Thank you everyone for participating in last patreon poll. According to it, there's not much of a problems with difficulty, quests could use some improvement, and there's overwhelming demand for sex mechanics and scenes.
Monday, February 27, 2017
Friday, February 24, 2017
New poll
Since new web version was released, I'm holding a poll about it and some other stuff (sidequets/tutorial/development) at patreon. For those who missed it, you can check out web version at newgrounds (link in the download section). I'll follow up with more info in next days.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/8224383
https://www.patreon.com/posts/8224383
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Monday, February 13, 2017
Next plans
For next update I will be focusing on mainly two aspects: tutorial and 'counters to placidity'. Tutorial is pretty self-explanatory part - you'll get short sequence of forced actions to introduce new player into the game and main mechanics. Yeah, its a kind of thing which is not terribly exciting for those who know their ropes, but strive being so heavy on so many mechanics obvious gets somewhat out of hand for new players. Even without of combat I've seen too often people struggling with food not realizing they should just send their first slaves to forage. It will also allow me to push game into the 'beta' stage.
Now the second part is a bit more interesting. I don't think strive is being very good management game right now, mainly because with enough loyalty and good setup you can just spam 'end day' all day and swim in gold and food. Two new quests somewhat broken this routine with small timed events in them, but that's not nearly enough. I mainly planned two things for now:
1. Cleanness: your mansion will get dirty with time. The more residents, the more dirt. To counter it you will either have to issue manual cleaning (probably costing energy/gold etc) or assign a slave to 'maid' job, which will make them take care of cleaning. The rate will probably be about 1 maid per 6-8 slaves to keep mansion clean and perhaps some actions will increase 'dirtiness' too. High 'dirtiness' will be affecting residents' stress and health. Overall it will be slightly similar to JoNT concept if you are familiar with it.
2. Slave events. Basically every few days one of the slaves will do something or ask for something requiring you to react to that in some way. Events will be good or bad and your decisions will be influencing resources, stats and so on. This should mainly break the routine and end-day button spam, although (naturally) it will require quite some number of events to not feel repetitive. Right now this idea is very sketchy, but hopefully it will get enough ideas to get going.
Now the second part is a bit more interesting. I don't think strive is being very good management game right now, mainly because with enough loyalty and good setup you can just spam 'end day' all day and swim in gold and food. Two new quests somewhat broken this routine with small timed events in them, but that's not nearly enough. I mainly planned two things for now:
1. Cleanness: your mansion will get dirty with time. The more residents, the more dirt. To counter it you will either have to issue manual cleaning (probably costing energy/gold etc) or assign a slave to 'maid' job, which will make them take care of cleaning. The rate will probably be about 1 maid per 6-8 slaves to keep mansion clean and perhaps some actions will increase 'dirtiness' too. High 'dirtiness' will be affecting residents' stress and health. Overall it will be slightly similar to JoNT concept if you are familiar with it.
2. Slave events. Basically every few days one of the slaves will do something or ask for something requiring you to react to that in some way. Events will be good or bad and your decisions will be influencing resources, stats and so on. This should mainly break the routine and end-day button spam, although (naturally) it will require quite some number of events to not feel repetitive. Right now this idea is very sketchy, but hopefully it will get enough ideas to get going.
Thursday, February 9, 2017
I'm taking a small break before getting to work on next pack of additions (although I'm still tracking bugs), so its a reasonable time to talk about what's been done.
So two first quests are out (with varying degree of stability) and I promised to talk a bit about it. Previously I mentioned that I planned to remove Emily, but couple of people mentioned their attachment so after some consideration I decided to flesh out her part bit more instead. Right now you can keep her multiple ways and even get her sister by one evil way, but I plan to add few more events with her sister.
When I was working at this quest, I actually had quite lot of possible ideas: for example let Tisha work for a limited time in attempt to earn Emily back, while you get the chance to bend them both to your will.. and at that point I realized this is just too much for current game. It would probably make a fairly interesting spinoff game where you would get multiple (non-generic) characters in various scenarios and you'd have to achieve something with them. Many custom interactions, reactions to items, spells jobs and so on... really lots of possibilities, but gameplay wise it would probably be whole different game, at the very least not sandbox'y at all. So for this moment I realized, that it would be too much of derailment and I settled for something way simpler - make choice = get girl or lose girl. Btw Emily has at least 3 different sequences for her quest depending on her loyalty and if you branded her, so there's some replay-ability too.
Cali's quest has been in drafts since strive one and most of my time (or at least most boring parts of it) I spent implementing it. It was done by one person who sadly left soon after (not without proposing few other valuable ideas). I've moderately modified it and I still have some ideas in mind to add bit more details to it.
I can't really judge how much of worth new quests are but will probably hold poll in couple of weeks when enough people will get chance to play through them. Thank you for your attention and support (remember patreon). Next time I'll talk about future plans and main focus.
So two first quests are out (with varying degree of stability) and I promised to talk a bit about it. Previously I mentioned that I planned to remove Emily, but couple of people mentioned their attachment so after some consideration I decided to flesh out her part bit more instead. Right now you can keep her multiple ways and even get her sister by one evil way, but I plan to add few more events with her sister.
When I was working at this quest, I actually had quite lot of possible ideas: for example let Tisha work for a limited time in attempt to earn Emily back, while you get the chance to bend them both to your will.. and at that point I realized this is just too much for current game. It would probably make a fairly interesting spinoff game where you would get multiple (non-generic) characters in various scenarios and you'd have to achieve something with them. Many custom interactions, reactions to items, spells jobs and so on... really lots of possibilities, but gameplay wise it would probably be whole different game, at the very least not sandbox'y at all. So for this moment I realized, that it would be too much of derailment and I settled for something way simpler - make choice = get girl or lose girl. Btw Emily has at least 3 different sequences for her quest depending on her loyalty and if you branded her, so there's some replay-ability too.
Cali's quest has been in drafts since strive one and most of my time (or at least most boring parts of it) I spent implementing it. It was done by one person who sadly left soon after (not without proposing few other valuable ideas). I've moderately modified it and I still have some ideas in mind to add bit more details to it.
I can't really judge how much of worth new quests are but will probably hold poll in couple of weeks when enough people will get chance to play through them. Thank you for your attention and support (remember patreon). Next time I'll talk about future plans and main focus.
Friday, February 3, 2017
I've been planning to make a release today, but amount of new text is pretty severe so I decided to spend few more days polishing new stuff. Besides some previously mentioned stuff I went back and redone Emily introduction and added new event. After it will be released I'll be going into some details and thoughts (don't wanna spoil it yet) I've got about it. So, see you next week.
Friday, January 27, 2017
Future plans
Since previous poll is essentially over(thanks for voting), I wanna go through the quick summary of ideas I have on my mind and will be implementing in near time.
Relatives generations.
Shouldn't be huge of a problem, although I'm not sure if I'd want to simulate parents every time I'd need to create, say, a sister to someone. Family tasks have been a long suggested thing and it should be fun to implement.
Starting sequence.
Basically there's some ideas to revamp game start and add some step-by-step tutorial. Current starting screens are pretty lackluster and I also have some ideas regarding the very first slave (basically take it away and give a new opportunity to meet one early on). But the first thing is to make game easier to pick up.
Sidequests.
My procrastination on the Cali's quest is miserable (perhaps would make it longest 'to be implemented feature so far?), so I will start implementing it right away. The other sidequest might as well come from new optional characters from starting sequence, but that might not come soon (as I'd need to make the sequence first). I also felt like removing/revamping Emily event for very long time, as her purpose was purely testing out event structure.
Visuals and audio.
Lack of any sounds bothers me but I didn't get enough time to search through free stuff to work on it. That might change soon enough though, or at the very least its in the check list. Visuals, though, is a bit of a different issue as there's always tons of work related to them. Basically, I'd want to expand accessibility of player added images, which could also land foundation for generic images (new slave tab revamp partly influenced by it since I want to add more space to the inspection tab which might eventually need to hold full body picture). However it raises the usual problems of other people's contributions: not many stick around even in terms of writing and I'd imagine artists/designers are even harder to keep. Hopefully one day I'll get to the point of being able to sustain some with support from you-know-what.
Other small stuff.
Apiary (passive mana generation), balancing issues, main story and more encounters of various kinds, specific empowering modifications at the lab, 'end of day' events for job assignments, dating, more various responses from 'talk' option and many other details I still keep in my mind, and wish to eventually add. Sadly, being one person crew makes it not conveniently quick.
Anyway, month is ending, and thank you everyone for watching over me.
Relatives generations.
Shouldn't be huge of a problem, although I'm not sure if I'd want to simulate parents every time I'd need to create, say, a sister to someone. Family tasks have been a long suggested thing and it should be fun to implement.
Starting sequence.
Basically there's some ideas to revamp game start and add some step-by-step tutorial. Current starting screens are pretty lackluster and I also have some ideas regarding the very first slave (basically take it away and give a new opportunity to meet one early on). But the first thing is to make game easier to pick up.
Sidequests.
My procrastination on the Cali's quest is miserable (perhaps would make it longest 'to be implemented feature so far?), so I will start implementing it right away. The other sidequest might as well come from new optional characters from starting sequence, but that might not come soon (as I'd need to make the sequence first). I also felt like removing/revamping Emily event for very long time, as her purpose was purely testing out event structure.
Visuals and audio.
Lack of any sounds bothers me but I didn't get enough time to search through free stuff to work on it. That might change soon enough though, or at the very least its in the check list. Visuals, though, is a bit of a different issue as there's always tons of work related to them. Basically, I'd want to expand accessibility of player added images, which could also land foundation for generic images (new slave tab revamp partly influenced by it since I want to add more space to the inspection tab which might eventually need to hold full body picture). However it raises the usual problems of other people's contributions: not many stick around even in terms of writing and I'd imagine artists/designers are even harder to keep. Hopefully one day I'll get to the point of being able to sustain some with support from you-know-what.
Other small stuff.
Apiary (passive mana generation), balancing issues, main story and more encounters of various kinds, specific empowering modifications at the lab, 'end of day' events for job assignments, dating, more various responses from 'talk' option and many other details I still keep in my mind, and wish to eventually add. Sadly, being one person crew makes it not conveniently quick.
Anyway, month is ending, and thank you everyone for watching over me.
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