Fate of the Squire - with demo! [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

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MonsoonMushroom
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Fate of the Squire - with demo! [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#1 Post by MonsoonMushroom »

Hello all! I'm working on my first ren'ai game. I've actually been working on this for a while but it's high time I started making a serious effort to finish it. So, without further ado...

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The lion, the serpent, the wolf – which knight will you choose?

In the kingdom of Somalaire any youth may enter the fête of the squire, competing for a knight's favour over the course of a year – the winner is declared the knight's squire and will eventually become their successor. You are one such youth, Leith, who hopes to lift his family from poverty to nobility by winning the contest. To do so, however, you must outdo scores of rivals and win your chosen knight's patronage... and their heart.

In this summer of the year 1350, three knights have declared their wish for a new squire...

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ARELI VALLE LISI | LYALL FOIRTCHERN | GARAILE HERENSUGE

Fate of the Squire is a low fantasy game based around the concept of knights and squires. The romances are male x male with some explicit sex scenes, though I'm considering releasing an SFW version of the game for platforms like Steam. Release was aimed August 2018, now looking more like late 2018, but new content is released as and when it's finished.

I'll update this thread at the end of every month showing progress, but there'll be weekly updates and features over at my tumblr if you're interested, and even more content at my patreon. I'm currently doing all of the writing, visuals (sprites, backgrounds and CGs) and programming. The only thing I'm not confident I can do by myself is the audio, for which I may have to hire someone else.



Update 05/11/2018: It took a while, but I'm now 2 months ahead with patreon content, which means I can start making more regular public releases. Now you can enjoy October's content!
PC download: MEGA
Mac download: MEGA
Or find it on the Itch.io page


Update 05/07/2018: After a break for NaNoRenO, I've released a new patron-only content update and a slightly updated demo!
Update 26/02/2018: Proudly presenting demo 2.0! Now with original backgrounds, prettier CGs and some quality of life improvements.
Update 01/01/2018: The demo is finally ready!



Struggling with the gameplay? I've written a quick .txt guide here for those who hate dating sim mechanics.
Last edited by MonsoonMushroom on Tue Nov 06, 2018 3:22 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#2 Post by MonsoonMushroom »

~PROGRESS POST - WILL BE UPDATED PERIODICALLY~

~

WRITING
All UI and flavour text has been completed. Progress on actual written scenes is broken down by month:

AUGUST: complete
SEPTEMBER: complete
OCTOBER: complete
NOVEMBER: complete
DECEMBER: complete
JANUARY: pending
FEBRUARY: pending
MARCH: pending
APRIL: pending
MAY: pending
JUNE: pending
JULY: pending

~

ART
Sprites
Leith and knights: Finished
Family members: Finished
Rivals: Finished 1 of 4
Commoner NPCs: Finished 6 of 6
Noble NPCs: Finished

Backgrounds
34 backgrounds and counting... alright, some of those are a nighttime variant of another picture, but still.

UI
Done, but the save/load and preferences screen could do with a revisit later on. Low priority though.

CGs
Finished all CGs for August through to December of the game. Many more to go, obviously.

~

CODING
We've got a working demo! See the post above for a download link.
All basic elements of the game are in place and working fine. Later game months have some slightly more complex mechanics, e.g. branching story, that may require some more wizardry from me, but for now I've finished everything I need.

~

MUSIC
Decent commercially free music found, though will be looking to hire someone for an original soundtrack later.

~

~CURRENT GOAL~
I'm now working on January content, which will be patron only. We're finally at the stage that when I release a new patron content update, I can release one (2 in-game months behind the early access version) as well. It's a bit of a drip feed of content, but I figure this is a lesser evil than aeons of content drought at a time.
Last edited by MonsoonMushroom on Tue Nov 06, 2018 3:25 pm, edited 7 times in total.

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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#3 Post by Ertal77 »

Following you on Tumblr now! I hope to see your updates more often, good luck!
Do you like BL games? Then join Ertal Games' Discord!

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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#4 Post by MonsoonMushroom »

Ertal77 wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2017 7:37 pm Following you on Tumblr now! I hope to see your updates more often, good luck!
Hey, thanks very much! I was expecting radio silence for the first few months of development.

By the way, if anyone knows any other good places to promote this thing, let me know. Maybe another dating sim or yaoi board? I haven't been on any for a couple of years so I have no idea which websites are popular anymore.

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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#5 Post by Ertal77 »

Well, Tumblr keeps being where the majority of the yaoi fans are, so keep posting regularly. Tag "evn" in case English Visual Novels wants to reblog it, although they are a bit overwhelmed now that its other blog, English Boys Love Game, has died.

Twitter is more for getting in touch with other indie developers, which is nice. And of course you must have a Facebook page, because it will give you more views: you can share your posts now and then in yaoi or otome groups and pages.

Other than that, once you have a playable demo you could reach to some youtubers and LGBT blogs. I hope this helps!
Do you like BL games? Then join Ertal Games' Discord!

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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#6 Post by NeekoF »

Hi. I'm going to go follow this project on tumblr.
So far, it looks great!!
You've worked hard on this.
I'm new to the forums but wanted to reach out to see if you are still in need of a composer?
If so, I would love to discuss.

I have Celtic pieces at www.youtube.com/neekofreeman
My email is neekofree@gmail.com
Would love to talk more.

Giving you a follow :)
Also, tumblr has a huge yaoi fan base. I agree with the previous post, twitter has a good indie game dev tag.
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AUGUST SHOWCASE

#7 Post by MonsoonMushroom »

Alright, I said I'd give an update at the end of each month, so let me show you where we're at :D This month I...

* Transferred my ancient code (from when I started this project ages ago) to the latest version of renpy and cleaned it up a little (turning imagemaps into imagebuttons etc etc)
* Implemented a few features I couldn't get working when I last tried coding - which means I'm better at it now! By like a cm of progress, but still
* Despaired at the hideous placeholder UI I was using and so focused on creating new UI elements
* Turned the character sprites I had into layered images to use as a DynamicDisplayable (so I can change expressions/outfits on the fly)
* Started working on some of the, ahem, adult scenes. My tumblr has some previews if you were interested

Here's some of the UI - Squire's thing is stained glass, so it's all modelled after that. I... think I got progressively better at the look of stained glass as I went along, so I'll probably retouch some of the earlier stuff I worked on later. This is quite image heavy, sorry about that. I can't see any read more type options in the editor...

Individual textboxes for each character (as they all have their own theme, e.g the lion, the wolf and the serpent for the three love interests)
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Icons used in the day planner menu, where you pick two tasks per day:
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Tasks can also be 'greyed out' if you don't have enough money to do them or if they're restricted to a certain day/time - e.g. you can only visit the knight on sunday evenings, or during the day after so many in-game days. I've used a piece of clever calendar code I found on the forums to keep track of that. Picking tasks currently looks like this:

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I've mentioned this on tumblr, but top left you can see a little gauge for the protagonist's tiredness, which you have to keep an eye on.


Here are some general window designs that are used in the opening, but could also feature in a few backgrounds:
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So the bare bones of the game has been coded and seems to be working fine. The big thing still to code is custom main and pause menus, which I’m going to take a look at next month. After that I can start actually adding game events and not just test dialogue.

Also on the to-do list is making a simpler version of the font. I use Andrade; I’ve already slightly modified it (as it was beautiful but hard to make out what some of the letters actually were), but I need an actual legible version with normal caps letters for the dialogue I think.

Anyway, making good progress overall. I'm back to having a day job (booo) sometime next month so I feel progress might slow, but so long as I can scrape together a demo for November I'll be happy.
Last edited by MonsoonMushroom on Mon Jan 29, 2018 5:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#8 Post by NeekoF »

The window designs are gorgeous. Okay, I'm so ready for this.
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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#9 Post by Dovahkitteh »

Your window/GUI designs are particularly gorgeous! I really love the consistent stained glass art style, it gives the game a unique vibe that ties it together thematically. I do think the font in the textbox/menus is pretty hard to read, but if you make a simplified version as you mentioned, it should be legible.

I checked out the NSFW CG preview on your Tumblr and... sweet baby jesus, please sign me up for some of that.

I'm definitely going to follow this project closely; I love how it has adult elements but a strong theme and storyline. Kudos for doing basically all the work yourself, too!
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Writer, Programmer, Designer

Programming/Design Commissions

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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#10 Post by Hazel »

Not usually super into bxb (I like girls, hey) but the designs for this are pretty amazing. I'm interested to see more.
Image Image

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SEPTEMBER SHOWCASE

#11 Post by MonsoonMushroom »

Hey all, it’s the last monday of the month so it’s time for a big update! This month I…

* Started putting all those gui assets I made last month to good use
* Coded a brand new main menu, pause menu and status screen
* Implemented a gallery feature that… mostly works as intended
* Worked on a few CGs
* Wrote three new knight scenes for August (the opening month of the game) to give the player a better insight into each love interest’s personality. I’m definitely happier with August’s writing compared to before

So, let’s start with the main menu. I’m pretty happy with this, I feel like it needs a bit of animation or something but the overall look is what I was going for:

Image

When you’re in-game, pressing esc takes you to a pause menu where you can access all the other functions:

Image

Again, I’d like to animate a flicker glow or something for those buttons when hovered, but it’s a low priority compared to getting CGs and other artwork finished for now.

Saving/loading currently looks like this:

Image

… I was trying to think of a way to makes the file slot screenshots look like windows but to be honest, it didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped. I do plan to revisit this design later.

Preferences (though I changed the name to config) is pretty similar to the gui renpy ships with, since I couldn’t really come up with a better design that fit the church window theme. It’s okaaay, but a bit bland so again, this one needs revisiting later. I did add in an option to change text size, since that’s always a nice feature for a player to have:

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The quit option, or any confirm choice, now looks like this. The sun and moon are actually two buttons cleverly positioned together so they light up individually when hovered over, which I think looks pretty neat:

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The Help and History screens are unchanged from the default; didn't see much point in messing with those. The Gallery is a new feature (using leon's code, ofc) so once you've seen a CG in-game, it's permanently unlocked for you (even if you start a new game):

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Lastly we have the Status screen, where you can check status, money, stress and relationship progress. I think it turned out well!

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The astute among you may have noticed a change in font as well. I knew the font I used for names/titles didn’t work as a small font in dialogue, so I tried making a simpler version. It… didn’t work out. My attempts:

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Image

In the end, the font was just too spidery and I wasn’t willing to sink more time and effort into it, so I caved and got a nice (and commercially free) font called Delius to use instead. Comparison:

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It’s still a little bit fancy, but it should be easy enough to read, I hope? If anyone disagrees please do let me know and I can look into different font options.

That’s it for September’s update. For October I’m planning to focus on finishing sprites and the CGs I need to release a demo (hopefully) at the end of November. Lots of work ahead!
Last edited by MonsoonMushroom on Mon Jan 29, 2018 5:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#12 Post by illuminate001 »

Wow so you are doing essentially everything yourself MonsoonMushroom?! That's an incredible feat...I should know. That's how I do it at SSEA with the exception of 1 mystery VN that's on our backburner.

Anyways the stain glass stuff and just the overall amount of thought going into everything is pretty impressive. A benefit of doing everything yourself is a super cohesive vision. The downside is...well, you gotta do most of it yourself. lol
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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#13 Post by MonsoonMushroom »

Yes, all writing, drawing and coding is by me. I'm using public domain music for now but once I have some interest in the game I'll be looking into commissioning a soundtrack, since audio is the one think I don't think I can wing, haha. It's a pretty massive undertaking, though on the plus side I don't need to rely on/wait for anyone else to do their job.

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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#14 Post by LeonDaydreamer »

Wow, those stained glass illustrations are really beautiful! :)
Question though - the text box ones, are they always going to be covered by the character?
I feel like that's a waste, they are so nice!
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Re: Fate of the Squire [BxB][Fantasy][Adult]

#15 Post by MonsoonMushroom »

LeonDaydreamer wrote: Fri Sep 29, 2017 3:26 am Wow, those stained glass illustrations are really beautiful! :)
Question though - the text box ones, are they always going to be covered by the character?
I feel like that's a waste, they are so nice!
They are yes, but the window designs show up in some UI and backgrounds, so there'll be other places to see them!

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