[Unity]Price For Freedom: Avarice

[Valaska]

Hello everyone, we’re happy to bring you all Public Build 9! This build is fairly mighty in terms of content! Some of our older content is being shifted into the public stream now so we’re happy to hear how guys and gals feel about the game. This version is essentially the same as the Patreon one, but without Katrina, Iski, Terri and Katie scenes. We plan on releasing public builds more regularly in the future, so stay tuned for that.

Reach us on discord if you have any issue with this build.

Here is the change-log since the last public build:

- Nailah smut scene.
- Katrina sprite / portrait.
- New companion Calypso with quest / sprite / portrait.
- New big village location (Toreign).
- 3 smaller interior locations in Toreign.
- Ability to skip the prologue in new game.
- Blood effects in combat.
- Merchants and trade system.
- Sell and Buy items UI.
- Goldra sprite / portrait.
- Alistra sprite / portrait.
- Chickens!
- New village soundtrack.
- Ambient track with three variants.
- And two other ambient tracks.
- Gallery portraits randomizer.
- Companions relationship system (currently doesn't affect gameplay but will have effect later on).
- Campfire location (day/night variants).
- 20 new animated foliages types.
- Ability for characters to sit.
- Corpse sprite Thugs and Bandits.
- Includes a save to access the new content directly (PatreonBuild9).
- Iski sprite / portrait.
- Thief guild location where you can find her after, location will later host a vendor as well.
- Hiho quest updated to work with the new location instead of placeholder dialogue.
- Misc bug\typo fixes.
- Fast game loading and reduced memory usage.
- New animated splash screen.

With this comes our first new town-hub outside of Kaldea. There is lots to do in fleshing the location out and exploration, so keep an eye out for changes in future updates. Here are a few of our big points I’d like to mention more in depth:

Toreign

Toreign was once a thriving fishing and agricultural hub. In its hay day it happily fed hundreds in the region… but recent tensions between Kaldea and Atlathka have all but killed off farming for Toreign, in it the stead of crops have sprouted dozens of passing by mercenary companies hoping to capitalize on the situation.

Thieves Guild

I want to give it a proper name in the future, like a syndicate or such but until then this location will be utilized quite a bit. Hiho’s quest properly enters the location and a couple other quests will come to a head here. There are also fences here that allow the purchase of sometimes rare objects… prices could be cheaper than somewhere else but they’re out to make a profit!

In the future we may have it more randomized and have surprise deals in these vendors. Keep an eye out as we develop our mercantile systems.

Music

Toreign represents a new step for our original soundtrack, with 3 different ambients based on the same track and will play in a contextual driven manner. We have a couple more tracks coming as well. Having custom made music for this game is extremely excited and we can’t wait to see how it is received!

Merchants and trade

We’re making the basic foundation of our mercantile system, don’t expect too much from just yet… but we are really looking for people to abuse/break this system and report back to us.

Relationships & Standing

We plan to utilize a somewhat basic, yet functional, relationship system that will play out behind the scenes. If you do something that one of the characters will disagree with you may get a small hit… but we are trying to reserve negative impacts to extremely heavy circumstances where you go completely against a characters core beliefs/ethics.

Typically we won’t have the fallout “X liked that Y Z disliked that” system. There aren’t too many situations that you will gain with one character and lose with another, that’s extremely frustrating. Also characters who are not present will not magically find out you picked a lock 2 kilometers away.

Positive gains will work similarly… but they will be much more natural in that, listening to advice or just simply talking to your companions will be the best way to get relationship gains.

Other uses of this system may play into actual story events and change how certain factions react dialogue plays out. This isn’t concrete and we are not sure how well we can utilize this system with the resources we have, but if we can streamline the process we will definitely try and do it.

Campfire’s

Campfires will be scenes that play between travelling from time to time. This will allow you to get to know your party and what I think is a twist on the system… allow your party to get to know YOU. I’ve never seen this in CRPG’s before, so I want to experiment with having the player learn more about Redic’s history and past through your party members actually taking an interest and asking.

You can decide to open up and explore your past with the party members or just shrug it off and completely cut these scenes short if you have no interest in them. But I think it's an interesting twist!

Chickens!

End game content confirmed…?

And last, but hopefully not least… our thanks!

Thank each and every one of you out there be it supporters, fans, interested onlookers, what have you - we are eternally grateful to you all.

[Valaska]

Build 15 live!

We've two quests added for this version the first involving Samara after she retells Redic about her ship adventure, and before the campfire scene. Rest at Nathan's inn to trigger the quest.

The second quest is the continuation of Verona's story! Enter the inn after completing the Whispering Brook questline and after completing her first quest and it'll trigger automatically. Alternatively, if you load up "Build 15" you will automatically jump to the quest!

We've also begun setting up our subscribestar! Complete with our oauth 1 build 1 game system we finally can bring the game to those of you who prefer not to support Patreon but still want to support us. We'll be setting up the page to make it more marketable soon!

https://subscribestar.adult/priceforfreedom

Changelog:
- [Backers] Verona second quest.
- [Backers] Verona's second scene with 2 animated CG and 5 stills.
- [Backers] Samara's third quest and collectible.
- [Backers] Garroth mini-quest.
- **Added the slums location** in Kaldea.
- Shaman Hutt.
- Zahra shaman animated sprite & rig
- New Abomination enemy.
- Item stacks can finally be split in inventory!
- Items can be dropped on the ground and picked up (everquest style!)
- 7 new items
- New Diff system for dialogue editor.
- Subscribestar!

[Valaska]

This might not be a huge content post but I want to give you guys and gals a look into the little things that make the game what it is. The small optimizations that our programmer Deck can do between builds after we implement! This kind of stuff can help us from racking up technical debt through making our game more efficient and tight, or really flesh out the experience with little quality of life touches.



Item dropping! We had no idea that this was going to be a feature until Deck just suddenly showed us the feature me made! He surprises us like that sometimes. It reminds me a ton of EverQuest, an MMO I loved as a kid. The stashes persist permanently atm, but we might dabble with the feature so if you drop something in a really busy area like the city streets the bag will only last for a while until a character swipes it. It's just a theorized feature at the moment, it might be just it vanishes from an unsafe area, or we could play around with it more even have a certain character swipe it or such!

So don't hold it to us but maybe this could lead to something with a certain kobold in the game, or pirate! It'd be really late into the project I think since Deck literally just whipped this up randomly in the span of an hour or so.

Another massive thing that our programmer Deck did out of nowhere in the span of 2 hours was to make our saves into JPG's. Out entire save data's are just JPG's now, you can send them to each other as a JPG on discord, share them here, etc! This makes the system vastly faster to load data from data and they are a bit smaller too!

I hope you guys and gals dig the behind the scenes mechanics too, I'm really excited about these features. It's these subtle architectural and mechanical changes to make things more efficient that keeps you from racking up technical debt. It's also amazing to see how much our programmer can get done while he has free time after builds!

[Valaska]

This update is a deep dive into the political world of Kaldea, rife with important choices that will have grave consequences through the story. Featuring General Alenai of the Atlathka army with her own scene, as well as a few familiar faces that who make their return for the first time in awhile.

This update is the first of two parts, the second being the focus of the next build. Since this part of the main quest, be prepared for a lot lore and dialogue, this is a pretty substantive update.

As usual there is a save named Build16 to begin the new quest directly (travel to the trade district). We updated the walkthrough on priceforfreedom.net.

Changelog:

[Patreon] Alenai scene with 2 animated CG and 2 still shots.
[Patreon] Main quest part 1.
[Patreon] 1 collectible to find.
1 new soundtrack.
10 new animated character sprites: Alenai, Moira, Atlathka Footmen, Bandit Lizard, Bandit Boss, Modular Worker, Kimber, Noble, Worker Speaker, Caroline.
4 dialogue portraits: Alenai, Moira, Caroline, Worker Speaker.
Military camp location.
Alenai tent location.
Kaldea Government district location.
Townhall location.
Slums Warehouse 2 floors location.
Outskirts village edge location.
Moira's home location.
Save are now jpeg images.
Old saves are converted to jpeg on game launch.
Sitting mechanic for a few NPC.
Screen resolution and Fullscreen mode can be changed in game.
Removed the unity launcher.
New wiki: https://priceforfreedom.net/wiki
New art gallery: https://priceforfreedom.net/art

And again our first game traielr is found here now since Youtube nuked it.

NSFW version; https://priceforfreedom.net/art/Avarice_Trailer_1_NSFW

[Valaska]

The next companion content vote is up! Will it be HIho our Halmechian priestess or the fiery cuthroat Crimson Dervish? Maybe you're into the retired mercenary Osh'to and her cool disposition? Our Subscribestars and Patrons will be picking which of the three companions get their quest content updated next. Vote for your favourite girl over at;

https://subscribestar.adult/priceforfreedom
https://www.patreon.com/PriceForFreedom

[Lucky777]

Hi there!

This looks like it might be interesting.

What's the latest public build and what scenes are in it?

[Valaska]

Holy christ it takes me to jump through 50 hoops to post in this thread... I gotta logout, log back in a few dozen times, edit the address etc... ANYWHO!

The latest public build is, well, build 16! Our builds are handled on the same thing, the game automatically checks if you are a subscibestar/patron and if you are authorized then the new content is accessible. If not, it doesn't trigger! Pretty nifty solution that allows us to only compile one version, takes a ton of work off our programmer... I mean, literal DAYS of compiling shaved off. It's ridiculous. As for scenes...

Vaginal, Oral, tit fuck, female domination, gentle fem dom, male dom female, tail fuck, demons, monster girls, ogres, naga/scalies, prostitution, robbery prostitution, smaller females, larger females, thigh jobs, ear/head patting, facials, sex in a tub, risky sex, hand holding, rubbing a naga's belly... uhh quite a lot. Sex with a demon or two.

EDIT: Also holy shite someone responding! lol I'd post more info but no one seems interested in our project here at all.

[Lucky777]

Thanks for the response!

I more meant which characters' scenes.

Just as an example, in Build 15 "Verona's Second Scene" was mentioned; has that made it into the public build as yet?

[Valaska]

Ah! Verona's second scene is currently Patreon still, we have a walkthrough here that mentions which scenes you can get and whether they are in the public build atm or not;

https://www.priceforfreedom.net/avarice/walkthrough

So we have;

Clementine Cowgirl modified
Samara Cowgirl
Samara Camp scene
Hiho Missonary
Scylla Missionary
Osh'to Standing Patreon
Verona Tit Job
Verona bathtub Patreon
Hera
Katrina
Iski bj
Iski doggy
Nailah Thigh Job
Terri something
Katie something else
Aya mating press
Whispering Brook scene Patreon
Atlathka Blockade Patreon (newest quest)

[Lucky777]

Ah, okay, thankye!

[Valaska]

We've redone the Avarice landing page! We will hopefully have a front page landing that will ask you which you want to check out and have a bit of stuff. Deck was playing around with the Unity web plugin and we might use it for more nifty little things on the page in the future.

SO yeah! Check out our landing page here!

https://www.priceforfreedom.net/avarice

[Amakuo]

Had a bug early on in the fights against any of the jailers where combat would not end after the jailer was killed. Tried several times fighting different guards using different save points and reloading the game to no avail, and skipping combat did not work either. The only way to progress was to turn on the "Auto end combat on win" option, which made the skip button work again and successfully ended the fight if processed manually as well. Did not have that issue with the very first fight in the ambush (and didn’t try reverting the setting for further encounters).

In Kaldea, the Dockmaster thanked me for taking care of some thugs apparently? No idea what he was referring to. I didn’t fight anyone in or near the city, I was just visiting everything for the first time.

After leaving the temple, the Oversized Key remained in my inventory. Shouldn’t it be removed as a quest item or something?

Also a few suggestions if I may:
- Would be nice if trash items were marked as such. They all seem to have a bit of history and nice, unique artwork so I’m holding on to everything at the moment in case it comes up in a quest For example Scrolls don’t seem to do anything, but I can also buy books that don’t seem to do anything in stores, or depleted magic crystals, so I’m kind of wary of getting rid of them.
- There are items that seem to have a mechanical effect but only have a flavour description. Would be nice to know what they actually do. One example would be Zahra Oil. Or the Red Pygmy which seems to grant stamina or AP but I don’t know which, if either.
- In combat, when enemies are near the edge of the screen, their body chart pop-up goes off-screen. It should be bound to the window edges. Oh and it’s often extremely unclear which stats point to which body part. Might help if they changed colour when the corresponding body part is highlighted.
- Related to the above, I think it would be more practical if you would first click the enemy and then click the targeted body part in the chart. The way you currently need to click the body part on the sprite can be really tricky as the sprites breathe and get flipped and sometimes overlap with other sprites, making it impossible to click the part you want, or very prone to misclicks, especially in larger areas like the Blackfur cave where the camera is zoomed out farther and on smaller body parts like arms and heads. I never managed to click on a Troglodyte’s head in any of the fights, it was like they didn’t have an actual hitbox on the sprite and would clip through other sprites.
- Dialogues should pause the action. I’ve had several instances where I was reading the narration, then something triggered a different conversation or a fight and not only did it interrupt my reading, but I had no way to get back to it after the interloping event ended (e.g. re-read a description of something in the scene, or re-enter a one-time conversation).

I’m mostly posting about things I would like improved, but I’ll take a moment to say that this is a very cool and ambitious project and I wonder why I’ve overlooked it for so long. Maybe it just didn’t have a Linux build originally? Thanks for making one, at any rate! I’m especially pleased with the background art and scenery, which is usually kept simple in adult games but is both varied and detailed here, and I like the way the music changes to suit the different characters in focus and ongoing events. I’m still on the fence about the combat, but I think it has potential with some UI improvements and clearer rules and effects

What’s your process/plans regarding review and proofreading? That aspect seems a lot less polished than other areas of the game, but I get that it’s still in development and potentially subject to re-writing. In addition to your run-of-the-mill typos, missing words and misspellings, syntax often leaves a lot to be desired, and a lot of the combat descriptions are particularly obtuse and feel like they weren’t written by native speakers (coming from someone who doesn’t speak English natively either ). I’d offer to help, but it’s too much content to do for free and there’s a lot more involved than just pointing out the occasional typo. Do you plan to review everything at once at the end of development?

[Valaska]

Humm that's an odd one we haven't heard of and if you wouldn't mind sending to us on discord, send your save file to us with the issue and we can check into that. Somethings in the early game were shuffled so some dialogue might appear a little erroneous. We don't really have quest items! I think you can sell it even.

[*] If you are worried you can throw them in the inn (or anywhere tbh) and keep them there until you need them on the ground. Just click and drag items out of your inventory and they will bunch up into a bag if you don't move. Maybe we'll give a special outline to quest important items though. Books are for reading in our game so far, there isn't any real purpose for the majority of them unless otherwise stated haha.
[*] Some items just aren't programmed yet. But yeah every single item in the game will have some flavour text btw lol, backstory to them or such! Just how we roll haha.
[*] Combat is getting a complete overhaul including the way you attack enemies, targeting will change quite a lot.
[*] Oh yeah? Huh... it should already be the case that you cannot be interrupted while already in a dialogue. Could you give us an example of when/where it happened??

Thank you so much! We did have a Linux build early on, Windows and Linux are platforms our programmer has access to. We don't do Mac just because none of us... have macs, to be honest. We tried to keep a mac edition running but we only ever got issues and complaints since it worked on the Mac OS emulation but apparently, it would not work on the hardware... plus a lot of mac users seem to try and run games on a freaking toaster like we were seeing people with only 2gb of system ram trying to run our game on macs. Like... jeez, man... my ti-38 has more ram than that. We don't get much traction here on LoK for some reason so it's easy to miss us here lol. Combat will be changed up as I said before, we plan a total overhaul which is going to change a lot of how things work period. Still turn-based of course.

Combat Descriptions are written by a Ukrainian and French speakers with English as their second language, yes. The rest is just due to the sheer amount of text we have to do and are pushing out for each update. We're up to over 300k words now with no real time to sit down and dedicate to proofreading. We have a person proofreading for typos and such now but even then they can only do so much work a month since we have... so much to go over. I write the bulk of dialogue and my mother tongue is English, and a lot of the grammar in dialogue itself is down to the speech patterns of those characters so some will speak differently opposed to others.

[Amakuo]

I don’t have much time to go over everything and send logs at the moment, but thanks for the detailed response. Dialogue interruptions happened while I was checking out a book on a shelf in the temple early on and got attacked by a kobold; and later in town when I talked to a merchant and Iski’s pickpocket attempt started. It took over the dialogue box, then dragged my sprite over to an alley.

Cheers!

[Valaska]

I don’t have much time to go over everything and send logs at the moment, but thanks for the detailed response. Dialogue interruptions happened while I was checking out a book on a shelf in the temple early on and got attacked by a kobold; and later in town when I talked to a merchant and Iski’s pickpocket attempt started. It took over the dialogue box, then dragged my sprite over to an alley.

Cheers!

Eyy danke, I've passed it over to deck.

[Valaska]

[Valaska]

We've just released build 17 for PFF!

Changelog:
[list=] [Patreon] Moira scene with 2 animated CG and 2 still shots.
[Patreon] Main quest part 2.
3 pinups to find.
1 new soundtrack.
5 books collectibles.
4 new animated sprites: Corpse trader, 3 captive girls.
Bandit Fort 6 locations.
Increase characters running speed.
[/list]
This update brings in the alternative path for resolving the second Main Story Quest we've added in. This is the second part of the quest, which isn't quite done just yet. We've cut out a special boss fight which was planned for the end of the quest with a destructible enviornment, special abilities, and a whole bunch of little nifty things! But we are holding off to finalize this fight until our combat-rework patch and have added a placeholder boss fight.

This quest will also have a much more overt choice that won't just pay off in the future. The end rewards of this quest depend whether you hand the fort over to Kaldea or Atlathka. Moira of Alenai. Hint hint . The Alenai scene has appropriately been moved to after the quest and as always we have provided a save named Build 17 which takes you to the content of this patch. Again... hint hint!

In the future

Our immediate plans are to expand Hiho's content and add her next companion quest... not only that but Moira will have revisit scenes! With all new options and dialogue. I will try and do my best to add in more revisit scenes if time permits, I would eventually like to mirror Aurelia and the way every scene plays out shorter but differently when you revisit them. Try the game out if you haven't! We'd love to hear feedback.

[Valaska]

Happy halloween!