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
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Thursday, 26 April 2012
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
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
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
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.
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.
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.
Monday, 23 April 2012
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
Pudding Earl
Saturday, 21 April 2012
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
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
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
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.
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.
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