Incubus Update #15 - November

I completely forgot to do one of these. It's the 20th so I'll try to keep it brief, but the first thing I'll mention is that there's a new alternate version - the Enhanced Edition (not to be confused with Unofficial Extended Edition) features a new scenario (which is a 2-parter under some circumstances) and a few other changes. The author intends to continue developing and adding to it, so check it out.

Incubus Island releases

Just before this month began I released the second public version of II. I would like to do this somewhat monthly because it's a good way to motivate me to fix bugs people report quickly, so that I don't forget to later and lose track of them. It also means I can be motivated to looking over this or that scenario and checking it for bugs, missing prose, out of date coding (such as using the fuck widget incorrectly in a way that could result in the player becoming pregnant) and whatever other defects I find.

When I released it I wasn't fully satisfied, having found that there was more content in the game than I remembered making (lol) and much of it needed a few more passes. Since then I haven't actually done those passes, but I'll pass over one or two of the scenarios before end of month and release a new html. 

(Jeni Angel)

Smut peddler

What I have been doing is writing and designing content for the pornographer part of the game, wherein you can become well known enough for the content you upload to be contacted the Utara's leading pornography studio and find employment therein and becoming embroiled in whatever drama you find at a family owned business like that. 

The thing about this content is that none of it will be relevant or useable for a while, but I had ideas and wanted to give them form so that I knew they would work. I think they mostly do? Anyway you won't see this content implemented for a while but a chunk of it is written and I've done some photoshoppery for it. 

Jobs

I think to facilitate the above I should finally create the job/work/rent system. I may have spoken of it before but not in any detail. Let me outline all the ideas I have:

• Jobs are acquired through story or exploration (meet the right person and ask for a job, or get offered a job through some achievement or plot point).
• Jobs occupy a day of game-time and will be selected before leaving home every morning, whereupon you will automatically go to work and work there. (When the time/stamina system is less wishy washy there might be the ability to work morning, afternoon or night shifts, we'll see.)
• A shift will deliver payout based on one attribute and one of two skills (which will be chosen depending on what type of workday it is, ie as a bartender most days your tips might be determined by your personality, but on busy days it's sheer volume of drinks you serve and keeping up with demand).
• Most days working a job will be relatively uneventful, but some days will present you with mini-events where you make decisions and reap benefits or get punished accordingly. Some of these might have some sort of 'challenge', requiring you to have remembered info previously given, to make a judgement based on facts at hand, some sort of skillcheck, etc.
• There may also be a rudimentary ranking system. If you get a job at a school, for example, you might start as a lowly teacher's assistant, but be able to rank yourself up to be guidance councilor. The type of things that can happen at each rank obviously will differ.
• They will have at least 2 progress variables associated with them. One is how well you are doing at your job in the mind of your employer (ie promotion XP), the others I have some idea of but I'll have a clearer picture once I've started solidifying jobs. I want there to be some element of conflict in priorities, such as: pleasing boss vs getting along with coworkers, doing a good job vs exploiting the job to fulfil your desires, etc.
• Jobs will have stories attached to them too; getting to certain levels of job progress, or making certain decisions in mini-events, or becoming a certain level of popular with coworkers or customers should do it.
• Initially the purpose of jobs will be to not be evicted.
• Most skills will be improvable through various means, taking courses and the like at University of Utara, going to the gym, or some other means.

I should find the traces of this system that I've previously started on, decide if I need to scrap them and start over or if I can work with them. I just need to start laying the groundwork and continue working on it so it never gathers enough dust to be trouble to excavate. (Ie I don't half-make it and forget how it works or where I was going with it, which leads to trouble.)

Goal

I do not expect to have anything real or coherent to show on any of this by end of month, and December is will likely be a writeoff for obvious reasons, though I might end up with a lot of unforseen free time as well. 

I think mainly my goal for end of month will just be fixing most of the bugs people have pointed out to me already. This sounds easy but whenever I sit down to work on a project it's easier to be led by my inclinations for creating things rather than by plan or pragmatism. Just how I am. I expect I'll continue to create at least a bit of content that will be unuseable for the time being, sometimes you just get ideas and have to give them form.

Questions for You, Dear Reader

Help me out here.

1) Have you played a Twine game that had music? Was it implemented well? If so, tell me the name of it. If it wasn't implemented well, what could have been changed to improve implementation? Please let me know. 

2) II's travel system as it is now is not great. It's supposed to function on hubs, where there's 3 neighbourhoods and within those you can navigate to specific locations, but I don't think this is clear. I put this question to the discord, and I'll put it here too: Would you prefer a map wherein you 'Go North', 'Go South', etc to get from place to place (TiTS is often cited as an example of this) or one with a 'world map' where you click on a place on a literal map (as Renpy games tend to do, such as Summertime Saga)?