ACT Mod [Mc Swagger] Mission Mermaiden – The Downfall of Hasumi

[Mc Swagger]

Hopefully the last post before the release of the mod! The work is going well and there are not so many things left on my list to work on.

Evaluation of the survey
Surprisingly many have spoken in favor of a translation, but the desire for a quick release was also clear. So I will release the mod on November 30th and make sure to include a detailed tutorial for the AutoTranslator. After the release, I'll take a look at the translation. The only variant that gives an added value would be to outsource the Japanese texts (eg as .txt) and read in at runtime, so you can change the language and adjust the translation easily. Let's see how well that works.

Thanks to the alpha testers
I would like to say a big thank you to the testers who helped make this mod possible with many walls of text and detailed reports. Dozens of bugs I would not have found without them and many of their good ideas would not have been realized. Last but not least they helped to motivate me during the development. Thanks to (alphabetically): @DarkMist67, @ilmncsm, @kuroscorpio, @takeba and @TCMMM.

Publishing model
For the creation of the mod I made a big effort, which cost hundreds of working hours. I therefore decided to use a "pay what you want" payment system on itch.io. The mod will remain free, but I would be very happy about an appreciation in financial form. Thankfully, the developers Mizuku have given me his consent to do so.

 

[pandoramail]

That is fantastic to hear!

Thank you and your helpers for your hard work, I'll make sure to give my part not only in praise but monetary. Quick question, so the release on Nov 30 will be either full Japanese and an option for MTL?

Can't wait till the release day, I've actually already bought plenty of spare batteries for my gamepad.

 

[Mc Swagger]

Quick question, so the release on Nov 30 will be either full Japanese and an option for MTL?

Almost. The "bare modded" version will be 98% japanese since I edited/added some text in english. Apply the MTL to that and you get a 98% english version with some japanese sprite leftovers. But I will provide a detailed description on how to apply the MTL for the ones who had no experience with the MTL tool.
Edit: I will also hint you to the translation thread of Mission Mermaiden, where the some part of the game was already translated by hand. So in the end it is a mix of MTL, translation by hand and my modification in english... That answer was unnecessarily complicated

 

[ilmncsm]

I honestly completely forgot that not everyone in this thread would have the english translation from the translation thread. It's not technically complete, but only in the sense that one or two things are impossible to be translated for technical reasons. If you want to play the game in english run over to the translation thread and follow the instructions. I have been testing the mod with the english version, and there are no issues with using the translation and the mod.

 

[pandoramail]

Yeah, I ask because I played the original Mermaiden in English and it was far from broken from what I remember. That's why I got confused about the language in the mod release.

Oh, McSwagger, I have a different type of question, and please, answer at your leisure. What made you dive into this project and make the mod in the first place? What was the drive, the need, the goal? I kinda wanna hear the dev-side story, if you will, won't ask for "tigger bits!" or "moar preggies!", just a bit of your perspective on this project.

 

[Mc Swagger]

Oh, McSwagger, I have a different type of question, and please, answer at your leisure. What made you dive into this project and make the mod in the first place? What was the drive, the need, the goal? I kinda wanna hear the dev-side story, if you will, won't ask for "tigger bits!" or "moar preggies!", just a bit of your perspective on this project.

Essentially, the answer can be divided into two aspects. On the one hand, there is a technical curiosity behind the development to try out what is possible. I find it exciting to deal with limited possibilities of changeability and to achieve the best possible result. I hope this is reflected in a noticeably different gameplay compared to the original.
On the other hand, I like the game very much and there was potential for improvement. The original has visually and conceptually one of the best designs I know and also the hypnosis theme appeals to me very much. Unfortunately, some of the basic mechanics of the game are rather boring: the enemies are cannon fodder, the camera is not suitable for a platformer and the statuses have little permanent impact. To put it wickedly, the original feels like a playable gallery where you have to deliberately lose to see the exciting content. Hopefully I was able to improve the game in this regard as well. But the judgment is left to you

 

[Devotedlynx1]

so hyped really felt like you had to be new to computer games to actually fail and get any proper scenes in the base game

 

[Mc Swagger]

It’s getting serious

 

[Devotedlynx1]

yoooooo thats sick, must be ready for release then

 

[Kindthief]

wow mate thats really cool, even get positive feedback from developer, keep up the good work and thanks!

 

[NotSoAvid]

Ahh, that's so awesome! I really hope he takes some of your mod's contents and implements their ideas into his next work!

 

[KoonPoomch]

Finally!

 

[pandoramail]

Finally!

I guess you're F5ing as hard as I am. Let's just take into consideration that timezones exist (I wish they didn't at least today...).

 

[Mc Swagger]

Done!

 

[cell943]

With how easy it is to be thrown into a confused state, only being able to attack once every ten tries is just too much. If that was tied to a status effect like latent hypno or trance seal, that would make sense, but after just a couple hits I'm forced to only dodge instead of removing enemies. This issue is compounded by being unable to defeat the squid enemies (at least I haven't found a way to hit them without being hurt). The idea is fun, but it seems more geared toward challenge levels and actively tries to impede progress. I guess you could make the argument to just play the base game if you want progress, though.
That said, I've only played one level. Maybe my opinion will change as I try more.

Did you change the music any? I don't remember the tracks sounding exactly like this.

Also, found a bug: receiving a sex animation while shoved in the ground corner at the final two bad guys (humans) causes Hasumi to be thrown back to the beginning of the level. It's not a big issue as it seems the game unloaded all the enemies at that point, so it was just tedious going through the level again more than anything.

Edit: I just found you can jump on the jellies to defeat them. Also, extra bug: some logs in level 2 cause you to fall through them when landing on them. I'm not sure if that's intended.

Edit edit: more bugs. The boss of the second stage is impossible to escape. Once it does the external H-anim, Hasumi is stuck "falling" onto it, which immediately causes her to be grabbed again. If grabbed in this state, Hasumi's sprite disappears. The boss continues attacking and such, but there's no player character to control, soft locking the game. Interestingly, I think the game continues trying to generate hasumi, creating multiple invisible instances of her on top of each other (somewhere). I'm watching the resources of my computer slowly be consumed, and the frame rate of the game is steadily declining. It went from a buttery 74 fps to about 5 fps now and falling.

 

[pandoramail]

Hurray, it's out! I'll play (and comment later) the heck out of it today, but a quick test got me a problem... how do you resist when you're captured? I don't think my resist keybind does anything...

 

[Shingle]

Hurray, it's out! I'll play (and comment later) the heck out of it today, but a quick test got me a problem... how do you resist when you're captured? I don't think my resist keybind does anything...

you have to spam keys when the bar is green.

OK, so i have played this for a while, the second boss is incredibly frustrating, having to sit through 30s animations and then getting bounced straight into the next 30s animation is just plain annoying

 

[DarkFire1004]

Thread moved to the H-Games section.

 

[Mc Swagger]

With how easy it is to be thrown into a confused state, only being able to attack once every ten tries is just too much. If that was tied to a status effect like latent hypno or trance seal, that would make sense, but after just a couple hits I'm forced to only dodge instead of removing enemies.

What I wanted to achieve is that every enemy must be taken seriously. Therefore, every confrontation must be approached in a planned way and you must wait for the right moment instead of just fighting on the fly. Managing your willpower should be a real challenge. The difficulty is therefore intentional. Maybe the design will still work for you if you keep at it.

Did you change the music any? I don't remember the tracks sounding exactly like this.

No i did not... Hopefully no bug?

Also, found a bug: receiving a sex animation while shoved in the ground corner at the final two bad guys (humans) causes Hasumi to be thrown back to the beginning of the level. It's not a big issue as it seems the game unloaded all the enemies at that point, so it was just tedious going through the level again more than anything.

That was a rare bug I noticed in 1 out of 100 cases and still not sure where it comes from... I will try to fix it next release but it is not easy to reproduce!

Also, extra bug: some logs in level 2 cause you to fall through them when landing on them. I'm not sure if that's intended.

Which ones? Not all logs are actually platforms to land on

Edit edit: more bugs. The boss of the second stage is impossible to escape. Once it does the external H-anim, Hasumi is stuck "falling" onto it, which immediately causes her to be grabbed again. If grabbed in this state, Hasumi's sprite disappears. The boss continues attacking and such, but there's no player character to control, soft locking the game. Interestingly, I think the game continues trying to generate hasumi, creating multiple invisible instances of her on top of each other (somewhere). I'm watching the resources of my computer slowly be consumed, and the frame rate of the game is steadily declining. It went from a buttery 74 fps to about 5 fps now and falling.

Was not able to reproce that. How did you get caught? There are 2 animations: The "belly vore" and the "tail vore" (with and without slugs attached). Do you remember how you triggered the H scene?

Hurray, it's out! I'll play (and comment later) the heck out of it today, but a quick test got me a problem... how do you resist when you're captured? I don't think my resist keybind does anything...

I almost thought to myself that this mechanic is not obvious. I will try to implement a tutorial for the next release.
But you have to press left right alternately to build up momentum to escape.

 

[masterblaster]

Unfortunately, this mod doesn't seem to play nice (or at all in my case) with wine. A clean copy of the game still works as expected.
The splash screen looks normal but the title screen is messed up. Selecting New Game crashes after it finishes loading with the following error.
0118:err:seh:NtRaiseException Unhandled exception code c0000005 flags 0 addr 0x6fabc7cc