Tuesday, June 7, 2016

0.5.7 release and few ideas

This version came out bit earlier than I expected, and mostly due to first mentioned feature - ability to copy text.
Now, this is actually pretty important thing to me, as it allows:
1. proofreaders/players to comment on the misspells more easily.
2. copy over debug screen in case something goes horribly wrong and I could get some idea what may cause it. 
3. save data from the game in text form, which may be used in some manner  - basically what I'm saying - it is an option which gives access to stuff like residents transfer over game versions. That is still tied to axma engine and I haven't really done any encrypt-decrypt stuff yet at all, but possibility is there, and I consider it to be pretty important. 

Now, as I'm working on content, there's also glaring problem with balance. I consider game to be not challenging enough in terms of training so I would also like to go with a poll. As of now I have minor idea how to make it slightly more adequate which I gonna write down. 

Current willpower stat would be directly measured against your guild(order) rank. If girl's willpower stat is higher than your rank, she would get high penalty to obedience (based on courage/confidence., compensated by loyalty perhaps), basically making obedience go red in 2-3 days. I could also tie low obedience to mischievous stuff like loss of money/food and causing disobedience with other slaves.   This would make order advancement way more important although this would also require me to finish main quest line first. Naturally, in sandbox mode you start at max rank so this does not play nearly same role. 

So the poll goes as following: how hard is slave training (as in how easy to make them do what you want from them instead of being resistant etc) looks to you right now? 
http://www.strawpoll.me/10423619

21 comments:

  1. when it comes to training it's kinda hard. since the game lacks a more in depth tutorial your kinda stuck wondering what would be useful to train besides what is best for hunting and farming and then the girl is untouchable for a week. that is fine later since you will have other girls but when you just start with one/two girls your kind of sitting on your hands. I know in your help notes you say food is the most important thing but money makes it hard to get new girls, training and so on. I understand late game it isn't an issue which is why it seems easy from a design perceptive. I would assume the best way is to have a more define explanation like you did for confidence, charm and etc. before you make it harder

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    1. Good point. I'll make sure to provide some reasonable explanation for starters at some point (i'd probably even make whole tutorial if axma actually allowed it). Although this post is more about whole obedience/riot thing, if people experience it or not and if it should be more present in the game.

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  2. The game is already turning in a bit of a grind as it is, with the necessity to go to the same place a billion times to get the slave you want.

    In your place I'd start by fleshing it out, adding content and ways to choose your next slave's race or level of willpower, maybe add high-level stock at the slaver's guild, THEN I'd worry about balance. This way you'll keep the game engaging during the process.

    To answer the question, the girls are pretty easy to control as of 5.5. All you have to do is release them from jail as soon as you get them and then spend time with them until they hit 100 loyalty and obedience, so it could definitely be harder. Ideally, making them more obedient should be interesting and a matter of making some choices to adapt the girl to her planned role, not just beating them on the head with a stick for a week.

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    1. I'll be making quests easier to fulfill, so grind won't be the case.. hopefully. I really like your idea of making choices though, although that would mean I'd have to provide some customized events to support them, which would require decent writing...

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    2. Still haven't found your writer?

      I would offer to help but 1/ I have no prior experience, 2/ I'm not a native english speaker even if I'm told my english is very good, 3/ I lack time and have a hectic schedule so I would have ddifficulties holding any kind of schedule for the game.

      If you don't find a writer for a while and things get more relaxed on my side I'll try to see what I can do, but you would have to accept that the text would arrive when it arrives, and give me some kind of guidelines about the tone you want ands where you intend to take the game. Also I really dislike torture so I wouldn't enjoy writing about it.

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    3. It sounds relatively fine, basically you can just do whatever scene you would want and then share it with me if you are this vague. Basically you'd want to include numerous outcomes depending on character's relation with you/personal characteristics? I can't really give you much more with these limitations, plus I'd have to work a bit on where we are going first too.

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    4. As I said, I don't have time for now. If and when that clears up, and if you still don't have found a writer, I'll see what I can do. Don't expect anything before mid-summer at the very least, maybe even september. Sorry, but that's just how it is on my side, I really don't have much free time at the moment.

      An experienced writer would be better, think of me at a last recourse if really you don't get anybody on the long term. In any case, I'll keep an eye on the game, see where you take it and if I can write something with that. If you go full hardcore slavery or forced obedience, I'll likely let it be, I prefer girls choosing to serve and becoming kinky on their own free will.

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    5. Alright, let me know then.

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  3. I don't really do any training.

    I just talk to them.

    Strategy for getting girls to not run away: Capture, Explain situation. If) energy >= 2 release to residents and spend time with, Else finish day before releasing to residents and spending time with.

    This usually gets them to light green obedience. The one that says she actually cares about what I'm talking about.

    After that I set 1 girl to forage for every 3 residents (forage produces 30-40+ food a day) which keeps me from wasting money on food at the shop. The rest work at the shop.

    After I have 6 residents (5 girls + PC) I get a human to start the guild quest line. I usually don't have a very courageous girl yet, almost every girl I ever get is a coward. So I use the bandit encounter to find the fairy for the guild.

    I send my most courageous girl to combat training as much as I can so she can actually handle the bandits without help. After that, I just focus on collecting one of every race.

    In other words...It's really easy to make girls do what you want. I lose a girl or two once in a while, but that's usually because I couldn't get them to light green before finishing the day.

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    1. Thanks for the post, that's really very valuable info for me, and I gotta have to adapt 'spend time' option a bit (lol it actually gives 5-10 loyalty per action right now... insane).

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    2. What's the valuable info for you, the way we play the game? Need more of that?

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    3. Nah, for now I'm fine. After I tweak difficulty a bit perhaps.

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  4. I don't think difficulty is really the issue. I think the issue is training girls feels shallow because generally you can apply the same exact strategy to every girl. If you tweak numbers to make the strategy weaker it won't change that, it will just change how long it takes and the rate of success, possibly making a different strategy better. But the same issue would remain, one strategy is used for every girl rather than learning about each individual and tailoring a new strategy to each individual.

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    1. I tried this approach previously (before I introduced obedience system), but it didn't quite worked out in my opinion. There were 4 'strategies', 1 effective, 2 ineffective based on girl's temperament. The problem was that it actually didn't add anything to the gameplay besides bit of guessing. The real issue though is that you can't really introduce multiple interesting ways to break girls if they are pregenerated. If every girl would be an unique wrote out character, sure, there would be tons of options, but that is not a game, but rather unfolding story. Currently I view training system as a mean to get obedient slave by sacrificing some stats/time/resources. Depending on what you are planning to do with her, you may prefer one option to another, for example you wouldn't beat the crap out of your future fighter as she would lose all her courage or mindrape a girl you would want to be smart. If you have any ideas I'd gladly listen to them though.

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  5. Maybe just expand the trait system so it gives us some unique things to take advantage of when training a girl. Allow for multiple traits, more possible traits, and a level for each trait. If you encourage the trait it will increase in level, or you can suppress it to reduce it.

    Some traits I'd like to see:

    - More sexual fetishes like pregnancy, cum addiction, preferences towards different sex acts.

    - Motivation based traits like food motivated or fear motivated.

    - Occupation preference traits. If she does her prefered occupation she'll gain loyalty/obedience and the trait will increase in level. If it's a high level and you don't give her that occupation she'll be unhappy and lose loyalty/obedience.

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    1. I'd rather not rip off FC. But I do plan to have physical/mental traits on the side of sexual ones though.

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    2. I don't think you should avoid features that are good and naturally fit in your game just because another game has similar features.

      Besides, the way FC does traits/fetishes is pretty weak anyway and given how it's coded I doubt it will ever support multiple fetishes. Also, the way they are tiered/leveled doesn't really do anything. The girl either has the fetish or she doesn't have it. The strength of the fetish is largely irrelevant.

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    3. oh btw, do the races currently have any differences in their stats or anything? I think it would be good if they did, especially if they were more likely to have certain traits.

      I remember I was pretty disappointed when my wolf girl wasn't any better at hunting than my fairy girls.

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    4. I don't believe multilevel traits is a good idea as they seem too heavy. My main personal problem with fc (besides lack of support for lolis) is that it feels like game just overloaded with pretty insignificant mechanics without any real core design idea or plan and they still keep piling up.

      Races have bonus in starting skills (if they are not birthed by your girls) and higher specific trait chance occurrence. I'll likely redo it though to give it more meaning.

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  6. so I wanted to try the game out as it looked interesting (the 5.7 and 5.0 versions) But all that's loading is a blank Grey page that does nothing.
    I don't know if it's something that's required that I'm missing or if the game is simply not there or what just a heads up.

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    1. If you are using firefox version below 46, try update or chrome.

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