Friday, March 5, 2021

Once Ever After 0.4.0 (Full Plot Release)

Backers on Patreon and SubscribeStar now have access to a build of Once Ever After that is plot and gameplay complete. The final version will need more parallax maps and will get more polish, but this one is the first release that's a full game. There's a lot included:

0.4.0 Changes
- Final plot update
- All sex scenes added
- All chibi scenes added
- Placeholder music replaced with 53 new non-RTP tracks
- Replaced all 30 RTP default sound effects with unique ones
- All custom battlebacks
- All custom NPC faces, edited NPC sprites
- Brand new fancy title screen
- New windows and menu format
- Non-RTP equipment icons
- Custom balloon/emotion icons
- 95% of battle animations replaced with non-RTP animations
- Attacks in combat now include sprite movement
- Placeholder battlers all removed, many unique battlers commissioned
- Misc tweaks: different treasure acquisition, new battle results plugin, new fonts, etc

I have been working on this in the background for several years and it feels very rewarding to finally complete the main creative work. I'm not sure how long it will be until the final release, but there will be no 0.5.0 and so on... the next major release will be 1.0.0.

Work on this will take me a while yet, but as soon as it's done, the next priority is TLS 0.56.0.

49 comments:

  1. Hello just past to give a bad new : i have find a bug in tls by restart the game when you go first time in magic academy you stop in midle of the corridor instead to go to the blond girl romm ( the "daughter"of simon) it not break the game since after the dialogue you are telpeport out but bad for the involvement

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    1. ps you are teleport in the room after the dialogue

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    2. This is a known issue because the text skip doesn't play well with the dialogue while walking. The only way I can think to fix it would be to disable text skip for that section, which I don't think is ideal.

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    3. OK. Last time i played this part i was working juste fine. what hapen for that do not work anymore ?

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    4. I do not believe that this section has changed in years. Were you skipping dialogue you'd already seen before? If you can make this happen while going through the dialogue at a normal rate, that's a brand new bug, and I'd appreciate video to try to figure it out.

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    5. I am already 20 later in the game. and i only use one save so if i want to rego to that moment i need to replay the 10 firs hour

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    6. @Sierra: I have an idea for how to fix this - I'll take a look after I finish OEA testing and let you know.

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  2. Hello I want to report a bug.
    Im in in the very start of the game, when the order soldier attacks me... the problem is: He cant kill me, and I cant kill him (obviously) so there is a endless battle that do absolute zero damage to both parts.

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    1. Does this mean the game has leaked to the pirate sites already? That's discouraging. I know that you're going to do what you'll do, but please don't come here and rub my face in it.

      In any case, that battle ends when Ingrid's HP is reduced to a certain point. If you've legitimately found a way to make Ingrid invincible to the soldier's attacks, let me know and I'll try to take care of the problem. If it's due to some tampering, I'm under stress trying to improve the game and I would appreciate if you didn't.

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    2. Sorry, I dont mean to rub it in your face. I will support you when I can (I cant at the moment, tehy pay me at the end of the month) Im not doing this for pleasure or to screw you.

      I found a way to fix the problem, I just restarted the game and it worked.

      Again, I will suscribe at you at the end of the month bc I like your games, your work and your passion. Sorry for the troubles.

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    3. Hey, no need to send me anything when times are rough. Focus on yourself first and support me once you're feeling comfortable.

      But the pirated versions are generally far behind what I'm currently working on from Patreon reports, so they use up my bandwidth. I'll take bug reports from anywhere, but I've found those from such sources tend to be redundant or erroneous.

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  3. Hello i have a question.
    How the corruption system work?
    Because for now i could only decreased it.

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    1. If that's what you got out of the introduction, this is not the game for you.

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    2. I am not sure i understand what you mean.
      You mean that during the introduction you could rise it?
      (sorry if i don't understand it well but i am not that good in english)

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    3. I don't think this is a game someone could enjoy without a good grasp of English. I don't mean to be unkind, but I am tired of people pirating my games and complaining that they're not a type of game I'm not interested in making.

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    4. ok you are right, sorry for pirating your game.
      I will uninstail it

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    5. I must say that you should not be so mean. It hard for eveyone curently and be mean will not help any one. For year i paid 50 dolar worth of money to patreon i like and that have good work and low number of patreon. I have to stop because of the curent world wide probleme and i hope that could soon restart my payment. And beford i could paid for the game i pirate they for years and when i played a game a like i alwayed end up paid for it.
      I understant that you work a lot for create the game and that you livee from you work. But you do not gain money by work you gain by sell your work.And from my experience the only way to sell somethink is to be profesional and kind even if you find your potential client as totaly shit in your mind you still need to be profesional. It not easy i know it but i know some people that would never buy you anything if your are mean to they just once.

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    6. Have I been mean in this post? I reread my comments and I don't believe that I have. I haven't condemned anyone or taken any actions to fight their piracy, just asked people politely not to do things that will only slow down development.

      If you mean this comment chain in particular, I'm not sympathetic. Someone who played the introduction to OEA and asked about "how the corruption system works" is not likely someone who will ever enjoy one of my games, much less buy one. The only thing I want to be clear to avoid is insulting anyone for not being familiar with English: if I came off that way I apologize, but I stand by my statements otherwise.

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    7. Just to be clear, i play the game until the part were there is a labirint with monsters and golden chests.
      After that you replay to my comment and i understand that i didn't had the right to play the game without paying it so i had uninstalled it.
      In the end to answer "azope" comment, i don't think that "Sierra Lee" had been particularly mean to me, and in any case he have the right to be mean to me from his perspective i am a thief.

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    8. I was frustrated by your initial question, but changed my mind when you mentioned your unfamiliarity with English. However, my general response remains the same: I don't think this is the type of game you're looking for.

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    9. ok i will be back after a bit of study and like a patreon i hope

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  4. Yo dev, can I make a request that could improve your game? So anyway my request is that you add a quest tab to the menu that tells me whats the next step/location to do or to go because I get lost easily in this game. Good game so far, but boy you can get lost.

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    1. A quest log isn't the sort of thing that can be easily added between minor versions, but I'm likely to include one before the next major update.

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    2. Ok and thank you for reading my suggestion.

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Decanter has informed me that I should have posted this somewhere else so I am moving it.

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    2. I already replied to you over there, but no worries! It's just best to centralize feedback to reduce duplicate and outdated reports.

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  6. Hi Sierra, I had a question. Since elves lives in forests, why do they use bows ? I mean, since there are lots if trees who could block the arrows.
    It always bothered me that no story explains this. Magic and swords, okay, but bows ?
    Anyways, have a good day !!!

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    1. Covering the general case rather than TLS specifically, there are a few reasons I can think of:

      * Ranged weapons are useful when there's a lot of cover, since it makes it easier to adopt stealth/ambush/guerrilla tactics.
      * Elves are often more lightly built than other races, so it makes sense they'd be less keen on getting into a melee. They're also often dexterous, with long lives to hone their marksmanship.
      * Elves are usually associated with fine craftsmanship and an affinity with forests, so it's natural that they'd be good bowyers.
      * Hunting is an important source of food in a forest since opportunities for agriculture are more limited than in open plains; bows are an ideal weapon for hunting.
      * Bows are an elegant weapon and elves are an elegant people.

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    2. There are some elements of TLS that I've given a lot of thought and done research regarding realism before deciding what approach I wanted to take. This isn't one of them, just the common elves/bows connection. =P

      That said, I don't think this is a purely fictional connection, because many real cultures have used bows for forest hunting/warfare. One factor I can add to what Lamsey wrote is that range is different in real life than the way it commonly is in games. In most games, bows have a maximum range and are equally effective everywhere in that range. In reality, the arrow loses power from the instant it leaves the bow. So in real military tactics, instead of "kiting" enemies at maximum distance, archers need to strike a balance. For example, horse archers would rush relatively close, fire, then retreat. I don't know anything about this in forest warfare, but I'd find it believable if you could still use bows at their effective range in a forest, especially if you were firing from denser cover into less dense areas where targets are massed.

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    3. Something else to keep in mind is that bows came to be common use in times when most forest was "old growth". In an old growth forest there is relatively little underbrush, and there's a lot more space between the trees. Nowadays most of the developed worlds experience with forests are with "secondary growth" forests, areas where there used to be cleared land but over time it was abandoned and became reforested. Secondary growth forests have lots of smaller trees and lots of underbrush because more light makes it through to the ground.

      I live next to a combined secondary/old growth forest, it used to be a dairy with some riding trails on a small mountain. Trying to get through the edge to find trees for firewood (for winter heating) is a nightmare tangle of roses, raspberries, poison ivy, and grape vines, but once you get past the secondary growth it's fairly clear with sight-lines out to 20 to 30 meters not being uncommon.

      I can easily imagine an archer ambushing a group by hiding behind a large tree: step out, fire two or three shots, duck back behind the tree before the group realizes they're under attack, take out a couple more while they figure out what happened, and depending on the size of the group, shoot the rest as they try to close the distance to the archer.

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    4. Hmmm, I admit I hadn't seen it that way. Thank you for all your responses !!!

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  7. This game is way, way, way wayyyyy too grindy. The gold and class points rewards from combat (and the various gold rewards from quests and exploration) need to be increased by at least 5x, possibly by an order of magnitude. The grind is SUPER tedious in this game!

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    1. For non-public builds, please post feedback on the Patreon thread. It's a lot easier to track if it's all in one place and it's clear which version you're reporting against.

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    2. I'd encourage you to consider shifting your strategies. Even without grinding, many players are hitting the level cap before the end, and the game can be beaten without fighting a single random battle.

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    4. It isn't necessarily about beating the game, it's about being able to interact with the content and strategy and items in the game. I *want* to tweak items, I *want* to see what the various powers do, I don't WANT to have to run from every single fight all the time (it gets super tedious, and there's no way to not get pulled into those battles), which means spend hours upon hours upon HOURS grinding to unlock things and save up enough cash to do anything notable!

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    5. You've supported me on Patreon and continued this point there, correct? I'm going to paste my Patreon response in case you're a different person, and so the public conversation isn't incomplete, but in the future I'd ask all conversation to switch over there.

      This was the balance I aimed for in the game: if you play through the story focusing only on story content (never repeating any battles), you will get enough AP to buy virtually everything. If I increased AP rewards by 4-10 times as you've suggested, players would indeed be able to play with more skills early on, but they would get every skill a short time into the game and then AP would be pointless for the rest. My goal was for players to keep getting interesting new stuff throughout the game, with the option to grind a little at the end for those who wanted to.

      When people say that the grind is too much, I assume that they mean they found the game too difficult to continue without stopping to fight extra enemies. That was why I responded to you as I did, regarding the overall difficulty.

      Now, I don't want people to have a bad experience or feel like they need to wade through a ton of unnecessary content. But to me, it sounds like you didn't have trouble with the difficulty, instead you stopped moving forward because you wanted to get all the abilities and buy things that weren't intended to be acquired until endgame. I have no problem with players who want to do that (or want to cheat), but this is self-chosen behavior that I can't really account for in the essential balance of the game.

      I am committed to improving the game, but I hope articulating my thoughts explains why I don't intend to make the changes you've suggested.

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  8. I didn't expect this cameo/easter egg.

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    1. It was a pleasant surprise. I am sorry if I misunderstood the emoticon. With that being said I believe that this is easily your second best game.

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  9. Hey Sierra I found a nice plugin for rpg maker MV. https://cutievirus.itch.io/mv3d
    Though somewhat expensive, I believe it would make your games even better.

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    1. The 3D plugin is certainly interesting, but I think you'd want to build a game around it, because it would radically alter map design.

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    2. To be honest, I don't know. The developer has a free demo. Perhaps it is not as complicated as it appears to be.

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  10. Asking here since I didn't see a description in your blog posts and forum posts, and steam is being uncooperative. Without major spoilers, would you be able to say briefly what the game is about, and the type of content (e.g. pairings) in the game? While it does show much effort went into it, "there are ## scenes" and "parallax maps" don't convey much about the actual content.

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    1. That's fair, I didn't really consider that some countries have NSFW blocked on Steam and there isn't much information elsewhere. Here's the Steam description:

      "Everyone knows how the story goes: innocent, 18-year-old Red Riding Hood goes into the woods and is corrupted by the naughty, naughty Big Bad Wolf. Ingrid is the newest Little Red Riding Hood: she doesn't know what awaits her in the dark woods, but she knows that it seems exciting.

      But Ingrid's world is only one of an infinite number of Tales, and those stories are starting to bleed over into one another. War is coming, and Ingrid doesn't even know what war is. Nothing will ever be the same, and the only weapon Ingrid has to face the changes is sexy fun.

      Features

      A 20-30 hour RPG across multiple alternate fairy tales.
      20+ base scenes with 150+ images total.
      30+ chibi images illustrating cute plot moments.
      All characters have access to multiple classes and skill trees that can be mixed and matched.
      Visible enemies instead of random encounters.
      Optional post-game challenges leading to second ending."

      And I'll add content lists for you...

      Pairings: solo, M/F, F/F, M/F/F, M/F/M, orgies
      Content: all the normal stuff you'd expect, futa, abnormal size, gangbang, exhibitionism

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  11. Now can we finally get back to a game with a male protag? One with actual art

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  12. Is this purchasable yet? I'm really hooked on the key art and the descriptions I've seen and would be hyped to play this even if I wasn't already sold on your works in general. It's not available on steam yet, can I buy it somewhere else or should I get a month's worth of Patreon sub instead if I'm understanding this post right?

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    1. Thanks for your interest, but it's not available yet. If you want to be notified when the game is released, you can follow it on Steam:
      https://store.steampowered.com/app/951860/Once_Ever_After/

      Patrons do have access to a story-complete build of the game, and once I've done a little more work on TLS, they'll have access to the final version as well. It's up to you if you want to pursue it now or later.

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