Friday 22 May 2015

Houseguest Musings

EDIT - update will now probably be on MONDAY, sorry for the change of plans, but I had forgotten it's a bank holiday - this means I have a free day to work on the game!

 Planning to have an update ready to go sometime Sunday MONDAY.

 Been getting some encouraging and useful feedback and criticism, here and on the thread at Fenoxo's forums, thanks guys! I really appreciate your views and suggestions, they help a lot.

 I've been playing with some ideas of having NPC's move into the base with the player. The way the game logic works, some of the minxes get bigger and stronger as they mutate, and some less so, and run in packs instead, some presumably imprison their prey. Basically they are all kind of evolving different strategies, and are all in competition, so it makes sense that some would want to set up a cosy home.

 Basic idea is that once a minx has moved in with you - and you'd probably have to fight her off if you didn't want her to or something, or she just has a terrible sob story and big puppy dog eyes to convince you  - she'd be a drain on your resources, taking some of your food, and demanding... attention from you that would eat up time in the evenings, so if she wants some loving, you'd have to fend her off that evening if you wanted to train. The Bossy Redhead has always been a popular character, and it seems like it'd fit her M.O, so I'm thinking of using her as a test for it. I'm going to try and set it up so you can have multiple "house guests", and have them interact, but I'll see how happy I am with it with just the one at first, I'm getting better at the programming shizz now, so hopefully I can rig up a system that will let me expand it easily.

 An idea that occurred was that it'd make sense for some of them to offer you some sort of reward or assistence in return - parasites do best when they don't hurt their hosts, and that is just one step away from symbiosis. Having them gather or grow food seems like it'd just cancel out the "cost" of feeding them, though, and I'm currently at a bit of a blank as to what else they could offer, other than being a guard to stop food thefts if you haven't secured your base at all. Any ideas?

 Okay, back to work. As well as hopefully a bit of that stuff, update will include more defeat scenes and stuff - hoping to get all the missing ones in - and maybe the beginings of a new way around town - the rooftops. As the streets get more dangerous, you can take the thieves highway if you are skilled enough to satay off of them. There's actually already a bit of that coded in the last build, just not activated.

 Okay, see you Sunday MONDAY, please lemme know if you have any ideas regarding houseguests! Or anything else, I guess.

12 comments:

EniliasNailo said...

I'm currently at a bit of a blank as to what else they could offer, other than being a guard to stop food thefts if you haven't secured your base at all. Any ideas?

You're thinking this the wrong way. They don't kick you out if you bring them food. If we're really talking about the Bossy Redhead here, she would be like "I do this if you care for me", she'd pretty much appoint herself as the new leader of the home and you'd get consequences if you don't live up to her demands (assuming you are unable to kick her out).

If it's just the sad sob story thing for other characters, that itself would be the motivation to keep them. It's interesting in survival scenarios to implement beggars and helpless people, because helping them doesn't help you in return. So you have to weigh morality vs. pragmatism.

TheDarkMaster said...

The one thing you could do with the girls is to have them be useful early on, but become more and more of a liability as time passes. For instance, they might help you heal better at night, do cooking to make it so that you can scavenge more food on average, do work around your base to make it more defensible and more pleasant to live in, or perhaps they provide a unique service or benefit for you like the pharmacy girl. It's almost the same as Rasna's addiction.

As they mutate, they become more ravenous, both in the amount of food they eat and in how much sex they 'need'. A girl might prevent you from going exploring on a day outright or they might start destroying your training items for various reasons (porn mags and training videos out of jealousy, weights and darts because they were too rough on them). Stat drains could even be brought back for these situations. Others might just force themselves on you and you have to kick them out somehow before they give you a game over.

The one problem I can see right away with these girls is that they might make your infection score rise too quickly. You'll probably need to re-balance that system somehow with this in mind. Obviously boss girls and giant monsters in the late game should give big boosts anyway, but I'm not so sure about the home NPCs and early girls. It would probably be better to have the NPC's and enemies's game overs work separately so that there is no overlap between the two.

Possible NPCs that might take up residence in your home? Well, the two others that I can think of right away that would fit well would be the pharmacist girl and a girl that finds and breastfeeds you when you're out of food. The first is a good example of a character that the player would have every reason to try and recruit because she directly lowers your infection score, and the second is an excellent way to try forcing a girl on the PC. Once she's recruited, you're no longer in danger of starving, but if you don't break free of her soon you're going to end up dependent on her and get a game over.

Anonymous said...

You could make Darlene a house guest. That way she could keep your corruption from reaching 100% and thus prevent the end of the game.

Anonymous said...

*whispers*

...feeeeaaatuure creeeep...

Anonymous said...

I think as far as the parasites go, they could passively gather cash every day? Randomly have the possibility to find training items? Find the fruits that are hanging around town as the days get crazier? Try and find others to help, and move in as well?

Anonymous said...

Do the dishes. Clean the house. Duh, what do you have your women do? Since housekeeping isn't implemented in the game yet, what about healing, training partners (battles), and an outlet to relieve lust (from any level, back down to 0. Hate having to leave the house with any lust that isn't high enough to be alleviated by masturbation)?

Anonymous said...

Jewish princess: Manages your money well, so your cash stack grows passively by whatever rate a competent investment banker can offer, while limiting your daily spending to $500 a day. Going past that limit starts a fight, with her stats increasing based on how much you wanted to go past (or exceeded) that spending limit. Losing means she rapes you for days (you go a number of days without any action).

Anonymous said...

Since minxes are corrupt and want to fuck you, thus getting you infected, getting a houseguest seems like a really poor idea if your goal is survival.

So instead, if you're getting a houseguest, you're basically commiting to wanting to become specifically corrupted and converted by that houseguest in particular.

Basically this means, you get sex scenes that progressively get more indepth, based on how corrupted you are (0%-20%,20%-50%,50%-75%,75%-95% + final scene).

Additionally, you get immunity from being robbed, so your food stores remain safe as long as the houseguest is around.

Kingmich said...

you know i always wonder what happen to Tristan in the Barricaded House u see her once have sex with her then if u ever go to the house again shes NEVER there o.o any info on that?

SeldomPie said...

Thanks for the suggestions guys! I think I'm leaning with Enilias's suggestions for the most part, that they should be more like unwanted guests who are difficult to get rid of - the temptation of more sex scenes etc might lead to you wanting not to try to evict them, despite the infection risks. I like the sort of meta "temptation mechanic".

That's for the more aggressive minxes of course, one of them who's more reasonable, like Darlene, or non mutated might be more use...

The Jewish Princess might actually be getting altered soon, I've been rethinking how the more broad caricatures in the game are portrayed in general.

Incidentally, the ExPieWife is planning to write more Darlene stuff, she has some interesting stuff in store for her, and she might just end up being a house guest at some point...

First Anon - yeah, maybe a little. :P This is something I had been wanting to add from the start though.

Michael Carter - Tristan wasn't written by me, and the guy who wrote her never got back to me with further scenes for her. Now I'm back he might re surface, I know he had further plans for her. I guess currently, in game terms, you can assume she succumbed to the infection and ran off into the wilds.

Update sometime soon, probably not going to be today UK time, I'm still adding stuff right now, but hopefully it'll be up while it is still Monday somewhere in the world...

EniliasNailo said...

BTW: I just finished my "repressed virgin" run. Meaning he came exactly 0 times during the 40 days. Just push Speed and Intelligence to 10 and Skill to 8. Run around and collect as many stat boosters as you can while mostly avoiding fights (discovery gives you a boatload of XP), and since dumbbells can be bought, you can amass them easily and increase your power, making it easy to pick off weaker enemies and amass XP.
Since I was stuck with 6 Lust (training it requires masturbation and that is a no go for my virgin boy) I still had to run most of the time and meditate more often than I'd like.

SeldomPie said...

Haha, well done! There should be some sort of achievement or reward unlocked for managing that...

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