2headedb0y

Latest Posts by 2headedb0y

Made a few hoodie sprite versions of sweet baby Kage for 2-Headed Boy. It's not much, I'm still trying to kind of piece parts of my life together, so I appreciate everyone's patience. And as some of you have said, progress is still progress!

What’s the chance of PC being able to train cat to attack ROs

You're the second person to ask this. Unless you're just the same person asking twice. Maybe I'll put it to a vote! It's a fun idea.

Do you have plans to release a demo? Or are you going to wait and release the full game?

I'm going to release it in chapters, one rival at a time, starting with the Yurei route :) so I guess 3 chapters total is the current plan

I could lose fucking everything,

But not you,

Oh God, not you...

The very next day after my last post here I got some bad news. A person close to me who has been a friend and mentor for the last 8 years passed away from an intentional overdose on their prescription pain medication. A pretty long suicide note was found in her home, so we know it wasn't an accident.

In any case, April was not a good month in my life. It seemed like it was one thing after another. I'm still trying with the game, but progress has really slowed down. I know you are all very understanding about these things and I'm mostly beating myself up about that. I just wanted to update everyone.

I decided now is as good a time as ever to add the hospital map to the game.

Hi everyone who's still here following this game development...really sorry that I fell off the radar for a while there. I'm not even sure how long it's been. I've been dealing with a pretty heavy family crisis/loss/grief lately and didn't have it in me for a while to do much else. I think I'm ready to start working on the game a bit.

I've added a zoo map here, including a version for spring (shown), summer, and autumn (zoo is closed in winter). I'm also working on a little lottery scratch off thing in the game. Sorry again to go so silent. Things were pretty dark for a while but I'm starting to feel better.

Hope everyone here is doing well

Relieved to say the character creator is nearly finished. I still need to make a few versions of the character portrait clothing that align with the "medium" sized neck, but I think that's about it. All clothing has corresponding portrait clothing now (where it would apply; swim shorts with no shirt or off-shoulder clothing of course don't show up in the character portrait).

I've fixed a couple of the hair colors, so red hair looks like a natural red hair, and brown hair now has a dark and light version. And the animal ears and tails now have hue shifters so you can choose the color of your ears and tail (if you choose to have them).

Oh, and I still have to add human ears too. A lot of the hairstyles will hide human ears anyway, so I have to figure out how to layer those with the hair; not sure if I can have them in the "beast ears" section or if they will have to have a separate section.

Will we be able to make bad choices with the cats? Like have one hate us? Or do we have the choice for one of the romances to be attacked by our cats?

Tbh I hadn't really considered that sort of thing, the cats are kind of a plot stepping stone to the overall story involving Yurei and their main function for story purposes so far kind of ends at the ability to adopt one, so I haven't done much with what happens after the cat lives with you except that you can change their accessories around.

Probably won't have them attacking any love interests. But I could do an ongoing point system with them of attachment level similar to what I have with the guy characters, that persists and can grow after being adopted. I could see how that could become story relevant.

As far as the inverse, making the cats dislike the player if you don't do well taking care of them could also be a thing and could also be story relevant.

My main goal right now is to keep features story relevant unless it's something very easy to implement, otherwise I'm risking a lot feature creep that just requires a ton of time to put in and perpetually pushes the release out you know? (which is why I'm not planning on housing customization right now if you saw the other question about that.)

So I guess the answer is the cats won't have an opinion on the love interests (except they like and remember Yurei because he basically raised them from kittens) but they certainly could grow to dislike the player if you don't act right :p

Just a brief check in here since I realize it's been almost a week since I posted any updates here; I took a couple of days off for some personal business but I am still working on the game. Unfortunately I don't have much to show for it at this time because it's story writing. I have written it into the game, arranged the chibi sprite movement routes and all that, but I haven't drawn any art for a while, so posting screenshots would be kind of boring, and I don't want to post a video sequence because I'm not trying to do too many spoilers here...

But please trust I'm still working! I've also added options for the player to do their own keybinds since RPG Maker defaults to arrow keys and z/x for select and cancel. I don't know if I mentioned that already on here, but I remember playing Omori and how awkward it felt to not be able to do the traditional WASD keyboard movement, so players can set things up that way if they want to from the options menu.

Also I got it set up so that you can type things into the game when prompted for things like naming your player or putting in a word or numbers rather than having to use arrow keys to scroll through an on-screen alphabet, because that's also annoying as hell imo. But mostly it's been writing I'm working on.

I hope to have something interesting to show you guys soon though, like actual screenshots or something, I just have to get back into drawing.

Will there be an option to buy furniture for the house?

I've considered this one but no plans to implement that at this time. It would take a ton of scripting to do something like that in RPG Maker MV and further extend the release time, and I'm already having to kind of slow down production because of the time of the year.

Edit: what I could do with this, is write the script setup for it into the release though, so that the bones for it is there on release and then on a succedent update I could do the longer process of adding in all the items, putting them in shops and as mission rewards etc. I'll have to think about it but it's not a priority right now

Made hoodie and tank top versions of Kage's chibi sprites. The face set next to that is for Koyomi, childhood friend of the MC. She'll be introducing the player to the various "love interests" (aka Kage rivals)

Finishing up the Yurei intro today too. Will try to work on a few other things, maybe some sprite art or something

Just a small update. Tuesday was minimal progress, just configured a few more plugins and set up an in-game credits page that's accessible from the start menu (setting it up now so I can more easily track everyone I need to give credit to; I've also hyperlinked back to contributor websites when one is provided).

There's one newly added plugin I'm particularly looking forward to, as it will allow the game to use the player's custom character portrait to make different facial expressions depending on the choices you make during conversations.

Also set up text macros for every time I have to use a pronoun in a sentence while writing to save some time. Since the player picks that at the beginning, I had to assign "he" "she" or "they" to a variable, and then write an evaluation that would assign the appropriate pronoun *and form of it* (she, her, hers, his, him, them, their, etc.) within the context of any sentence I wrote that included it...every time it would come up in writing. The macros are already saving me a ton of time with writing, so that's been pretty nice.

I'm not gonna show the whole intro scene for meeting Yurei, but I got the bulk of that written last night too. Although I still have to draw his sprites for it, so even if I showed the whole scene here it would just be chibis talking to each other. And set up a way to "sit" at the bench seats in the cat café, since I wanted that for a cutscene, and unfortunately customizable player characters mean I won't be able to have player sprites make unique poses like actually sitting.

Oohhh weird question but will we occasionally catch a glimpse of Kage while moving around the map? Like when we go out to the shops does he follow us?

I'm very excited for this game 💕👑

There's always some evidence of him being not too far from the player, though I'm still looking at different ways to portray that, and it probably won't be just one thing or way of knowing.

I'm hoping to make some neat moments like that too though, where you can "spot him in the wild" :)

I wrote this poem for Kage:

I don't even know you. I don't know what you've been through.

What is it that you really feel? Why is it my heart you want to steal?

Please don't be so brash. All of your actions are so rash.

If you really love me, give me space, or I will flee.

No more stalking, or I'm done talking.

Do you understand? I'm being as nice as I can.

We can take things one day at a time. But, hold me captive, and you won't be mine.

Dang I love this :') Kage would probably

find it terrifying to be called out but he's not going to say that part out loud

Deny he's a stalker

Keep this poem forever

If you'd call my name out loud,

Do you suppose that I would come running?

Do you suppose I'd come at all...?

(You know I would...I'd come running)

Working on more maps for 2-Headed Boy, testing player collision and currency checks etc. Since there are no ushers yet I can just walk up to the concert without paying, but that will change soon™

Also started writing the first meeting with Yurei into the game.

I’m so happy your adding actual skin tones to your game a lot of games I’ve played as a darker woman don’t often have the option for me to be a similar skin tone to what I actually am and it’s refreshing to see

Wow, I guess I haven't played a ton of modern games, I would think that would just be a given by now, but here we are. If we're putting skin tone options in a game it seems like one would just naturally put a wide spectrum in. That's not difficult to do at all.

This reminds me of something else with the character customization in my game though. I'm glaringly aware that I'm lacking a variety of hair textures in the hair options. I have some loose waves and some slightly tighter waves but no real curls or coils. That one can be more of a skill issue on an artist's part, being able to draw them and have them look good.

Unfortunately I've collected hair assets from various community sources as well as pulled some from the base engine default assets, and none of them have a lot of texture. I'm not sure how much that's going to matter or bother people, but right now if I can't find any pre-made I would have to draw them myself, and they wouldn't match the other hair options in style. I'm not even sure they would come out good looking in tiny pixel art form (again skill issue). So I'm feeling a little stuck there.

Sorry for the rant, you didn't even bring up hair but it was something I had been thinking about with the customization and I was reminded by the comment on skin tone variety. This is just me saying "out loud" I'm sorry about the lack of options in that regard.

New date spot and maps incoming, stay tuned please

Reminder to take a break and drink some water!

p.s your working on the game rather quickly from what I’ve seen with developers it can take months / years to get to the point you’ve shown us and your doing amazing! Be careful of getting burnt out tho!

Oh wow ty :> I feel like I still have so far to go, like I'm still in the phase of laying the foundation for the game I guess, getting all the menus set up and working through mechanics, making maps, adding assets...

I've done a bit of writing the story into the game, but I decided to backpedal a bit with that progress as I feel there are likely more efficient ways to do certain things in the story and just within the engine, and I'll know those methods if I get the other parts set up first y'know?

But once that part is all done I can really just focus more on writing and drawing, and any future installments should theoretically take less time than the initial release since the framework will already be there.

As far as burnout, for sure! It probably doesn't seem like it but I do try to take time for myself too. It was finally nice outside today so I took a nice long motorcycle ride, since my lungs haven't recovered enough yet from being sick for a bicycle ride. And of course I took breaks to just wander around and enjoy the sunlight 🤍

Honestly it's just super cool you give us the option to choose clothes, you don't have to put stats on them if you don't want to, that seems like a lot of work for you 🥺

Hey thank you, honestly I think I needed a voice of reason here, and you're probably right. I would probably have to figure out balancing and stuff for the clothes if I did that. I'm hoping to give these as "mission rewards" so adding stats to them really could get too complicated.

I said I wasn't gonna do this, but after all the trouble of adding a bunch of outfit options into the character creation, it seemed like a waste to not be able to change your outfit after creating your character.

So now you can! Honestly, the bulk of the work is just getting all the outfits in; making it so you can change them turned out to be easier than I had thought. This applies to accessories and glasses too. Since making this video I've added all the items you can equip into the game, though I still have to make character portrait assets for several of them, which should be pretty easy since the clothes are just shoulder-up shots, and then some simple accessories.

So you can collect clothes and change them throughout the game. And I added more hairstyle options too, like a single braid (besides the double braids that were already there), wavy hair, and some other options.

I'm still debating whether or not to make the clothes mechanically significant in some way or just leave them as cosmetic only. Like should they provide some kind of stat boost while wearing them? The stats are supposed to represent your character's personality, so I'm not sure. But then, clothing choices can also be a reflection of one's personality, so maybe that should be a thing...? The personality traits are "the big 5" though, and I'm not sure what clothes read as "agreeable" vs "openness" or "extroversion" etc.

If anyone has any thoughts on that lmk

Edit: also not sure how Kage's birthday got messed up in this video but he's not a Capricorn, he's a Sagitterrorist ;p so I'll have to go in and fix that

Your gift is finished! I made a game for you! No idea how to make an exe file with the engine I used, and it is the only game engine that I know how to use on a phone, so you can only play it online for now. Sorry about that!

Here is the link to the game: https://vocaloidsrcool.itch.io/your-re

This is one of the cutest, sweetest things anyone has done for me ong

ignore the shitty camera quality but he's home 🫶🫶🫶 im so excited to put him on my fridge

Sorry about the weird creepy silence for the last couple of days, I had a pretty gross head cold so my head felt about 50% larger than normal for a few days there, and I've been kind of busy expelling all kind of unspeakable evil from my face holes.

Mostly over it now, but all I really did during that time was work on the character creator a bit more, work on some menu organization for the game and other backend things (trying to future-proof the game for installment release and other stuff), and also this thing in the video.

I was thinking about the seasonal produce ingredients for cooking, and how players might end up making something they don't actually want/have a use for, and then not only being stuck with that dish, but also having lost their seasonal produce they used to make it. If they ran out of that seasonal ingredient, they're kind of screwed until the next time that produce is available/in-season, as far as making any other dishes goes.

So besides adding the option to discard unwanted items from your inventory, I've also set up an item called the "Unmaker" that can be used to break down creations back into their base ingredients. The Unmaker is a consumable item, meaning you can only use it once per dish then it disappears from your inventory. In this video demo I have 5 of them, so you'll see that amount go down with each use.

Right now I have the percentage chances of successfully getting your ingredients back set pretty high (100% for the seasonal ingredients and 60% for all other ingredients) but I'm sure I'll end up adjusting these after doing some playtesting.

Wow this it a very ambitious project for one person. Have you made a game before or is this your first one?

Yeah it is definitely ambitious, but thankfully there are a lot of plugins and community support (if I get stuck and have a question) to help streamline a lot of it. And I'm not drawing my own map assets, those are purchased. Music is a mix of assets I donated for and someone I know making it.

So you'll see in the credits more people than me, I guess technically I'm not doing it all alone! I just don't have a team of people, so I do all the programming and scripting for the actual gameplay, map design, writing, character design/art and piecing it all together.

I have made one much smaller game before just to learn the basics of game logic and my software, which it turns out is mostly super intuitive, at least with RPG Maker. I've never released anything though.

I want Kage to kidnap me, right now! I hate my life. lol But, seriously, it would be nice.

Aw :<

Back to working on the customization options for the character creator at the start of the game. Working on getting more clothing options and accessories in (getting rid of the ugly placeholder hats etc.). See this post and this older one for more info on that.

Also got rid of the weird giant red flowers that were locked to the twin tail hair before. Kind of made it hard to accessorize that hairstyle when those were already "built-in."

And obviously you can be a variety of colors in terms of skin/hair/eyes, these are just "base values" shown that hues can be shifted from in the generator.

I've added more in than this but I didn't feel like making samples of all the new stuff.

Also made the Save menu a little more user-friendly, like showing information on each unique save file (like the in-game location you saved at, amount of $ on that save, in-game date and time and which characters you've met, in case anyone wants multiple save files and needs to keep track of them without having to load a save just to see where they are). RPG Maker also doesn't come built-in with an option to delete a save file from the save menu for some reason, so that's been added too.

EDIT Also, none of the clothing or hair options are locked to the body types, but some of the outfits might not layer properly on certain types (mainly the largest body type with broader shoulders will clip through a lot of the smaller-framed clothes). Unfortunate but that's a limitation of working with 2-D pixel art

Hey love the updates so far!! I had two questions (if its okay and you want to answer)

Are the other suitors aware of Kage before our MC comes into the picture and what are their opinions of him? Is he kinda just thought of a loner/creep by everyone or do they have a different view?

I also saw that in some stills Kage appears to be in our house, can we do things like cook for him or even give him gifts like the other suitors?

Hey thank you :) the other guys are aware of him to varying degrees, since they all live in the same apartment complex as MC/player, they have at least seen him around. Yugen is more "aware" of him than the other 2 rival guys/suitors, as in he knows more about Kage where the other 2 just know he lives in the apartment complex.

Yes, they all see him as a creep, as he not only avoids all of them but kind of just always has a hostile expression/looks unapproachable, and they all get a sense something is seriously off with him.

I think the stills you're referring to are actually the player in Kage's apartment. They all have the same floor plan and even wallpaper iirc so they look similar but have different furniture/decorations.

You can give Kage things and do things for him the same as the other guys, yeah :) it gets a bit... messy because one of the guys will always be a "rival" to him since everyone is worried for MC's safety in relation to Kage ^^; but yeah you totally can

1st of all in the sprite where kage turns away I thought his lower back was showing? Didn’t look closely + the text box placement made me think his shirt had ridden up or he was wearing a crop top lol

2ndly does the game take place in the uk? Asking cause of the use of cunt

1. nope no crop tops here lol

2. Also no, cunt is just a great word, game is in a fictional setting

Can we put cat ears on them (for reasons) ((catboys)) 🐱

On the the guys or your player character?

Player character is a definite yes, the guys... Maybe 🤔 from a technical standpoint it's easy, but I would have to fit it into the story somehow as an option.