Description

Live Chat: Discord.
Get the latest builds: Patreon.
Get Mods here: Reddit.
Public Version for Heroine Rescue Team (v0.51): Here.
Download for Heroine Rumble is at the Heroine Rumble page.

Monday, October 31, 2016

Happy Halloween and higher fantasy content.

As I work more on the game it becomes increasing apparent that keeping the game to a "realistic" wrestling game is going to be difficult. One of the major challenges is how to balance the combat system given the kayfabe nature of real wrestling. Two similar games that comes in mind are Rumble Roses and Princess of the Ring and both of them have a flawed combat system and a rather facerollable AI. (And some of the stuff from Rumble Rose are pretty far from "realistic" wrestling)

My solution to this is to make a fighting/wrestling hybrid where the combat system is balanced around an arcade-fighting-game style and wrestling moves (submissions, H-move, throws, etc) are required to actually defeat the opponent. 

The above fighting/wrestling duality isnt going to change. What is different is that the fighting in the base game will have higher fantasy elements. For starters, there will be magical attacks.

For those that are looking for a pure wrestling experience, there will be a "grapple-only" mode sometimes after the grapple system rework and if there is still interest in such a mode.

Alternatively, ditch fighting all together and let Quick Time Events/ Rock Paper Scissors to decide who gets the advantage in wrestling?

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Alpha v0.14 Released!

Download PAGE.

Features:

  • Endless Mode! Fight against an endless wave of randomly generated girls and see how long your girl can last!
  • 2 New automatic camera controls! Toggle-able in match and customize-able via mouse.
  • A new "Z" key for snapping the camera for manual camera controls.
  • An updated HelperWindow to reflect the camera controls.
  • An additional outfit!
  • 3 new hair models (the Sapphire's old hair model is scraped due to bad UV, likely to replace Ruby's hair too)
  • Textured hair and a new hair shader for additional shininess.
  • A main menu screen!
  • A new locker background for character select screen. Thanks to freeko for his excellent work!
  • Some more tweaks to the combat system, in particular:
    • getting up from downed position no longer has invul frames; this looked awkward and played awkward
    • instead, the cooldown of ground escapes are reset whenever this getting up animation is played and while in downed position, character have additional stamina regen.
  • Reduced AI difficulty of lower level AI further
  • Fixed bug that caused AI to use abilities less often than it should. 
  • Lots of changes this patch and and looking forward to your bug reports!

Friday, October 28, 2016

New camera controls


  • Added 2 new toggle-able automatic camera modes.
  • Added "Z" key for snapping the camera during manual camera mode.
  • Added camera height adjustments via dragging with right mouse button.
  • Added camera controls HelperWindow.
  • Showing the new outfit, hair and RNGed girl in action as well of course.
  • Video is SFW so no armor break nor H-moves.



RNGed girls


Announcing RNGed (random number generated) girls! Hopefully it works now after some massive headaches. The system isn't ideal yet, not enough assets + cant change skin color + need more tweaking on the parameters in the future, but its a good start :)

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Groupie

Added some new hair models to facilitate RNGed girls. Also fixed the transformation outfit that was taken out of the game.


There are some other changes. They say a picture says 1000 words, so let the pictures do the talking :)



Only used assets that are in game. If only the game had an in game poser.... Oh well, there is always next time.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

V0.132 - AI nerf

Download PAGE.

Patch log

  • Reduced AI alertness of lower level AIs further.
  • AI difficulty for unlocking "watch" is now at difficulty 3.


Monday, October 24, 2016

V0.131 released: high performance version + minor bug fixes

Download PAGE.

Patch Notes
  • Fixed bug that caused shield effect to play when the character failed to block the attack.
  • Fixed unique animation not playing when finishing off a character with H-move
  • H-moves buffed more
  • Grab attempt requires two auto attacks to use when the targeted character is in the standing up animation 
  • Further nerfed the lower lvl difficulty AIs
  • Added minor AI changes that reduces the chance that the AI will walk on top of the downed character.
  • Damage to red bar is slightly reduced as matched are a bit quicker than intended
  • Fixed shoe laces floating in the air
In addition, released a high performance version for those without a dedicated graphics card with many effects disabled + smaller resolution. The regular version is preferable if the hardware can handle it.

A new toggle-able camera mode


Showing a new toggle-able camera mode for those that want a more familiar fighting game setup. (LEFT) and (RIGHT) move towards/backwards from the opponent and (UP) and (DOWN) are side movements. It also showcases the girls better :)

Also fixed the following bugs in v0.13:
  • Fixed bug that caused guard effect to play when the character failed to block the attack.
  • Fixed unique animation not playing when finishing off a character with H-move
  • Grab attempt requires two auto attacks to use when the targeted character is in the standing up animation 
  • Further nerfed the lower lvl difficulty AIs
  • Added minor AI changes that lessens the chance that the AI will walk on top of the downed character.
  • Damage to red bar is slightly reduced as matched are a bit too quicker than intended
  • Fixed shoe laces floating in the air

Friday, October 21, 2016

Alpha v0.13 Released - new controls, game balance and AI.

Download page.

Showing new controls and some other stuff to come :)
Features:

New controls:

  • Abilities are activated via holding down a movement key + "W", similar to Super Smash Bros.
  • Grab key is now "A", and standing grabs can only be performed after 2 basic strikes. But it is no longer interrupt-able by regular jabs.
  • Roll is now done via double tabbing a movement key
  • There is also an experimental, optional roll key "R" 
  • Abilities will now track towards the target better, including abilities used while running. The tolerance for this to activate is currently set to 60 degrees.
  • Input buffering are now only active on the last 300 ms of any action. 
  • Block can now be freely canceled by any action
  • Fixed several bug that caused controls to behave unexpectedly
New game balance:
  • Reduce snowballing further:
    • Damage to the green bar is reduced based on how low the red bar is. So effectively, the character will always fight at approximately full strength
    • Stamina regenerates faster
    • Roll cooldown is now 5.0 secs from 6.0 secs
    • EXPERIMENTAL CHANGE: using abilities and rolls with a non-zero cooldown will cause that character's maximum stamina to reduce by 4% of that ability's SP cost for the remainder of the right
  • Guard changes:
    • Stamina regen is halted while guarding
    • Shield pop up effect now changes in color and size to reflect how much more that character can block
    • Blocking a strike will cause the blocking character to lose some stamina depending on the strength of the move blocked
    • Blocking character is now knocked back based on the breaking strength of the move that character is blocking
  • More options for the downed character, less uncontrollable time:
    • Submission holds duration are decreased by ~20% across the board.
    • While standing up from the downed position, the character is invulnerable.
    • Characters will passively sit at the downed position for less amount of time 
    • Wake Up Kick cooldown is now 12.0 seconds but stamina cost is 40.0 
    • Wake Up Kick now knocks foe into the air instead of only staggering (this reduces the chance that the 2 characters are piled on top of each other)
    • Wake Up Kick now have much greater breaking power, however, it still cannot hit foes in the air 
  • Abilities are generally nerfed across the board to make other options, such as regular attack and dash attack relevant. The changes to abilities are too numerous to list but just note that there are super armor/break power changes to the abilities which determines which ability can interrupt the other move.

And finally, an improved AI.

"BS AI" will inevitable come up so might as well address it now:

First of all I want to build a coherent and fair combat system that has no option that is dominant 100% of the time. What is meant by that? Lets take a look at similar games and how their combat balance results in "spam":
  • Rumble Roses -> spam the counter button
  • Princess of the Ring -> stand still, spam attack and wait for the AI to walk into your attack spam
  • Fairy War 2 -> spam the strongest ability, pick the character that has the strongest ability to spam with
In contrast, I hope there is no dominant strategy in this game. Everything has checks and balances. It is designed so there is a proper response and counter for everything. The higher difficulty AI will block, evade and counter etc if the player throws their arsenal randomly against the AI.

Secondly, I want the abilities to be unique, powerful and varied. This actually puts a lot of stress on the AI system. Imagine if the AI only blocks and rolls randomly. Then it is questionable whether a move like Ruby's Jump Smash is healthy for the game. It is barely interrupt-able, it is unblock-able and it deals tons of damage when hit and it has a low cooldown. But because the AI can handle such powerful-if-not-dealt-with move correctly most of time, it is okay for these type of moves to exist in game.

Thirdly, the other means of creating challenge is quite boring. It is actually very easy to make an AI that is retarded but has ton of health and/or damage relative to the player. In contrast, all the AI in game has no statistical advantage against the player. The players who eventually manage to beat the lvl5 AI actually finds that it is a fulfilling experience.

Fourthly, care taken to not create a perfect-play AI. Otherwise Ruby would never use such as risky move as the Jump Smash against the player that can roll. Obviously there is a very fine line between the AI just countering enough versus countering too much and that is something that is hard to get right. But thats what the Alpha is for :).

Finally, I understand that this isnt everyone's thing and thats why the lower difficulty AI exist. The "Watch" feature is only unlocked at difficulty 4 because I want the feedback and to "stress test" the system. Without it, many of the issues with the controls would never have come to light.

I also want to thank the pre-alpha testers, their feedbacks are invaluable and without whom this patch really wouldn't be possible. 



Wednesday, October 19, 2016

New controls scheme, combat mechanics and AI behavior


Showing the new controls, combat mechanics, and AI.

Some of the highlights:

  • New controls setup and improved input responsiveness.
  • Using an ability is now done by a dir key + the special key ("W") 
  • Double tap a dir key to roll, there is also an experimental dedicated roll key ("R")
  • Grab key is now "A". 
  • AI should behave more realistically rather than hurp derp get to your face while countering everything.
  • Combat balance changes. Every action should be meaningful. Even basic moves like regular strikes, dash attack and grab can be very powerful if used correctly. Special moves are generally nerfed across the board. They are still powerful but they should no longer be the only "useable" move against the AI.
  • Standing grab attempts can only be executed after 2 basic strikes. There is a window of opportunity for the victim to react after the 2nd hit. Regular jabs no longer interrupt grab attempts. 
  • Stamina management plays a bigger role now. Guarding now takes more stamina and you can block fewer "impactful" moves.
  • I would list the exact changes to combat mechanics but I realize its too much change to get a sense of it from reading, so just treat it like a new system. 
Since there are many changes, there could be many new bugs. I am looking for some mega-alpha testers to test it out AND GIVE FEEDBACK ON CONTROLS AND BALANCE. If you are interested in participating, send an email to enlit3d@gmail.com.

Monday, October 17, 2016

Fairer AI and combat change demo


Showing the new fairer lvl 4 AI behavior and how to handle (and fail to handle) some of her moves. Still a WIP of course.



Some of the combat changes are:

  • Grabbing attempt attack reach is lowered
  • Grabbing attempt can not be interrupted by regular jabs anymore and is a valid move against AI
  • Guarding is now a freely cancelable action
  • Guarding will now turn the character towards targeted opponent if available
  • Double tapping a direction key will now use a roll if roll is available (instead of starting run)
  • Reduced the super armor of many abilities and/or apply the super armor later - many of them can not be used as a counter to basic strikes after the character is staggered

Combat and balance changes

Had some time today and in lieu of the comments regarding controls and bullshit AI I decided to play some games instead of watching AI duke it out or AI stomp to test out new features.

There were definitely some bugs to the controls and the combat falls short of where I want it to be. The current game balance is fine, provided you know about the special moves and can use them effectively. Unfortunately, the special moves are too strong atm and it kinda turn into a game of special move rock paper, scissor.

Take Ruby for example, all 3 of her moves have enough super armor to withstand regular attack and they all have such low cooldown that there isnt really a opening to attack her unless you know how to use your own abilities to counter hers. In addition, since currently there is a window of opportunity to react after the 2nd basic strike going aggressive on her (or any other AI) with basic strikes is unlikely to work well. The reactive observe and counter plan doesnt work too well either because grab attempts invalidate guarding and poking with basic strikes gets countered too easily by abilities. So in the end, the special moves are too dominant in combat.

This wacky balance is kinda expected given the alpha nature of the game. New features, particular AI improvements will give the game a drastically different feel each iteration. I am very glad that "watch" is unlocked via defeating the difficult AI and I thank those who tested against this somewhat unfair setup and that bring this issue to light.

So I am going to tweak the game balance and refine animations, some of which are very rough due to the model rig adjustment. Expect fairly big game balance changes in the near future.

I also implemented the following changes to the controls:
  • characters are now able to run even when their weak
  • dash attack will now attack towards the target opponent if the angle between the attacker and opponent is less than 60 degrees. (instead of attacking in the direction the character is running towards)
  • improved input buffering for dash attack
  • updated Helper Window to reflect Dash Attack cooldown status
  • added more visual cues to the Stomp attack to indicate its size better
  • guarding will now turn the character towards targeted opponent
  • reworked game logic for auto de-targeting (currently sometimes the opponent is unintentionally de-targeted and thus result in the ability attacking the wrong way)

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Feedback and Improvement #1: Keyboard and Camera Controls.

There are some issues raised regarding the game's controls. I am not sure if this is a loud minority or legitimate issue because most of you are Anons.

So let this be the place to discuss the keyboard and camera controls and how it can be improved.

Please note that this game requires a certain degree of finesse and timing to defeat the higher difficulty AIs. The nature of an alpha is to test and refine game mechanics and its much simpler to tone down an AI that is too difficult and much much harder to make the AI more difficult without "cheating" if its too easy in the first place. Treat the high level AIs as optional end-game content rather than something you need to face in a regular basis for the main game.

Please indicate, the following if possible to help us isolate the problem and how we can fix it:

1) the situation that you encountered an issue with controls
2) the sequence of keys/mouse movements you inputed
3) what you expected to happen
4) what actually happen in game
5) (optional) suggestions on how to handle the situation better, the more detailed the better.


Saturday, October 15, 2016

A new girl appears! Alpha v0.121

Same place as always to download.

EDIT: Oct 15: released alpha v0.121 fixing the following:

  • fixed invul period after grab release not working
  • fixed phantom throws when using throws without sufficient stamina
  • refined a couple of animations that were looking odd
  • Amber(Yellow) now has a lvl5 difficulty version. May want to get some practice against her now because who knows what she'll unlock


Welcome the new girl to the family:

One of the new moves

The playable version must be unlocked by defeating the AI:


"Watch" sure is convenient:

AI is winning!









PS: doing some heavy stuff in the background while recording thus the non 60 FPS


Patch notes v0.12 Oct 14 2016:

  • Added 3rd Girl!
    • She brings to the game 8 additional animated punishments (to a total of 24 in game) and 4 additional combat moves 
    • She also introduces the game to throws! Throws uses the same familiar grab-punish system - grab foe, then punish! Throws has its own unique way of dealing damage to the opponent compared to submissions and H-moves and you may want to test out different combinations!
    • Of course, she has her own unique outfit as well if bikini wrestlers isnt your thing
    • Girls are not officially named yet so they are referred by their color for now

  • To address the complaint of being infinite combo to death by the AI and the snowball-y ness, here are the following changes:
    • fixed armor break bug causing the character to lose all her stamina
    • grabbing-punish-hits no longer causes stamina damage
    • releasing the opponent from either grabbing or during a hold will make the opponent invulnerable while she is falling from the air.

  • Blocked melee strikes will drain the attacker at least 10.0 points of stamina (this makes blocks more effective against auto attacks)
  • To ease the difficulty jump between old lvl2 and lvl3 AI, there are two additional AI difficulty levels in between.
  • AI lvl for unlocking "watch" is reduced from (new lvl range) lvl5 to lvl4
  • Added additional AI routine to make it less predictable
  • Fixed AI bug that caused it unable to use auto-attack. Not sure how this will affect the overall difficulty tho. On the one hand AI will block/counter less but on the other hand AI is more aggressive.

  • Redid default model topology. Which means there is now a new face for all the girls. I hope no one got too attached to the old model.
  • Moved hip bone further up to allow for more correct deform at the waist area (such a hard area to do given the wide range of possible motion, particularly in this game)
  • Girls' arms are now slightly shorter
  • Due to above changes, some animations may be a bit rough/incorrect. They will be refined over time.

  • Disabled the automatic camera zoom feature when camera is moved out of bounds since it was causing confusion to some players.

  • Attempted a fix for a rare problem that caused in match buttons (pause + watch) to not show up. If you had this problem and this fixed/didnt fix the problem, please leave a comment. Please make sure this problem is not caused by your screen size too small to fit the entire game.
  • Fixed bug that caused game physics to de-sync if run at lower than 60 FPS. (Although you guys may want to wait for the high perf version)




Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Upcoming difficulty changes

Since the release of the unlockable "watch" feature, which forced players to challenge themselves against the (old) difficulty 3 AI, many players had issues regarding AI unfairness, infinite combos and game balance. To address some of these issues, here are some of the changes already implemented for the next patch:

  • fixed armor break bug causing the character to lose all her stamina
  • grabbing-punish-hits no longer causes stamina damage
  • releasing the opponent from either grabbing or during a hold will make the opponent invulnerable while she is falling from the air.
  • Blocked melee strikes will drain the attacker at least 10.0 points of stamina (this makes blocks more effective against auto attacks)
  • To ease the difficulty jump between old lvl2 and lvl3 AI, there are two additional AI difficulty levels in between.
  • AI lvl for unlocking "watch" is reduced from (new lvl range) lvl5 to lvl4

Monday, October 10, 2016

Added move request page.

Added an official move/pose request page. More details on that page on how you can participate.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Throws!

Demonstrating a throw from the new girl. Note: her outfit isnt done and what she wears atm is temporary. 



Youtube:

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

Alpha v0.112 - "Watch" feature released!

Feature patch today!

Download can be found at Heroine Rumble page. (From now on all the releases can be found at that page, this is also to serve as a remainder to keep that page up to date.)

Here is a screenshot of "Watch" in action:
Hands free to enjoy the view :)

"Watch" must be unlocked by defeating the difficulty 3 AI first

Full changelog (Oct 05 2016):

  • Added a "pause" button which also brings up the in game menu
  • Implemented a save/load system for game. Save file is at <you>/AppData/Roaming/HeroineRumbleSave/
  • Game now automatically saves your progress at the end of every match
  • Added a "watch" button. Enabling this will allow AI to control your character in a match. This is toggle-able so you may get back to the action at any time. This feature is hidden by default and you must defeat the lvl 3 difficulty AI to unlock it. (Because I need to test the save-load system + feedback on game mechanics, three birds with one stone :D )
    • If the "watch" button doesnt show up after you defeated lvl 3 AI, please leave a comment, could be a bug.
  • Disabled damage number pop ups, they are distracting and doesn't bring much to the game play
  • Reduced Helper Window size and changed Helper Window to only show your abilities (but hides the basic actions) after you won one match. Before you win one match, the Helper Window will only show the basic actions (but hides your abilities).
  • Changed the location of escape bar so it should be always in view.
  • re-tweaked lower difficulty AI to make them slightly more responsive
  • to reduce the snowball-y nature of the game, submission no longer cause HP damage (green bar).


The next patch will be a content patch releasing the 3rd heroine! (If all goes to plan)

A quick update

Been busy working on the game.

There is a feature patch coming tomorrow featuring "watch" and some other tweaks.

Kinda wish I could release the 3rd heroine too but she isnt 100% done, and you guys voted against partial releases. I plan to release her in the next content patch (not tomorrow's patch).




Monday, October 3, 2016

Thanks for 20,000 views!

I feel like I missed the opportunity to make a post on 10,000 views and 100,000 views is probably a bit far away, so lets celebrate 20,000 views instead :D.

Yesterday LewdGamer written a piece on the game which is why we had a lot of visitors recently. This is great news as the game is finally starting to get exposure that was not done by me. (Of course, thanks to the folks at ULMF and Pixiv too, whom without their support I'll be probably making a post on 1,000 views instead.) The only other source that link to the game that I know of is this youtube video. For those that are undecided on downloading maybe check it out, although be mindful that his criticism on the game is... odd.

Game exposure is very important as explained best by this positive feedback cycle:



At the time of this writing 201 of you favors releasing the 3rd girl when she is completed to 137 of you who favors gradual release, so I am probably going with the majority.

I have also implemented a very frequently requested feature that I think that many of you will be happy with. If you guess it right (or close enough) in the comments I'll release more information on how it works :) Hint: its not futa mode lol.