Team Nessassity and Princessity News - If You Like It, Put TWO Rings On It. Also Maids And Stuff.
Added 2024-07-28 23:35:57 +0000 UTCMONTHLYMODREPORT!
You know, before we retire them as we transition to my new focus on game development, I kinda want to give the MMRs a good send-off.
So I wonder. When you think of Monthly Mod Reports, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?
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Wait no- NOT the delays! Shush! That's not the point! >.<
Aaaaaa! It's also not the pointless intros full of unfunny jokes, stahp it! >o<
Okay, I give up... I was going to say it's the exciting reveals of beautiful shiny things that I love to spring on you, but if you're going to be like that, I'm taking the shiny and going home! HMPH!
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Okay, fine >.< There's SO MUCH SHINY to look at today, so let's wrap up the delays and unfunny jokes, and get straight to it!
WITHOUT FURTHER ADOOOOOOOO!
✧ Elves of Stellaris
Remember the last time we had a looksie at the WIPs of elven Orbital Rings back in May? i just realised that a lot of pictures are missing from that post and I have no idea what happened to them >.< BUT, at least the early framework of the Ring was preserved!
When you first construct it, it actually won't look much different. However, we have decided to add one extra feature to make it a bit more interesting, even with no modules constructed.
Ta-daaaa! A second, glowy, ring! I don't quite remember how it came about, but as soon as we saw how much it added to the overall structure, we instantly fell in love! Not only does it draw the eye to the megastructure a lot better, but it manages to do so without compromising the delicate-looking, lightweight and elegant frame.
It goes along super well with the fantasy of our space elves - their hubristic grace, for the lack of a more profound expression. Their architectural paradigms revolve around perfecting nature's designs, so I imagine that when it comes to reinforcing the structural integrity of a supermassive space construction, they would opt to exploit geometry's cheat codes - such as precisely positioning load-bearing points - rather than going the easier and more obvious way of counteracting the planet's force of gravity with more bulk.
But of course, when you're building an Orbital Ring, you typically have bigger plans for it than just looking pretty around the planet. This extravagant megastructure isn't complete without functional modules.
Commercial, military, industrial - whatever purpose you dedicate each of the modules to, you can be sure that the planet's denizens will be flocking to live and work up there! Well.. part of the reason could be because by building them, you may have ruined the planet's ecology in unforeseeable ways, but um... they're very pretty too! So who WOULDN'T consider that a fair trade?
Anyways, let's sweep that little issue under the rug and focus on the fact that the new Orbital Ring models will be coming to Elves of Stellaris very soon! I believe they're almost good to go already, so expect them in the next update!
And now... for something completely different...
✧ Ero Dungeons Mods
DISCLAIMER! The game and mods in question are NSFW and - unlike the typical atrocity simulators we make mods for - very family-unfriendly! Reader discretion is advised, and if you are currently not allowed to look at lewd things or have lewd thoughts in your country of residence, I legally require you to read the rest of this section with your eyes closed! And no peeking!
Are we good? Am I non-liable now? Phew...
So um... I mentioned Ero Dungeons in the last month's post, but didn't go into much detail at the time. In truth, I was waiting for the planned Steam release so I could send you to an up-to-date page.
Well, apparently the plans have changed, and it's no longer coming to steam, BUT it does actually have a new page on itch.io that I can send you to! Here it is!
But to give you the short version - and why it's relevant to me and today's MMR in particular - ED is an indie game heavily inspired by the Darkest Dungeon formula, except rather than everything being dark, gory and depressing, the aesthetics and premise of Ero Dungeons is a lot more cutesy, comedic and um... naughty.
And its gameplay loop is also hopelessly addictive, which is what kept me in it long enough to consider modding it! Although... I also had a second purpose in mind when I started.
I also mentioned in last month's post that I would be starting my own indie game project later this year. The game, tentatively codenamed Project: Charon, has a few technical things in common with Ero Dungeons. It will also be drawn in a colourful anime fantasy art style and the characters will also be 2D puppets animated by a skeleton instead of a spritesheet.
And, coincidentally, even though I was originally planning to create Charon in Unreal Engine, I eventually ended up switching over to Godot, which is the engine Ero Dungeons runs on as well (and you can read the whole story of my engine-seeking journey in last month's post if you're interested).
So the ED mods kiiiiiiinda ended up being my "trial run" to help me get familiar with various aspects of development that I'd soon be getting into myself. In fact, aside from the mods, I've also made some tiny contributions to EG's code and even helped with a few bugfixes directly. All this practical experience will be invaluable when I strike out on my own.
But for now, let's talk about those mods! Yesterday, I actually put them up on Itch as well, so you can download them right now!
In case the random presence of maid outfits in our Stellaris mods wasn't enough, I think this will make it clear just how much i adore maid outfits. They're cute, they're frilly and you can do a lot of creative things with the core design elements! >.<
And as it happens, Ero Dungeons has a Maid class that your adventurers can adopt, so I could not stop myself from designing a whole bunch of different outfits and accessories! The mod has actually evolved a lot over the months, with redraws, new outfits and gameplay being added as my art skills improved and new mechanics became possible to implement.
As of today, it adds 25 items, 8 of which constitute 2 collectable sets that enable completely new playstyles, and most of the other 17 offering their own unique utility!
This mod wasn't actually supposed to be about outfits at all initially... In fact, it wasn't even supposed to be about the unique recruitable adventurers with their own stories and mechanics either.
Originally, I wanted to create whole new classes - songstress, archaeologist, tinker, etc. - because a lot of other mods were doing some very impressive things and my brain was brimming with ideas I wanted to try out!
But, well... you know my relationship with ideas. The first one I come across rarely ends up surviving till the end, but usually what ends up coming out makes me a lot happier than what could have been. And it was no different in this case!
While Adorable Adventurers lacks the unifying theme of Sweet Soubrettes, it is nice to have a repository for smaller one-off ideas that don't require their own dedicated mods. And it's also really fun to come up with characters and their idiosyncratic gimmicks that still contain the vestiges of those abandoned class ideas. Working on this mod always gives me excuses to dive deep into the mechanical intricacies of the game's combat system.
My first ever mod! This was a very simple override I created just because the idea of my girly guild being run by possibly a man didn't sit right with me, so I decided to reflavour the few references to "the Guildmaster" that existed.
But it actually ended up being a much more complicated affair that required some changes to be made on the game's own end, and the game's developer, Madodev, was kind enough to implement them for me!
I've always appreciated developers who are willing to make their games more moddable, especially in niche aspects like UI and flavouring. One of the reasons I've stuck with Paradox games to this day is probably because a long time ago Martin Anward was also willing to entertain small requests like that from me. And since then, the company as a whole has only become more and more open to working with modders to create flexible environments in which both devs and modders can thrive! <3
So while NBA isn't the most groundbreaking mod I've ever made, it's still very important to me because it's probably the reason I ended up getting so invested in Ero Dungeons in the long run.
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Anyways, if you ever wondered what Princess does when she isn't reacting to cat gifs in #high-quality-catent, now you know! I'm actually planning to make more Ero Dungeons mods very soon, and in the next one, I want to experiment a lot with another skill I seriously need to work on - animation! So if you're interested in that, I'll probably hijack another Monthly Mod Report when I have something to show. Or you can follow my Itch Page to get notified as soon as I release more ED stuff.
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And on that note, this is all for today!
In the next MMR, there's a high chance that I'll finally have something to show in terms of the EoS Lhùren rework! Because, yes, even though it may look like I'm doing everything but, I won't be procrastinating on that forever n_~
Oh! And um... if you happened to notice any strange phenomena occurring on our Discord lately, like, say, channels disappearing, getting moved around, someone's secret stash of cat gifs briefly becoming visible, and such... THEN NO YOU DIDN'T! But also, we've been working on a few new features behind the scenes, and soon they will be ready to go public! We'll probably be rolling them out for testing one by one and hopefully the gradual overhaul won't turn the server into a complete mess @.@
But whether or not you are on our cute catty community Discord, I'll be seeing you again in the next Monthly Mod Report! Until then, thank you so so so so so much for your continued support and impressive tolerance levels for the perpetually unfolding disaster that is me >.<
And let's always have fun playing, modding and making all kinds of games!
