Wednesday 8 July 2015

Farm Ideas and Other Musing

 Okay, so we had a good run weekend gone, we had some good ideas and suggestions and all in the comments, and I got a nice big wodge of writing done, and a stack of new inspiration. Hopefully, have a enough new stuff for a new version pretty damn soon. :3

 One of the things that got discussed in the comments was the sadly and sorely neglected state of the Farm area in the game. And idea suggested by GentlemaninTheory and expanded by Darkmaster and others was to have the farm be, well, a working farm, on which the player can be hired to do work for various rewards. Of course, they'll have to deal with various farm-animal-mutant girls while doing so...

 It's a pretty great idea, and I like it a lot. As GentlemaninTheory suggested, it'd be a good way to give the player a few early mini quests and flesh the world out a little for them near the start of the game. He also suggested, among other girls, Chicken-Girls, and for some reason having the player harassed by a flock of horny chicken ladies while collecting eggs really amuses me. It does, however, pose a few problems with the in-game logic.

 Basically, the infection doesn't cause mutations straight away. A big part of the games theme is of things changing fairly slowly - my rough rule is that no particularly prominent mutations show up until roughly the second week, day 8 or so. Until then, the infectees are crazy and all, but still visibly human. Second week, the mutations get established and develop, and from day 20 or so, everything gets mega crazy. So, having cow-girls or chicken-girls or whatever on the farm right from the start would be pretty jarring and out of place, when there's no indication of mutations elsewhere.

 So, couple options occur to me. First would be to not have the mutant farm girls there until later in the game - day 15-20 say. Before then, the farm could be explored and have farm girls and other workers, and you could meet the farmer and maybe even do "normal" farm work. It's only alter that the farm develops/attracts mutant stock.

 Another would be to have the farm have been infected before the main outbreak. The in game cause of the infection is a toxoplasma - a kind of fungus - from a closed off system of caverns beneath the island, where it has developed with the bugs and blind things in isolation, escaping to the surface when there was a minor earth tremor that breached the caves, starting the outbreak. If we change it a little so there was a minor leak a few weeks earlier, make the farm isolated - maybe the farmer has deliberately shut it off - then we have a situation where the farm can be more developed, mutation wise, than the rest of the island. I don't think I like this idea that much though, it feels sort of messy and I'd really rather try to keep the whole island at the same "mutation level".

 Third, a pretty silly one but just popped into my head and made me laugh, the farm is not a real farm, but a resort for furries and pony play fetishists and similar. At the start of the game, the farm animals there are humans in costumes, who gradually mutate. Pretty goofy though.

 Those are my ideas to fudge around it, anyways. Any sound good? If you have any better ideas, please stick them in the comments!

 It might sound silly to fret about trying to keep story logic consistent in a game that already has as goofy a set up as this one, but I'm a nerd for shit like this, and I'd like the world of the game to keep making a *kind* of sense, according to its own rules.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Pie,
I think sticking to the story and letting the girls on the farm mutate on the later days works just fine. That way you can make a "MilkGirl", which want to milk more than just the cows and later becomes a "CowGirlMonsterSomething" (if I am not wrong, both ideas had been suggested by differen persons already).
All the best
Daxstar

Anonymous said...

I'm going to have to go with the 'logical' one, to say the least. The farm is staffed by the female farmhands that were not evacuated from the island, and maybe the Farmer stays because 'its his farm dagnabbit!'

They eventually mutate to fit in with whatever area of the farm they worked in. So the 'dairy' farmhands become cowladies and the girls that pull the eggs from chickens become a flock of horny chicken ladies. And so on and so forth.

-Vasin

Anonymous said...

Hi Pie,
Being nerdy is awesome, I definitely think you should keep to the theme of the game world and hold off the mutations until week 2. I really like the idea of visiting the farm prior and seeing the farm girls transform over time. If anything, this further defines the game world that you created! I'm already imagining the banter between the main farmer as he quickly realizes his farm is going to be overrun by farmdom harlots, haha!

As for your last suggestion, instead of changing the farm into that, why not think about including a new location after day 40 where the protagonist has chosen to survive this infected world and keep on going? You could make the last location "The Zoo." Upon entering, all the cages would be open without a trace of anything or anyone. As the protagonist explores, he must defeat each Zoo Girl to put them back in their respective cage. Periodically, some could escape and have to be caged again, but this also allows another amazing feature that I would suggest including in the game (eventually), being able to revisit specific girls and choose fights without having to roam around until RNG favors you. You could use the extra cages in the Zoo to keep one of the many types of Monster girls from any location.

I'm really looking forward to see what you end up doing with the farm! #CHICKENGIRLHYPE

-GentlemaninTheory

TheDarkMaster said...

internal consistency makes a better game. So I do say stick with the current setup. You can still do other things on the farm in the mean time with human girls, as others have pointed out.

Now, I don't really like the idea of a main male farmer giving you jobs on the farm, but he could potentially work as an early game NPC that helps the player out, but then succumbs to the infection as time progresses and gets replaced with some sort of queen or matriarch of the farm that gives you quests instead. Possibly she likes seeing the PC struggle to escape the farm's denizens or wants to see the PC eventually fall to it.

Anonymous said...

Regardless of which path you take, will getting infected at the farm result in the PC turning into an animal too?

Anonymous said...

I doubt it. The infection only mutates females, as of the game lore. I think it heightens the libido of men a great deal, but I don't think it does much to them. Of course, used to it exploded your head. . .

-Vasin

Anonymous said...

Maybe males are just somewhat more resistant?

Unknown said...

It would make more sense if it mutated the males too though.It would be more fun in one way if you had to deal with the prospect of possibly gaining mutations as a result of what you were exposed to on top of your heightened libido. The end result could potentially be that you end up becoming another one of the monsters out there. It would certainly open up the windows for a more detailed character inspection system. On top of that it could allow for amusing alternate dialogues if you had certain infections or were beyond a certain point in the infection. Of course males may have some initial resistance but if they get too much exposure there could potentially be the chance that it can start changing them too. Maybe they'll end up futas or monstergirls too.

Kingmich said...

i rather not have my male char turn into a futa or a monstergirl if anything i rather have him go mad with lust and not have my head blow up (sheesh that gorey way to die man) hey i mean we even need a cheat mode or umlimted mode where we are stuck there but we are immune to the mutated stuff and keep having sex with the girls eh just what i think

Anonymous said...

The way Pie put it is this, the infection seeks out males. In order to get closer to the males, it initially infects women, and mutates them in order to get closer to the host it actually wants. That's why we get the ten foot tall farm girl and the sentient goo girls, because the infection wants them to entice you so it can swap over to you.

As big a fan as I am of TFs, I don't think it would fit the game universe. Unless Pie wants to add a thing where the scientist creates a modified infection to give you said mutations, which I can kinda see. Otherwise, I don't see it happening.

-Vasin

Unknown said...

That said it doesn't make sense that it doesn't infect males though. There isn't enough of a genetic difference to justify it hitting women and not men. If it's mutagenic for women then it would also have to be mutagenic for men. There's just no way for an infection to distinguish between two sexes of the same species the way you guys are implying. If there is absolutely zero percent chance of males mutating then honestly why would the infection make its hosts seek out males? The infection would cause the host to seek out other targets that it can infect. If males are immune to mutations then they wouldn't be a very conducive host. Honestly with the transformations going on in the game I don't see how it couldn't fit into the universe. Unless the premise is just plot armor with no real reasoning or logic behind it other then a niche restriction because for whatever reason the fetish was found undesireable. I mean the other thing that wouldn't make sense is the fact that it doesn't seem to kill the female hosts and yet its pretty much killing off the male hosts.... uhm yeah... that's a genetic deadend right there. There's no benefit to an infectious agent to kill the host since it will die shortly thereafter.

I just thought I'd toss that out there since the whole transformative presence in this game seemed somewhat weirdly lopsided and the only thing I've seen as far as nay saying is just people that don't like that particular fetish so they're against it for that reason rather than anything truly tied to the lore and precedent set by the game as it is presented.

TheDarkMaster said...

I really like that this game offers a very different sort of perspective that you really don't see anywhere else. I think that's plenty of reason to have the game work the way it does. It would be a very different game if the player mutated as well, much more like Flexible Survival.

Touka said...

I'm new here so I don't know much about this but the first option sounds best.... but if there was a sort of "funny mode" that you could turn on for crazy, wacky stuff the 3rd sounds good.

Kingmich said...

some people really want tf thing but for this game? it just might be safer keep it out of MMM i understand coc having some of it or storyline wise it might make little sense.... but still. its different already with all girls sometimes turn into full monsters.. i dont think we need male chars transform into futa or monster girl or a monster man eater or a furry or anything and some people really like transforming a bit.... to much

Anonymous said...

Glad to see your back on this. I noticed that the nerd is encounter less. I have done five run throughs and only saw her once. Don't know if bug or not.

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