Pokémon Love Link - Weekly Dev Blog (Current: Week 11 - Shops and BP)

[Darkfox1525]

An idea popped up in the meantime, you could add in crafting the ability to craft a set of vitamins (like Protein) from one basic item, so you can choice which vitamin you want to level up your Pokémons

Instead of an item, how about using berries as the crafting material for vitamins and have a berry seller set up in one of the towns? A good example would be using the berry that increases friendship but lowers the Atk Ev of a pokemon as the main ingredient and, with other berries, use it to make Protein, thus giving the berry two different uses that stays in character for said berry.

 

[zARRR]

Instead of an item, how about using berries as the crafting material for vitamins and have a berry seller set up in one of the towns? A good example would be using the berry that increases friendship but lowers the Atk Ev of a pokemon as the main ingredient and, with other berries, use it to make Protein, thus giving the berry two different uses that stays in character for said berry.

Instead of an item, how about using berries as the crafting material for vitamins and have a berry seller set up in one of the towns? A good example would be using the berry that increases friendship but lowers the Atk Ev of a pokemon as the main ingredient and, with other berries, use it to make Protein, thus giving the berry two different uses that stays in character for said berry.

The problem is that you can then produce as much vitamins as you want by just grinding money and buying berries.
Since they are expensive and rare they will be a reason of unbalancing.
Especially in the early game, I can see unlimited vitamins crafting in the late game, but bestowing the opportunity to produce unlimited power ups kills the difficulty.
Solutions are for example limited resources: such as a rare base item where you craft vitamins (and could add different berries into the potion making to obtain various vitamins). Or making berry sellers hard to find or challenging to buy from, long heated quest lines to unlock berry markets or that specific berry to level up.

 

[Luximora]

Week 11 (9/21/2024):
Another week, more work, I don’t think there's a real theme for this week. I'm at the point where I'm trying to finish up my check list and I think I’m making pretty good progress.

Streamline:
I decided to streamline how events work when talking to a love interest. The original system was made from testing and pushing RPGMaker’s eventing/scripting system to see what works resulting in some spaghetti code where if not dealt with now would have been a real pain in the ass later.

Daily Reset Event:
Make it so some events/variables etc reset at 12:00 at night, this is mainly so the player can’t do some brain dead gameplay of spamming stuff with a love interest or farming a material and breaking the in-game economy. There's a quote that “players will optimize the fun out of a game”, so i’m just trying to avoid that.

School Exam Minigames:
Just some fun minigames/plugins I added to the schools, there are two teachers on the second floor of the school in Cassiopeia Academy, you can take a test and get rewarded BP. The first is a “Who’s that pokemon” Style quiz and the second is a Type matchup quiz, both self explanatory. I’ll have a more battle-related facility next week, so I don’t want anyone to think this is the ONLY thing you can do here, these are just meant to be silly fun things you can do here to kill time.

General Store:
The general store is a store in Lyra town. Like animal crossing where the Nook shop has new stuff every day (at least in new leaf, that's the only one i played) there is new stuff to buy in the shop and it refreshes daily, the shop is also slightly discounted as well. You can talk to the cashier to also get your normal pokemart stuff. The shop also can exchange BP for gifts. I think I mentioned this in another blog but gifts all have their own specialized moods that make them prime for gifting when the Love interest you're gifting to is in said mood (though all will be happy to get a gift no matter what, you just get bonus points for lining up the mood with the gift correctly). (Moods of LI’s reset daily). You can spend 230 BP for 10 random gifts or 23 BP for 1 random gift. This is just so you can save up on random gifts over time for any specific occasion when needed. I also had some fun writing the cashiers dialogue, I might make a event for her later in another update, probobly not a fully blown love intrest but maybe some side quest for a sex scene or something, definitely not for 1.0 though, I'm already biting alot more than I can chew.

Pokemon Center BP:
In general I like the idea of BP returning random things, you kinda gotta work with the scraps luck gives you. You can roll for the following: Berries, usable items (So potions, ethers, revives etc.), held items and pokeballs, each have different prices for BP cost. I think it’s a fun system, though I won’t really know till’ people test it out. I think it will have a good gameplay loop of playing/battling for BP then exchanging that BP for items that should make your battling better, which then loops back into getting better items. It still needs some work for sure, I’m playing with the probability code and stuff to make it not frustrating which is really most of the work im doing when it comes to this system, when your dealing with randomness in games there is a fine line between frustration and fun, it's definitely the top priority to finalize next week since I feel like i’m so close to making it feel good. But yeah, the framework is there and I'm feeling pretty good about it. BTW I totally get being kinda skepticle of the system but I do think its got potential, if it sucks, thats fine, I can easily change it to a more traditional BP system in another update.

Mood Character Portraits:
I already mentioned moods, the player needs to be able to read the mood of the character their talking to as that's a pretty big part of the romance system i’ve coded so I got started on making some art, here is the Mom characters portraits:



That's about it for this week, soon enough I think I’m going to get to the point where coding and eventing are done, and when that happens it’ll be time for art, sex scenes etc, I want to get coding and eventing done by next week, but if i'm being realistic it’ll take at least 2 to 3 more, we’ll see though maybe if i really go on that grind i can get it done. Speaking of art I’m not fully sure of the artstyle I'll do, most of y’all will have seen the character portraits in pixel art. I think that’s fine for portraits but I think the sex scenes themselves should be drawn, I do wonder if I can pull it off. I can draw pretty well IMO but when it comes to drawing on my IPad the slipper surface compared to rough drawing paper is so weird, I can't get used to it. I have ordered a “Paper-like” screen protector for it so hopefully that helps, we’ll see, worst case scenario the sex scenes are also pixel art, which i’m pretty confident in my own pixel art ability to make that look sexy.

Pictures

 

[Penumbral Evanescence]

Since they are expensive and rare they will be a reason of unbalancing.
Especially in the early game, I can see unlimited vitamins crafting in the late game, but bestowing the opportunity to produce unlimited power ups kills the difficulty.

Yeah, berries for vitamin production can be kinda exploitable in a sense.

Unless if you make the berries hard to procure/$$ to purchase from the berry sellers. Or perhaps make the berry sellers appear more rarely in-game perhaps only on certain days or something like that.

Or maybe make it like a tiered process. So, start with berries as the base, which have a small percentage to then craft berry juice from, and then combine the juice with some other ingredient (I dunno like a poffin or something lmao just thinking out loud) and then voila you have your vitamins, but only going through multiple steps with low-medium probably of cooking up said vitamins.

 

[zARRR]

And he is back with a new great dev log

General Store:
The general store is a store in Lyra town. Like animal crossing where the Nook shop has new stuff every day (at least in new leaf, that's the only one i played) there is new stuff to buy in the shop and it refreshes daily, the shop is also slightly discounted as well. You can talk to the cashier to also get your normal pokemart stuff. The shop also can exchange BP for gifts. I think I mentioned this in another blog but gifts all have their own specialized moods that make them prime for gifting when the Love interest you're gifting to is in said mood (though all will be happy to get a gift no matter what, you just get bonus points for lining up the mood with the gift correctly). (Moods of LI’s reset daily). You can spend 230 BP for 10 random gifts or 23 BP for 1 random gift. This is just so you can save up on random gifts over time for any specific occasion when needed. I also had some fun writing the cashiers dialogue, I might make a event for her later in another update, probobly not a fully blown love intrest but maybe some side quest for a sex scene or something, definitely not for 1.0 though, I'm already biting alot more than I can chew.

Pokemon Center BP:
In general I like the idea of BP returning random things, you kinda gotta work with the scraps luck gives you. You can roll for the following: Berries, usable items (So potions, ethers, revives etc.), held items and pokeballs, each have different prices for BP cost. I think it’s a fun system, though I won’t really know till’ people test it out. I think it will have a good gameplay loop of playing/battling for BP then exchanging that BP for items that should make your battling better, which then loops back into getting better items. It still needs some work for sure, I’m playing with the probability code and stuff to make it not frustrating which is really most of the work im doing when it comes to this system, when your dealing with randomness in games there is a fine line between frustration and fun, it's definitely the top priority to finalize next week since I feel like i’m so close to making it feel good. But yeah, the framework is there and I'm feeling pretty good about it. BTW I totally get being kinda skepticle of the system but I do think its got potential, if it sucks, thats fine, I can easily change it to a more traditional BP system in another update.

Mood Character Portraits:
I already mentioned moods, the player needs to be able to read the mood of the character their talking to as that's a pretty big part of the romance system i’ve coded so I got started on making some art, here is the Mom characters portraits:
View attachment 4057472
View attachment 4057473

That's about it for this week, soon enough I think I’m going to get to the point where coding and eventing are done, and when that happens it’ll be time for art, sex scenes etc, I want to get coding and eventing done by next week, but if i'm being realistic it’ll take at least 2 to 3 more, we’ll see though maybe if i really go on that grind i can get it done. Speaking of art I’m not fully sure of the artstyle I'll do, most of y’all will have seen the character portraits in pixel art. I think that’s fine for portraits but I think the sex scenes themselves should be drawn, I do wonder if I can pull it off. I can draw pretty well IMO but when it comes to drawing on my IPad the slipper surface compared to rough drawing paper is so weird, I can't get used to it. I have ordered a “Paper-like” screen protector for it so hopefully that helps, we’ll see, worst case scenario the sex scenes are also pixel art, which i’m pretty confident in my own pixel art ability to make that look sexy.

I like the other ideas, therefore I’ll discuss these ones:

The idea of a general store that changes products it’s a fun idea, it gives a sense of dynamic and life to shops but also a sense of agency to go and check them daily.
So you can strategically decide what to buy or if you should wait for sales, if you played New leaf (Which is the best one) then it can be very fun, especially when rare items are sold.
The cashier idea is also cute, but as you said it‘s better to introduce it later (Oak's words echoed... "There's a time and place for everything but not now!").
I always have the fear that adding too many side LIs could hinder the progress of the game; if you have seen the landscape of F95, certain developers start throwing new LIs after LIs, forsaking the main girls and the other already existing side gals.
But you seem to have everything well planned.

For the BP dilemma it could risk to turn into the most frustrating gameplay gimmick ever, but it’s better to test it and see the reception from players, and of course, if such system does work.

Yes the sex scenes, one of the key parts of the game, during the week I pondered if your pixelated art can feel homogeneous to the one of Gen 5. If the result is lukewarm at worst, the backlash of the design can hurt the art direction overall with the incongruity of styles.
For the drawing dilemma I was and still am on the same boat as you, I just hate drawing on a screen, I love using paper and pencils, therefore I terribly understand.
As a solution you can scan your drawings and upload them but I also don’t think that could be a definitive solution.

Ah in addition, the soul for any motionless sex scene with only transition images, is of course (other than the art) the writing.
Countless Japanese Visual novels have managed to glue their players to the screen with intense emotional/erotic dialogues to fill the void of movement (also voice acting but that’s for another discussion).
Hell, there are Visual novels with decent or mediocre art who won just by having an able writer.
Anyways best of luck for the drawing problem!

Yeah, berries for vitamin production can be kinda exploitable in a sense.

Unless if you make the berries hard to procure/$$ to purchase from the berry sellers. Or perhaps make the berry sellers appear more rarely in-game perhaps only on certain days or something like that.

Or maybe make it like a tiered process. So, start with berries as the base, which have a small percentage to then craft berry juice from, and then combine the juice with some other ingredient (I dunno like a poffin or something lmao just thinking out loud) and then voila you have your vitamins, but only going through multiple steps with low-medium probably of cooking up said vitamins.

Yes! We turn the berries expensive as fuck as our fruits and vegetables with inflation, that’s the solution!

 

[Penumbral Evanescence]

We turn the berries expensive as fuck as our fruits and vegetables with inflation, that’s the solution!

Lol, yeah I mean that might help with not making it so exploitable by grinding money and buying the berries to be used in vitamin production.

Oak's words echoed... "There's a time and place for everything but not now!

Yeah Oak's thinking certainly doesn't apply to Delia Ketchum that's for sure There's always a time and place for Delia in his eyes

Speaking of art I’m not fully sure of the artstyle I'll do, most of y’all will have seen the character portraits in pixel art. I think that’s fine for portraits

I love the pixel art style! Gives off a unique Poke/Milf vibe to it haha

we’ll see, worst case scenario the sex scenes are also pixel art, which i’m pretty confident in my own pixel art ability to make that look sexy

Sex scenes being pixelated is good. I mean, if drawing the art is too much trouble for what it's worth, having pixelated sex scenes might be the more consistent option since you seem to be leaning moreso towards pixelated art styles as the major theme of the game.

 

[Luximora]

I always have the fear that adding too many side LIs could hinder the progress of the game; if you have seen the landscape of F95, certain developers start throwing new LIs after LIs, forsaking the main girls and the other already existing side gals.

For sure, I think it's better to have fewer fleshed out LI's compared to many basic LI's.

For the BP dilemma it could risk to turn into the most frustrating gameplay gimmick ever, but it’s better to test it and see the reception from players, and of course, if such system does work.

Absolutely fair take, and you might be right, its definitely something I need to be careful with, I could add some things so the player has more control over what they get. The idea was kinda inspired very vaguely by Rouge-like games, each run is different and you need to win by getting through with what luck gifts you, but yeah, I need to be careful.

Yes the sex scenes, one of the key parts of the game, during the week I pondered if your pixelated art can feel homogeneous to the one of Gen 5. If the result is lukewarm at worst, the backlash of the design can hurt the art direction overall with the incongruity of styles.
For the drawing dilemma I was and still am on the same boat as you, I just hate drawing on a screen, I love using paper and pencils, therefore I terribly understand.
As a solution you can scan your drawings and upload them but I also don’t think that could be a definitive solution.

The gen 5 pixel art style is definitely tricky, each sprite seems to have a unique color pallet and they don't seem to have any reservations for limiting their color pallet which is a very different style then I'm used to but I think I can thread the needle where its important, like battle trainer portraits and stuff.

Ah in addition, the soul for any motionless sex scene with only transition images, is of course (other than the art) the writing.
Countless Japanese Visual novels have managed to glue their players to the screen with intense emotional/erotic dialogues to fill the void of movement (also voice acting but that’s for another discussion).
Hell, there are Visual novels with decent or mediocre art who won just by having an able writer.
Anyways best of luck for the drawing problem!

For sure, writing is actually something I'd say is one of my stronger suites, making character that someone cares about and feel some kind of connect with. It feels a little funny to say but you can get alot of characterization by seeing how a character approaches sex, it tells you alot about their personality, are they a prude, experienced, kinky etc.

I love the pixel art style! Gives off a unique Poke/Milf vibe to it haha

Sex scenes being pixelated is good. I mean, if drawing the art is too much trouble for what it's worth, having pixelated sex scenes might be the more consistent option since you seem to be leaning moreso towards pixelated art styles as the major theme of the game.

I'm glad you like the style! I really tried to channel MILF for that character so im glad it got that vibe across. There is another thing i forgot to mention, becuase of the limitations of RPG maker the resolution is locked to smaller then usual size, seeing how the image compresses for the game will be important but I dunno, maybe it can add some charm. We'll see, if you were talking to me in the past I'd be super against pixel art sex scenes since I didn't think it'd be possible to make sexy, but after learning about the artist/game dev Dark Red its kinda opened my eyes, I'll still try and shoot for drawn sex scenes first but I'm not against pixel art sex scenes.

 

[zARRR]

Lol, yeah I mean that might help with not making it so exploitable by grinding money and buying the berries to be used in vitamin production.

Wealth spikes are a great wall for leveling up, but if grinding exist then it’s just a matter of time and annoyance.

Yeah Oak's thinking certainly doesn't apply to Delia Ketchum that's for sure There's always a time and place for Delia in his eyes

View attachment 4057622

Maybe he was the father all along…
Or that Mr mime

Sex scenes being pixelated is good. I mean, if drawing the art is too much trouble for what it's worth, having pixelated sex scenes might be the more consistent option since you seem to be leaning moreso towards pixelated art styles as the major theme of the game.

And do we love pixels.

Absolutely fair take, and you might be right, its definitely something I need to be careful with, I could add some things so the player has more control over what they get. The idea was kinda inspired very vaguely by Rouge-like games, each run is different and you need to win by getting through with what luck gifts you, but yeah, I need to be careful.

I see, although roguelikes are tricky to develop; gameplay is everything, refreshing abilities, enemies and worlds is a must.
Variety is the key word.
You aim already to turn the game into an open world where you can travel and go wherever you want, that already adds replayability.
Any additional roguelike system as much as it’s appreciated, for upgrading thegameplay, will always be observed with skepticism.
Because randomness is fun only when it’s not frustrating.
we will discuss it more when the skeleton of said system arrives.

For sure, writing is actually something I'd say is one of my stronger suites, making character that someone cares about and feel some kind of connect with. It feels a little funny to say but you can get alot of characterization by seeing how a character approaches sex, it tells you alot about their personality, are they a prude, experienced, kinky etc.

Great.
And for sure, it’s the little things that create character development.
A bit amin on how trainers view their Pokémons.
(Although mainline Pokémon is a see saw between evil bastards that abuse pokemons or trainers that treat them as bffs)

 

[Penumbral Evanescence]

pixel art sex scenes

Well, you'd be surprised, if developed well, some games on the Zone actually have some pretty *fire* pixel animated sex scenes

Take, for example, Aurelia

 

[Penumbral Evanescence]

mainline Pokémon is a see saw between evil bastards that abuse pokemons

So many examples come to my mind when you mentioned that point



Paul from the anime wasn't evil per-se, but boy oh boy was he a douche


And then

You must be registered to see the links

and how neglectful he was of his Charmander

You must be registered to see the links

.... -0-

 

[zARRR]

Well, you'd be surprised, if developed well, some games on the Zone actually have some pretty *fire* pixel animated sex scenes

Take, for example, Aurelia

View attachment 4057824

View attachment 4057822

Aurelia is a classic but don’t forget the Goty Summer memories.
Realization that most sex pixelated games are Japanese ones
Ah yes there aren’t many for now

So many examples come to my mind when you mentioned that point

View attachment 4057827

Fuck this guy, he was evil as fuck for a Pokémon movie aimed especially for children.

Paul was edgy and douche but not really evil

 

[Penumbral Evanescence]

Goty Summer memories

Yeah I remember that game, loved the pixel art in it

 

[Jaike]

View attachment 4057837

The whip's obviously a whip, but those Pokemon outfits are something else. They just need stretchy crotch pieces with openings in the front and back. And maybe gimp hoods and nipple piercings. "Work those bodies, slaves!"

 

[zARRR]

The whip's obviously a whip, but those Pokemon outfits are something else. They just need stretchy crotch pieces with openings in the front and back. And maybe gimp hoods and nipple piercings. "Work those bodies, slaves!"

Early Pokémon content is in that grey area of being a successful product but not yet a fully established kid friendly brand.
So we do get such memorable content as:

 

[Luximora]

Aurelia is a classic but don’t forget the Goty Summer memories.
Realization that most sex pixelated games are Japanese ones

God how could I forget about peak, those where the first few h-games ive ever played to!

Early Pokémon content is in that grey area of being a successful product but not yet a fully established kid friendly brand.
So we do get such memorable content as:
View attachment 4060401
View attachment 4060406
View attachment 4060409

Early pokemon was ridiculous but in a good stupid way, so many memories watching it as a kid on Netflix man, been thinking about rewatching it recently

 

[zARRR]

God how could I forget about peak, those where the first few h-games ive ever played to!

Yeah, summer memories is peak. Simple yet effective, it’s fun, kinky, atmospheric and straightforward.
Childhood summertime that ends into the protagonist conquering the town, anyone‘s adolescent dream.(And I guess you are aiming too at creating a same atmosphere with a young protagonist).
There are so many copycats now of SM, some even with better writing but they fail hard on the gameplay, which was the heart of the game.
I could write an essay on how it still rocks to this day.

Early pokemon was ridiculous but in a good stupid way, so many memories watching it as a kid on Netflix man, been thinking about rewatching it recently

Me too! I remember running at home hoping to find a Pokémon episode.
Even arriving at recording each episode.
Kanto and Johto were the best, the trio Brock and Misty worked so well they had to slowly replaced it.
That’s why when everyone talks about Pokémon anime, thinks about the first seasons.
It is definitely nostalgia that is holding us back, remembering them fondly, but some episodes were actually creative and ridiculous.
Gen 5 anime was the worst, after that I stopped watching it.