Pudding Earl breaks ancient covenant. Elder gods unleashed on world. Shield High updates early.

The skies turn dark. Six children cry in unison. A wolf speaks with the voice of a man. Blood runs through the gutters. Glitches are fixed.

Wait, what was that last one? Glitches fixed? Okay, now I know this is bullshit. BUT IT ISN'T! You have sent me various e-mails, pointing out all my many failings, and I have listened. I combed through the game and hunted down as many bugs as I could. I've played through it a few times myself, trying to spot things I've missed. I'm fairly certain I've found them all now. So naturally, expect a whole bunch of new bugs in the parts of the game I forgot existed.

As well as bug fixing, and early releasing, this whole update was focused on dialogue with Kaylee and Sasha. I considered adding a new NPC as well, but I decided that would ruin the whole "Kaylee and Sasha" edition I had going. So instead you get an early release. Partly because I feel bad making you wait for the bug fixes. This means the next release won't be on schedule either, but should be coming out a day or two after, and will be containing MAXIMUM ERO.

Yes, next week is fling week, the week in which I make a whole bunch of random NPCs to flirt with, and occasionally have a fling with. Enjoy.

Anyway, here's the download:
http://www.mediafire.com/?7e6duic393b72gu

And a quick thank you to all you fine folks who e-mailed me telling me about broken shit, and how much you love the game. It makes my day to be woken up by your e-mails. That wasn't sarcasm, even though it probably could've been taken as such.

Hope you all enjoy the update!

Pudding Earl

Earl's Musings: Game Balance

Despite my habit of writing copious amounts of ero-material, I actually put more emphasis on game design than I do anything else. Shield High is more of a hobby project. A way for me to flex my muscles and get some practical design work done, and generally work out what the hell I'm doing. I've got another project open which I spend about just as much time thinking about, and I keep focusing on one very important point to it, as well as future projects. Game balance. Doesn't seem all that important, but it really, really is, even to Shield High.

However, Shield High is an example of an imbalanced game. Not that it matters, it's single-player, and more about the story, so giving the player some advantages, like first action every fight, doesn't really matter. The game so far has 5 fights, which I have to rank the fight against Andriana as the greatest show of imbalanced. The player has only a 10% chance of escape if they use the wrong escape method. And that's really damn likely. Despite this, the rest of the fight is fairly easy, so it balances out to make the fight a race against chance, can you strip Andriana before inevitability catches up. The fight with Melanie is also ridiculously imbalanced, though this time in the players favor. When I first tested what happens when you lost, I had to try really hard to lose. It was pathetic. But none of this matters, because it's mostly about the story. It's not as though an unfair advantage either way hurts the game.

Which is where I get to points of when it DOES hurt the game. The other project I'm working on is a card game (oh hey look spoilers) and the balance there is VERY important. So I end up spending a lot of my time thinking about it, musing over what cards will see more play, and nerfing them so they no longer have their stand-out power, then checking what will never see play, buffing that, and so on. It's an interesting exercise, and one I'm learning a lot from. However, it's not an exercise I would recommend, as it leads me to over-analyse other games. Games which I could enjoy, if only I couldn't notice that certain parts of it are so clearly imbalanced. It's rather depressing truthfully, to see how many people can't seem to balance, or don't understand what to balance. A balanced game doesn't just factor in the pure numbers, and make certain everyone achieves the same result there, but also the utility, the game environment, and everything like that. And that's where modern games fail it seems. Numbers balance out, but utility and environment get horrifically imbalanced, and it leads to crap games.

So, what am I trying to say here? Nothing much really, I'm just complaining, or musing, as it were. I went off on a tangent somewhere along the line, as I'm certain I had an entirely different point when I started, but these aren't exactly meant to be top-tier articles, just an insight into what I'm thinking or doing. I suppose the insight you should glean from this is that I have a big stick up my ass about game balance, and you can be almost certain that any games I release will be focusing on it heavily. That's a pretty good point to make, so I'll pretend that was the original intention.

Sorry this went on too long, hope you at least found my musings worth the time, if not interesting, informative, or just enjoyable.

Pudding Earl

For my RSS followers

So, I dun goofed in the Karen fight. Applied a hot-fix to 0.21, which has been updated, as you can see in the post about 0.21. However, if you use RSS, you won't see that. So I'm making this post specifically for you, so that you can have a no-longer-faulty copy of Shield High.

Enjoy

Pudding Earl.

Shield High 0.21: Angel and Joyce edition

As is to be expected, 0.21 is a small update. Following suit from 0.11, which introduced Joyce and Angel, 0.21 is all about them. So if you ended the up using Angel to gain leverage over Andriana, rejoice, for the fruits of your labour have been written. It was a lot of hard work (hehe), given that I have a limited attention span for writing, so I had to do the whole thing in small sessions. Also Joyce is no longer just useful against Karen, she'll provide information on every NPC encountered thus far. Naturally, when 0.23 introduces a bunch of new NPCs that'll be ruined but whatever.

Download link here: http://www.mediafire.com/?j2myjvg53kzv3k9

And since I already have plans for it, I'll give a bit of insight into 0.22. It'll be the Kaylee and Sasha edition. They'll have full dialogue for the entire story thus far, as well as the ability to pursue random tangents, and learn more about them as people. So basically, no ero next week. Because I'm a terrible ero-game writer. I promise I'll make it up to you the week after though!

Hope you all enjoy 0.21!

Pudding Earl

P.S. Released a hotfix on 0.21. If you downloaded it before reading this addition, you're Karen fight is broken. Now it is fixed.

P.P.S. I am bad at hot-fixing. Luckily I have very dedicated fans who e-mail me about my many numerous shortcomings. All glitches are now fixed. On the plus side, I have become very proficient in working out my mistakes.

Awkward Discoveries

I was fixing up 0.21, applying the final coat of polish, making sure all my fancy little switches work, when I noticed something. I had completely neglected a story-line in 0.2. Oops. Turns out if you get Melanie to submit to you as a slave and not as a protectee there's not an actual difference in the dialogue. And there should be. This...this needs to be fixed. So, in one of the next updates you'll be getting a fancy new plot-line added to the second arc. Don't expect much, but it'll be different, and I'll make sure to include something nifty in there to make it worth checking out. Now, back to work for the night.

Pudding Earl

0.21 Status Update

Like 0.11, 0.21 is going to be a fairly small update. As I get close towards the next big step, I tend to cram in more work, and more ideas, trying to get it all together as quickly as possible. What this usually means is the next week I'm mentally burnt out for ideas, and so all I can really think to do is add a bit of minor content. So that's what this week is going to be. The night after the Andriana fight with Angel, if you asked for her help, and probably some expanded Joyce dialogue, to make her relevant to the new fight as well. 0.22 is planned to contain more serious features, and will be a step forward once again. My apologies for the short content drought. On the flip-side, the Angel content is some of my best works, if I do say so myself.

Hope you've all enjoyed the game, and thanks to those of you who have given me the encouragement and help that I need.

Pudding Earl

0.2 has arrived.

That's right ladies and gentlemen, Shield High 0.2 has arrived. It's been made. It's here. The days of 0.1 are OVER. LONG LIVE 0.2! or something like that. So, 0.2, what's so special about it? Well, it's got full plot-line content up until Day 5 Week 4. So, two full plots, is what I'm saying. And it's got polish. I did a bunch of tests to hunt down the nasty bugs and fix them, so almost all features are guaranteed to work perfectly. The only ones that are iffy are the ending scenes.

So, here's the download link for it: http://www.mediafire.com/?3pozc1066g09z0w
And once again a reminder that Rags, located on the right, is necessary to run the game.

So now it's time to talk about THE FUTURE! Namely 0.21 and so on. This is important, because it's relevant to those of you who are in it only for the porn. Updates in the 0.2 branch will be, for the next few weeks, primarily focused on adding new NPCs to the game, new dialogue, new relationships, and more background. There will be some ero content, but a lot of what happens here is going to be non-ero. This is being done for a reason. By making a whole bunch of NPCs, that are fleshed out, I can later draw on them when I need a character to fill a role, rather than making a new one every single time. Also, it means I'll have more resources to draw on for the casual ero.

Wait, what? Casual ero? That wasn't mentioned before! That's right, the idea here is to make non-plot-centric ero part of it. So if you want a quick fling, you can find one. It also is a good way to include more niche content that may only interest certain people. Which brings me to my final point here, requests. While I'm not facilitating them immediatly, in the coming weeks I'll be opening up donations, and taking requests with them. The exact details on how much you can request to how much you donated remains to be seen, but I'll work something out.

Anyway, this ran on a bit long, so I'll stop there, and I hope you all enjoy the latest update.

Pudding Earl.

Earl's Musings: A note on Shield High, and the choices presented.

So I'm doing some writing for the end parts of 0.2, and I've been confronted with a situation. The player's made a bunch of choices already, that have led them to this place, but now there's a question: Does the character promise to be nice, or is she planning to be an equally large bitch as her opponent? And this is where I get a little stumped, and have come to a realization about Shield High.

The simple fact is that Shield High isn't a game about you. It's not a self-insert game, where you can name your character, or define your features. It's a game about Jessica, and her situation. While it's very true that a lot of her actions are left up to the player, there's also large conversations in which Jessica speaks, not on the direction of the player, but in the way she would. So this is where I get to the problem I'm faced. Is giving the player this decision something that I should do, or is it best to leave it to the story?

Honestly, I'm not sure which is the better option, the one that would make people happiest, or the one that might be considered "right". But I do know that the way this game has been made so far, a choice like this wouldn't really have enough impact on the story to be worth including, and that letting Jessica be Jessica is probably the best approach. Though at the same time I feel kind of guilty. I'm denying the player options. I'm telling them that no, they aren't allowed to be a complete sadist. But at the same time, Jessica isn't a complete sadist, she's picking up a taste for sadism, but only in moderation.

I suppose, in the end what I'm saying is that this is a roleplaying game, but one with a pre-built character. You can only act as the character would, and see how they turn out. It's an interesting situation, a nice contrast to most "roleplaying" games that are made today, where the player makes whatever they want, and then makes almost no serious choices. Or makes "serious" choices the only impact of which is to make a big deal of something. That conclusion kind of went off on a tangent, but whatever. The point is, Shield High isn't about you, and if you would do something that Jessica wouldn't, and think that's a problem, then I guess the game isn't for you. Or something.

Just a little thought I had as I was writing, I doubt anyone will look at it, but still.

Pudding Earl

Glitches and Bores. And a few apologetic words.

I'd like to first take the time to say sorry to EVERYONE who has played my game up until now. I've been hunting through the code for bugs tonight, in preparation for releasing 0.2, making sure all the features work as intended. I was mainly testing the features I'm planning to include in 0.2, making sure the night's work was fine, when I stumbled upon more problems. Then even MORE problems. Then a couple MORE problems. So I'm making this post to say that I'm sorry. I've made a ton of mistakes so far. However I promise you, 0.2 will come to you free of these glitches. In the code reviews I learnt a lot about how Rags works, and I now know how to make everything inside it tick properly. So, in the future, I will be programming the game correctly, without these issues, and that means more content per week. Well, a little less content per week, but content that you can actually SEE. As it currently stands there are two major bugs, and only one that effects the current versions. Unfortunately said bug does deny a large portion of the content. So yeah, once again, I apologize.

While I'm posting, quick update on 0.2:

Content Additions Progress: Around 30%. Lot's of non-Ero writing to go, but that's easy stuff, a bit of tinkering to do in the mechanics to make sure it all works.

Stability: A LOT of issues currently present, but a few re-designs are planned to address these problems, and pretty much every glitch is solved, the solution just hasn't been put into effect yet. Couple that with the content situation, and the game isn't very stable yet. Definitely be finished by next week though.

Possibility of Delays: Medium. Internet's capped right now, so I might just say fuck it and wait until Friday to update, when the cap resets. Maybe. We'll see.

And finally, a bit of news on the intent of the content. I guarantee a complete plot-centred game up until Week 4 Day 5. Future updates to 0.2 will be based around adding further features to the first week and a half, such that no days have nothing to do. This will mostly be in the form of background NPCs, or just short and random encounters to bring Shield High to life.

Pudding Earl

On time as always: Shield High 0.15 released.

Pudding Earl plays Starcraft. I considered putting that in the title but decided against it. Instead it goes in the first line, followed by an awkward explanation, which I then go on to ignore for the rest of the post.

The title says it all folks! Shield High 0.15 is now done. And for the first time ever I actually went out and hunted down INCOVENIENCE bugs, rather than just game-breaking ones. When I say hunted down I mean had play-testers complain and point them out easy enough for me to quickly fix them. Regardless, debugging is debugging, and 0.15 is smoother than ever. Now it's more like coarse sand paper, as opposed to a saw blade. In addition to that I touched up some of the plot, and actually programmed out a new fight. But I didn't add the required framework for the fight to actually be accessed because that last bit was a little rushed. Next week not only will you have a new fight, but you'll also have a nearly fully polished, shiny version of 0.2.

Yes, that's right, next week is 0.2. This is my promise. Now I'm going to eat those words, but hey, at least I went out doing what I love, spinning glorious lies for no real purpose or gain. Now to quickly distract you and hope you forget I said anything, HERE'S THE DOWNLOAD LINK!

http://www.mediafire.com/?c4eoj3hr7r20tc8

As always, I hope you enjoy, or at least find it good enough to not send me hate mail.

Pudding Earl.

The Earl's Musings: Introduction and a little news.

Alright, so this little thing here, the section labelled "The Earl's Musings." That's stuff that I'm thinking about, that I feel like sharing. Not wanting to be all like "SURPRISE GUIZ! HERE'S MAH RANDOM THOUGHTS ON A TOPIC." I figured I should give everyone who reads this blog a fair warning about the imminent danger of random gaming-related ideas. That's my promise though, this isn't going to be something like "So I was on the train today and this guy decided to do this REALLY annoying thing so I'll make a blog post about it." No, nothing like that, it'll all be thoughts on games, stories in games, game mechanics, games I like and think I should give some love in case someone else likes them and I find a kindred spirit. Just so we're all clear, Pudding Games, not just a development blog for a single ero game. Also about other games.

Like this one that I'm going to spring on you RIGHT NOW! So, today began the official play-testing of a card game I'm making. I have no delusions about it taking off any time soon, but I'm working on it all the same, and today we got to play a few games of it. It was surprisingly balanced, with only a few things proving to be truly stupid. Most of them got hot-fixed and tested further. Conclusion: It's good stuff. A lot of the mechanics do need to be fixed up though, since every game ended the exact same way, normally with my defeat. But that's okay because we accomplished SCIENCE! I'd like to note that I have one more game on top of that one, a roleplaying game, but I'm being even more tight-lipped about that. And I've been pretty tight-lipped about the card game so far.

Anyway, just my little piece of personal-ish news I felt like sharing, partly because it's exciting, partly to prove I'm not a totally depraved pervert, and that's only a part of my personality. A rather large part, but a part none-the-less.

Pudding Earl.

Bug Fixes. Bug fixes everywhere. Also an insight into the features of 0.15

Title says it all folks. Thanks to the guys over at /d/ pointing out a bunch of bugs I'd completely missed I've patched up lots of little over-sights I'd made previously, and gotten the game into a significantly less buggy state.  Which isn't to say it's without bugs, just that it's got LESS bugs. I'm sure knowing my luck I'll show off 0.15 in all it's polish, and someone will instantly poke a hole in it. But that's to be expected with a game in such an early stage of development.

Since I mentioned 0.15, I figure I'll give a quick run-down of what's to be expected. The Punish feature for Karen now exists, means winning her as a slave actually gives you a real benefit. I've got the Service feature slated next on the slave front, followed by the Reward feature. Though don't expect those for a while. Other things that 0.15 is doing include a bit of plot advancement. Don't expect any new fights this week, but I'll be adding almost all of the infrastructure for them, so 0.16 can be purely fight programming. So basically, unless I somehow over-shoot the mark, 0.15 is looking to be an important, but fairly light update, mostly dealing with maintenance. A sad state, but an unfortunately necessary one. I'd postpone the release a bit and promise more solid content, but the bug-fixes included make this kind of like a hot-fix, that happened on the scheduled updating period. So nothing like a hot-fix. Whatever.

Once more, a big thanks to all of you who've tried the game out, I hope you all enjoyed it, and I hope I stay on your radar long enough to impress.

Pudding Earl.

0.14 Release

That's right the highly anticipated* 0.14 has just been released. So, what does 0.14 actually do? Well, I'd love to tell you, because I'm sure I did some awesome shit. But I went out for the weekend, broke my train of programming, and so forget everything I did between Tuesday and Friday. HOWEVER I do know there's a bit of plot in there. A very obscure bit of plot. And a fight. A pretty good fight too if I say so myself. So yes, the plot advances. What does this mean? It means 0.2 isn't all that far off. Once this plot hook is finished I plan to officially dub the game in it's 0.2 stage. Once that's done, well, I have some plans which I won't share.

Anyway, download link is here: http://www.mediafire.com/?hxhqeawc7qecqsu
And on the side, as always.

Enjoy!

Pudding Earl

*I'm lying.

Playtesting is a thing. I should do it.

Well. For 0.14 I started testing my new features, and in the process I found a lot of old ones had gotten broken. While I haven't tested my 0.13 yet, I imagine it's probably just as bad, so to anyone who played it, I apologize. While being an alpha product means your going to encounter bugs, I really shouldn't have let there be THAT many in there, so yeah. Big fuck up on my part. So, from now on I promise I'll be bug-testing every new release I make, and if there's too many bugs, I'll either fix em up before release, or make sure there's a big tag saying how buggy the release is.

Pudding Earl