Added enemy shooting animations!
Previously, I hadn't done this because in gunfights, enemies are usually far away and too small to be clearly seen.
However, it was necessary to implement enemy shooting~
Later on, we could try adding some melee enemies.
Previously, players mentioned that the sister's attack power was too high because her bullets carried explosive damage (the highest attack damage in the game).
Sometimes, players would see the sister "suiciding" because her bullets hit the wall and exploded, damaging herself.
For now, I've temporarily removed the sister's "explosive" bullets, which has also made boss fights easier.
On the PC version, I've added a shortcut key for fast-forwarding animations.
I've also fixed some bugs on the PC, such as no sound prompts when players use items.
Next, the key point~
The companion system I mentioned before~
After players complete the game, the sister will join the team.
The sister won't always follow the player but will freely seek and shoot at enemies.
If enemies see the sister, they will attack her (of course, they will prioritize attacking the player).
If the sister's health drops to zero, she will respawn in another room.
Later, it might be interesting to try adding various types of companions in the shop (hiring).
In the previous feedback, there were suggestions regarding the sensitivity of mouse controls and the issue with the item bar selecting the same item every time it is opened.
In version 0.6, the sensitivity settings for the mouse were updated in the pause menu (although it would be better placed in the settings menu on the main menu).
Additionally, the item bar will now only spring to the wallet position the first time it is opened, with subsequent positions not being recorded.
Furthermore, hints have been added for the F1, F2, F3, and F4 keys (related to functions like fullscreen, windowed mode, etc.).
Of course, these settings can only be adjusted when the game is not paused.
Just a brief reflection on the Crossdressing Detective series.
In fact, around 2019, the "Crossdressing Detective Series" I initially imagined was supposed to be a stealth-based game. The early version of Crossdressing Detective resembled a labyrinth, lacking action elements. Players needed to control Yuyan to find a kidnapped girl in a huge maze, avoiding the bad guys.
Therefore, when I later developed a side-scrolling action game, I also wanted to integrate the element of searching, but this made the game even more challenging.
Early on, players reported to me that the game looked a bit like GTA. Because I created a huge city but did not provide a map, many players got lost. Crossdressing Detective 1 was updated once in June 2021 due to most players not finding their way after receiving missions, and a poor control system. I changed the fixed map to a randomly generated one and removed many objects in the scene, converting it to a night version. Unexpectedly, this made the game less enjoyable.
There was an Android version of Crossdressing Detective, which I thought had crashing issues due to too many objects in the scene. After some research, I discovered it was actually due to running too many heavy scripts simultaneously. But removing these codes would result in a significant loss of content, which was a major reason why I later gave up updating this game.
In my mind, the earliest "maze walking" gameplay suited the theme of Crossdressing Detective better than the side-scrolling action game Crossdressing Detective 1, where Yuyan could handle a large group of enemies with knives and guns. In reality, Yuyan couldn't even defeat a strong man; her likely outcome after encountering a group of enemies would be getting gagged and bound.
Players were not supposed to fight enemies but to avoid them as much as possible and find the missing or kidnapped girls.
Yuyan's main task is to find her missing sister. To gather information, players need to control Yuyan to search for various commissions online, such as rescuing kidnapped girls, investigating clues about missing girls, infidelity investigations, tracking suspects, and recording enemy hideouts.
In fact, "Crossdressing Detective 2" started with the same gameplay as the 2019 version of Crossdressing Detective; essentially, the entire project was an upgraded version of "Crossdressing Detective Early 2019" with roguelike map elements and a refined version with numerous CG animations.
When I began creating Crossdressing Detective 2, I envisioned a top-down perspective similar to "The Binding of Isaac," where I needed to create animations for Yuyan moving in all directions. Players could explore or fight in maze-like buildings (there was no requirement like in "The Binding of Isaac" to clear all enemies in one room before moving to the next). I could easily achieve this, but then I started thinking about making the map rotate clockwise and counterclockwise while all objects maintained a single direction (similar to the game "Don't Starve"). I thought this would be interesting because the map would appear to have perspective. When being chased by enemies, the view could rotate.
After that, I suddenly realized that if I could raise the view to 45 degrees, why couldn't I raise it to 90 degrees like a real FPS game? Thus, you see this work. In reality, a game view like "Don't Starve" allows players to play more comfortably because they can see clearly where enemies are coming from, and bullets can be dodged (I indeed plan to make another version of this game with this view, which should be very interesting).
To compensate for the lack of visibility, I added a small map in the upper right corner, but I guess players are likely to keep staring at this small map while running away, thereby forgetting to watch Yuyan's stamina bar. Consequently, Yuyan stops to catch her breath due to exhaustion and gets caught by the enemies.
Morning and Evening
In this work, I carefully set up the light for morning and evening. In the morning, Yuyan is bright, distant things are dark, and there is light outside the window. At night, Yuyan becomes darker when she leaves the light, and there is no light outside. These settings enhance the game's visual perception and increase the sense of presence.
Crossdressing Detective's UI Design
Early production title (scrapped)
The current game's UI in this work has a somewhat sci-fi feel, mainly a black background with iron-wrapped displays and various slots. I once considered creating a UI in a "flat", modern translucent polygon style (like GTA), or a Western sculpture style (like "Castlevania"), but later I thought about laying out various interesting animation effects heavily on the UI (such as iron chains binding, where when Yuyan is captured, the directional keypad that originally could move up, down, left, and right is bound by iron chains and can only move left and right to struggle).
However, this required the various UI icons to be "thick" and "solid".
Much of the above was written around May last year. At that time, the Crossdressing Detective project had just started not long ago, and many ideas had not been demonstrated through this work yet (such as skills and abnormal statuses). These will be fully demonstrated through later updates or other games.
How do you feel about the shooting experience after adding the mouse sensitivity settings? Does it need further adjustment?
The replacement of the previous animation machine with sequence frames has had a huge impact.
Now we can try to bring back elements like "getting caught by enemies," "struggling," "escaping," and so on.
Previously, players would trigger a death CG upon encountering an enemy. Now, it's changed to being caught by enemies! Players need to repeatedly pull levers (for mobile version) or press AD keys back and forth to struggle and break free from restraints.
If the struggle is unsuccessful, they will be fixed on a restraint table and continuously drained until their health reaches zero.
In other words, the bondage escape content from the "chase battle" has been integrated into the shooting battle scenes.
Animations like "carrying on the shoulders," "pulling by the hair," "stuffing into a suitcase," and "being led by chains" have all been retained for enemies.
More bondage animations may be added in the future.
Through relentless efforts, the computer version of the operation has been modified to be similar to regular shooting games.
Players can rotate the perspective with the mouse, switch shooting modes with the right mouse button, and use items and attacks with the left mouse button.
The mouse sensitivity may be a bit high. To maintain the shooting direction, players can dodge bullets by moving left and right.
The inventory has also been almost completely redone. The computer version's inventory will only display one item slot (the currently selected item), and players can use the current item with the left mouse button.
This way, players don't need to click on the buttons above the inventory.
The mobile version has also changed to free-view shooting.
However, I found that it is still difficult for players to turn around in one go, so I kept the 90-degree rotation button (which allows players to quickly turn a large angle).
Enemy shooting has also been modified to free-view aiming at the player - shooting mode.
The warning before shooting is also a red line that cannot penetrate walls. At this point, the modifications to the game's operation are almost complete.
Thinking back on the almost sprinting speed I've worked on modifying the game over the past two months, I'm almost amazed at myself.
I've practically turned the underlying code of "The Binding of Isaac" into "Resident Evil 4." Whether this counts as a detour or not...
But the journey has been immensely rewarding. In the past two months, I've managed to solve many code-related problems that seemed insurmountable last year.
If I were to list the top three accomplishments...
First place would definitely go to the animation innovation.
Not only did it get rid of the lengthy sequence frame animations and greatly reduce the game size for both computer and mobile versions,
but it also unlocked "costume changes," laying the foundation for future player customization and costume collection elements.
During this process, the code that worked with the animation machine was continuously optimized. The original "morning" and "evening" lighting system was also retained.
And all this was done while constructing such a complex system of directional view animations - "front," "back," "left," and "right."
Second place should be reserved for the Android update, boldly upgrading the engine. The game itself miraculously survived (no plugin errors!).
Being able to export a game that runs on Android 13 is incredibly important!
It can be said that updating the engine practically revived the Android version, and all subsequent games have a version that can run on Android!
Third place is a bit controversial, but it should go to free-view shooting. About a month ago, I tried to dismantle the underlying code related to the camera...
and gradually started to reconstruct the first-person shooting code. Other related code such as the inventory, warehouse, shop, and enemy shooting were all built on this foundation.
After a period of research, there have been significant breakthroughs in the "Movement and Shooting Camera" and "Animation Mechanism" in the current game.
Many things that couldn't be done before are now possible.
First of all, the "90-degree" rotation has been removed, and players can now freely rotate around the Z-axis without the camera shaking.
Also, players can walk diagonally.
The camera angle for shooting has also been raised (looking at the viewpoint of Resident Evil 4, I noticed that the character occupies a small area of the screen).
However, when I tried to combine "Free View" and "Shooting Aim," I encountered some problems.
Aiming at enemies has become more difficult than before!
So I tried to add "Auto-Aim," but found... the camera became somewhat strange after forcibly aiming.
Switching between enemies also seemed like instantly changing to a different camera.
In contrast, enemies can aim at the player faster.
This has made the game more challenging.
After careful consideration, "Detective Yeyuyan 2" still maintains the 90-degree shooting mode for now.
If there is an opportunity in the future, I may fine-tune it to 45 degrees.
Players can now enter shooting mode while moving.
This is mainly a modification for the PC version, as there is little room to shoot while running in the mobile version.
The update of the animation mechanism is very important.
This means that the previous frame sequence images have been relegated to history.
Players, enemies, and NPCs are freed from the constraints of frame sequences, allowing for the creation of many different skins, and the size of the game has shrunk.
The size of the animation mechanism is also large, but much smaller than the frame sequence images.
Especially on the PC version, the previous size was about 1.8 GB, and it was directly reduced to 1 GB, reducing the volume by about one-third.
So, female enemy skins have been added.
Additionally, the variety of skins for the missing girl has increased (previously, there was only one).
Some features (dressing up, customizing characters) are expected to be implemented in the future. Perhaps the pursuit battle and shooting battle will be combined.
This update mainly optimizes the melee combat system.
Four new melee skills have been added.
High Kick
Side Kick
Back Throw
Currently, when the player collides with an enemy, they automatically hook the enemy's foot and throw them out, but once the number of times is exhausted, they will be caught.
So, it's important to keep a distance from the enemy. In a one-against-many battle, stamina is restored every time one enemy is defeated.
The more enemies, the more stamina is restored.
Main quests are highlighted, and the probability of female enemies appearing and the probability of enemies firing special bullets have increased.
The reason why the PC version's controls have been described as "strange" by some players is actually because I haven't found a control method that is suitable for both the mobile and PC versions.
The current PC version can be seen as forcibly pushing the screen of an Android phone onto the PC, where a few commonly used buttons are converted to the keyboard.
Why do I say the PC version should still stick to mouse and keyboard operation? Because the store, warehouse, and mobile task system...
all require mouse clicks on the PC version, so players don't want to use their right hand to click the mouse and keyboard alternately.
In fact, changing the trigger button to a keyboard trigger will instantly improve the game's operation...
but then the problem of "using the right hand to click the mouse and keyboard alternately" arises. This game has a lot of systems already in place...
I'll try to consider both the mobile and PC versions in the next installment.
After relentless efforts, "Detective Yeyuyan 2" can now run on Android 13 and below!
Finally, the engine has been smoothly upgraded (unexpectedly, there were no plugin errors).
However, it was only two days ago that I realized there are 32-bit and 64-bit versions of smartphones. So I suspect that some Android 11 players may not be able to run the game, which may be related to the fact that the previous version of the game only supported 32-bit.
(It seems that many early yellow apps were like this.)
To test whether the new version can run on smartphones that only support 64-bit in Android 13, I bought another phone. (Spent money)
It runs perfectly fine~
Awesome, I didn't expect to solve the problem in such a short time.
And the game runs smoothly without any lag.
The previous Android 11 version also runs smoothly~
All future games will be able to run on Android 13 and below!
This update only replaced the version with 8GB of RAM and the trial version (the trial version has also been replaced with Android 13 and below, 32-bit, and 64-bit corresponding versions~).
As for the mobile version, only these two versions will be updated in the future.
What about the 4GB RAM version?
Regarding why I didn’t make an Android 13 and below, 32-bit, and 64-bit corresponding version for the Android 4GB RAM version.
I think I may have paid too much attention to the issue of smartphone RAM memory (previous crash issues) before.
As time goes on, smartphones with 4GB of RAM may have become relatively rare, and it is more common to have 6GB, 8GB, or even higher capacity RAM.
So, I saved time by modifying the latest 8GB version~
About the issue of CG camera
Previously, many people criticized the camera shaking too fast, so I removed most of the "fast zooming" camera movements~
Actually, if everyone updates the shooting version of the game, they will probably feel that all the cameras have been greatly revised.
However, I think the camera may still shake too violently, so I made another version change now.
The current status is:
Almost all "multiple movements within one second" camera movements have been deleted.
Deleted and slowed down fast zooming camera movements
Reduced the degree of camera rotation
Unless there is a close-up, there are almost no zoom in or zoom out movements for the camera.
Previously, players feedback that the rescue and investigation tasks were too long, so this update reduced the number of investigation targets for investigation tasks~
The number of investigation targets is 1 for levels 2 to 3, 2 for levels 4 to 5, and 3 for levels 6 to 7... and so on.
Players restore stamina in shooting mode~
(To avoid lack of stamina for melee when enemies approach)
Then I added the originally planned "skills", and by upgrading these skills in the store, the difficulty of the game will be further reduced~
Currently, there are four skills:
Resilience:
When using healing potions and stimulants, you can recover an additional X points.
Stay Alert:
When running, reduce damage taken by X points.
(Equivalent to having a shield when running)
Dash:
Increase running speed by X points.
(Some players previously feedback that traveling directly through scenes was too slow, but investigation and rescue tasks required repeated running)
Detective Intuition:
At the start of investigation and rescue tasks, there is a 1/2 chance to reduce the target number by X points.
(Lessen the burden for investigation and rescue tasks)
Because there will be a lot of production of "skills" later on, the current version on the computer side will not be updated for the time being (to avoid too frequent updates, everyone downloads it and then has to download it again in a few days)
Hot updates for the game may be researched in the future.
In terms of game versions, the campaign on the Android side is somewhat complete, and I am currently studying how to upload versions and DLC on Steam.
Wait until after solving the problem of balancing mobile and computer operations, and update them together next time. (The next update will modify and add a lot of things)
