Saturday, August 26, 2017

Patreon Poll results and upcoming changes

The last post had votes somewhat evenly spread which was curious to me. Most people asked for focusing on existing parts, but it seems that what parts we should focus on are not quite synchronized among patrons. In all honesty, 4th option was added more of a filler, but anyway, I wanna talk what shall be our main plan for next weeks.



1. Character gallery. I've had this thought for some time especially since amount of sprites and scenes keep increasing. There will be a section which will allow you to see unlocked characters (and their naked version) and replay their scenes (and an option to unlock everything if you are patron). The progress will be global, so you can also see it as an 'achievement list' of sorts. This will require some rewrite done to the code, but I believe this should be pretty satisfying.

2. Slave Leveling system. The main reason why old atrocity has been around for so long is that I couldn't quite grasp what I want from it. So now I will announce: leveling system will be redone to the next patch. Skills won't cost any skillpoints and you will only have to increase attributes.

Next, I wanna get rid of 'put slave into library and arrange points later' routine. I wanna make leveling more intimate and impactful. Instead of current skillpoint/level curve we gonna have only couple of levels and get about 3 skillpoints (or rather attribute points) every level. Slaves won't also get new levels automatically, but will stop at 100 exp and will require your personal attention at that point. After completing their personal request, they will earn new level and will start getting exp again. With this high level slaves will be far more precious while also have dynamic leveling progress.
 3. I want to redo slave talk option, but this is more of just a concept at this moment. Basically, I thought about making slaves respond about the actions you've done to them recently, as sort of flavor thing. But when I began thinking more about this, I thought it could be turned into far more elaborate mechanic: basically slaves would hold a memory of recent events which happened to them and at the end of the day make them be affected by those. I like this idea, because it would give very diverse feeling on many different actions (won or lost a fight, was subjected to incest or rape, publicly punished, received a gift and so on). However I'm not ready to blindly take this idea on for two considerable reasons: 1. it will require a severe amount of work; 2. it might be quite difficult to balance all possible combinations of slave's mood but it also can give lots of potential to play with. So, let me know what you think about this approach.

 Next public release will be at 1st September or right before the next patreon release (if it comes sooner, but I'm not sure how much new leveling system will take to implement). For the patreon, I'm also planning to add a sidequest with new character, and have few other plans which might or might not appear in next release. Thank you for the attention and have a nice weekend!

15 comments:

  1. Honestly, these changes sound great!

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  2. Why not make a Talk menu similar to the Sex menu, where you can select multiple options that will require energy? This might be easier for you to implement, and can include existing "talk" commands like praise/berate/convince to have sex. Also leaves room for slave events related to obedience or loyalty progression and breaking the slave to certain acts (incest/rape/tentacles/etc) that you could select if you have the energy left.

    I also woul

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    1. In fact this is the approach i plan to do (move talk options into dialogue window so you can choose what to talk about).

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  3. Game is way too grindy.
    Slaves sell for too little, it takes FORVER to get upgrade points and most stuff if overpriced for what they do (like current beauty pot)

    Even after editing the files to buff slave costs, reduce prices on some items and restore beauty pot to it's old function, ti is still barely tolerable

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  4. Also, still no Forced Sex options for slaves with dicks?
    No teasing, forced riding or forced handjobs?

    No options to force sex onto two unwilling slaves?
    They are both tied down, it shouldn't be a problem to force them to trib or something.

    And generally some additional text and reaction for incest (and Incestuous trait) would be nice.


    None of those should be hard to do.

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    1. Are you willing to give us a hand in this case? Sex scene structure is pretty easy and straightforward.

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  5. Sure.
    The changed scens are here.
    http://www.mediafire.com/file/u1iuwwv5kgk1jx7/SfP.rar

    Don't know how to make an "incestual" trait though.

    Implementation-wise, I'd say doing it with someone related gives a big stress and loyalty penalty. Perverted and Deviant actually ADD obedience/affection for it (thereby reducing the penalty indirectly).
    Incestuous removes the penatly, turning incestuous actions while Deviant/Perverted into a bonus

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    1. Nice to have those scenes expanded but since you added just forced versions for all except tribadism, it would also require to make forced slave/slave versions for those.

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  6. I figured out the bug with Yris and Dolin, along with another bug regarding Geisha specialization.

    Geisha specialization can't be trained unless you go into jobs&specs.gd and change 'slave.face.beauty' to 'slave.beautybase'.

    Yris and Dolin's scripts are bugged in exploration.gd. For Yris, find the 'slave.face.beauty' variable and change it to 'slave.beautybase'. For Dolin, find 'dolintemp.face.beauty' and change it to 'dolintemp.beautybase'.

    That should allow you to complete both Yris and Dolin's questlines instead of causing them to bug out.

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    1. I've already fixed those bugs, but thanks anyway.

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  7. Oh, since I'm at it - I'd recommend a lab operation to increase beauty (would require beauty pot and magic essence. Maybe nature essence too)

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  8. Great! I looked into modding this a bit game, and I do agree that the talk system does need some extra love. However, I'm not sure if different dialogue options are necessary.
    When presenting the player options, the goal should be to make most of them meaningful in some way. If dialogue is just a clumsy, hidden way to display the slave's stats, it's not an interesting option. I hope that's not what you're going after.

    I approached this from a different direction, by adding more randomness and variation into the single Talk option.

    IMO, avoiding the feeling of static same-ness on text games is quite important. So I looked into adding variation into small things:

    — Hello, Master.
    — It's nice seeing you, Sir.
    — Hi again, Sir John.
    — Greetings, Father.

    And a different set of variations for low obedience / loyalty:
    — Just leave me be, mister.
    — What do you want, John?
    — Tchk, it's you again.

    I basically create lists of possible replies, and choose one from all available ones.
    — Greetings + callsign
    — Random line 1.
    Sometimes dialogue line 1 actually includes a second line of text.
    — Random line 2 that appears only 33% of the time, which includes things like stuff about the brand, or unique NPCs saying unique things, or that the slave is horny, etc.

    Each dialogue line is written to only take a few traits into account, but the displayed line is chosen from the list of all eligible lines. This way, a slave with high obedience and mediocre loyalty might get a line that fits someone with high obedience, or mediocre loyalty, or both, or family relations (if they're related), slave's current luxury relative to what she expects, etc.

    To make this more manageable, these long lists of possible dialogue lines, greetings etc. are best to put in their own files. It makes the code more readable, when instead of a long list of possible replies in actions.gd, there's just a call to a function that gets that list from a different file.

    I made a list of such replies already for my own modded version based on 0.4.43, and I found out organizing it well is quite important. A good way to organize such dialogue line lists would be something like this, I think:
    - First, check for slave's obedience, loyalty, confidence and other variables to decide whether specific speech patterns are available: shy, bold, rude, scared, horny, etc. It makes it easier to change or expand the system in the future, easier to see if specific lines are too common / too rare, etc.
    - Organize dialogue lines under different function calls, each function is responsible for replies that fall under a specific category a slave may not may not belong into: generic lines, lines for relatives, lines for unique NPCs, lines for pregnant slaves, unique lines or responses for shy slaves, etc.
    - Call only functions appopriate for the current slave. In the function call, there's a list of dialogue lines, and each suitable one is appended to a list of all available answers. Obedience + loyalty seems to be the easiest way to organize lines within the functions.

    I looked into doing something similar for sex scenes. I made functions that checks the slave's stats, and chooses a dialogue line / reaction for a sex scene based on a few variables. The functions are divided into categories:
    1) what happens before the sex scene (wants it, hesitant, resistant? first time? reaction to partner? reaction to degrading act?)
    2) what could happen during a sex scene (easy way to add small details / race-specific details, such as "There's a lusty look in $his $eyecolor eyes." or "The $race's wings shudder in pleasure"
    3) how the slave reacts to the sex scene (based on factors like 'consensual'-variable, orgasm, and loyalty)

    I also added slighthly more detail into character descriptions: lust status indicators in description, and more descriptions (smaller steps) when it comes to e.g. face beauty, pregnancy status and loyalty.

    Strive is a really cool project, hope you can continue developing it.

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    1. That sounds pretty interesting. If you are willing to share your work I might include bits of it to the main game.

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  9. ummm just want to point out that at present you can send slaves away to gain skill points and that slaves have very different attribute caps. I'm concerned that if you took away the earn skill points via training and limited the levels available, and thus the points from them, some slaves, in particular dragonkin would be unable to reach their potential attributes. that said allowing the training for skill points would allow a way around the new leveling system and as such I propose it be locked to a slave until they reach maximum level but still retained in future versions so that slave can always reach their limits with enough effort.

    -omegaburst-

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    1. No worries, there's no plan to implement level cap which would not allow servant to reach full potential.

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