Despair Labyrinth (RPG) Latest Release: Ver.0.09 (4/18/12)

[Lucky777]

Oh, also, do ye know which stats most heavily affect which attacks?

Just as I had assumed, ordinary attack stat affects Asella's physical skills, but it also seems to have a very heavy effect on the power of her holy magic.

The "Exorcise Evil" spell is an example.
It works like magic in that its awesomeness always hits, it is described like magic in that it talks about "holy power" and in that she "casts" it, but it is buffed by things like her weapon and the warrior's bracelet, as if it had been a physical attack.

(Oh, also, speaking of exorcise evil, I fucking love it.

OVER ONE THOUSAND AND TEN DAMAGE on the nonfatal KO assassin-type chasers in the Chambers, fuck yeahs.)

[Azurite]

There IS a Purity meter in the game, actually--it has been there from early versions, really. Each girl starts at a different Purity value, though you can check the score by talking to mirrors, which so far can be found in the Chambers and the Barracks. I was supposed to have a script that would display such a thing for this patch, but that didn't work out due to some complications so hopefully it'll be ready by 0.08.
The mirrors themselves also show the values for the counters regarding how many times your character has been cummed inside, and what orifice. XD
Kind of strange, I know, but Violated Heroine had something like it, and it was easy enough to implement, so I figured why not.

Of course, the way your character reacts in a majority of H-scenes, as well as the choices you can make in certain situations, can change depending on your Purity level. For certain NPC's (such as Gwyn), your ability to have a relationship with them is also dependent on your Purity score.

My bad, didn't use any mirror so far and I really like the idea to have stats on how many times your character has been cummed inside and how.
By the way, about your consensual sex scenes, I guess it won't lower your purity since it's... well consensual !

Keep the good work mate, your game is shaping into something awesome.

[KITAmaru]

For people who have trouble downloading the thing, it must be Multiupload--I thought that they uploaded it on various mirrors like Megaupload etc., which is why I chose them... so here's a link to ol' Sendspace;
http://www.sendspace.com/file/p1lsdr

Lucky-
Yeah, Assassins are weak against Holy element, which explains the whole Exorcise Evil thing. Turns out that it's not a Physical Attack in terms of hit determination (meaning it will always land on a dodgy character), but it's part physical and part magical in terms of damage--heh, I forgot that's how I made it. It actually used to be a weaker attack than Smite until someone on ULMF pointed it out, so I fixed it, and now it seems to be quite an impressive damage spell for Asella.

For the most part, little if any of the physical fighters skills are determined by Spirit (the INT of the game), and are supported by weapons instead.
I made it so that mages' staves boost Spirit in increments so that equipping the damn things won't be utterly useless, though Irine is stuck with clubs at the moment, some of which I might have boosting Spirit as well later in the future. She seems to be doing fine in combat thus far though.

Azurite-
No worries, really! Like I said, I really meant to have it in the status this patch but that didn't work out due to some scripting issues... so I apologize. Virgins like Irine and Asella TEND to start at 100, whereas Thyme begins at 60 and Rhiannon at 70. However, the more 'promiscuous' girls by default tend to show more of a mental resistance to the mindbreak that slowly occurs at lower Purity levels, particularly flavor-wise, so just a heads up. They may also suffer slightly less Purity loss in the future, depending.

And yeah, consensual / romantic sex that isn't typically a function of low Purity (with one exception) will actually raise your Purity score.

[Zodiark69]

@KITA I had a small problem when I was trying to get Gwyn with Cesca. I was able to make out with her, and and i saved her in time, as well as having the two idiots be dead. But I never had Gwyn tell me to rest. I went to the bed/mat, and nothing came up. Got an answer?

[KITAmaru]

Honestly, I can't think of much besides that. I double checked and tested, and Cesca seems to be able to do it with her fine. So Blue and Red are dead, Gwyn has been saved in time (and is in your party, obviously)... outside of that, Gwyn's relationship score is the only other variable. Make sure you do not turn her down at ANY point during the first makeout scene or you will definitely drop her relationship score. If you get to the heavy petting and let it get interrupted, then I don't see how relationship score can be lower than 2, which is the requirement...

[Zodiark69]

Well then, what answer am I supposed to choose when she asks about the kiss? I chose the top one, and it went farther, before being interrupted. >.< Man. I really wanna see the scene.

[KITAmaru]

Okay, I tested it again, and it works.
Here's what you do, provided you saved before first encountering Gwyn (and kept high Purity);
Choose the first answer on all options (which will cause you to swoop in and save Gwyn, make out with her, all that). Afterwards, kill Red and Blue, head straight to Xanrud in time, beat him, rescue Gwyn and head back to the campfire room. Touch the bottom part of the bed just right of the bonfire. In my game it triggered right after that; she'll ask if you want to rest, but you have to choose the second option to say Yes. Even if you accidentally hit 'No', you can run over the tile again and the prompt will pretty much always appear.

[Zodiark69]

Alright. I'll give that a shot. I'll run through the game again. I'll let you know what happens.


Edit: Yeah, still no scene. Cesca's got 90 purity, so I don't see why it's not working. I did everything you said.

[shin]

As a suggestion maybe in the future have a sort of split in the story line, maybe the choice between 2 characters or something along those lines. It could be a choice only specific to certain characters, like a choice between a man and a woman, but only certain people get a choice, so for someone like Cesca she would choose the woman since she is afraid of men, or something along those lines. It's just an idea so take in into consideration.

[KITAmaru]

shin-
Do you mean in terms of romantic character choices? I mentioned that I have 4 in total already planned for that, so we're covered on that one--although I don't blame you if you missed it, as there is quite a bit of discussion in the thread that gets lost. In terms of character motivation, a Syndicate path will likely open up, but not till a bit later in the game.

As far as character-exclusive stuff, I'm already working on certain NPC's the only some characters will encounter in terms of programming--there is a LOT that is already fabricated storyline-wise, but the execution is the tricky part. I know that some people have been complaining that there isn't enough difference between characters in terms of what you can do, but they'll see... this game is a far cry from version 0.03 and it's only been a couple of months, so most if not all of the concerns will be addressed. So don't worry, the suggestion was something I actually had planned for a little while now.

Zodiark-
I don't know what to tell you tbh, I've tested it with 2 different characters now and they all work. If you like, I could send you some savefiles right before the scene...

[Meep Meepersons]

I could send you some savefiles right before the scene...

Please? ^^

[PolterGhost]

I did a playthrough as Thyme, didn't do absolutely everything, but I accomplished most of the tasks.

I've got a hard on (pun intended) for the magic caster types; nothing more satisfying than picking from a menu of what to slaughter your enemy with next. A few notes:

Thyme's magic is really absurdly powerful. At level 7, fighting the boss to save Gwyn, I completely wrecked face by slapping him with the 'status down' spell, which knocked his damage down by about a fraction of 6. I followed up with the wind spell to confuse him (which, by the way, pretty much won all my fights just through making the enemies lose all their turns and take additional damage), and then the fire spell to deal what seemed like an extra 300 damage a round. The confusion spell alone was pretty much enough to win most fights for me, only failing maybe 4% of the time.

Odd note: All potions refill twice as much of the stat listed. Dunno if this was intentional, but I was surprised to see my cheapo potions suddenly bring me to full health with one gulp.

I don't know if you're doing the stat balancing on your own, or if you're relying on outside help, but, um, I do love number crunching, I'll tell you what. My favorite thing about this game is just the amount of character options as far as choosing your abilities go. For the most part, however, there just seems to be a lot of unbalanced techniques, ranging from downright useless to holy-shit-awesome. Just saying, if you need someone to help you with all that...*wink*wink*wink*

Aside: There was one triple battle, one quad battle, and one double battle, and I honestly feel cheated. I love fighting masses of guys, especially when certain characters have multi-hit techniques; you must program more non-fixed encounters with multiple dudes ready to slice and dice! Nobody says you need to make new scenes specifically for these new encounters, nor must every encounter equal an H-scene. I don't mind losing and having my 'have a nice death' prize be either getting sent to a jail zone or being killed or whatever.

[KITAmaru]

Here's the savefile for Cesca right before the Gwyn scene;
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pr8zda

Basically just ran right through the game, killing all the sleeping bandits, not having a single H-scene besides the stuff related to Gwyn.
Tested it with the regular version of the game, playing it through from the beginning (sorry, couldn't get ya a Widowmaker, but got both Swordbreakers) and it... well, seems to be working.

A good indicator of your relationship with Gwyn is that when Cesca passes through the gates near the Veteran Pikeman, she says to herself 'Grr, that X... X GUY, etc.' right before the timer starts. If your relationship score with Gwyn is too low, she'll say something to the effect of forgetting something.

Anyhoo, that file with Cesca in it should lead ya straight to the Gwyn scene, just move one cell left. Keep in mind that it's 'Save1' though, so you might want to rename it real quick to Save7, Save8 or Save9 if you already have an important Save1.

[Lucky777]

I don't mind losing and having my 'have a nice death' prize be either getting sent to a jail zone

Pretty sure the chambers works as a place to get sent when you lose to some enemies, so that woiks for me too.

or being killed or whatever.

Voting no on this. There was a flash called Project X or something, over on ULMF, that had one of the bosses randomly kill you after loss, instead of raping you like all the others. It was out of place as hell in a sexgame, and I believe they later changed it, due to someone letting them know the blindingly obvious fact that death is a turnoff. (Except for fans of snuff, but what can I say : O )

non-fixed encounters

Don't know what this means, but I ain't a fan of random battles in the least. If he means infinitely repeatable encounters, then I like this idea too.

Beating down 1 dude is fun, but beating down 3 at once for 3 times the exp is slightly more awesome.

[KITAmaru]

Odd note: All potions refill twice as much of the stat listed. Dunno if this was intentional, but I was surprised to see my cheapo potions suddenly bring me to full health with one gulp.

I don't know if you're doing the stat balancing on your own, or if you're relying on outside help, but, um, I do love number crunching, I'll tell you what. My favorite thing about this game is just the amount of character options as far as choosing your abilities go. For the most part, however, there just seems to be a lot of unbalanced techniques, ranging from downright useless to holy-shit-awesome. Just saying, if you need someone to help you with all that...*wink*wink*wink*

Aside: There was one triple battle, one quad battle, and one double battle, and I honestly feel cheated. I love fighting masses of guys, especially when certain characters have multi-hit techniques; you must program more non-fixed encounters with multiple dudes ready to slice and dice! Nobody says you need to make new scenes specifically for these new encounters, nor must every encounter equal an H-scene. I don't mind losing and having my 'have a nice death' prize be either getting sent to a jail zone or being killed or whatever.

Naw, most of the combat balancing and what not is done on my own, which explains the kind of kooky battle system. Also, unlike pretty much any other H-RPG (that I've seen anyway), there are a lot of selectable characters off the bat which makes it even more time-consuming for me, so combat reports are always welcome. Unlike most RPGVX games, you pretty much don't get a party member until WAY later, so having each character be able to fight on her own, whether it be a caster, a healer or a melee type, can be quite a challenge indeed. Provided, I haven't done much balancing since 0.05 or so, but it'll get done for sure. If you like, I can send you an editor's copy and you can log changes that I'd also apply to the game. Since I chip away at maps, events and other things little by little each day, it's not something that can be easily worked on by multiple people unless every single change is logged. I very much appreciate attempts to number crunch though, as that is definitely not my strong point. I like naming weapons, armor and skills--testing combat over and over to make sure they don't totally suck or totally own isn't something as interesting to me.

I know that at this point, Thyme is pretty OP. She used to be the weakest character; I originally meant to have her specialize in status effects, but the plan got kind of strange when it was found out that certain status effects are just dirty in the VX engine by default, and it's truly a hassle/pain to go through and adjust parameters of every status effect out there--at least for me, anyway. She'll eventually be getting the nerf, and some rebalancing will be done, but my primary focus right now is advancing the story and doing the H-scenes, which is really my focus from the beginning.

Most of my time working on this game is writing smut or coming up with storyline ideas, and this game is far from finished--I mean, it's 'customer input' like yours that will change this game for better or for worse; the challenge for me is that there are SO many suggestions and proposals that I really have to calm down, sort them out, and do what I WANT to do first. I've seen lesser indie developers crumble under the pressure of their fanbase, but I remind myself that this game is for me first and foremost, and I'll be damned if I let this game die before I at LEAST fit in the scenes that I want to see. Making it outside the damn Labyrinth would be great too, though.

Speaking of which, the potions healing for double is an ability that Thyme has, I think it's called Pharmacology, and is a default option for some characters in the game. Flavor-wise, it makes sense for Thyme since she is a potions master / hermit / sage of sorts, and balance-wise I originally added it to make her stronger when she was severely underpowered in earlier patches. Lanie is most likely one of the weaker characters at this point in the game, which is fine considering she's easily the least experienced in combat, seeing as that she's basically just a student--but she'll unlock better potential and more powerful / useful spells as the game goes on. I also feel that the lack of a 'stunlock' option hinders her to some degree as well.

In terms of making the combat in the game more interesting, I've mentioned that I plan on adding more multi-enemy encounters. Yes, getting sent to the Stalls is definitely an easy out for many enemies which I will implement more often in the future, but it's more of a personal goal; after all, there are players out there who do appreciate the fact that you can literally get fucked by pretty much everyone you fight in this game, save for Kalen and the assassins thus far (though that can always be adjusted in the future, since an assassin will likely visit you in the Stalls and Kalen can always get an H-scene as an afterthought). In the interest of advancing the plot and providing ways to grind, however, I will certainly make more enemies and/or groups of enemies that just send you to the rape zone when you lose instead of taking you right then and there. No matter what I do in this game, someone will suggest something that is completely opposite of what another person wants--like one person will definitely say 'y u not get gangbanged when u lose to group of 4 guys'... etc. Perhaps this is a result of its open-ended nature, but alas, something that we all live with to some degree I'm sure.

If you want to help with balancing, you are welcome by all means; just note that the reason I have been kind of slow with that is because I feel story and H typically should take priority in this kind of game, though tolerable combat is certainly a bonus I'm sure, which is why I welcome help on that front.

[Azurite]

...
If you want to help with balancing, you are welcome by all means; just note that the reason I have been kind of slow with that is because I feel story and H typically should take priority in this kind of game, though tolerable combat is certainly a bonus I'm sure, which is why I welcome help on that front.

I know, I know, you said it, everyone got his opinion but I wanted to tell you that I totally support this !
Personally, when I play a H game, I play it for a good plot, good relations with NPCs and good sex scenes. If I want epic or hard combats I just play a normal game.

[Sync]

What I think would be a great little touch (although I readily concede it would be a pain inthe ass to implement):

* when you have Gwyn in your party, she gets included in any H-scene when you lose a combat...

[Zodiark69]

@Sync Finally! Someone else who thinks that should happen as well.

[PolterGhost]

@Sync: The issue with that is obviously that for every new party member you obtain, there would have to be additional scenes for them. Worse still is if you lose party members, thus forcing there to be a bit for each character in the team for every scene.

For four slots of characters, assuming that there's only three extra playable characters on top of your main, that would give you eight distinct scene combinations for every battle lost, i.e. if each '1' bit is a character, and the rightmost bit is your main character that always occupies that slot, the party combinations would be: 0001, 0011, 0101, 0111, 1001, 1011, 1101, 1111

Unfortunately, that's quite a lot for anyone to be expected to keep up to date with.

@Lucky777: Non-fixed means the wandering monsters you bump into to fight. As a note, in Project X I think more people complained because of the implementation of the attack itself as opposed to the sex vs death part. The trick behind the game is that all enemies attack you through rape, usually in some comical fashion. In most cases e.g. non-bosses, you have a split-second window to press the special attack button to break free of an attack. The monster's attack in this case (a boss, btw) instantly killed the player as opposed to dealing damage (in a game where the majority of characters can take three or four hits before losing a life.) While vore was considered a turn-off to most, it was far more frustrating to deal with a boss with instant death attacks to some.

@ KITamaru: See, to me, going off of a design perspective, mechanics should always come before story and such. This is mostly a way of thought brought upon by the games of yesteryear, where the setting and monsters had about as much to do with the game as a doberman running for state senator. With the dungeon crawlers of the 1980's, you were usually given a dungeon or series of dungeons and an excuse plot to go through them. For consoles, Final Fantasy basically told you "The world is in tumult because the crystals burned out, go fight the fiends and relight the crystals," whereas Phantasy Star told you "The galactic governor is evil and is releasing monsters everywhere, plus he killed your brother. You should totally gank his ass." Games like Might and Magic didn't even bother to give you any real plot and expected you to go at it on your own.

~WARNING, TL;DR SECTION AHEAD. PLEASE SKIP NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS IF YOU DON'T GIVE A FRAK~
As far as plot goes, DLab is closest to Wizardry I: Get to bottom of the dungeon, accomplish task X, where X is rescue princess or kill sorcerer or whatever, optionally get out. While story is not a bad thing, in my mind the key thing to remember is that every game is a game, no matter how good the story may or may not be. If the gameplay doesn't make you think or force you to come up with new ways to tackle introduced elements, then you're probably going to bore your players. As a note, this is one of the major gripes I have with companies like Squaresoft and their fanbase: Square dumps millions of dollars into a video game of all things, to produce great CGI and have a massive world and characters that live out their lives in front of you without any player input, and they leave their gameplay to be subpar in most cases. Final Fantasy 6, easily broken just through grinding every now and again or doing side-quests; Final Fantasy 7, can mostly be won through the attack button and intelligent use of magic when against tougher foes; Final Fantasy 8, easily broken just by playing with the game's Junction system as it's supposed to be used; these games are pretty much called the favorites of the entire fanbase despite playing like crap (and their stories aren't exactly the most intelligent to follow either.)

Obviously, that doesn't look like it helps my argument much. But, let's try something else: Final Fantasy 10 has a shit story. If you cut about three or four characters out of the story and focused on the rest, it would end up being this really endearing tale of a father figure sending his best friend's daughter off to die for the sake of the world, joined by two friends who have major emotional troubles with each other due to their past but are putting their differences aside to accompany their friend for the last time. As it is, I played the game way more than 6, 7, and 8, just due to the fact that the gameplay was superb; You had a bunch of specialized characters you had to switch between in the midst of combat in order to exploit enemy weaknesses. Perfect. 12, commonly hated by most of the fanbase, was absolutely awesome because it was just like 10, but with real time wandering around the battlefield, plus the fact that you get to customize all your characters how you want them to be. The story I didn't really care too much about, but it was told in an interesting fashion: You'd travel around the world with very little narrative to guide you, and you'd occasionally use clues given to you to find monsters or further the plot. It doesn't force plot down your throat, which is great.
~TL;DR OVER~

So I think I had a point in all of that, but I think I might have lost it in the midst of typing. As it stands, a lot of people aren't going to give two damns about narrative if the game isn't entertaining in most cases, and a good game can commonly overcome any plot handed to it. I don't need plot to play Ikaruga, but it makes the game more interesting as a whole. The original Final Fantasy gave you an excuse plot to help you learn about your world, and then populated the place with NPCs that helped teach you more about this strange new place you and your characters stumbled into, and for most people that's all they needed.

Now, thinking about segregation and unification of gameplay and story elements, DLab is mostly, for all intents and purposes, a dungeon crawler with typical JRPG elements.

Let me define the term 'dungeon crawler' for a moment: An RPG where you usually, but not always, are given a nameless cast of characters; where you explore linear 'levels' of the game world, typically split into a linear or non-linear choice of areas to explore; where the challenge of the game comes from proper management of your team, as well as having to deal with puzzles and mazes; where most of the game is handled through a heavy reliance on randomized elements and parameters that can increase and sometimes decrease that affect the amount of luck involved.

So, DLab, in my eyes, is a dungeon crawler, but lacking certain gameplay elements. Things that I enjoy in DLab that remind me of a dungeon crawler:

• The Gargoyle Room: This is a maze, where failure to traverse it properly initiates a battle sequence.
• Assassin AI: These guys have an apparent elemental weakness that can be exploited, as well as carrying a multitude of attacks that can ruin your day. They have strengths in that they can poison you, and that their evasion and hit rate are absurdly high. This calls for you to exploit attacks that can finish the fight quickly and efficiently, as well as ones that are accurate.
• Lack of free healing: Some people will probably gripe about this one; I think it's a great thing. A dungeon crawler is all about resource management: Knowing how far you can go before running out of hit points or magic, deciding whether to use the elixirs you're carrying to refresh your status, always making sure you're stocked with all the elixirs you need, knowing whether to use a high powered spell or to save your magic points and use your standard attacks instead. Having free heals removes the challenge, UNLESS every individual battle is a case of life or death. In that case, having numerous healing points when the enemies can reduce you from 100% HP to 50% HP in every battle is a boon.
  
  One thing you should decide is whether you want the game's challenge to be based around individual battles or around long treks. If it's about the battles, you should jack up the toughness and abilities of enemies and put healing points around just as you are at the moment. If it's about going through large sections while managing your resources, you should use healing fountains more sparingly. One idea is to have healing at a cost; in mechanics terms, you may be able to refresh your HP at a cost of Purity or Gold. Perhaps there is a random chance of a combat encounter, or, in narrative terms, a chance of being captured and transported to another area. Maybe certain places will inflict status ailments on you for resting, or maybe they don't restore your parameters to 100%. Otherwise, players should know that they have money, and they have potions and elixirs to utilize.

Things to consider, as far as the game is concerned:
[list]
[*]Mazes: This is a dark labyrinth, after all, so being more labyrinthine would be welcome. The slime area and the assassin section act as decent pseudo-mazes, but otherwise are relatively simple to traverse. Toss in more twists and turns, as well as dead ends and teleporters, perhaps 'find item X to open door' sections, maybe add puzzle elements and walk-through walls with hidden passageways. Maybe have a section like the Gargoyle room where stepping on the wrong square teleports you back to the entrance of the room, and you have to map out either physically or mentally the proper path. Narratively, a good place for a maze would be the plant room; it begs for a hedge maze of sorts. With this example, if the beginning of the maze had the healing fountain, and the maze itself had a couple different enemy types of various difficulty (and maybe 'hotspots' that if you step on them, tentacles bust through the wall or ground and you have to face a monster) you could turn it into a section that wears down the player before they reach the boss, thus requiring them to make sure they're stocked on items before entering, lest they have to turn back due to being unable to take down the boss.
[*]Narrative: Funny thing to mention, I know. Part of the game that interests me is that the Syndicate, for the most part, are working outside of the law because the law are apparent jerks (hence why they kidnap a noble.) What would be nice is to learn more about the world, perhaps with more bar or barracks sections. For instance, you can talk to a guy to get news from the outside world about a war that's going on, or that the plague hit, or that a person has gone missing. Later in the game, you use that knowledge to help tell the story to the player, i.e. the person that went missing is a person you stumble upon in the labyrinth. Perhaps you could even make it so that the player has to pay to obtain rumors, like having to buy a guy a beer or do him a 'favor'.
[*]Puzzles: If the most important part of an RPG is getting the player to feel like they're in their character's shoes, then the second most important part is engaging puzzles. Reward players for exploring by giving them cryptic clues written on walls, slips of paper hidden inside books, keys hidden under beds, and passwords given out by drunken guards. Encourage players to take notes and to make maps to continue. Alternatively, offer players choices of how to accomplish tasks. One thing I enjoyed was that I could either seduce the soldier to find out where Gwyn was taken, or I could beat the information out of him; depending on the character, if a door is locked, they could just smash it down or use magic to bust through as opposed to requiring them to find a key. Obviously, they miss out on earning experience, gold, information, and items by doing so, but at least they aren't forced to follow a set path.



Now, as far as combat balancing goes, I've never actually used RPG Maker before, so figuring out how anything even works would be step one if I were to do hands-on work. Otherwise, I can write out formulas, give ideas for technique and stat progression, offer enemy AI routine examples, and et cetera. I've really got to figure out how that program works one of these days...

[KITAmaru]

Did we not discuss this already? I'm working on it, little by little, ya know. So what about when we get a third party member, and a fourth (which is debatably a possibility as early as 0.9)? What about when one leaves and another new character replaces them? Does the second girl get included for EVERY H-scene too, even when there is only one rapist? How about the third? What if the third only stays in the party for maybe 2 patches before leaving again?

Considering it's taken me how many months to put up what I have so far... alright, let's do this! No new content until April while I work on putting Gwyn in existing H-scenes.