The Pirate Mermaid [GxB][Fantasy] - New Demo Out!

[KittyKatStar]

Uwaaa, everything looks so amazing and shiny. <3

And congrats on the word count! I love the forest, I can't wait to see the cute butterflies.

(Red and green are so hard to pick... I guess red since the prince has a green tail.)

[Jason]

So gorgeous. Let's do our best finishing our games *_*

[fioricca]

/SIGHS PASSIONATELY, I love it so much whenever this thread gets updated ;////; That background looks FANTASTIC and the new sprites look great! The pirate heroine is so cute omg I still love her $_$ face so much. And everyone got hotter! Also HOT SMOKING NEW LOVE INTEREST. I think the black/red colour scheme overlaps a little bit with the sorcerer's but I like it better because he looks more dangerous in red, which seems to be what you're going for. And omg I love the subdued shine effect, that looks so good!

I hope this game is going to be at least PWYW when it's out because SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY sob I love the glorious ATL, I love the amazing art, there isn't a single character that I don't want to bang and -- and -- asdfjkh. /hopeless infatuated noises.wav

[Mad Harlequin]

Whee, an update!

That forest! I want to live in it and take naps in the sunshine and watch the butterflies and . . . well, you get the idea.

I rather like red on Malik, but maybe you could make him a burnt orange color? That might look neat. (It looks cool in my head, at least!)

Wonderful work as always!

[slick]

I like the red color scheme for malik!

[Nebty]

@ Nebty
Thanks for bringing up the hair shine effect! I was wondering if the hair shine would be distracting because it isn't synced to the light in the background. The in-game rationale was that it's a manifestation of his magic (that's why the merfolk all have such long hair - to store their magic ). The real reason is because I, like Jack, am obsessed with shiny things. xD Would it be better if I increased the interval between shines, or reduced the brightness? Or should I just remove the effect completely?

Aaah, I see. That's a good explanation for why they all have such lovely flowing locks. And reducing the brightness would probably be good, just to make it a bit more subtle so that it isn't too distracting. Perhaps increasing the interval as well. I really like that it has an in-universe justification, rather than just being a design thing.

@ NebtyAnd yes, Malik is definitely the "dangerous" one! He's the one who'd get along best with an Evil Path MC. At least two or more of your guesses for his relationship with Mikali are also pretty close. ^^ The sorcerer does have reasons to be interested in the mermaids, so he won't be completely uninvolved, especially not in the final path.

On that note, will the "final" path involve railroading the player into one relationship vs another? I tend to not like it when games contain a "true" path, unless it either leaves the relationships ambiguous or gives the player room to make a choice. It feels like a canon route, which in my mind sort of invalidates the choices you made during the other routes. Now, that's just my feelings, and I'll love the game either way, but I'm curious as to which approach you're planning to take.

Re: Malik's Design. I like the green better from a design standpoint. The red, I think, makes his colours too similar. The green is a nice counterpoint to his reddish skin tone and red eyes. In addition, I notice that you changed the jewels on his outfit from blue to red, which makes everything match a bit too well. However...

If you wanted to give all three guys their own emblematic colours (Mikali green, Wizard blue, Malik red) then I could understand why you'd want to change Malik's scales.

[Arowana]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone! Nellie will do another art update shortly, but here are my coding updates for now. ^^

I did a lot of Pirate Mermaid coding this week, so all of the main sprites (except Malik) and most of the GUI are up and running. There are still a few things I'm fiddling with, but overall I think I added most of the features I wanted.

There is now an "animation light" mode in the options menu (under the "Animate" tab") that reduces the amount of movement on screen. Hopefully it will help if the full animation mode causes lags. Also, you can now turn on hints for karma and affection. Hints will cause a small animation to be played after each choice, so you will know right away how your stats have changed.



I have added a readback log to the quick menu. There is actually still fixed rollback though, which is my personal preference. Might be a bit redundant, though maybe people will like the ability to pick?



(here's the screen right after, just because I love Jack's face)



The last major thing I have to do for the GUI is the extras menus, which will be after the CGs, etc. are complete. I did finish the music room, though:



Now to check for bugs and start recoding the demo. ^^

***
@ KittyKatStar
Thanks! I am pretty slow, but at least it gives Nellie a chance to catch up in reading. (just let me keep telling myself that) I was actually worried people would mix up Mikali and Malik if they were both blond and green-finned, so that was one of the reasons I wanted Malik to be another color.

@ Jason
Yep, same to you!

@ fioricca
Ooh, I didn’t notice the red was similar to the sorcerer, so thanks for pointing that out. I was actually thinking the green was too similar to Mikali instead, lol! And aww, thanks for the support! I'm not sure if we can do "pay what you want," though, because we are using a lot of Creative Commons Non-Commercial music. Unless PWYW doesn’t actually count as commercial? (the rules really confuse me, tbh)

@ Mad Harlequin
I really like the forest too! As for burnt orange, do you mean something like this?



@ slick
Great, thanks for your input!

@ Nebty
Oh right, that is most definitely the reason! (Not because I have a fetish for long-haired men or anything like thaaaattt....) I ultimately decided to remove the hair shine effect since there were already too many glowing things on screen (especially when all the mermaids are together ahaha), so it’s all good.

If it helps, the final path won’t have much romance at all. The focus is on building relationships with and between multiple characters, rather than favoring one over the others. For a Good Path MC, lots of friendshipping and nakama power. For an Evil Path MC...recruiting people for your personal army/harem? ^^ Maybe we can put in a short scene at the end for players to pick a love interest, but yeah, we won’t treat any pairing as more “canon” than the others.

Haha yes, red Malik is an extreme case of Curtains Match the Window! I agree that making the jewels red is too matchy-matchy, so I will change them back to blue.

And you’re absolutely right – I do like having the three guys as the three primary colors. ^^ Originally, it was also going to be that scale color matched eye color, but the MC’s mermaid form violated that rule, haha.

[Mickychi]

Personally I liked the red tail better but I do have a suggestion for the colour - maybe multicolored/ 2 colours, like the main tail red or orange and the fins and etc the other colour. Just a suggestion

Also I've been loving the artwork but I really can't keep myself from saying this any longer the tails look good but the scales of the tail put me off - it's the fact that it looks too generic (because each mermaid has the same pattern it appears to me), because of this I have one more suggestion about the colour and tail - maybe give him a different pattern for his scales to look unique.
I shall say it once again loving the artwork - it looks fantastic - the scale thing might just be a personal preference for me.

[Mad Harlequin]

Yeah, that's about the color I was thinking! Nice!

[CloudOfSugar]

Mmh, I'm pretty ambivalent between green and orange Malik, with a mild preference towards orange, but I don't like him in red.

[Nellie]

Personally I liked the red tail better but I do have a suggestion for the colour - maybe multicolored/ 2 colours, like the main tail red or orange and the fins and etc the other colour. Just a suggestion

Also I've been loving the artwork but I really can't keep myself from saying this any longer the tails look good but the scales of the tail put me off - it's the fact that it looks too generic (because each mermaid has the same pattern it appears to me), because of this I have one more suggestion about the colour and tail - maybe give him a different pattern for his scales to look unique.
I shall say it once again loving the artwork - it looks fantastic - the scale thing might just be a personal preference for me.

Thanks for your input! Multicoloured fins sounds interesting - but unfortunately I'm lazy and decided to give them single colour fin to give each mermaid a colour identity! XD Hmmm... I get what you mean by the tail scales, I'll see what I can do to give them a bit of variation each to avoid having them all looking like clone mermaids!

Yeah, that's about the color I was thinking! Nice!

I like the orange too! But for now, we'll be using the red as for majority vote... Tentatively

Mmh, I'm pretty ambivalent between green and orange Malik, with a mild preference towards orange, but I don't like him in red.

Oh noes... Another vote against red... >_<

We'll keep him in red for now, and see how the general voting goes... Thanks for your input!


Updates
The more important sprites are completed as of now... We might add more sprites in the future if any other minor characters gained a more important role (or popularity!) in the upcoming paths yet to be written. Progress is looking good, hopefully I won't be trapped in my procrastinating mode again so we can have the game released before the end of 2014 xD

Here's the final romance-able merman!

What do you think about him from looks alone? :3

And here's the lovely Jack! (my personal fav... so I'm pretty biased ohohohoh)

Everyone's favourite shinies loving merbird, now complete with gentlemen attire!

Enough of the guys, there's even this cute maid girl you can approach and befriend... or take advantage of! (Note: No yuri path applicable here XD)

What do you think?

More sprite previews in the next update!

As for backgrounds, we have 2 more to go, and some modifications and additional variations for some of the existing ones... And then that's done too! CG and chibi animations... Urgh... Let's say they're progressing at a decent pace so far... GUI is almost complete (galleries remaining) and script is more than half done too! Thanks a lot for your patience, and please keep supporting us!! You guys have been our motivation to continue working our best :3

[Hazel-Bun]

The girl and last mer-man are really great! I want to pick on the maid though >>" Maybe I'm strange? The mer-man looks like a delinquent type to me. Jack is always looking on point haha Keep up the great work! Can't wait to download and read it once it's here

[Shmittens]

It's really good to see this game coming along, can't wait for it's release!

The sprites are looking really good :3 I vote for the red tail by the way, i really like it.

Jack is adorable.. That last sprite with him wearing a top hat and having a diamond shaped monocle just cracks me up

[Mad Harlequin]

I always knew Jack was a gentleman and a scholar.

These are great!

[try10]

AHHH! Too much hotness! That merman is really HOT! Thanks for the update! XD