*Journal

I have been told the login and other things aren’t working. I will fix it at some point, no worries.

I know it makes us look bad, but come one. Not finishing this game is making us look much worse. And I know how silly it seems to post a tech demo, maybe once you see the full game it will seem more neat.

Getting there! I do appreciate all the support and understanding, and for not burning me alive. No matter what anyone else says, I think you’re great, respectable, mature.

So, just letting you know. Am still your pal.

Download test game here

Quick game I made to test several things:

• fps, aiming for 60
• pathfinding, for dungeon movement
• delta, what online games use so game time always runs consistently regardless of the fps

You’re welcome to give it a try. Thought it’d be cool to post.

*** nerd alert talk below ***

In theory, to get MAX FPS, fullscreen + turn off grid + press 5 to max out desired framerate. This is the ideal starting point. My computer hits 174 fps, am sure you can beat me. From here, you can stress test: press up or right to create sprites until the FPS drops below 60. My computer takes 129 (complex multi-part + animating) sprites or 2,100 small (single-image) sprite objects.

Delta is the time, shown in seconds here, between screen refreshes. In theory, this means if you move the character or look at an animation, it will take the same amount of time as it would if the fps were any other number. I think this is the ultimate solution regarding slower computers. I had wanted to code two separate ‘behind the scenes’ handles for 60fps and 30fps, and add a toggle in the options, but with this way, the game will simply appear the same regardless the fps.

Full screen is 1080 resolution, windowed is 720. The current HoT release is 720 only. If you’re like me, you’re not a fan of the blurry text when in fullscreen due to the stretching. This way, everything will be crisp… until we all get super 4k HD mega-monitors :/

Also of note, curious if anyone has a monitor refresh rate of something other than 60 hertz. I have read this can cause tearing if the fps is out of sync, but I’m sure newer drivers and monitors sync this to where it’s a non-issue. You may notice screen tearing anyway (horizontal line where the screen updates are not sync-ing) as making sure this never happens costs too much processor framerate, so it’ll be our little secret ‘feature’ between us.

Pathfinding is simple grid based, as I don’t have time to code in something more complex. I think this works well enough. The idea is when your character stops, if you’re near an object, a pop up will appear and click that to interact. Try to break it, like seeing if the character will walk through walls or get stuck… seems bulletproof to my attempts.

*** end nerd talk, begin informal barks ***

still hyped about this game. don’t want to build up expectations, but i think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. we’re getting a full-experience furporn rpg adventure, the likes of which we usually only see in text or pixel graphic games. they told me never to make rpgs as it takes forever but damn, just want to play more furry ones, so here we are.

Finished responding to all the emails. If I missed yours, please accept my apologizes. I am prepared to take my licks. Is that how the saying goes? I may want to retype that but there’s NO TIME GOTTA KEEP MOVING

So far as the most common question I’m seeing:

House of Tail is still in development. *NOT* canceled! Never ever. It’s been a super long time, complete agreement from me / no excuses. Life has been crazy, very understated. very. I’m making this my life.

So! I think this can go faster. It’s really a lot to juggle, getting back into it.

• Story: The text and scenes are all there, but due to multiple revisions and editing, I think they need another pass. Most side characters need some development, but that’s fun/easy given context–it’s only a lot of work due to the volume. I’m not happy with the ending… I think I’ll have to feel it out in-game, so no more editing scene.doc, get it in the game and adjust as I go.
• Code: The game’s mostly there but I’m regretting the choice for 720 resolution, thinking I could do 1080 given everything but the maps are drawn for it (text in fullscreen looks a bit too blurry). Redoing this will require redoing the base ‘engine’ as it’s been hard-coded to 720 for sprite placements (look at me, I’m a dummy). I’m paranoid about framerate issues, noticing weird lag here and there, could just be my computer (graphics card doesn’t seem to be working which is fine for a min-requirements testbed.) I have code for dungeons that need to be integrated into the main build, and I need to code in a BATTLE SYSTEM, 3 variations cause this is how much I trust the base game to not be tedious spread across hours and hours. I wanted to avoid putting in battles as a dumb designer challenge, but have since accepted battles are cruise control for fun in high fantasy, that and story requires it.
• Music: I have 3 ‘ok’ tracks written, and a few more from a friend that I might acquire permission to use. Feeling good here, it’s going to be much better than Common Grounds.
• Art: Character designs are finished, even color palettes. Have drawn a few to completion, but I still have maybe around 100(?) left to make into fully animated sprites. This sounds like a mountain but I have my tricks (putting in long hours who needs sleep). If finances allow, I will definitely be looking to commission some help for the ‘porn’ scenes (please don’t tell anyone, am not ready, let’s keep it a secret between us for now.)
• Extras: Voice acting, extra this-and-that ideas are all on hold until I finish a solid version 1, but still in the back of my mind. (Without voice, are cut-scenes boring in this day and age??? do i add in soundfx blips instead?) Design is all there and written, it’s ‘ass in chair’ time as I’ve heard the furry writers’ circles say.

In order of importance: Art first, finish the code around it, side character design whenever fun and interesting ideas strike, story + music + soundfx worked in through many passes and play testing to check or add to code/art. Easy.

wew. what’s a good journal update schedule? this is too much. look at this wall of text, we need more pics here. next time

Public Service Announcement on the web game “Furry Beach Club”:

I was going through emails I’ve missed, (sorry again to everyone I’m replying late to,) and noticed what looked like another odd spam from a company called SimLnk, which is a brand of Cloudburst Media B.V.

They were asking us to join their referral program for, I quote “[O]ne if the biggest furry game out there (Furry Beach Club) as well as Hentai Diaries and Galactic Monster Quest”. They said you and our website were exactly what they were looking for, (we have the furry + porn check marks, I guess.)

I’m fine with this stuff but it seems so shady. Just let people know what’s going on. I looked around and noticed people hosting the game, and it uses in game currency paid for by real money to view content in something advertised as ‘free’. Whoever hosts gets a 25% cut of sales. Or at least that’s the rate they offered us.

Kudos to the developers (doubt it’s Cloudburst Media), game looks nice. I’m curious which one of you made it. Just wanted to let ‘my website and my users precisely know’ what your publisher is selling.

also “Please concider the environment before printing this e-mail.” lol, come on guys, who conciders or prints emails like this?

—

in other news… your pal, right here, has entered into

BEAST MODE

that’s right, bringing my F-Game up in here, going to finish house of tail like wow. I used to enter what I would call ‘robot mode’ to get a lot of work done, but no, now I must embrace my furry heritage and all the anger and rage of the past year thrown in the gutter and use it as fuel and fire like some bad/rad shadow the hedgehog OC

b-mode begins now

Whoa, almost an ENTIRE YEAR without posting. Can’t let that happen :/

Am still here. Some big personal stuff hit, and I mean huge in a bad way. But, it should be more or less over with and

I
will
finish
this game

This is going to be my life again, more so than before. Only way I know to make things right is to finish more games, so that’s the broad overview. Sorry in advance, but I really don’t want to talk about personal life. I wish it was as mundane as losing a hard drive or something.

New office is set up and I’m ready to work! me and the maid gonna do this, hard to contain my excitement

—secret website talk—
did you know hardly anyone clicks or looks at sliders? the moving banners found on front pages. or at least this is what internet studies tell me. is why i made it stop moving, but now that i’ve switched to https (the last ‘s’ stands for secure?) is no longer loading the thumbnails for the slider and i’m just like, whatever. will redo it without any slider. i mean, honestly, when’s the last time you’ve EVER clicked a slider anything??

Side character sprites!

Included the sketches of the characters as it’s neat to compare concept to finished sprite. All of these are cut to be animated.

These are only 3 of House of Tail’s 100+ characters. They also each get their own ‘special scene’ image. Absolutely insane.

But hey, should make for a fun game. Between you and me, it did feel kind of lame to have to dance around not having a larger support cast for Common Grounds. No excuses this time!

Art Direction / Production

I hope the art direction will be cool with you. Wanted to try something different: expressive and cartoon-ish, but tangible. While it has it’s pros and cons, I’m digging it. The hope is that it’ll all come together for a really unique experience that will hit all of the right RPG spots. A game you can really get into. At the very least, it shouldn’t feel low-effort. Going to have some real heart to it. Am feeling it so hard it’s like I can’t let them down, not just you but the characters. Their existence is counting on us to finish. A good sign, right? Or could be further insanity. Maybe a hot mix.

My method to madness is doing several passes to tackle it all. The characters above were taken through all the passes to make sure the end results looked okay. All the sketches/designs are finished. I’m halfway with line-work. Then coloring (all that preschool experience coming in super handy), rendering (light and shadows), and animation. Just a matter of time. Still unsure on some of the color choices (you can notice the change in Hextilda’s dress above), but I’m sticking to an overall color palette so it shouldn’t be difficult to narrow it down.

Wouldn’t believe the stuff we’ve had to go through privately, by the way. A story for another time.

Kavori sent us an amusing pic (thanks!)

Game List Talk

Uploading some more games to the master game list. Discovered a really neat platformer, “Packed Rat”, not listed in the forum from the maker of Vore Fable, added it.

Thoughts on the list so far…

Genres

Been fine tuning the descriptions and listings. Genres have been especially tricky. Such as where dating sims and visual novels fall into each other. Put ‘hack and slash’ into ‘brawlers’. Didn’t know there was so much overlap between the two until looking into it. I want it to match up with expectations, such as we all have an idea of what kind of game a beat ’em up is, and we expect to see those kind of games if we select the genre. As such, there has been a lot of overlap when tagging games.

Example, Packed Rat is obviously a platformer. But! You run around with a sword and slash enemies. So is it a hack and slash? A beat ’em up? Seeing metroidvania vibes too. Lumping it all into brawler for now.

Not 100% happy with the filters, but getting there. It should work itself out as I go through more games and adjust it to match what’s really out there.

Excluded List

Had to put quite a few games on the excluded list. It gets around the problem of what to do with really short or borderline games. Having to research Japanese titles and go through translated pages sure is an adventure. All for nothing in the case of Secret Lagoon, as I noticed it was tagged as shota, at least the first one. Bummer.

Tagging

Was afraid games like Corruption of Champions would be a tagging nightmare, but really liking the method of only tagging what a game focuses on. Cuts through a lot of clutter and gets to the point.

One of the first tests of this was with Common Grounds, where a character cross-dresses in a scene. Yeah, it’s there, so in say… a picture you’d obviously tag it as cross-dressing. But in a game? A TV series? A many paged comic book? Nah, not if it’s not really a big part of everything. There’s a lot of silly judgment calls, such as We Are Fighters has minor watersports, but it also has gore, so… would someone who’s OK with gore see the peeing and be like “NAH i’m out”?

SFW List??

Started the safe for work list due to some of the games on the waiting list being such. Will add more to it after I get through the waiting list and upload. I know there’s just endless furry games out there so there’s no way it’s going to be an exhaustive list, just more for amusement and needed context to show how rare the porn games are in comparison.

Hi!

Took a break from game making and updated the site.

It should display in mobile devices rather nicely now. It also should be broken on older browsers, especially Internet Explorer. Don’t have time for that (sorry to whomever it concerns). I like taking advantage of all the modern html/css standards. It allows for…

NEW WEBSITE STUFF

Furry Porn Game Master List added, finally!

Was sitting around, put some finishing touches on it and added 10 games to start off from the list we’ve been making together in the forums. Special thanks to everyone who has contributed and helped! Would appreciate any feedback. Will go through what’s on the waiting list when i need additional game making breaks.

Forums: changed the look and added emotes/smilies from Common Grounds you can use.

Out with the big button top menu and in with the blinking links. I have been told no one should ever use blinking text on the web. Call the Internet police-i dont care, haha! (It’s supposed to give that retro arcade feel.)

Not-so-secret easter egg stuff: hover over the fupoco logo up top or at the bottom in the footer. New web standards allow for animation. Had to try it out.

I think that’s it. Oh! Click the House of Tail slider up top to see some character sketches I’ve been drawing. Main cast is drawn, working on additional supporting crew. Not kidding when I think we can hit over 100 characters.

The courtyard map – took quite a while to make. Had to create custom brushes for the houses to do the angles and shadows.

I’ve been drawing maps. Lots of maps.

While they don’t seem as exciting as drawing characters, I have grown to appreciate them. They’re easy to take for granted. Trying to put some thought into them, especially the layouts. We have another ‘house’ map, the court above, a castle, tavern, shop, and some dungeon and battle maps I’m currently working on.

Thoughts on Genre

I’m not quite sure the genre for the game is exactly a RPG at this point, but maybe? Probably. Recently, someone talked about it as a brothel sim, and it reminded me that it was originally supposed to be one. It’s a lot more subtle about it than what I think the genre expectations are. I know expectations are important and can make or break a work.

If I had to describe the design goals in that regard, it’s not been how to market it or meet genre guidelines, but more about seeing what’s been done with character management games in general, coming up with that character icon and slot drag-and-drop mechanic to streamline the play and make it more engaging, (which I’ve seen since then explode in popularity in mobile games… sucks that it’s taking us so long here), and following strict design objectives and guidelines. Which is a lot of words to say things like: make it less tedious, understand what keeps players interested (context, challenge, and reward,) and so on.

For example, while making the maps I’ve often had the thought of how easy it would be (but time consuming) to make it so you can walk around. I like walking around in RPG’s, the exploration and immersion of talking to everyone in sight, going into their houses (not creeping). But it doesn’t make sense here. It would slow things down and remove the focus on where the player has agency or control. That and the story’s designed in such a way that it sure would be tedious to have to trigger it by walking and talking around. Would get old fast, but having to playtest a game everyday since whenever, I can see any game getting old fast given the right circumstances, so who knows.

I could be wrong about this, and I’d love to make a more traditional walking RPG. We’ll all get to see how it turns out, can learn from it. There will always be room for improvements and different takes, and I’m kind of excited about that. About a month ago, we reached that development milestone where you’ve been finished with the design long enough that obvious ideas on how to handle a sequel or follow-up hits you. Had it with Common Grounds a long while ago, still sitting on those sequel designs. It’s been like that when drawing maps. Get close to finished and think up all kinds of ways to make it look different and possibly better. Better a finished game than twenty different iterations of a map, if you know what I mean.

Hi

Hot Progress

Did another pass on the visual design for the main and supporting cast. I believe the count came out to be 22 total characters. There were a lot of interesting design considerations and I feel like I leave everyone out of the loop too much when we discuss it behind the scenes (happens almost everyday.) It’s neat stuff to think about and I like talking about it and hearing others’ thoughts, so why not?

Visual Style

One of the issues with drawing a larger cast is the strain it puts on the visual ‘style’. This is hard to put into words, but by style, I mean how you can draw the same characters in different but consistent-between-each-other ways. Think of things like Disney where a cartoon duck or bear head will be in the same style regardless the show or movie, Ms. Pacman being Pacman with makeup and a bow–Minnie being Mickey in drag, Sonic the hedgehog proportions, how you can tell a character has the Pokemon-look, or how every pony in My Little Pony uses a similar base template and perspective shots.

What I learned is that the more characters you have to draw, the more it pushes the limits of a style. And that some styles are geared toward accommodating this, while others not so much. The assumed goal is making visually distinct and striking characters. And, avoiding those moments when you have trouble telling who’s who.

I played around with styles and choose one within my ability to keep consistent and that will animate well. But it’s not without its drawbacks–the characters in the above pic are a possum and deer. You can see where I made the possum look more possum like, but I felt it breaks the style too much. I showed it to a friend and they could not guess its species. Hopefully with colors it will be more clear, but it’s also a question of: why does it matter what species a character is in a fantasy setting? Does every furry character need to fit into a specific representation of a specific species? Can see arguments for both sides. Forced to pick sides when designing, gotta be mindful of it all and do our best. Made a big list of species to pull from, but I doubt we’ll hit everything as it clashes a lot with the setting and world-building.

Questions of style. Big topic, lots to say, but I need to get back to finishing the game.

I’ve been working on maps this week. Will show you next time.

—

Furoticon

This really took me by surprise.

Furoticon’s ending. They’ve released their final set, Climax. Apparently, their work on the online video game almost bankrupted them. It’s a lot to take in and think about.

There’s a fascinating journal by Seppel that goes into a surprising (and much appreciated) amount of detail here:
http://furoticon-online.com/furoticon-online-is-dead-tail-kiss-studio-closing-soon/

And here’s an earlier journal where the developers talk about the end of the physical card game:
http://furoticon.com/index.php?a=1024

It’s incredibly sobering. I remember when I first found out about it at a convention many years ago and was able to convince some friends to try it out by signing up for a draft tournament. Hardly anyone understood the rules, but it was great fun. Out of all the adult furry games to review, this is the only one I know for sure I could write multiple articles for–from the silly experiences of playing a competitive game in person, to talking about deck construction and game design.

Hate to see them go. We wish them the best.