Heroes on a Budget - Development Back on Track

[LuckyBuizel]

Hey , first of all the idea reminds me of two Japanese games that I played a long time ago (maids vacation and money in the town, that’s how they came out translated from Japanese ), and secondly I like the idea although it seems tedious to me that when an adventurer became immobile stop participating in the adventure, although I may be misunderstanding since I am not a native English speaker, in short my doubt is, when an adventurer becomes immobile she will stop traveling with others and stay in town from the previous chapter or will she continue with us but when it is her turn to do his work,s he simply will not be able to or will he have different “tasks” such as eating, eating and resting to give her turn to the next adventurer?

Oh and I almost forgot, let’s imagine that all my adventurers ended up immobile in chapter 2, the game would end up showing us how they spend being blobs in the area of ​​that chapter? If the adventurers will have different endings if they get “stuck” in certain chapters?

and there will be art? As I said before, the game reminds me of “maids vacation” and “money in town” (if they are well translated), these games had art when a character gained weight or looked in the mirror, I thought that since you are an artist too,will you create art for the game?

however these would be my doubts, I hope you have a good time doing this project because I can see that it is something great like your Ck2 mod, this rpg maker project has a lot of potential

[starvoyager]

so is it planned to be a limited resources game, similar to lulu farea?

in that game, you start out with a certain amount of health, and every in game enemy is placed on the map and doesn’t respawn, and you always take and deal the amount of damage that your stats say

and if you take damage, the only way to heal is by paying an innkeeper
but the only way to get money is by killing enemies
which causes damage

so it’s a cycle that causes you to be softlocked and have to start over unless you think things through. you said something about the game not softlocking because you auto move on from the chapter

so if i understand it: damage is persistent, meaning if you take damage, the only possible way to heal is through food, so every hit you take causes weight gain, making it more of a strategy game. like if you take damage at the beginning of the game, it doesn’t heal at the end of a battle or when you sleep in an inn.

sorry if i’m totally misunderstanding you, those were just my things about it, and what i thought and stuff

it sounds reeeeally nice, and WG implementation plan sounds almost like feeder fantasy, which makes it amazing

i have 1 thing that’d be awesome: making it so that the weight gain level effects your out of battle sprite, like when you’re walking to town and stuff, your belly gets progressively bigger and stuff? like it effects the sprite
i’d say maybe have it efect walking speed a little too, but that might be annoying for some people

[failmuseum]

Funny you mention Maid’s Long Vacation and Money in the City, since those two games were part of the inspiration of the idea (Maid’s for how the time mechanic worked, and Money in the City for the general story idea). The other two/three games that gave me the idea for some of the systems were Persona 4 and Vale City for the resource management meets RPG style of gameplay, and Fallout New Vegas for the amount of player choice during quests (though since I don’t want to be working on this for a year+ it’ll probably only be for the main quest).

When an adventurer becomes too fat to go on adventures they can still do any activity around town to help the party. Once they get to the next size after that, they will not be able to do the more manual labor or agility focused jobs. Once they get to the final stage they won’t be able to do much of anything, with a few exceptions (I’ll try to figure out something for them to do so it’s not like a chunk of every day is wasted). If they become immobile they won’t be left behind, they’ll make special travel arrangements and arrive in town with the rest of the party. The game will end if all heroes become immobile though.

I will be having at least some art in the project. I’m thinking due to how many parameters I have to deal with, to only draw things detailing an action that can happen at most of the weight sizes (such as a zoomed in belly grab for example). I might make more specific drawings for cutscenes that don’t have too many permutations (particularly for the “bad” ending in chapter 8). The main thing my drawing ability will probably be used for is to draw new enemies since RPG Maker MV’s default enemy selection is rather limited and I don’t want to risk legal trouble using images from somewhere else.

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@starvoyager You are pretty much spot on. The only ways to heal are to eat healing items (or use the scarce and very expensive potions), eat food at the inn (only the max sized meal is efficient if you need mp restored as well. Max sized meal for everyone is also efficient but it’s expensive) or sleep at the inn (only heals the character that rested and takes their time out of the day).

I do intend to make the sprites get bigger as they gain weight. I debating do stuff with the walking speed, but only for when a character is too big to go on adventures. The mage will never have their speed reduced.

[failmuseum]

I have been referring to the heroes by class and will continue to do so until I have the first chapter out and able to be played, but they do have their names and appearances picked out. Here are the protagonists:

Claire (Fighter):

Ophelia (Mage):

Sarah (Rogue):

I haven’t quite worked out their personalities yet, mainly because I have most of the plot worked out in my head already, but non of the dialogue written out.

[failmuseum]

Since they are on sale now, I will also be picking up a few music packs for RPG maker MV. So everyone can rejoice in knowing that you won’t have to listen to the same 8 or so tracks for the entire game (although I will still use the vanilla stuff if it suits the area. So “generic starting village.mp4” will still be intact for my starting village). If anyone knows any good audio packs to pick, I’m all ears. I chose the pirate, wonderland, and fantasy packs.

[NickSav]

For good royalty free music, I would definitely look on itch.io. A lot of creators post some excellent music you can use for free in your game (all you need to do is credit them somewhere). They have a ton of variety and some awesome tracks too.

[failmuseum]

While this certainly isn’t my best work I’ve done (in fact it’s probably the worst I’ve done in a long time, but I only threw it together in about two hours), here is an example and current placeholder image for an event the rouge can end up in when doing one of her primary jobs at night, getting stuck in the window. I want the Rouge to have the ability to break into the less important houses at night and steal from the residents in a simple stealth minigame (usually for gold). While I am not satisfied with how it came out, for now it will stay as a place holder image until I do it properly next time.

[failmuseum]

So I went to bed upset with the drawing, so I redid it as soon as I woke up. I only kept the black mist border. I hope this is better.

[Krodmandoon]

Yeah it looks good, I definitely get the I’m stuck and not happy about it vibe. Id say the other one to me felt as if they had given up after being stuck for awhile. Other then that the new one is more aesthetically pleasing to me, great job.

[failmuseum]

Thinking about it then, maybe if I touch up the other one a bit, I can use both and do a one frame “animation” when/if this happens and the rogue can’t get unstuck.

[Krodmandoon]

Yeah that could work that was how I saw the first frame anyway .

[LuckyBuizel]

[failmuseum]

I decided today was an art day, and I also made an edit to an existing enemy picture. I have no idea what I’m going to use it for, but it will be used somewhere. I give you, the Chubbubus (and the original):

I did this to see how difficult it was to make minor adjustments to existing enemy images. Found out it’s absolutely doable.

[failmuseum]

Two things. First, made another succubus edit. For this one I made just about everything about her chubbier and changed her expression to that of embarrassment. Now her wings’ top part, tail, the heart on the tail, and the bottom section of her horns are all chubbier/rounder to go along with the body. I also changed the heart decals on her wings to drumsticks. This is probably going to be an optional boss fight character you can meet in every chapter, rather than a single enemy. If I add succubus as normal enemies, I’ll probably change the hue on them, the main coloration will be for a character. I might make one more stage, but I haven’t decided yet.

Second thing is now that I’m starting to add quests to the game, I think I should go over the subject matter and writing style of the game. Main thing is that this game will be focused pretty much exclusively on weight gain and sometimes stuffing. My do’s and don’ts when it comes to content pretty much line up with the Currently Unnamed Stuffing RPG The currently unamed stuffing rpg. Read the first post for specifics. The other thing I wanted to talk about is how humor will be handled. For the most part, when ever I make an attempt at humor it will be likely to fall in one these three categories: something trying to be witty, situational based, or some form of dry humor. One of my biggest pet peeves is referential humor that has no subtlety whatsoever (at least when the rest of the game’s tone is trying to be semi serious or straight forward). I will likely make references to other things in the game, but I’m going to make sure that they are done in a manner that isn’t disruptive. It will usually only be lines of dialogue that still fit the context of the game, that way those that get the reference will know what I’m talking about and those that don’t won’t even know anything was being referenced.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I forgot about what I’m doing with the sort of adult content. Cursing will be in the game but only in small doses and most likely the most severe word in there will be “damn”. I don’t have a problem with cursing, I just find it uncomfortable to read most of the time. Sometimes it feels like a
writing crutch so I want to avoid it when possible. For sexual content, odds are it will only have nudity from the waste up (only exposed chests will be visible when nude, and nudity will be limited to the max weight size, at least when it comes to sprites. I may do more nudity in art, but it still will only be the chest). Sex itself will only be use sparingly and only implied, nothing shown. The reason is I just don’t feel that intense sexual content really fits into this game that well.

Edit 2, couldn’t help myself:

These are available for anyone to use in the stuffing rpg’s discord. Look in the sprite donation channel.

[failmuseum]

Started working on my first enemy, an optional boss (because its for a side quest), a plant that has the ability to force feed people with its sap. It does have an attack that will cause weight gain, but it will only use it rarely and it will be one of the very few enemies that cause weight gain during battle. Since managing weight is key to the game, only handful of enemies will be given this ability. I’ll be drawing my own art for this one, but for now and probably for the demo it will just use the RPG maker MV plant asset. I will likely give this boss fight a bad ending if you lose to it since the weight gain mechanic is involved in the fight. Speaking of bad endings, I intend to have one for each boss fight that is involved in the main quest or the main chapter quest as well as a few others like this one. I’m thinking of adding an ending viewer to the game, but due to how it’s meant for repeat playthroughs, you can only really see so many endings that could have gotten on your “path”. So I’m thinking of giving out codes after each ending cutscene. type it in at the ending viewer area and you can see it at anytime. I have to pay for the plugin that stores data outside of save files, so unless/when I get that, its either this, unlock all endings at the end of playthrough (pretty much negating a large reason to play it again), or no ending/cutscene viewer.

[failmuseum]

I’ve decided to not have most enemies drop money after defeat. I don’t want the jobs to fall off in usefulness as the game goes on and it’ll be too difficult to balance enemies dropping money in just small enough amounts to keep town jobs worth it. In each chapter, however, there will be a monster that drops an item that someone in town is willing to pay money for (with the probable exception of chapter 8, since that one will have the largest differences of all of the chapters). For the most part, I want XP to come from slaying monsters and gold to come from spending time in town, quests and a choice few monsters.

The succubus character will be a part of a side quest in chapter 1. Depending on your choice here, your relationship will change with this character for the rest of the game. Spoilers for the general idea for the succubus quest. Not doing the quest will cause the succubus to only appear as a side character with no real noteworthy content (she’ll slowly get fat over the course of the game). Choosing to step aside and let her leave will give a similar relation with her as not doing the quest, but she will recognize you in dialogue. You could choose to have the rogue enter a sort of relationship with her, giving a new activity for the rogue at night. At the cost of HP and MP the rogue will permanently gain magic defense each time she sleeps with her (succubus will gain weight from the “energy” the more you do it). Choosing to fight her will cause her to be a solo miniboss fight for the Rogue once every chapter. Losing the fight will have the succubus transfer her excess energy into the Rogue, causing the rouge to gain weight, and the succubus to lose weight. Winning gives you XP, money and the Succubus will gain weight with each victory.With the personality traits I’m giving the characters the rogue will almost certainly have the most sexual content. She’s more self interested than the other two, and is only on this quest out of obligation, self preservation and to get a pardon for previous crimes. So her taking interest in fun distractions is more in her character than the others. The warrior is more virtuous and fairly religious (I have worked out quite a bit of the faith’s lore out, so it’s not generic vaguely Catholic religion), and the mage is more pragmatic and focused on the bigger picture of stopping the crisis.

I came up with a few general activities for the warrior to do during the day. First is a standard job at the weapon shop, nothing special, just pays out money. Another is to spend time at the church to gain a better spiritual understanding (fancy way of saying spend time and MP to permanently raise her magic defense since I made it rather poor). Finally for the warrior, similar to Vale City, you can be paid to have your measurements taken at the armor store every time she goes up a weight size until she can’t go into the adventure field anymore.

For the Mage, I gave her a place to work at the potion shop for her standard job (at least for this chapter). For the Rouge’s standard job that isn’t theft, I’m thinking of making it something to do with the inn, being a bartender, or “entertainer” depending on the chapter.

Need some ideas for small side quests for the forest town, they can be fetish related or not (So far I’ve got 4. Two are fetish related, one is the lumberjack one, and the fourth is related to the succubus character).

[SirBunnyMan]

maybe a foraging sidequest, something akin to collecting mushrooms based on a description and collecting the wrong ones could cause some debuffs for the following day

[Insert-JoJo-referenc]

Damn, how do you do it? I’m already more hyped for this game than I am for most “official” games by big name studios, but with like every post you make my expectations just keep rising.

As for side quest ideas, since it’s a forest town, I’d guess there could be some trouble with monsters and such sneaking in by using the shrubbery as cover. As a solution, a side quest could be something like:
A: Helping thin out the trees and bushes around the town’s outskirts to make sneaking in more difficult.
B: Helping build something like a sturdy fence or a wall around the town.
C: Both.
This could just be a regular quest, but could also work as a fetish one if monsters try to impede the work in a more subtle way than just wrecking things. Something like: imps, evil fairies or the like putting alcohol in the workers’ water supply. Or maybe sneaking sap from the monster plant mentioned before into their food.

Of course, an alternative is that the monster prevention plan was going on before the heroes showed up, and they instead get hired to get rid of the “Mastermind Monster” that leads the other monsters and organizes the disturbances.

[failmuseum]

I hope I can manage to meet those expectations. I might not have the monsters harassing the town itself, but I did make the town pretty isolated and not produce much of anything besides lumber. So I could make it so that something is attacking the trade caravans for the supplies they bring into town. I think this and @SirBunnyMan’s ideas will work. Thanks .

[failmuseum]

Now I’ll be starting to add food healing items and equipment. So far what’s in the game are apples, tomatoes, and bread. Apples and Tomatoes are going to be 2 of the 4 healing items that don’t cause weight gain (the others being healing tonics and magic potions, full restores on HP or MP respectively). They are the cheapest healing items to buy on paper, but efficiency wise they are a joke. They only heal 50 HP (tomato) and 20 MP (apple) for 10G, meanwhile bread heals 100 HP for 15G, but it causes the user to gain 1 lb. So these two items will only have any viability during chapter 1 and with extremely efficient play if you are going for the ending where everyone is thin (effectively the hard mode).

I am also adding a fun accessory item as a reward for completing any chapter that is related to group the main antagonist in chapter 1 is a part of (3 times, once for each party member I’m thinking). If equipped, whenever that character eats consumable food items that cause weight gain, they will restore 20 extra HP and gain 5XP + (weight gain from food item * 2XP) but at the cost of gaining 1 additional lb.