Alpha Devlog 9: Some Streamlining

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The preview of Ero Hunters, available to subscribers on Patreon/Subscribestar, is doing pretty well and I like to believe that the biggest crashes are fixed by the hotfixes that came out. So let's focus on adding further content.

The way I make games always starts from raw game data, implementations come later. The advantage is that it quickly shows what is and isn't feasible to do. I started with the three additional races as defined in the Roadmap and decided how I would make these new races interesting.

Streamlining I: Racial Moves

Every race has two racial moves which increase in power as the monstergirl levels up. There are of course visual changes and unique genes (often strengthening these racial moves), but this is the main thing that makes the races mechanically unique. Your Ratkin mage will always be able to bite when brought to the front, while your wolfgirl can transform into a wolf in a pinch.

The new races aren't encounterable in the game yet, but knowing what is necessary to create a new race is pretty important. It also fills out the role levelups pretty nicely.

Streamlining II: Racial Roles

The base role is commoner, it mostly serves as a short introduction before a real role is chosen. There are five of these: Cleric - Paladin - Soldier - Mage - Ranger. Finally, every race can replace some of these roles with a unique role of its own. Ramgirls replace Mage by Woolmage, which has superior knitting magic, the Soldier with a Siege Ram, and the Ranger with a Mule. That last role is a typical support role which all non-human races have. Such as the Ratkin Slave, the Wolfgirl Pet, or Bunnygirl Waitress.

This means that adding a new race is essentially free since the race can just copy all roles from humans, but still allows a lot of customization. It is also likely that the Commoner class won't exist for very long, since it's mostly just an incubation stage for the other ones right now.

Streamlining III: Role Moves

Then onto the roles themselves. Rather than granting moves at random levels, I've decided to give each role five moves (each with five upgrades). This means that every other level you get something new to work with while also making roles very easy to create.

Streamlining IV: Weapons

Since every role only has five moves (+ two racial ones, + upgrades), the system where you need a specific weapon to use moves didn't really make sense. A role that requires a staff for one move and a sword for all others, might as well not have that staff move. The only thing it added was forgetting to equip your cleric with a staff after role swapping and letting her punch a bit.

Now, everyone has all weapons in her pocket, and will take out that weapon when needed. A simplification which is possible due to the new animation system. I plan on having the active weapon play some role in the critical system that still needs to be developed, but that's still somewhat away.

Other Stuff

And now for something completely different. Normally, moves of a higher rarity are better than moves of a lower rarity. However, this isn't always the case. The higher moves may have higher requirements or - in case of buffs - slightly different conditions. Such moves can now be downcasted to a lower rarity. For example, while Punch can always be used, Belly Punch (Punch Uncommon) requires a charging enemy, so you might want to switch between the two.

The Paladin and Ratkin Lancer are now also in the game with their moves (Common). Additionally, Artemis' role was changed from Crown Princess to Ranger, the human specific role. The Ranger and Paladin can mark enemies which - together with captures and throws allowing custom targetting - should allow some counterplay to the random targetting.

Dungeons will now also track your progress and you get a sizeable experience bonus for fully clearing one instead of being a coward and running to the exit.

Changelog:

First a friendly reminder to use the F8 key to send a bug report whenever you find something strange. If it isn't working as you expect, it's likely a bug. Even if it isn't, the fact that you misinterpreted it means that the UI can be improved.

Major:

Role and Racial streamlining, see above.
Weapon handling rework, see above.
Moves for the Lancer, Soldier, Paladin roles.
Rework of the Commoner moves.
Replaced the Crown Princess role by Ranger.
Racial moves for Human and Ratkin.
Girls now change expressions based on their status.
You can now downcast/upcast moves in combat.
Fully clearing dungeons gives additional experience.

Minor:

Capture/Attach now allows selecting your target.
There is now an automated version checker if you enable analytics.
You can now demolish buildings.
You can now release characters.
Added recipe and building for Stone.
There is now an option to get tooltips to display faster.
Fabric cutter now requires the target to have valid equipment to cut.
Disrupting moves now require the target to be charging.
The exp penalty from fighting lower level enemies has been decreased.
Starting a new role now sets your level back to 3 instead of 1.
Fatigue is now shown in the combat healthbars.
Expandable panels now remember their expansion state.
You can now quickly select girls in the overview panel.
Gear now resets after combat.

Bugfixes:

Reloading the game would cause the map to get stuck, breaking all overworld movement (Hotfixed).
Mana/Iron/Latex had missing recipes, causing opening a related building to crash the game (Hotfixed).
Undo/Redo weren't working for nobles (Hotfixed).
The game broke when starting combat/dungeons on non-grass tiles (Hotfixed).
Character positioning during combat could break (Hotfixed).
The executable files were still named EroDungeons.
You couldn't swap to roles that had no prerequisites (such as Slave).
Latex icon wasn't really visible.
Middle Clicking moves will no longer trigger them.
Fixed excessive brightness for difficulties and resources mapmodes.
Putting girls from the party into jobs would break the game in multiple ways.
You can no longer (un)equip gear during combat.
Slot tooltips crashed the game.
Conditionals and counters could sometimes break on similar enemies.
You could go below 0 favor with curios.
Favor wasn't reset at dungeon end.
Defeated girls would still gain experience.
Mouse interaction with moves was mostly broken.
The pagination on the Party Select Panel didn't work.
Queueing research didn't work.
Clicking an enemy or other UI element while a move was performed visually broke the game.
Clicking an enemy while the combat intro plays broke the game.