Category: Uncategorized

Coding! Art! Stuff!

That’s right, at long last we got it done. There’s been some tumult recently but our art lead is art leading and we’re making progress on chapter 2. The bunny TF is complete, I have the harpy dialogue portraits on the way, and maybe a secret TF that will be announced later???

On Carnation, I am currently working my way through the combat changes. Abilities are now per-class instead of per-character like in RoP, so there were some issues that needed to be attended to (such as all the abilities thinking they were owned by the first party member – and using up his SP!). I am next going to work on getting items up to spec, as they are also quite different from RoP’s version and even WHI’s. Items in Carnation are instantly used without using up your turn, so they are somewhat like 55’s Effortless Action class change skills.

Urimas has delivered the steam droid idle animations and I think we’ll be getting eldritch Christine animations next. Hund is working on a very cool thing that will be revealed later.

The next Tales of Strings is on its way! Art and audiobook are contracted, editing is done. When will it come out? My goal is sometime in September. The first one has alllllmost made back its budget, so it’s time for round 2.

And lastly, our most important team member found a spot to hide.

Imagine the power you’d have if you were permanently invisible.

Fan Art, The Wiki!

After much battling with html or xml or whatever, Xandra has made us a wiki! It’s a community project so pitch in. Currently, it has some pages on slimes and such, with in-game stats and image galleries. Like all good long-term projects it’ll get better if you believe. Alice even made some nice chibis :3

Meanwhile, the secrebots got two new members. I think CR-2-1 and CR-2-2 would be happy that all their friends are now secrebots, too. I would say that but I think they won’t really be happy until everyone is secrebots. Art by Dias, commissioned by Justin Kinniger.

Curious Cat

Surprise Niko!

Niko is a master ambush predator, seen here imitating a loaf of bread.

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

The Wiki of Pandemonium. Learn more, help out, get furious!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Coding and Stuff

Done with the UI upgrades for now, I’m working on Carnation’s combat. The game uses a greatly modified class system, accuracy, damage formula, and other hoo-ha. I’m mostly done setting those up, after which the equipment upgrade system will be my next thing. The massive combat back-end overhaul we did earlier this year has paid off big time, what would have taken a month before has basically taken less than a week.

Meanwhile, Sanya Sevavi is almost done but Koops hurt her hand and Doctor Niko is on the case (vibration therapy). It’ll be fine and she’ll be back to work soon.

Fan Art

:3 Fan art of a certain Izuna by Alice!

Curious Cat

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Coding

I have completed half the UI overhaul. Because this has caused me to go insane, I have decided to proceed with Carnation development and finish the UI overhaul later. I’ve already finished overhauling all of the Carnation UI stuff anyway so there’s nothing holding me back.

And what a benefit it is! It’s already 100x easier to work on, great work, me. We’re already benefitting from our hard work. Glad I’m not me three weeks ago!

Fan Art

This fan art of three heroes becoming plushies even comes with a little story. Great work, DaimosZ!

Curious Cat

YES, YES, YES, BEST NIKO. NIKO/10. BEST!

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Coding and Aiieeeee

The UI code layout was terrible and now it is usable and we’re not done yet. We’re not done yet. I’m just over halfway done because Vendor and Equip taken together are about 1/3rd the total actual UI code.

Maybe another week and change and the UI overhaul is done. I’ve massively improved the system, even found and fixed a few bugs, lowered the memory footprint, and improved load times. Oh, and the code has a lot of removed redundancy.

If you don’t understand what the hell I’m talking about, it’s coding stuff. It means I’m spending time now to save gobs of time over the next few years. When new games are made or new UIs get added to RoP, such as switching party members, it will be 1000x easier to do it with the new code layout. Invest in your future, hire a coder today!

Periodic Budget Report

I publish these when I feel like it. You know where your money is going, it’s going to ART.

ART

Urimas is working on those idle animations and Hund is making a map. I have several candidates selected for possible new hires, and Dias is working on the bunny TF comic.

I am hoping that all of the TF sequences will be ready for chapter 2 by the time work resumes on it after the Carnation prototype is out.

Tales of Strings: Instruments is on Amazon!

If you liked the look of Tales of Strings: Instruments on Itch but had some kind of problem with itch.io, now it’s on Amazon. There are some services like audiobooks that you might have access to for free if you already have Amazon Prime, try it out!

I’ve seen a good reaction to the story so more are on the way. :3

Fan ART

The fastest way to my heart is puppet TF. This one is by Animerionettes! Thanks it looks wonderful.

Curious Cat

“Ha ha I made it all the way through a post without getting ambushed by Pumpkin” -You, being WRONG

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Development Update

The time has come. I am redoing the goddamn UI. It has taken a week and it’ll probably take another week but it is overdue. Restructuring the UI to be easier to work with, with less redundant code and more automation, is the right choice.

What does this mean to you? Nothing. Nothing at all because the whole thing will look identical when I am done. The code will just be easier to work with and less prone to causing bugs when I add new stuff or make new games.

Just know that I’m tired and it’s going to save 500 hours of work over the course of 10 years. Long term investments!

Fan Art

Art by Kumquat :3

Curious Cat

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Development Update

I’ve updated Carnation’s buy/sell stuff and am going to be working on getting the UI up to spec. I have also optimized some stuff in the C++ code so you can now directly load assets into C++ objects, which is another step on the road to fully moddable UI elements. Will that ever happen? Maybe! I really do want to encourage mod development but it’s a ton of extra work to do. Still, this will if nothing else slightly reduce loading times.

Oh and I have been considering changing the Harpy Tower Defense minigame in chapter 2 to Harpy Autochess. The purpose of the minigame is to both give the player something fun and cool to do besides beating the shit out of monsters (though that is fun), and to give you a better impression of the fact that the harpies actually do have an army.

One of the problems omnipresent in games is that the scope of things isn’t always clear, due to technical limitations. It’d be a lot of fun to put in 6000 harpy NPCs in a huge military camp but I think the call of “not doing that” is much stronger. Instead, you put in as many characters as you need in order to save on resources. So the player is always of the impression that the harpy army is 20 people over 3 game screens. It isn’t! There are thousands of them! Hence why TD/Autochess exists.

I’ll make a patron poll once Carnation is prototyped and ask the great mass of the patrons what they think. I’m sure everyone will be measured and reasonable.

What Could Have Been

Art by Xandra. You made Pyxxis cry. I’m not tearing up, you are!

Curious Cat

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Quick Development Update

Before we get to the Carnation stuff: Urimas has finished some more idle animations, Koops has finished the style bible, and Hund is working on the big map reveal. I’ve also got some TOP SECRET individual working on some more chapter 2 talk sprites.

I also borrowed a second monitor and bought a new HDMI cable (because the old one freaking broke) so I could greatly improve the engine’s support for multi-monitor setups. Unfortunately the version of Allegro it currently uses is bugged, but the SDL version works. I may have to update the Allegro version after Carnation is out.

Project Carnation

Possible Title: Witches of Ravenbrook

Carnation is an RPG dungeon crawler where your three humans must confront and defeat the so-titled Witches of Ravenbrook in a turn-based combat system with upgradeable equipment and changeable classes.

There’s TF involved, as if I had to tell you that.

After several iterations of design, we’ve settled on what I’m calling an Influence system. When a character’s HP reaches 0, they gain a point of influence, which advances the transformation. As you level up you can increase the influence cap, slowing down transformations, but when the transformation is complete, that party member is hostile for the remainder of the expedition.

Your party enters dungeons and is not always expected to succeed, as the difficulty is intentionally high but fair. If you fail to reach the end and beat the boss, then you keep half of the gained EXP and money. I wanted to make it acceptable and okay to go get transformed, make it part of the gameplay, while still giving you the ability to overcome it.

The art lead is Inkyfluffs, the internationally renowned artist who worked on such titles as String Tyrant and is currently making Covenstead. The characters of Chris, Beth, and Lore are also her design and she’s handling the overall setting and writing. I, Salty, am doing the more game-y parts, like balance, layout, and the actual C++ part.

Presently the prototype is a few months out. I want to overhaul the combat system some more. Navigation is mostly complete but will likely need a few more backgrounds, we’ll know for sure once the final product is ready. I have further ideas on how to handle the navigation part but we’re making a prototype to see if people are interested in this kind of gameplay.

The combat system actually uses a lot of RoP’s guts with a number of small changes I may go into in a later update. Dialogue is also using RoP’s basic talk sprite system.

So there you have it, the semi-reveal of Project Carnation. If you love it or hate it, let us know on Discord or email or just, flag me down in the street and yell at me from a rolled-down window. Do whatever you want.

Fan Art

Here we have SX-399 and Unit 499323, or as they are now called, CR-2-2 and CR-2-3! Brand new secrebots ready to serve. Please don’t look further into their pasts, they’re fresh off the assembly line!

These were drawn by Dias and you can find their DA pages here and here. Thanks, Justinkombat888!

The upcoming Windthrall form hasn’t actually been concepted yet though the base enemy has. So local maniac Xandrasubmarine asked, what if they were cool as hell. Here’s the answer. This is what Jeanne would look like if she merged with one.

Why it’s fan-art of Dmitri! Taken by Koops, it’s so realistic!

Curious Cat

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Coding and Hoo Haa

Koops is presently working on the art bible, Hund is working on a big map that I’ll show off later, and right now I’m working on Project Carnation. It’s not quiiiiite ready to show off, but it’s getting quite close to a point where I’d start showing off some teasers and progress reports. I’m making rapid progress on the layout work, though the UI leaves a lot to be desired. Yay!

I have also completed the third and final String Tyrant Story. Taken together all three are the length of a medium-sized novel. They’re going into editing, and then we’ll look at publishing them in full.

Niko

He is a haunting fellow.

Curious Cat

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Coding and Stuff

Version 4.35 is a very small update BUT it fixes a crash so it’s important to update to keep game instability down. You don’t want to lose progress because the game crashed, right?

It also fixes the paragon menu bug. There are a few other minor bugs I need to fix but those can wait for later. They are minor chapter 5 issues that don’t crash the game.

Get it from our public downloads folder (Mega / Mediafire), or on Itch / Steam!

Our New Art Director (Is Koops)

(Assistant Art Director Niko)

There have been some shakeups in the studio! Giga has left to pursue other major projects, we wish him well. Wispy is no longer working on RoP as an artist but is staying on as a programmer, he’s also got lots of big art projects to deal with. He may be the art lead in future projects, who knows!

This means Koops has been promoted to art director, having the time to spend on the job. We’re also going to be hunting around for a new talk-sprite artist to help fill in the gaps. This means I don’t have any idea when or how chapter 2 is going to progress, it depends on us finding artists up to the task. We’re still going to move forward just not at the pace I had hoped.

Project Carnation is still being prototyped, there may be other projects in the future if it takes us too long to get caught up on the art. I still want to finish chapter 2 ASAP so let’s hope we find some people.

Curious Cat

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!

Happy Pride :3

It’s a bugfix update

It’s in our public downloads folder (Mega / Mediafire) or on Steam/Itch.io. You can find the changelog in the public downloads folder as well.

There’s still a few bugs left to go but I have most of them sorted out in this release. I’ve also completed that useful developer and modder utility I mentioned last week. It will be getting updates as I go, and will be incorporated into the modkit… sometime after the Carnation prototype.

It’s basically an in-engine utility that lets you create abilities, enemies, and other things and generate the scripts so you can plug them into your mods. Saves a lot of copying.

Meanwhile, the chapter 2 intro background is done and Koops will be adding the characters soonish. Urimas is still doing those chapter 5 idle animations.

We’re also filling in the various pieces in chapter 2. Sanya’s got a lot of other form poses where she uses her gun but I wanted to capture the alternative to gun violence: fist violence.

Peace is not an option.

Fan Art

Mr. Toui liked the werebat design so much he made his own version. Watch out, her bite petrifies!

I’m not going to explain this one. Thanks, Xandra!

Curious Cat

The Link Pile

Rationally debate this post on the forums!    Discussion thread for String Tyrant!

Witch Hunter Izana’s forums page! Get it on Steam or Itch.io! It has a free demo!

Pandemonium’s Steam Page! You can get updates automatically.

Maiden Sealed in Stone, a game Salty translated!

Buy String Tyrant, our gaiden game, on Itch.io! It’s on Steam too!

I write silly books! Here’s the first one.

Ask us questions anonymously on Curious Cat!

Buy our merch on Redbubble and Teepublic!

Give us money on Patreon so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

Alternately, give us money on Subscribestar so we can make more monstergirl stuff!

DO NOT join our Discord and curse at me in person! Our testers might be cats, I can’t tell!