RPG Unknown/Hiatus Malise and the Machine - Public Demo Available Now!

[afa]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Some nitty gritty/generic questions.
Will there be a world map? Are there going to be towns or similar non combat zone, are they going to be similar or different than the standard shop/inn/occasional side jobs line up?

Is the game flow going to be similar to: town > map > dungeon > return > next set of town/dungeons
or
dungeon > plot event > next dungeon

I think you mention different armor/equipment will offer different skills, and I notice the armor slot in the equip menu in the recent screenshots. Will armor damage eventually cause armor to be unequipable? Is no armor an option either by choice or through plot, what skill will that provide or will it be a definite handicap. Will there be non combat related interactions depending on the armor equip, armor damage, or the lack of armor?

 

[Demontom]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

There will be a public demo about a month ahead of the next Patreon/Kimochi release! Keep an eye out for more news~



Yep, there was about a year of experimentation with RPG Maker / art styles and learning Ruby before the Patreon was even announced. Just for the record though AltairPL coded the most modern iteration of the battle engine, ATB system and UI .

Basically all battle and UI code that was in V0.02 of the game (released in July) has been rewritten from scratch by AltairPL at this point, while I've made a lot of additions and edits to the map system. AltairPL will at some point go through and rewrite the entire map engine for optimization now that the requirements have for the most part been established.

It's probably worth mentioning here that I'm still looking to add an expert 3D artist as well as an expert 2D painter to the team (if they come in one package it'd be even better).

Ah, right. Massive props to the both of you. Echoing previous sentiments, this is legitimately a game that I'd be excited for without the H aspects. With them, I'm very much eagerly awaiting the future of this project.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Some nitty gritty/generic questions.
Will there be a world map? Are there going to be towns or similar non combat zone, are they going to be similar or different than the standard shop/inn/occasional side jobs line up?

Is the game flow going to be similar to: town > map > dungeon > return > next set of town/dungeons
or
dungeon > plot event > next dungeon

I think you mention different armor/equipment will offer different skills, and I notice the armor slot in the equip menu in the recent screenshots. Will armor damage eventually cause armor to be unequipable? Is no armor an option either by choice or through plot, what skill will that provide or will it be a definite handicap. Will there be non combat related interactions depending on the armor equip, armor damage, or the lack of armor?

I thought about a world map, but decided it just wasn't necessary. Instead it will consist of a mostly interconnected playable area that expands throughout the game (there are teleporters to move between major areas). The flow of gameplay will be most similar to something like Chrono Trigger in that the game world will be available to you when you aren't progressing through a string of story events.

The easiest way to describe armor is that the type determines a character's combat archetype. Each armor type has a different look and damages differently in battle. Armor type determines what skills a character can equip, but it doesn't supply the skills (these are added to a character's skill set by using items called glyphs). Armor type will influence how H-events play out outside of combat, just as it does in combat.

We haven't fully explored the no armor idea yet, as it will likely come up quite a bit along with event-specific outfits.

 

[Damoriva]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

We haven't fully explored the no armor idea yet, as it will likely come up quite a bit along with event-specific outfits.

SOMEBODY will be mad enough to try a no-armour run. I guarantee it.

 

[Darkstrain]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

SOMEBODY will be mad enough to try a no-armour run. I guarantee it.

armor, and playing not in lv1 is for casuls.

but who wouldn't want to play as malise naked? can't you give us a quest with a reason, like, for example, a melting liquid(classic) that makes play through an area without clothes XD, unless of course, you can already do that.

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Well, I had a few days of limited Internet access and wasn't following the thread in that time, so I just wanted to thank everyone for all the kind words and wish everyone a Happy New Year - kinda late, but better late than never, right?
(This and I had the inexplicable urge to steal post #666 )

 

[thaplayer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Hey, i just found this game. Is it olny patreon only or is there a demo version for all?

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Hey, i just found this game. Is it olny patreon only or is there a demo version for all?

First public demo is planned for a very near feature - hard to exactly say when, but it's close - follow this thread or Eromancer's blog and you will not miss it .

 

[thaplayer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

First public demo is planned for a very near feature - hard to exactly say when, but it's close - follow this thread or Eromancer's blog and you will not miss it .

Thank you, i would maybe support you guys, if there was a demo for me to try and if i liked it , can't wait for the demo!

 

[Loogie]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

First public demo is planned for a very near feature - hard to exactly say when, but it's close - follow this thread or Eromancer's blog and you will not miss it .

Will the public demo have more content than the latest Patreon version?

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Will the public demo have more content than the latest Patreon version?

Hmmm, yes and no... AFAIK, public demo will contain only area introduced in 0.03 version (Access Tunnels), but both PCs will be playable (only Neon was playable in that area in 0.03). Probably nobody cares about it, since no boobies are involved, but public demo will also have revamped UI and few other modifications/optimizations which were done in the meantime. Well, this is what I know and since EM doesn't share everything with me, this info may not be 100% accurate.
Hope this answers your question.

 

[torkenstiem]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

im gettn kinda interested in this now.

 

[Lipucd]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Hmmm, yes and no... AFAIK, public demo will contain only area introduced in 0.03 version (Access Tunnels), but both PCs will be playable (only Neon was playable in that area in 0.03). Probably nobody cares about it, since no boobies are involved, but public demo will also have revamped UI and few other modifications/optimizations which were done in the meantime. Well, this is what I know and since EM doesn't share everything with me, this info may not be 100% accurate.
Hope this answers your question.

Does this mean Malise will be able to fight the Vioreaper now? =O Still, if that versions going to have the new UI and the like, it'll be worth peeking at alone for that!

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

im gettn kinda interested in this now.

Glad to hear it .

Does this mean Malise will be able to fight the Vioreaper now? =O Still, if that versions going to have the new UI and the like, it'll be worth peeking at alone for that!

Whoops, I think I said too much... ech, what's done is done... well, what would be the point of adding Malise to Access Tunnels if she couldn't play with Vioreapers (or rather Vioreapers play with her ), right?

 

[Loogie]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Hmmm, yes and no... AFAIK, public demo will contain only area introduced in 0.03 version (Access Tunnels), but both PCs will be playable (only Neon was playable in that area in 0.03). Probably nobody cares about it, since no boobies are involved, but public demo will also have revamped UI and few other modifications/optimizations which were done in the meantime. Well, this is what I know and since EM doesn't share everything with me, this info may not be 100% accurate.
Hope this answers your question.

You must be registered to see the links

 

[Demontom]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Believe it or not, I'm actually really interested in playing through it with the new UI. Based on the screenshots Eromancer posted on his tumblr, it looks really good. Couple that with Malise being available in this demo, and there's plenty of reason to be excited.

 

[Iloiine]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Hey hey. Long time lurker, etc... just want you to know that this is the game I finally decided I wanted to post for.

Effusive praise aside, I had a few questions, thoughts, and such I wanted to pose. The short version is that I'm anxious to know how possible it will be to go through this game getting fucked left and right without hitting a game over screen.



So first, I want to second Loogie's suggestion that, where plausible, being defeated in combat leads to escapable capture rather than death or a bad end. Bad ends are fun and all, but prefer bad... setbacks. One idea is that losing in combat might lead to one of the ARIS machines becoming corrupted/sabotaged. You could still use it as a save point, but its armor repair and lust/sickness recovery functions might be broken or even reversed.



The rest of my thoughts pertain to grapples. Right now, it seems like grapples are just bad news and, in terms of gameplay, you always want to break out of them as quickly as possible (with a few caveats, like timing your breakout against the FF right so that he doesn't just immediately grapple you again). Now, a lot of stuff is clearly just not implemented yet (I've noticed a distinct lack of turboslutting in 0.3, so it's possible I'm covering stuff that's already planned, but in case I'm not...

While it makes sense that grapples are basically bad--since they're enemy moves after all--I would prefer if they had some upside, at least compared to enemies standing there and shooting/clawing/pummeling our heroines.

1. While grappled, the open hand option is just an option to forgo struggling and watch the consequences. It's taking a penalty for porn. But, since interweaving sex into the gameplay as much as possible, it seems like there should be some gameplay benefit to not struggling. The first thing that springs to mind is having it function like guarding.
2. Being grappled is the worst when facing large groups, as the remaining enemies don't care that you're grappled and will fire away anyways. If enemies either didn't attack grappled characters or held their attacks until the grapple ended, this might make this less of an "escape now or die" situation. Of course, for all I know this will be resolved handily once multi-grapples are implemented.
3. Enemies receive a defense bonus while grappling. Now this seems to be more to encourage using breakout attacks than anything else, but it would make fucking less deadly if the heroines also received a defense bonus.

All of those are just ideas that occurred to me, though, and I'm not making the game. Ultimately, what all this boils down to is "I love the game, but would love it more if letting Malise and Neon get fucked was more survivable/less counterproductive."

 

[Slam Sector]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

I've got a question about the Kimochi platform. It seems that each version of the game is listed as an individual purchase. Do we actually have to buy each new version as it comes out?

 

[AltairPL]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Believe it or not, I'm actually really interested in playing through it with the new UI. Based on the screenshots Eromancer posted on his tumblr, it looks really good. Couple that with Malise being available in this demo, and there's plenty of reason to be excited.

Glad to hear it - hope you won't be disappointed.

Hey hey. Long time lurker, etc... just want you to know that this is the game I finally decided I wanted to post for.(...)

I'll leave your post for Eromancer to answer - I am but a humble coder .

I've got a question about the Kimochi platform. It seems that each version of the game is listed as an individual purchase. Do we actually have to buy each new version as it comes out?

Yes, at the moment every version available on Kimochi requires separate purchase. It is meant as alternative to Patreon - for people who can't or don't want to use Patreon or for those who just learned about the game and are really impatient to give it a try.

 

[Eromancer]

Re: Malise and the Machine (New RPG!)

Hey hey. Long time lurker, etc... just want you to know that this is the game I finally decided I wanted to post for.

Effusive praise aside, I had a few questions, thoughts, and such I wanted to pose. The short version is that I'm anxious to know how possible it will be to go through this game getting fucked left and right without hitting a game over screen.



So first, I want to second Loogie's suggestion that, where plausible, being defeated in combat leads to escapable capture rather than death or a bad end. Bad ends are fun and all, but prefer bad... setbacks. One idea is that losing in combat might lead to one of the ARIS machines becoming corrupted/sabotaged. You could still use it as a save point, but its armor repair and lust/sickness recovery functions might be broken or even reversed.



The rest of my thoughts pertain to grapples. Right now, it seems like grapples are just bad news and, in terms of gameplay, you always want to break out of them as quickly as possible (with a few caveats, like timing your breakout against the FF right so that he doesn't just immediately grapple you again). Now, a lot of stuff is clearly just not implemented yet (I've noticed a distinct lack of turboslutting in 0.3, so it's possible I'm covering stuff that's already planned, but in case I'm not...

While it makes sense that grapples are basically bad--since they're enemy moves after all--I would prefer if they had some upside, at least compared to enemies standing there and shooting/clawing/pummeling our heroines.

1. While grappled, the open hand option is just an option to forgo struggling and watch the consequences. It's taking a penalty for porn. But, since interweaving sex into the gameplay as much as possible, it seems like there should be some gameplay benefit to not struggling. The first thing that springs to mind is having it function like guarding.
2. Being grappled is the worst when facing large groups, as the remaining enemies don't care that you're grappled and will fire away anyways. If enemies either didn't attack grappled characters or held their attacks until the grapple ended, this might make this less of an "escape now or die" situation. Of course, for all I know this will be resolved handily once multi-grapples are implemented.
3. Enemies receive a defense bonus while grappling. Now this seems to be more to encourage using breakout attacks than anything else, but it would make fucking less deadly if the heroines also received a defense bonus.

All of those are just ideas that occurred to me, though, and I'm not making the game. Ultimately, what all this boils down to is "I love the game, but would love it more if letting Malise and Neon get fucked was more survivable/less counterproductive."

Hey! Glad you're liking it so far!

Regarding game overs, it's possible that the straight up return to title screen may change, but I'd rather wait and weigh the possibilities once content has progressed some more.

About grapples, giving a beneficial function to the Submit (open hand icon) skill is something I've planned for awhile, but haven't decided upon yet. It mainly boils down to balancing, and whether a beneficial bonus to using it will be necessary throughout the majority of the game is undetermined yet.

In general, that's also the case for your further points. There will be a lot of skills, passives, and equipment bonuses meant to negate the punishing aspect of grapples and H skills later on. The way you choose to outfit your characters will heavily affect these things. Ideally there will be a focus throughout the game on making the player decide whether they want to increase combat parameter bonuses at the risk of being more susceptible to grapples and H attacks.

I've got a question about the Kimochi platform. It seems that each version of the game is listed as an individual purchase. Do we actually have to buy each new version as it comes out?

Like AltairPL said, the Kimochi early access releases aren't retail releases, but are instead an alternative to Patreon with the proceeds going to fund the game. These releases give latecomers the ability to try out the current Patreon release without having to wait months for the next Patreon release to occur.