Vivid Dead Devlog Update

 

So it's been a long time again since a development update. Today I have just a small amount of new info to post.
Recently I managed to finish a lot of important scenes and other parts.
For example the intro scene, the ending scenes, the final boss events, are mostly complete.
However there's still many minor things I still need to work on here and there.

Since v0.3.3 alot of things have changed. Actually, the game is very different in several ways now.
First the map now shows the layout of the entire areas, there is no longer a stage based structure, the game is now completely metroidvania like.
That also means there is no longer a results screen after exiting each area.
In truth, I did this because I wanted the game to feel more atmospheric, so the arcade like elements are more toned down now.

Kotone's basic attacks and movement have been also modified, the knife has wider range and the item key is now only be used for paint.
There are no longer any consumable items unfortunately. But with this I think the combat will feel a little easier for many people probably.

When playing the first time, the game will probably seem somewhat short, but there are multiple endings.
Afterwards other new features will also unlock, but right now I can't talk about those until the full game is ready.

前の更新からかなり時間が経ってしまいました。今日は、ここで少しだけ新しい情報を投稿します。
最近、私は色々大切なシーンと部分とを完成しました。
例えば最初のシーンとやエンドシーンや最後のボスイベントや、今、大半には完成です。
ただし、まだあちこちに色な取り組むべき小さな点が残ています。

v0.3.3デモ版からたくさん物が変更されました。実は、現在のガームは色な方に以前の版とは大きく異なります。
まず、地図画面が全部のエリアのルームを表示します。
ステージに基づく構造もうない、今はVDが完全にメトロイドヴァニア風になりました。それで、ステージ結果の画面もうありません。
真実に、私はもっと雰囲気な感じを上げたかったんですから、アーケード要素がちょと減らした。

琴音の基本の攻撃や操作やも変更されました。今はナイフ攻撃が範囲がもっと広くなりました。さらに、残念ながら、消耗的なアイテムもうない、アイテムキーで琴音のペイントのみ使用できます。
これで、戦闘が多くの人にはもっと簡単に気がするかもしれません。
また、今は回復のアイテムが希少になってきたから、プレイヤーが倒したのときで直ぐに現在のエリアから再読み込みことができます。

一回目の遊びでゲームがちょと短い感じるかもと思うけど、複数のエンドはあります。
後で、様々な新機能も現れますが、ゲームが完成するまで、今はそれを話すできません。

Happy Halloween

 

Vivid Dead is getting closer to completion, but it will still be a little while longer. Sorry for the wait.

Vivid Deadは完成に近づいている、もう少し時間がかかります。ごめんなさい。

Vivid Dead Comic #3

 

Vivid Dead Comic #2

 

Skye Over the City

 

I drew some more art for Skye this time, as Kotone already has a few scenes like this.
On a side note her animations are very close to complete at this point, though I can't showcase how she fits into the story just yet.

I know many people eager for more news but there's really not much I can say right now as I just have to stay focused on finishing the rest of the game and I don't want to reveal anymore beyond what the demos already contain.
It will still take at least the rest of the year to animate the remaining enemies and bosses, make the cutscenes, and other elements even though the level design is mostly finished.
Despite this I will still try to post regular small updates, probably with art or things unrelated to Vivid Dead until the game is closer to completion. The next one may even be a bit of a surprise for some.
Once again however I'm sorry to have to give everyone the bad news.

Development wise I mostly been doing bosses lately, but some changes have also been made to Kotone's animations that I thought felt kind of stiff or awkward in motion like her heavy attacks.
The hub world and game progression has also been reworked somewhat again, I decided I had to make some changes that might sadden some people in the future for the sake of time and simplifying development,
but ultimately I think it's for the better. Because many people tend to struggle with the progression of the demo I was at first thinking of making the game more linear again like version 0.1 but decided not to.
But still I feel that the old layout wasn't doing a good enough job pointing the player in the right directions.

琴音にはすでにこんなシーンがいくつかあるので、今回はスカイのアートを描き足しました。
ついでに言うと、彼女のアニメーションは現時点で完成に近づいていて。ただし、彼女がこのゲームの物語にどう関わっているのか、まだお見せすることはできません。

多くの人が続報を待ち望んでいるのは知っているが、今はゲームの残りのを完成させることに集中しなければならないし、すでにデモに収録されている以上のことは明かしたくないので、言えることはあまりません。
レベルデザインはほぼ完成しているものの、残りの敵やボスのアニメーション、カットシーンの作成、その他の要素に少なくとも今年いっぱいはかかるでしょう。
にもかかわらず、ゲームが完成に近づくまで、おそらくアートやビビドデードに関係ないものを使って、定期的に小さな更新を投稿しようと思います。次回の更新は、ある人にとってはちょっとした驚きかもしれません。
しかし、またしても皆さんに悪いお知らせをしなければならないのが残念です。

開発的には、最近は主にボスを作っていたんだけど、琴音の強い攻撃など、なんか動きが硬いというか、ぎこちないと思っていたアニメーションもいくつか変更しました。
ハブワールドとゲーム進行もまた多少作り直した。時間の都合と開発の簡略化のために、将来的に何人かの人を悲しませるかもしれない変更をしなければならないと判断したんです、
しかし、最終的には良い方向だと思う。多くの人がデモの進行に苦戦する傾向があるため、最初はバージョン0.1のようにゲームを再び直線的にしようと考えていたが、そうしないことにしました。
しかしそれでも、古い構造ではプレイヤーを正しい方向に導くのに十分な役割を果たしていないことがわかりました。

Erie Yagami artwork plus other news

This month and last I got several enemies completed. Recently I've been mostly just making enemies everyday since most of the level design is done.

In September my computer power supply broke, so I started using another laptop I had and found many points of fps drops and lag. As a result I also spent a lot of time last month editing graphics and optimizing, but I think the game should run faster and smoother now than before. Unfortunately however I will not be able to apply these changes to the current demo.

This rabbit like girl is Erie Yagami. Right now in the demo she's an acquaintance of Kotone who gives helpful advice. Like Kotone she is also a street artist and shows up for the graffiti battle minigame from time to time. Erie always looks upbeat and cheerful, but in truth her mind is a little bit twisted. She's also close friends with the kunoichi Risa.

Erie probably looks very similar to Moon Rhapsody's Nyx, who was originally designed to be a character in Vivid, but since MR and Vivid Dead are set in different worlds I felt it was best to change her design.

今月と先月は多くの敵が完了しました。全てレベル設計大半の済んだから最近は敵を作ってるのがほとんど毎日していました。

九月は私のパソコンの電源が壊れた、あと、他のノートボークパソコンを使い始めたのときは様々のfpsドロップや遅れの点を見つけました。だから先月はグラフィックを編集するも最適化も多くの時間を費やした。今ゲームが以前より速くとうまく機能するようになったはずと思います。残念ながら、これらの変更は現在のデモを適用することができません。

このウサギような女の子はエリー・ヤガミです。現在に、彼女はデモに琴音の有用なアドバイスをくれる知り合いとして現れいます。エリーも琴音のようなストリートアーティストです、落書き勝負のミニゲームにもときどき顔を出す。エリーはいつも明るく元気そうに見えるが、実は彼女の心が少し歪んでいます。　エリーもくノ一秋山里沙と近い友達です。

エリーはムーンラプソディのニュクスに似てるおそらく、ニュクスは元々ビビッドデッドのキャラクターとして設計される、でもムーンラプソディとビビッドデッドは舞台が違うから彼女のデザインを変更した方がいいと思いました。

 

Vivid Dead v0.3 Demo Update

This is a pretty large update overall, but in terms of the main story it covers about the same amount as previous demos. There is however many new features that can mostly be found after completing the older stages.

Major changes from v0.2.1:

• Kotone walks by default now instead of always running. To run tap the directional key/button twice, or just use an analog stick controller.
• The default weapon is now a regular knife rather than kodachi.
• Grabs can be escaped instantly using the knife by pressing the attack button, although Kotone will still take damage.
• Clothing is destroyed faster and if Kotone is at 0HP when grabbed she will be stripped and violated if nudity is on.
• The mountain stage from v0.2 extended has been removed and parts of it merged with a different stage.
• Treasure Dungeon minigame is not in this version, there is a different minigame instead.

これは全体的にかなり大きな更新ですが、主なストーリーについて以前の体験版とほぼ同量を扱っています。
しかし、旧ステージを完成したの後にはたくさん新機能を見つけることができます。

v0.2.1から主な変更点:

• 琴音はいつも走っているのではなく、既定で歩くようになりました。　走るには矢印キ―を倍タップするか、ただのアナログコントローラーを使います。
• 既定武器が小太刀から通常なナイフになりました。　
• 攻撃キーで直ぐにグラブ攻撃を逃げることができます、　でも琴音まだダメージを受けます。
• 服が破壊されやすくなる、また裸体設定がオンと0HPと捕まったら、琴音が裸にされと暴行されます。
• v0.2ext版山ステージは削除され、様々な部分が別のステージに追加されました。
• 宝のダンジョンミニゲームはこの体験版にはない、　他のミニゲームがあります。

Public version: https://kosmic91.itch.io/vivid-dead-demo

Extended version: https://www.patreon.com/posts/vivid-dead-demo-109133617

Vivid Dead Comic #1

 

Skye artwork plus other news

I was going to post an update before February but I had a lot to deal with last few weeks, including not having electricity for a couple days, but everything is back in order now. I manged to complete one stage in January and mostly finished planning the one remaining though there are a couple old stages I think need some heavy improvement that I've been doing this week.

At this point, 90% of the game is fully mapped out it's mostly a matter of just going through and drawing the assets+building everything. I should note again the game still has much development left to go however because I haven't made many new enemies or animations in a long time trying to get this part out of the way. When I started the game(as Nocturne) I had initially wanted to keep it short, shorter than MR at least and maybe only take around 4-5 hours or so to finish. I can pretty much confirm though the game will take most people much longer than that to play through, probably in the neighborhood of 10-15 hours without trying to find everything. Even though I cut down on the stage count over time, many of the existing ones are now twice as large and require backtracking to 100% and to make progress sometimes. There are a lot of key items now as well so I'm thinking I'm going to make a separate menu instead of just showing them on the bottom of the pause screen. 

 

Anyway, the character here is Skye Chione, a harpy who lives in a castle hanging above the mountains near the city. The castle only appeared recently when the city of Shingetsu became overrun with demons, and Skye was a just a regular citizen beforehand, though she is a foreigner not fond of human society and it's laws, having grown up in the wilderness. She doesn't care about the current turmoil but finds amusement watching Kotone's struggle to deal with the situation, sometimes putting more obstacles in her path.

 

私は二月の前に更新を投稿する欲しいでしたでもここ数週間にたくさんことに対処しなければならないでした、二日には電気がないことも含めて。　でも今は正常に戻っています。一月に一ステージをすんで残り一が大半に企画を済んでした。けどまだ数のステージを練習に戻ってしないと感じはもあります。この時点で、ゲームの地図が90%企画されており、あとはアセットを描き、すべてを構築するだけです。しかし、私は長い時間には新し敵とかアニメをしなかった、だからこのゲームにはまだ多くの開発が残されている。開発のときは（Nocturneとして）当初は短くまとめたかった、せめてMRろりも。完成するには4とか5時間くらいたぶん。でも今はたいていの人はそれよりもずっと長い時間がかかるだろう私は確認できる。すべてを探そうとしなくたら、おそらく10-15時間くらいはかかるだろう。時間をかけてステージ数を減らしたとはいえ、既存のステージの多くは2倍の大きさになり、100％にするためにはバックトラックをしなければならず、前進できないこともある。今は多くの鍵アイテッムもある、だからポ―ズの画面の下の表示するよりも別のメニューを作って考えっている。

とにかく、このキャラはスカイ・チオネー、新月都の近くの山の上で城に住んでいるハーピーです。その城は都市が化物と妖魔で氾濫したのとき最近現れただけ。その前にスカイは普通な市民だけでした、しかし荒野育ちでしで人間社会とその法律が好きではない外国人だ。現在の混迷を気になりないでも琴音の闘いを見ているで楽しみを見出す、時には道にもっと障害物を増やす。

 

Onward

 

So 2024 is just around the corner, there's still a lot of things I want to finish before I show more gameplay. I feel like December was mostly a successful month of progress, 2 more stages of the 4 I had left are 90% complete minus enemies and some missing background elements. Although some of the earlier ones now I feel like I may need to go back again and improve slightly as I don't think the quality is quite on the same level as the more recent areas as a result of many refinements to the game over time. I added another type of magic that has a more unique ability compared to the other spells, there's one more left I have to make. That's all I really have to say for now, I feel before February I should have all the stages and areas in the game finished as long as there's no setbacks. So next year expect to start seeing some more substantial news once spring comes around.

Also I want to thank everyone who helped me reach 1K in pledges on Patreon, I can work more comfortably now than I have in the past not having to think about bills as much. With this though I'll have to work even harder to ensure VD gets finished and the final product delivers.

Last month of the year...

Another month already over, I know many want to know what's happening, and whether another demo is coming. Well good news is I feel like I made a lot of progress this month, more than I usually get done at least. I've added and polished multiple areas in the game, made some existing parts a little longer. I still have around 4 stages not finished, though 2 are in the early phase of development.  The world map overall has changed pretty dramatically since the last version but people probably won't notice much since the demo only covers a small portion. I say world map, what I mean is the hubs that connect between areas were initially just save points, sometimes you find the ghost merchant there. I made there areas more interconnected with more to find. The actual map screen that you see on the pause menu also looks different and more detailed.

Bad news is all of this work means I haven't been able focus on any other aspects of the game like the enemies, dialogue, abilities, music for a while and will likely be that way for a least a couple more months. So the game is still not very presentable past the early stages unfortunately and even making any gifs/videos doesn't feel right at this time now with how bare it is. So even though I said January might be a possibility for a new demo update, most likely that won't be happening...
Which honestly is hard for me to have to admit, as I feel like I've been working on this game forever, not to mention MR which can't focus on at all right now, and many are eager to see more. However Vivid Dead means everything to me, and I won't rest until it is completed and polished to highest quality I can make it.

Summit Hut

 

To add on to yesterday, I have another stage that is now mostly finished but needs more enemies and polish to the visuals. The snowy stage I posted yesterday is still around half way done and is probably the second or third largest one I will make. Hopefully I can have the rest of the parts to it finished within the week. I'm still however at 4 stages left not started at all, all of them are not part of the main path that leads to the end but mostly are still required to complete the game. Besides that I made some more items and weapon types I won't reveal yet, and the ability to increase the number of item/weapon slots is now there, though the ingame requirements to do so aren't finished yet. 

 

I'm considering making another demo, since I know many are constantly wondering about it. But there's honestly only one or two more areas that I think should be added to it, so I don't know what the time frame will be yet. Before January is possible but not super likely and I also have to think about where I'll be staying again soon.

Forest Foes

 I've been moving around a lot lately and am no longer living where I have been the last 5 years, or even permanently settled where I am now, so it's been a little harder for me to focus on development than usual. But I've gotten back to a more steady pace for now at least.

Risa's animations are just about finished though still needs a lot of play testing, another major character Skye whose role I haven't touched on much still needs work but is about 2/3s done animation wise.

A lot of people are probably expecting to see more H content here but understand that VD has a limited amount of that and I don't want to show everything too early. The female characters Sayomi, Hano, along with Risa and a couple others can get grabbed by enemies as well, so I have to keep the amount just for Kotone at reasonable level.

Stages wise I haven't made much progress TBH since the late update, still around 4 left that need to be started. The one water stage I made a gif of before felt slightly bland and I ended up mostly redesigning. Also a few still need music which I'm trying to get to now. One thing I want to improve is the save areas in between the stages, I feel like some more secrets or sidequests added to them might help make the world feel a bit more alive, but that's still up in the air for now.

Short Vivid Dead Update

 

I've had a bit of rough time the last few weeks getting everything done  that I wanted. While I've been trying to avoid it as much as possible, I  had to go back and rebuild some areas a in order to fit with changes made to the game's flow, and ultimately decided to remove some stages that I was planning so that I could put more effort into other areas of the game that I think still need it. Some parts of the cut areas I merged into  the existing ones however. At this point there's 5 stages left I know I  definitely need to make, and the ones already there now mostly just need more polish and tweaks. There's also some enemies, items, NPC I still  need to make and add to them.  Like I said before, VD won't likely be a very long game but I don't want  to give away the total number of stages just yet. The castle area, as  you can maybe guess is the last one, which very early on, before I changed the art style, was going to be a hub and the player would be  traveling to different worlds Portrait of Ruin style, but I later thought it would be better to have the player work their way to the  castle so you could see it in background in later areas.

 

 

Tight Spot

There hasn't been a proper devlog in a while so I think this time I'll give a little more information on what's been developed so far.

I already shown some changes to Kotone's moveset. You can now aim paint manually by using the strong attack key and you can now crouch and attack with other weapons besides the kodachi. The dash attack I decided to remove entirely however, as I found it wasn't that useful and had too many end frames making the combat feel stiffer than it should, so instead holding forward and attacking for now just does a regular high slash regardless of the weapon Kotone has equipped. The dash attack animation is still used with some weapons however.

I also made changes to the way the stages are structured and how the player progresses so that the game won't feel quite as linear. The idea I had at first was to have each area be mostly linear with the stages being unlocked after the previous one is cleared, but with the option of finding a secret goal that would open a different route(This is the reason 1-3 has a blocked off path currently).

That will most likely still be the case in the final version, though now clearing the stage normally won't always open up a new stage, the player will have to search the stages more carefully for certain key items(in addition to the blue flames) and finish the stage in order to progress. Because of this though, the stages will now be generally shorter and easier to reach the exit, sometimes within less than a minute, but they'll be harder to "fully complete" if that makes sense. So some stages will take multiple replays at different points in the game in order to find everything.

One last thing is I teased an NPC in the last screenshot I posted before this devlog, and though I want the game to have more NPCs VD is going to stay very light on story and dialogue, as writing is another thing I struggle at and had a lot of difficulty while making Moon Rhapsody. I can say that it does have a story, though until I get around to making an opening cutscene you'll just have to use your imagination.

Regarding NSFW scenes which is what most people seem to mainly care about, VD will have more sexual content and animations, but it's not a guarantee that there will be very many or that there will be things like a gallery mode or MR's captured scenes. With that said I don't like promoting the game as an H game because some people may, and still often do come into it expecting lewd content to be the main focus, but that does not mean I'm opposed to adding more.

Fountain in the Rain

 

Since all the basic mechanics are done I'm likely going to spend the next few months just doing level design. How many levels it'll have I won't say, the game will probably not take very long to beat, but I'm aiming to make it open ended enough that the player has reasons to revisit areas multiple times.

Nocturne Update #3

 

So I'm aware I haven't said a word about Moon Rhapsody in a very long time now, which I'm sure many people who are reading this would come here to see but I spent the last few months mostly working on Nocturne because MR is unfortunately going to still take a long time to develop before I can show anymore progress, and Nocturne I can work on faster at the moment since the gameplay and engine is a little simpler.
Which though it's making decent progress and is fully playable. Still isn't at a point where I want to show any gameplay of it yet. This is because some elements I think still need to decide on how they're going to work exactly.
Like for example I initially had designed the stages in a loop fashion where the player would go to a certain point, defeat an enemy collect an item and return to the entrance, and the stages would change in certain ways while going back. But this idea I decided to scrap because I felt it raised complications with replaying some areas, and I wanted to keep the sense of always moving forward towards a goal. Also I wanted every stage to have a boss enemy that needed to be defeated, but it would have probably meant either multiple reskins or less stages, and I feel like this game is better off down playing the combat anyway.
So what I can say about the gameplay is the design will feel similar to anyone who's played a Metroid game, there are different weapons that break different kinds of blocks, you run very quickly and can wall jump and grab ledges, and you occasionally need to backtrack to find an ability to open a path. But the game is broken into stages and the player's weapons are lost if they die or fail and may need to be recovered to make progress. Though the main character always has default weapons they can use to attack with, and there's no durability or stamina system if anyone wants to know about that. 

The ghost girl I shown in one screen is not the protagonist or an NPC, just a strong enemy. Most of the enemies don't pose a large threat besides being obstacles to avoid running into, but a few encountered throughout stages guard valuables and needed items. Also lastly, as the name implies, the game mostly is set in night environments as ghosts are the primary enemy and certain ones need to be hunted to clear the areas completely. The player can use regular weapons to defeat ghosts, but like in MR it's better to use magic and lightning based attacks especially to defeat them quickly.
That's it for now, I will try to post more updates soon but probably not gifs or videos until October or so, though my goal is to get the game to at least close to a half way finished state before putting out any demos.

v3.1.2 Update

 

Version 3.1 for the demo is now available for everyone to play. I'm sorry if there have been people waiting a long time to see this update, this version contains the option for Japanese and I wanted to be extra thorough making sure every line of text was accounted for, with that said a few things in the JP version are not translated yet and some things may definitely still need editing, but it's mostly stuff nonessential. There are also of course several fixes from 3.0 to this version:

Changes from 3.0.3:

• Nyx's mode has a new dungeon that can be accessed after the first one.
  
• The Sky Garden Temple has been redesigned.
  
• Nyx's portion of the overworld is bigger and rearranged in some spots.
  
• Sasha's dungeons have changes to certain rooms.
  
• Grab system is different, instead of mashing to escape you only have to hold down the jump key. However there is a variable time limit to how long you have to escape. You have the option to attack enemies for a large amount of SP to immediately escape, but it can fail under some conditions. Many enemies also can't continuously grab the player as easily as older versions. Some new items added.
  
• A couple new enemies added.
  
• Game should run better and not be as likely to crash when closing.
  
• Special art is displayed depending on the results when finishing the demo.

Nagi preview + other info

 

It's been almost a month since I posted a devlog again so I better give an update. Some things might be already known but I'll list them here anyway. I know promised another demo update but the next version is still probably a few weeks off unfortunately.

Additions:

-The dungeon/town posted before in the last devlog is about half way finished.

-1 new enemy finished, another is almost done and took a while to fully animate, screenshot related.

Changes:

-Grabbing via enemies is different, and no longer requires the player to mash buttons/keys to escape. Enemies will also no longer take SP when grabbing, but there is a trade off that I'll let players see in the next version.

-Seaside Ruins area and north eastern part of the map in Nyx's mode has been modified and expanded. 

-Working on the Sky Garden Temple some more because I feel like 

it's poorly laid out in it's current form.

-Found and fixed a memory leak causing multiple cave areas to lag, should also allow the game to close easier now.

I've also gone back and did some more work on Nocturne, which I've tried to limit for a while so I wouldn't get behind on MR, but I had to figure out the visual style I was going to go with as well as how I was going to handle the multiple clothing layers on the protagonist. Since I decided not to go with a similar pixel art style that MR and my older projects have and instead use higher resolution sprites. Ultimately I finally settled on something good I think, and the basic movement/jumping sprites along with the clothing layers are animated. But the game is still far from being presentable, and if I do show it, it will likely be after Moon Rhapsody is finished. Or not it depends, but I felt it should still be mentioned.

Regarding the changes to Game Jolt's policies.

So if you aren't aware Game Jolt has recently out of nowhere decided that all games containing explicit sexual or violent content such as heavy gore are not allowed as they apparently aim to be a more kid/teen friendly site so to speak. I have no idea what the reasoning is behind this decision is, I suspect it's a similar case to what happened to tumblr years back, but of course that means Moon Rhapsody may not be able to stay up on GJ much longer. I won't be taking further action unless I am forced to, but the game is still available at Itch https://kosmic91.itch.io/moon-rhapsody-demo-v2 and my patreon https://www.patreon.com/Kosmic91 eventually other sites hopefully.