added to the "help" tab in the menu screen.

I've also added 3 personality types (per gender) to the officer information panels. These already existed, but they weren't super clear. They basically affect how much credits their missions pay, how much morale their missions cost, and also what kind of scenes the main character might have with the officer.

I also made a change to the mission information panel. It now tells you how much morale the mission will cost, later in the day.

You can see both the morale cost and the officer persona here:

Here's how the new hints look like, as well:

Is this helpful? That's 3 of the 8 hints in the first 8 days.

Next week, I'll focus on a bonus system. The idea is that in the beginning of the game, the main character will have 1 or 2 powerful, randomly generated, situational bonuses. These bonuses will be something like 50% more pay from missions starting in security (yellow) stations. Or, maybe 50% more pay from officers of a certain personality. I haven't finalized it yet, but I think this coming week, I'll focus on planning it out, and then the following week, I'll try to build and test it.

If you have any ideas, let me know! Thanks!

Just a quick update on what I've been up to last week.

Earlier last week, I made the first public release of Delivery Pilot. I got a lot of good feedback, and based on that, I made a list of things that I think I need to work on next.

See: https://acacgames.newgrounds.com/news/post/1257984

Afterwards, I began working on the following part on that list:

Clarity for players - What's the strategy? What are my options?

1. Add morning scenes in the beginning of that game, that should succinctly explain ranks, how pay scales for missions, and hopefully give the player some direction and things to think about. Right now, I don't think what the player can do is being signaled well to the player.
2. Add some labels for officers. Currently, there are 6 personalities that affect morale, pay and scenes. By giving them labels, it should help the player make more informed decisions.

I've typed up the text for part (1). The way I envision it, everyday for the first 8 in-game days, in the morning as the main character leaves the hanger, there will be a scene where she is thinking to herself. These should basically express to the player what the game expects from you, and what you can do to surmount those challenges. Think of it as a tutorial.

I've put about 25% of that into the game. Next week, I plan to put in the rest, test them, and also tackle (2).

Cheers!

Recently, I've posted the first public release of Delivery Pilot - Dreams and Debts. I'm really happy with the response! I've gotten a ton of helpful feedback, and I thought about them a lot. Please continue to give me your thoughts! I really appreciate them!

Based on the feedback I've received, here are my current goals:

Clarity for players - What's the strategy? What are my options?

1. Add morning scenes in the beginning of that game, that should succinctly explain ranks, how pay scales for missions, and hopefully give the player some direction and things to think about. Right now, I don't think what the player can do is being signaled well to the player.
2. Add some labels for officers. Currently, there are 6 personalities that affect morale, pay and scenes. By giving them labels, it should help the player make more informed decisions.

Reduce difficulty - Right now it's impossible.

1. Make officers have 100% chance of giving missions (unless their subordinates don't know the MC well). Currently, it's set to 60%. I thought it might be fun, but in practice it's pretty anti-fun.
2. Add a bonus system. Each playthrough will have one or two big but situational, randomly rolled bonuses (can be re-rolled). For example, 50% more income for missions from Yellow stations.
3. Minor tweaks, including making one of the officers pay a bit more (but also cause more morale loss).

Needs more lewd scenes.

1. Add morning scenes, where unnamed NPCs will harass the MC if she isn't fully modest in her attire. The chance of this occurring will be based on how scandalous she looks.
2. Unlock all her outfit pieces, as higher level obligations. To get these obligations, her relationship level with officers have to be higher.
3. Add a dress-up/undress system. Something I really want to add is having the player go through the outfit steps that the MC has to go through, due to the her obligations the player has chosen. If it's deeply unpopular, I'll add a skip button.
4. Add many more lewd scenes further down the track, maybe version 0.3 or later.

UI Improvements - Too much clicking.

1. When the MC has a mission, entering the vessel can take the player directly to the cargo hold.
2. When the Cargo hold is inspected, the return button could take the player directly to the cockpit.
3. When leaving the cockpit in the evening with an ongoing mission, the player will be directly taken to the cargo hold.
4. Look into adding more and on-brand sound effects and controls.
5. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do here, right now. I could redo the UI, and I might do so some day. But, this will be a big job.

Other aspects that were disliked but are unlikely to change

1. Cannot manually save and load. Unfortunately, this is not likely to change. It's a design choice I like and it would be too hard to switch now. What I can do instead is try to balance the game around this fact and the "Iron Woman" design.
2. Too Grindy. Unfortunately, this is true. This also doesn't work well with an "Iron Woman" style game. In those kinds of games, you'd typically like to die fast and try again. However, this is meant to be a long experience. You don't have to do it in a single sitting. I hope that it's still fun for some people, to see how far they can go, even if they don't beat the game. That's why I've added the archive. I also hope to make the journey more fun with more lewd scenes in the future.

Hi All,

I just wanted to give you an update on what I've working on. Currently, I'm working on two games right now, in addition to Darkmorrow Arena. One game is in a Feudal Japan setting, and the other is in a future sci-fi setting. Lately, I've been copying the audio and settings systems from Darkmorrow into these two games. I've also been looking into which music tracks to use. I've been browsing through Kevin MacLeod's library a lot, lately.

The sci-fi game is in a state where you can progress from one day to the next. My plan is to get the basic gameplay loop down, and then flesh out the content afterwards, in a modular kind of way.

I find myself working on the Feudal Japan game today, and I was surprised, because the last time I worked on it was in June last year. I forgot how for I got on that game, and it was too bad that I stopped working on it.

Hi All,

It's been almost a month since version 0.5 of Darkmorrow Arena came out, and I'm really happy with how it turned out! Thank you to everyone who took time to give me their feedback! Every bit helps!

Currently, I'm taking a break (not forever, of course) from Darkmorrow, and putting some time into another game idea that I've had. I've been thinking about this concept for a while, and now I really want to put it to code!

You take the role of an ex-navy pilot, who wants to run her own private shipping company. You take out a loan, salvage an old Imperial transport aircraft, and do hotshot delivery jobs for local Imperial officers. You have to balance work and stress, your relationships with the officers, and making enough money to pay back your debt.

Like Darkmorrow Arena, there will be some RNG, an auto-save system, and some bad ends (but not a brutal, this time). Each playthrough, there will be a randomly generated game-world. There will be 10 procedurally generated "bases", and each base will have randomly generated NPCs and activities. The game is designed so that these things can be really simple, and you can still have a fun (hopefully) gameplay loop. But, if I have time, I can expand on these things, by giving the NPCs individual preferences and personalities, and random scenes for the activities.

I've asked MutantPrawn to do a concept design for the main character, and I really like it! You can see it here! (NSFW site, SFW image)

I've also taken a screenshot of the menu screen I've made, showing a summary of the stations, officers and activities. What do you think? I'll add a bit of color coordination, as well. A lot this is based on stuff I've learned while making Darkmorrow Arena!

Hi All,

Just wanted to give a quick update. We're still doing further testing and polish for the next version.

Here's a screenshot of some changes in the shop. First, there are now more items for sale. Second, I've added a little red X next to items you cannot buy. This could be because the item is too expensive, or because the main character doesn't want to wear such a salacious (or boring) outfit. Lastly, it's not shown here, but I made the shop reroll items a few times if it is not something the player can buy. This should help present more items that are actually useful for you (but not always).

Cheers!

I got a surge of inspiration lately, so I wanted post about our progress. Mutant Prawn has made a ton of new art! Cheese wrote a bunch, as well. Currently, I'm adding the art and stories into the game. I'm quite happy, because at this point, pretty much all of the mechanical bits are already done. Right now I'm just adding content into the game and testing it out. At our current pace, I think we can finish this game by the end of this year.

One thing I really want to do is change how the shop offers items for sale. Currently, the shop offers only a few items each day. This is by design, because I want to force the player to make do with what they have available. But, I think the general consensus is that this isn't very fun. Furthermore, a lot of new items will make their way into the game. Because of these reasons, I'm thinking about increasing how many items the shop offers each day. Right now, I'm thinking about increasing this by about 2.5 times as many items!

In addition to that, I think there is a feeling that a lot of the items for sale in the shop are just too expensive, or they can't be used because of restrictions. As part of refactoring the shop, what I might do is; for each item generated for the shop, the code will check if the main character can a) afford the item and b) wear the item. If the answer is no, then the item will be completely re-rolled. The item will be rerolled X number of times, where I think X should be 2, but it might be something else after some play testing. This system can still generate items that the main character cannot equip or afford. That's fine, and it's by design. I still want to give the player a glimpse of what they can possibly get later, or what they might be missing out on...

Alright, back to coding! Cheers!

We are continuing work on the next version of Darkmorrow Arena. Cheese has written some more stories. I've made some fixes and alterations to the UI. One thing I've added is a cheat menu! Actually, it's only for me, and for debugging. :P We are getting far enough into the game that I need this for testing. But the option is there, and it gave me some insight onto how to make a cheap menu for this game or a future game.

Speaking of future games, I wanted to share some screenshots of other games I've been working on. They won't be available anytime soon, and our main focus is Darkmorrow Arena. But, I wanted to hear your options and thoughts on the tone, UI, setting, etc.