october report

Hello, everyone!

I couldn't think of what to put on the cover of this post, so here's a silly cat.

I started out not finding many hentai games interesting enough; to me, they felt like a collection of scenes. My goal was to make a hentai game that felt like a game and that I could be proud of.

And so, in 2022, I started writing posts and working on the game “Psycho Triumph.” Development was going quickly. I created several interesting systems, hired an artist who drew the characters and scenes, but after a while he left and I hired a second artist who drew the backgrounds and the remaining scenes, while I drew all the pixel graphics for the game.
And so, in January 2023, I released version 0.1. You can find it in the post and play it if you want. It was planned as a game set in a “college dorm life” setting, but with “ntr time loop” mechanics. Girls can communicate with rivals, and you have a lot of worries that would prevent you from devoting all your time to them, which is why they will cheat on you at the beginning. In addition to the girls and your studies, you could also develop psychic abilities (such as hypnosis or seeing through walls). Also, your knowledge and psychic abilities would not be reset in a new time loop, in reality. There are quite a few scenes and the overall gameplay

When the artists left, I realized that I couldn't continue developing at this pace without artists, and decided that I needed to learn how to draw and make another game as a testing ground for this, and... As a result, I disappeared and it took a lot of time (sorry)
Besides that, there was something else. One of the reasons why the posts are in English and not Japanese. I'm from Russia. On the one hand, my games will be a little different from what you're used to seeing and, to some extent, unique. On the other hand... Russia's war with Ukraine... I am partly Ukrainian, which is why this war is absurd to me, as well as the tightening of all laws and total control by the country, and I have lost several close people because of the war. This puts a lot of pressure on me and causes depression, which is why I didn't post as often... And was less active. But now I'm feeling better.

Also, even though I spent a lot of time drawing. I wouldn't say I'm a good artist, but now my level can be called “enough” to continue development, and it may also develop in the future. The gameplay of the new game is divided into two phases:
1 - The “daytime” phase, where you can play as the heroine, walking around different places outside the house and engaging in exhibitionism and dirty things.
2 - The “nighttime” phase, which is a node editor for the stream “plan.” I don't show or work on this part much, but you can see an old post from August 2023, which shows the old version of the editor. I'll give details on its current state later (I'm working on it to make it extremely interesting and diverse).

Unfortunately, development is not progressing as quickly as I and you would like. I usually work on the game on weekends and occasionally after work, if I have the energy (sorry for not doing it more often).

However, I am free from November 1-9 because I took a vacation and plan to spend it developing the game.

I am a programmer myself, but in addition to programming the structure of programs, I have also always studied graphics programming, mathematics, and physics. One of the things where I used my knowledge is the lighting system.

I planned this post as a showcase of the key characters and a story about them, but in the end, I decided to focus on polishing the technical part of the game.

I am developing the game on Monogame. It is a framework that works with C#. It is not an engine; there is nothing there. It is literally a blank slate. Every system, be it sprites, objects, or locations, must be created from scratch. I've already made all the systems I need for the basic game. I moved over the interface system I made for Pysho Triump and improved it, adding stuff like drawing sprites from an atlas and other optimization methods. And this month, I polished up a lot of the systems and improved the code.

At first, I thought about writing a post about how the 3D lighting in my game works in all its technical details, as well as the funny mistakes I encountered and how I solved them, but... The post turned out to be TOO long, stuffy, and technical. So I decided that instead of all the subtleties and details, I'll just give you a demo of the lighting system :)
This is not the current version; it was written in Game Maker, not the framework I'm using now. But there aren't many differences. The current version is more optimized, has more parameters, and also has the correct mathematical distortion for the perspective of my game.
But here you can see the interface system that you can see in Psycho Triumph, and there is a more advanced version in the version currently under development. I made this UI system from scratch and made it multifunctional and optimized.

Would you be interested if I sometimes gave technical details of some of my systems in my posts?

This is NOT A GAME, it's just a demo of the lighting system so you can try it out. You will need to unzip the archive.

For the lighting system to work, you need to place at least one light source.
Controls:
-Right mouse button - press and hold. To create a light source and change its height relative to the floor using the Y axis of the mouse.
-Left mouse button - press and hold. To determine the radius of the light source.
-Middle mouse button - change the height of the light source.

There can only be 20 light sources in the space

In addition to point light sources, there is also directional light. In TOOLS, switch the mode to DIR L. (There must be at least one point light source first)
The properties of the lighting system and light sources are customizable. You can experiment

In addition, I have done a lot of work on functionality and optimization in Monogame, and I think I will reuse the classes and libraries I have created in future games

This post was a bit... messy, but most of it was technical, so I cut it out and not much is left... But I hope you now have a better understanding of the development situation and that you like the lighting system.