MilkyNail (MariaMod)

Well, hello, everybody. Good news for ones, bad news for others. I’m stopping to work on Homelands. Sorry.
When I started that project, I wanted to take a step forward. New engine, new approach, new challenges. Sadly, I found out that I made a few mistakes. I have to admit that 2D vanilla game on Unity was a too big piece of cake for me. Chewing it would take a few years and I’m already all tired. So, I decided to work on something more familiar – a text game.
Did I learn something on that journey? Yes, quite a lot. Learning C# made me a much better programmer. I found a few amazing artists, sound designers, animators. Learned about working in a team. I also found out new ways to store files, create useful documents for game development, started using Figma/Trello/Toggle. I do hope that this will help me in the future.
What will happen to Homelands? Sadly, I’ll pack all files till the better days. I don’t think that I’ll return to this project, to be honest. So let’s say that it’s abandoned from now.
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What I will do next? My next project will be a text game. Nope, not YM. The new game will be about a girly boy. About his MtF transformation under heavy pressure of wild cyber world. I can’t say more, but I think you’ll see the base of this game really quickly. It will take a month or two. I’ll keep you posted.
Many of you know me as text games developer. I guess I made a mistake, trying to switch to Unity without second thought. It’s time to take a step back and create another great game. Like always, I’ll do my best. With your help.
See you soon!  

Hello, everyone! In this version, I tried to focus on the battle zone. Snow leopards, attack animations, everything is messed up. First things first, I fixed small and easy things. The next step will be dealing with more complex problems, like movement of snow leopards. My thoughts? Rip the whole path building asset off and put a new one in. The current one is really buggy even without me touching it.

Sadly, the sound designer couldn’t make a song and sounds for menu I was talking about earlier. Well, we’ll keep in touch in case he becomes more free. Anyway, I’ll start looking for new musicians.

- Corrected “Genetails” to “Genitals” in the character creation menu. I’ve also dealt with all the mild warnings in the Unity that popped up after building process.

- Now all the buttons with arrows are looped! Hooray.

- Now snow leopards are not moving after being stunned (or killed, which is removed from game for now).

- Now interaction with stunned leopards don’t cause a critical error. Sorry about that.

- Both player and leopards are now stunned/killed instantly when their health drop to zero, without finishing the current animation.

- Now the second jump performs without losing momentum.

Hello, everyone! Can’t believe this month is already over. A lot of things have changed, but nothing too significant for players, sadly. Anyway, let me get straight to it.

The huge bug I was talking about earlier… I fixed it. Sadly, it took so much time and energy that I’m not even happy about that. Anyway, now we can go back to chasing smaller bugs. Our former programmer said that I should just change the whole asset for moving NPCs and enemies. I’m not sure about that, but let’s leave this question for another time. Now we have to change task and fix something else.

And good news! Now you can move camera on scroll button! Big good change. Just a couple of days of work. Pretty easy.

- Now all NPCs are walking on the ground, not in the air. And not “jumping” or falling under ground when you are walking by.

- Fixed hitboxes of donkeys and bears. They were too small after changing appearances. Some cursed playing with sizes took place earlier, yes. Now you can talk to them without need to stay really close.

- Snow leopards are now moving, if the scene (battle zone) is loaded correctly. They still can walk away from player or mess up their animations, but that’s in progress. I’m going to work on this in a few days.

Hello, everyone! Sorry for such a small update, autumn got me and I’m all sick and wasted. It’s sad, yeah. I was working really slow... Okay, let’s move to the next part.

I started to work on the fighting zone to remove the last serious bugs. Animations, enemies, attacks, hitscans and everything. A lot of work. A lot. I will ask our former programmer to help me in order to speed up the process.

- I think you noticed that the gray fox on the loading screen looks like a torn ragdoll when fading in and out. It’s impossible to fix, so I reduced it’s fading time by 30%. Looks a bit better now.

- Now all projectiles hit ground and enemies as they supposed to do. There was a really unexpected bug.

- Foxes and horses (both genders) were updated in the settlement. They have slightly better appearance now.

- Added code that generates updated NPCs (foxes and horses) with random accessories. There are 4 pieces for foxes, 5 ones for female horse and 6 for male horse.

- Added a new portal to the fighting zone. You can abandon mission and return to Hub anytime now.

Please consider following me only on SubscribeStar or Patreon
Download the latest version (v0.0.8a)

Hello, everyone! I was happy to receive a lot of feedback (I was kinda surprised to get any at all) and I made many changes to plans regarding developing this game. And first thing I decided to add is a little more information about who the main character is and why he does what he does. Please read signs in every location. Plus, I made a few the most simple “life quality” changes to things people was not so happy about.

UPD v0.0.8a
Fixed:
- Now all interactable objects (portals, doors, NPCs...) calculate the distance to the player and choose the closest one. It is very useful in situations when you try to activate one specific object in crowd of NPCs.
- Fixed the default “I” button for toggling Inventory. Now it works perfectly.
- Moved a mill and a cabin a little further apart in the settlement, so you can’t be trapped in there forever.
- Now it’s not mandatory to capture all snow leopards in the fighting zone to open the gate. You can just defeat them and leave.
Added:
- Added.. information! Please read signs in every location, they contain the base info about who you are and what you are doing. It’s a bit raw, but we have to start somewhere.
- Also added an info window to every portal. You’ll see why.
- Now pause menu, clothes menu, character creation menu, settings, info windows – all of them can be closed by pressing “Esc” button. Sadly, that doesn’t apply to dialogs. They use the completely different system of UI management.
- Added pixel perfect camera component to the main camera. This could make the overall picture slightly better, but it’s still far from perfection… Work in progress.

Okay, one person said it would be nice to know what I’m going to work on next. First thing, I’m going to fix as many bugs as possible in the fighting zone (projectiles moving through enemies? Impossible to tolerate). Second, I have a lot of new animations to be installed. In addition, all of them need new pieces of code, so it will take some time. For example, there are a couple of new NPC models (fox and horse) and new sex animation just for tests.

I want to work on bugs and new content at the same time, but there are too many fixes to be made for now. Anyway, we never stopped working on the ero animations – the most important thing in the whole game. Yep, still in process. At least we found solutions to the problems I was talking about earlier.

Stay warm this autumn; don’t get sick like I did. See you in two weeks with new version!

Hello, everyone! The last three days I spent dealing with an enormously big and complicated bug that made pause crashing the game. And in the end I ripped everything out and replaced with a few lines of code. Works perfectly now. … I don’t even have any emotions left, just fatigue. So let me present the cool changes~

UPD v0.0.7a
Fixed:
- Now you don’t take damage while performing a roll. Small, but significant change.
- The gate in the fighting zone is closed now. Defeat all snow leopards (and take them as prisoners) to open it.
- Fixed a lot of layer errors between sprites, enemies, projectiles in the fighting zone. Plus, weapon sprites in the beginning have better resolution now.
- Reduced a huge health drop hitbox. Also made an eagle enemy hitbox a bit bigger.
- Fixed pitfall death. Now player doesn’t freeze there randomly..
- Also fixed bug that prevented player movement after dying.
- Fixed a really, really nasty bug that crashed the game in attempt to pause it.
- Also reworked pause system to make it much more simple, fast and reliable. Works like charm now.
Added:
- Now Homelands has an icon! Hooray!
- Added animation to the pieces of loot in the settlement.
- Now arrows and bolts stuck in the ground, and fireballs destroy on contact.
- Added clothes menu to the hub! The same table as always, but now with cool UI.
- Enemies spawn randomly in the fighting zone now. Totally randomly! Don’t be surprised to meet no one on your way.
- Added attack icons for every weapon! Crossbow has bolts counter in addition. They are super cool and in the next update they will have cooldown animation! Already in process.

A huge amount of work is done, but there is more to do. Arrows and fireballs pass through enemies, ballista (the “new” enemy type, not present in current update) is not working, and all enemies are still acting funny. Not saying about the resolution problem, oh boy.
Good news? I found a new artist and she is a master! With experience, adequate price and skills. We are gonna draw a lot of stuff~
Be warm, stay tuned! See you in two weeks, as always;3

Hello, everyone! I’m back with another update. These two weeks I spent on coding, mostly. Learning by mistakes and reading documentation. It’s not so easy to learn C# and Unity at the same time! But I see a really good progress.

I want to say a word about sex animations. It seems we need to write a few new scripts for them. The system we are using now is looking bad (sad news) and the only way to make it better is to replace it totally. I’m having a call with animator tomorrow so we can discuss the skin management and I can start working in that direction. Thanks for patience! (In other words, it will take quite some time)

- Now player enters and exits houses in the settlement more smoothly.

- I changed gravity scale and the force of jump and roll in order to make them feel better. Now player spend less time in the air after jumping.

- Fixed a bug that was moving player forward without the rolling animation.

- Now the crossbow works as expected. On it’s main attack, it always shoots a single bolt. On a special attack it charges an extra bolt, and on the next attack it will shoot 2 bolts at once. You can charge 2 extra bolts (this means that there will be 3 of them in the shot). Just try, it’s not that complicated.

- Fixed music settings. Now you can save it without any problems.

Hello, everyone! Guess what, I want to try to publish a public release every other week! The updates won’t be as big as the previous ones, of course. But you will see the progress and that’s important. Tell me if I’m wrong.

These two weeks were not so hard, but.. they were boring. For some reason. Maybe because I was working on tiles. Yes, I made a beautiful ground in the fighting zone. By putting a tile to a tile manually. It was worth it, okay?~ I really enjoy the outcome and it had to be done. Well, let’s look at the changes.

- Fixed a small irritating bug, which has been appearing after closing the pause menu by pressing “Resume” button. Now this action doesn’t trigger an attack.

- Changed some grass sprites in the fighting zone with the new ones of better quality.

- Changed tiles so they make a nice looking ground. Moss (that green stuff on top of the brown tiles) was fixed, too.

- Changed the shape of fighting location here and there, fixing mistakes and improving it for better movement experience.

- Fixed snow leopards’ bug. Now they will trigger if player comes too close from behind.

Hello, everyone! What can I say about these two last weeks of working with Unity? It was really hard. Maybe Unity is not the most dense game engine, but it still requires a lot of understanding. Do I know how to work in that engine now? Nope. But I believe that a couple more weeks of learning will help greatly.

Well, back to business. I’m happy to introduce Homelands v0.0.4a! The previous public release was.. two months ago? Damn. If v0.0.3 was “somewhat playable”, this version is “at least something playable”. Let’s look at the changes, shall we? (I want to wrap it in the old format that I have been using for these four years)

- Fixed a bug that prevented choosing female character in the main menu.

- Fixed a music volume bug that prevented changing it from the options.

- Fixed a captives bug. Now there is 50% chance of capturing female or male snow leopard, not only female one.

- Fixed some ground points, hitbox colliders and everything. Now player doesn’t stick to vertical surfaces. (But, boy, there’s still plenty of work to do)

- Fixed some blurry pictures of trees and bushes. Yes, by redrawing and reanimating them. It has affected some pics from Hub and the fighting zone.

Hello, everyone! Well, first of all, I want to inform you all about somewhat serious changes in the next work on Homelands. We are going to add something from YM and this will be… me. From this day, I’ll be working on this project as a programmer. Cons: I will be learning from the very basics. Pros: I learn fast, plus the former programmer will be teaching me.

I tend to believe that the success of YM is based on my work. No one is willing to work days and nights on a project, except for it’s owner. And you can imagine my excitement about this change~

A couple of words about the now-former programmer. I rarely speak about that person, but I knew him from the very first pages of YM. He helped me here and there with games. Sadly, now he needs to find a real job, that’s something I can’t offer to him. Let's wish him good luck!

Now, let’s get to the changes. Starting with the characters we were working on. Female kobold is totally ready. She has all moving, attack and super attack animations. Two sets of clothes, just to make sure this system works. The sex animations are in progress and I really hope to show you them in two weeks. That would be perfect.

An artist and an animator are working on the new male character right now. Clothes are ready (one set) and animations… We just started, so not much to show yet. Just a bunch of very basic animations, here’s the least goofy one x3