Sunday 1 November 2020

Incubus Island Monthly Goal #8 - November 2020

Yo, happy belated Halloween. Another busy month of barely working on anything, but I'm actually genuinely pleased with what I got done. 
Don't ask what's inside. If you know what
you were smuggling you'll get a much
harsher punishment if caught.

October - Previous Goals
1) Create the skeleton (as in, baseline functioning without images or full writing) of at least one scenario of the 'pharmacy' character's storyline. I have some writing for her later stuff, but the earlier stuff exists only in my head. I should get it out there in some form. 
Actually, I had a lot done, more than I remembered. More importantly, I got a lot done. I have her 'hub' scenario and one of three 'missions' done, and by done I mean beyond skeleton, and I actually really like what I've written, which is often not the case. The 'pharmacist' (actually a scientist in hiding) is sociopathic bitch and may seem quite evil from the outset, but a player might eventually learn that there's more to the story. (Weather they agree with her goals and methods is another matter.) 
2) Revise how fuck/impregnation macros are coded. Right now when you fuck a girl, it gauges the likelihood of impregnation based on your attributes and hers, and if successful starts the pregnancy countdown and inserts a simple piece of data into her 'womb' variable to determine the nature of the baby (hatespawn, lovespawn, etc). I want to have the macro function so that it can allow sex interactions between any two NPCs, not just the player. I also want the lineage of the baby to be preserved, so the game will record the names and races and other attributes of the parents. All of this is unnecessary to the mechanics of the game, but is fun to make, helps with immersion (for me, anyway), and might become useful later. 
I barely scratched the surface of this project. The fuck macro is a whole thing and I think fully revising it is best saved until after I'm more prepared to deal with revising how pregnancy works. Coded some of this, but haven't tested it properly, and am leaving it disabled for now. I think it'll be a lot easier (and more fun for me) to test when I have some aspect of the gameplay that uses it working. Technically I failed but I'm ok with that. 

Other things I did:
  • Revised the store interface coding: The store was always a mess in terms of code. I cleaned it up a lot and made it easier to modify. 
  • Created a drug merchant character: Not really a huge deal. Have ideas of what to do with him. 
  • Got started on another character: Did some travelling this month, and during periods where I couldn't do anything else I wrote some material for a character I knew I'd get around to making - the psychic trainer. He's a person with impressive powers, but is kind of a loser. 
  • Some photography-related content: In a previous entry I mentioned that I wanted the player to be able to have all kinds sleazy jobs, one of which was as a paparazzi. I implemented a bit of the content leading up to that. 
Honestly it kinds feels like I got a lot done. 


November - New Goals

I've mentioned before that I decided to release an alpha build of the game before year's end. I will stick to this. I know it will mean releasing with a bunch of stuff broken but I'll put a disclaimer. 

I'm not sure what to prioritize before then. I'm just going to toss out a few things I think I need to get done, and say I'll do any 2 of them. 
I got the combat system working just to be able to
 get this screenshot. Mainguy and his posse have
killed two Pests (you can see their ghosts
if you squint) and are about to kill a succubus.
The characters move around, flash, glow etc using
CSS animations. Currently they pick their targets
randomly; I think I was working on manual select
and alternate options (defend, use item, etc).

1) Resurrect combat system.
I would like to make the combat system a ‘launch feature’. I’ve mentioned this before - and might even have linked to a download for a demo of it - but I’ve already made an animated combat system, where png sprites zoom across the battlefield and hit each other like old timey JRPG characters. It’s not crucial to the game right now, but there’s been several times where I’ve thought "this would be a good time for the player to purposefully or accidentally start a fight" but didn’t add the option because a basic combat skill check would have been boring. 

2) Revise event system. This is a big one. Right now when you visit a location, the game sorts through a list of events relevant to that location and picks which one to play. Some annoying inconsistencies have crept in, and I'd like a way of having it so that if the player is aware they have something to do at a place, it's presented to them as an option they can click on when they arrive, instead of the relevant event simply triggering when they enter. Like say you're looking for a particular person and you go to the black market, an option "Look for Guyface McPerson." appears alongside other standard location options. It will also let me specify which scenarios can be 'auto launched' (as in, they happen when you arrive somewhere or otherwise the necessary conditions are met) vs 'player launched' (the option link style I mentioned earlier). This will involve changing every single scenario I've created, and might involve other roadblocks I haven't anticipated. Still, it will make the game far less annoying or confusing to navigate. 

3) Finish more of the pharmacist story. I'd like to get it to the point where you can recruit her to your 'party'. That means finishing 2 of her quests. I have ideas for content involving her after this point that will - I hope - be amusing, and she'll be able to comment on places, people and events in a way that other characters can't because she understands more of it, and may allow for alternate paths through events. 

4) Implement Psi Trainer. I have content existant that doesn't really fit into the game until the player has access to this guy, so he's kinda pivotal. I got a lot of him written and he may prove important to the story.



Conclusion

That's all I got. Take care. 

11 comments:

  1. I know this was last month's goal, but just to clarify, even with the revised fucked/impregnation macros, the NPCs will only have sex interactions with the PC? If that's not the case, I was just thinking it'd be a fun idea to be able race against time to steal another man's partner before he can impregnate her himself.

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    1. No, the idea is that they can fuck each other and impregnate each other. So there could be scenarios as you describe, where you're competing to fuck a girl before someone else does (already have a few ideas in mind) but also others where you might want someone else to impregnate someone. (All pregnancies for proper named NPCs are tracked regardless of who the father is, but the game keeps track of who the father is and assigns appropriate race, stats etc upon birth.)

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    2. Thanks for answering, I guess I just misunderstood what you meant when you said that something was unnecessary to the mechanics of the game. This game certainly seems pretty ambitious, but that just means all the more power to you, system-heavy games are my favorite. Also I don't know how big the scope of the game will be, but I hope you implement a family tree system, those are usually fun to mess around with from my experiences of playing crusader kings and the sims (knowing or not knowing who the true father is, and of course good old fun with the family). Finally, have you considered making the combat system similar to the battle fuck system in other games? Just a couple ideas, I understand you're already busy with other things.

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    3. The game isn't really going to have a multigenerational scope - the pregnancy/birth system I am developing is more of a novelty in the game, I put it in because I enjoy making it and others might appreciate its presence.

      That said, I'd like to do a game that has a much larger (multigenerational) scope, and if you've got all the ends and starts in IC you can probably imagine where I'd go with that concept plot-wise. That's down the line though. (I might include the 'fairy breeding sim' I was working on where I played around with that idea as a game-within-a-game bonus feature in II, at some point.) The thought of coding a system that creates a family tree diagram of all the characters is pretty daunting, but would be a lot of fun to figure out.

      I don't play many games anymore, so I'm uncertain about the 'battle fuck' you mentioned. A battle system in which characters can rape each other in-battle? A sex minigame that has the principles of turn-based RPG combat? I've toyed with both ideas, the former is more likely to make its way into the game than the latter.

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    4. Hey sorry for the late response. I certainly like the pregnancy stuff myself, and I'd definitely be interested in seeing a multi-generational game, it'd give some kinda extra meaning to impregnating someone. Though I guess that would be quite the undertaking, I imagine you'd have to make it like a simulator game with random events and such rather than just an rpg with a clear story and plotline. I'm not much of a game developer myself, but simulator games seem like they'd be a lot more work. That being said I'm still looking forward to your current project.

      Also, the 'battle fuck' system is something you see in some rpg porn games (mostly japanese games). It's exactly as you've said in the former, just raping each other mid-combat.

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    5. You might enjoy this brothel sim called Whore Master where you can impregnate your whores, they give birth, and then however long later your daughters grow up and come asking their father for work.

      Writing random events for a sim is easier than a single coherent story, but coding is much bigger a task. I like coding stuff though, it's fun to puzzle out a solution to a problem.

      Mid-combat rape is silly but is def a feature I'd eventually put into the game. Like, gotta make sure you have the girls in your party use birth control or they might get pregnant with an opponent's kid. Or if one of you girls is sufficiently slutty, you can have her suck an opponent off to incapacitate him. Shit like that. Dumb but funny.

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    6. Thanks for the recommendation I'll be sure to check it out. Here's a game that you may or may not like, "Lab Rats 2." It's a sim game and it's definitely a WIP as its pretty systems heavy. The game is actually pretty interesting aside from the porn, lots of customization. You basically own a pharmaceuticals company where you develop drugs to slowly corrupt women, but there's more to it than that. I'll say it might be confusing to play at first, but I had some fun. I'd recommend getting the modded version on F95.

      You definitely make coding sound like it's fun, maybe one day I'll look into learning coding.

      I'd say go for it definitely, I like the idea of using unconventional means of winning fights. but you may want to make that optional or somehow avoidable for the more sensitive of us (they can be pretty loud if you get what I mean). To clarify, I mean the portion where your girls can also be raped. Maybe stuff like chastity belts would work, with the obvious downside being that you can't use your girls' sexual prowess in battle. That's sorta funny in itself to imagine, maybe you could also equip some female enemies with such equipment and only through the powers of an incubus can you open them. Its like those elite enemies that can only be taken down through very specific means.

      I'll give a pretty silly example, but it should help with the point I'm making. Let's say that there's an enemy that's controlling robots from a secured area. There's no apparent way in, but through the hypnosis you can make her open up. Not exactly a chastity belt, but it's the same effect. If you didn't have sufficient hypnosis abilities you could still just beat the robots, but you wouldn't get the 'reward'. Just an idea I had, inspired by the gameplay mechanics you had in the previous game.

      Hopefully this doesn't come off as me just telling you what to do. It's your game and your vision after all.

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    7. Haha, chastity belts. That's a funny idea.

      Maybe rapeability is derived from how they are dressed. Like it's much easier for an opponent to rape someone in a skirt or swimsuit than in pants or speedsuit. Harder it is to remove something = better defense vs rape.

      No I get what you mean. People throw ideas at me all the time, they get mixed into the melting pot of my brain. Even if I don't use them, they might lead me to think of something I do use.

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    8. That would certainly help add another rpg aspect, having equipment that makes a difference in combat. It'd also be neat if you could visually show the characters in different gear, but I don't know how easy that would be if you're using real porn.

      Maybe you could make it a trade off between better defense and better raping. If you wanted to do some more with it, maybe make it so that going full defense (layered up in clothing) or full rape (just naked) won't be the best way to utilize your abilities, but still provide extra bonuses for going to the extreme. Like being a geared up paladin that doesn't hit back, or a naked barbarian that doesn't know how to defend.

      Here's another idea, you could assign random traits to NPCs (and specific traits to nonrandom NPCs). Stuff like being more vulnerable to being raped, 'prey', and being more capable of being the rapist, 'predator'. Maybe make it so that such things are hidden until you have enough insight. You could also add extra traits like 'beautiful' and 'fugly' for more NPC variation, these probably wouldn't need insight to notice. You could even go as far as making an ending for only impregnating women of a specific trait, like if you only fucked ugly women for the hell of it. Maybe even a beginning where you could play as an heir with the same traits as the mother, in this case you'd play as an ugly heir (also for the hell of it).

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    9. Re Characters that change appearance based on what they've got equipped: I learned recently this is called a 'paperdoll'. Unless I change art styles I won't be doing it, but I'm considering doing something like that for the player character in II just to play around with it. That's down the road if at all tho.

      I like games where you have to tradeoff between different advantages, so when I start really getting into the design of combat you'll probably see some of that come across eventually.

      I've got a trait system going and a few of your third paragraph ideas are adjacent to stuff I've thought of. Mind you, you just reminded me that I haven't made traits or stats inheritable yet.

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