Spankers and Spankees,
The following post is just some musing about game design. No updates of either the Let’s Spank or Potion Wars. Just some Etrian Odyssey inspired musings about game design. So feel free to ignore this. It’s mostly here for my self 10 years in the future. Hi 10 years older self! Nice to see you’re still developing spanking games. You need a life.
So I’ve almost beaten Etrian Odyssey (just have the final boss left, who like every JRPG final boss ever, is 2 orders of magnitude harder than the rest of the game. I lasted all of 2 rounds the first time we fought, despite obliterating all the FOES and random enemies on the final stratum. So I’m stuck in a tortuously boring grind fest right now. Stupid JRPGS.). And I have been enjoying it, however there are a few things that really piss me off about the game. One of those is the skill system.
In Etrian Odyssey, every time your character gains a level you gain one skill point. You can then put this skill point to improve one thing. Maybe it’s something generic, like how much damage you do with a Whip, or maybe it’s something specific, like improving one of your character’s special abilities.
This kind of system is usually advertised as “Complete control over how your characters develop! Choose any one of dozens of paths to powerful characters!” and yeah sure that’s theoretically true. However in practice it’s bullshit. Why? For a couple of reasons:
0. All paths are not created equal. Admittedly, Etrian Odyssey may be the exception to this (I haven’t tried every path), but I find it highly unlikely. Every game has useless skills, or skills that should be awesome, but are inflicted with so many downsides that they’re not worth it. Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing which skills are which until you find yourself forty hours in and swearing viciously because your Protector maxed out Provoke only for you to discover that it never triggers fast enough, and your enemies almost always ignore it anyway (I didn’t max out Provoke so I don’t know if that’s true. However, one point of Provoke on floor 1 was pretty useless, so I figure it’s a reasonable hypothesis). Meanwhile, she’s still ten levels away from unlocking Smite, so after she’s invoked Defender, she can’t really do much against the boss.
1. It discourages versatility. Ten skills with 1 point in each are useless. One skill with ten points is godly. So the best way to succeed in this kind of situation is to have 5 one-trick ponies. One-trick ponies are boring to play, and they’re boring to develop. I hate it when games force me to do that.
2. It discourages experimentation. You have no way of knowing if a skill is worth using until you’ve already invested a significant number of precious skill points in that ability. As a case in point, consider my Hexer. A Hexer essentially has three paths: A binding path (binding enemies arms, legs and head to keep them from using special abilities), a crowd control path (sleep, paralyze, curse) and a control path (Evil Eye plus the curses that allow the Hexer to “control” any enemies that have been terrified by Evil Eye). Now of these, the Evil Eye path is very brittle. If your enemy is resistant to Evil Eye, you could find your Hexer contributing nothing to battle. Furthermore, considering the fact that the control curses are guaranteed to effect anyone who is inflicted with Evil Eye, I find it hard to believe that any of the bosses would be susceptible to it. Otherwise, boss fights would be a cakewalk, and game designers don’t like it when boss fights are cakewalks. Evil Eye and its control curses are too prohibitively expensive to use in regular fights, so they’d be the heavy artillery. Heavy artillery that probably doesn’t work, because that’s not how RPGS work in most cases (especially JRPGs). Similar, the crowd control spells while ostensibly useful in regular fights, would probably be pretty useless against bosses for the same reason as the control curses. 99.999% of RPGS make bosses absurdly resistant to paralyze/sleep/etc. However, while crowd control can make regular fights easier, they aren’t necessary. The bosses however are pretty challenging. I can’t afford to have a character whose borderline useless during boss fights. Therefore, I sent my Hexer down the binding path. I knew from experience that bindings are actually pretty useful against all enemies, including bosses, and they’re dirt cheap.
However, all that reasoning about Evil Eye and crowd control? Total speculation. For all I know the final boss’ greatest weakness is Evil Eye, and if I’d invested in Evil Eye I could invoke Evil Eye then tie a rubber band around the Gameboy’s A button and take my dog for a walk. Why? Because I didn’t dare risk investing in Evil Eye only to discover that it’s totally useless. Then I’d have to sacrifice 10 levels just to reorganize my skill points. Ten levels is a lot. After gaining five levels, enemies that were dangerous are a cakewalk. My characters gained a little over 10 levels per Stratum, so resetting my skill points would set my Hexer back almost a full Stratum. The fact that I was forced to add her very late in the game for stupid reasons of stupidity just adds salt to the wound.
All this means that if it’s the first time playing, you’re forced to give all your characters one trick (well, maybe two), all while praying fervently that the trick you choose is actually useful. In other words, most of the strategy in this game is wound up in character development, but you have no way of evaluating your strategy until it’s too late. This ties in to a wonderful blogpost by Spiderweb Software game developer Jeff Vogel. Some of his ideas I don’t agree with (guy puts way too much emphasis on boss fights), but this one I agree with completely: Don’t Ask Questions Until the Player can Answer
At the beginning of the game, Etrian Odyssey asks me the question: How would you like to specialize each character?
However, I’d never played this game before. I had no idea what would be involved, so all I could say was “I dunno. Let me explore alright?”
And now, Etrian Odyssey is going “Hahahah! Fuck you! Now you have to grind because you wasted so many of your skill points actually having fun instead of specializing everyone into one-skill-spammers muahahahah! Well except your Dark Huntress. You got her right at least. Muahahahah!”
Of course all this is exasperated by the heavy emphasis on boss fights, which are battering ram fights in Etrian Odyssey. Etrian Odyssey has six mandatory boss fights (1 per stratum except stratum 3, which had 2). For perspective, Wizardry’s 1 and 5 combined only have 6 boss fights, 4 of which are in Wizardry 5. Furthermore, the Wizardry boss fights really aren’t so much more challenging than the regular battles that you need to worry about optimizing for them. If you’re beating the enemies before the boss fight without much trouble, you shouldn’t have many problems with the bosses. Not so in EO. In EO the boss fights are so much harder than the regular battles that you have to cater your character development to whatever is most likely to be useful against the next one time big battle I’ll never have to fight again but I know nothing about right now, rather than which is going to be the most useful against the monsters I already know about, and that I’m going to be fighting over and over again.
Now, this led to much fuming on my part. I prefer most of my strategy to be wound up in the battles not in trying to prepare my characters for battles I haven’t fought and have no way of knowing anything about. When I have control over how my characters develop, I prefer to acquire/improve skills that will make it easier against enemies I am currently facing. That’s my favorite part about a good RPG. Encountering a new enemy, trying different skills and spells, getting some idea of what works and what doesn’t, then improving those abilities that work against those enemies. In other words, I like catering my characters to deal with the current situation. That’s what makes levelling up exciting: “Alright! Now I can finally learn ice ball and obliterate those fire demons that were giving us so much trouble! Suck ice Satan!”
Then I started thinking about how I would implement a skill system. Because a good game with a horrible development system is a double waste if I can’t learn something from it and become a better game developer myself. I came up with the following system:
On the surface, it’s the same as Etrian Odyssey’s. Each level up you gain some number of skill points, which you can apply to improve your skills. However, there are two key differences:
1. You are free to rearrange your skill points at any time with no penalty.
2. You can save skill point configurations.
So for example, you could have a “dungeon exploration” skill set that focuses on crowd control spells, light spells, secret-detecting spells and the like. Then you could have a “boss fight” skill set that focuses on all of your expensive, heavy hitting skills.
You could have a “balanced” skill set that evenly distributes your skill points across all your abilities (this would be used at the beginning of each floor, when you’re not sure what will work and what wouldn’t). You could have a “fire-focused” skillset that emphasizes the fire spells a given character can learn. Similarly with the other elements. Each time you level up, you’d be able to improve one skill in each set.
This I think would be fun, because it can open the door for all sorts of things. You could have an ice-focused level, or a fire-focused level. You could have a boss fight that is a standard tank and spank, and you could have a boss fight that is nigh impenetrable, but is susceptible to status effects, even instant death attacks! At the beginning of each boss fight, you’d be given the choice to select your desired skill configuration (or tweak one, or create a new one). Then if you die you get the option of starting that fight over again with a different skill set. So each boss fight is a search for the best strategy. Hell, there’s no reason why there would have to be only one best strategy for each fight. So the search would be for the best strategy that you like the most. Maybe a spell-focused tank-and-spank. Or a physical attack focus, or a focus on using spells that reduce stats, or improve your stats. Or skills that fiddle with the game engine (i.e. turn order, combo attacks, number of hits per round, etc.). Or a focus on skills that improve the impacts of your spankings 😛
Meanwhile, when you’re exploring each floor/dungeon, you’re focusing on experimenting with different spells and skills, trying to figure out which ones will work best for the obstacles (monsters and otherwise) on that level. So at first, each floor/dungeon is kicking your ass and it’s a struggle just to stay alive. But then as you get a better handle on your enemy’s weaknesses, you start to breeze through them, without having to grind ten levels.
Thoughts? Does that sound like a good idea? Or does it sound stupid?
Spankers and Spankees,
Happy New Year! Things are moving forward, I promise. I’ve completed all the paths for the opening sequence of the second episode (i.e. from the start of the episode until the player regains control) when the player lives at the adventurer’s guild. Currently, I’m working on the paths for when the player stays with Maria. Not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but I’ve also finished the first draft of the translation program, and it can successfully translate simple latex files. Which means it’ll break in horrifying ways once I run a proper episode through it, but whatever. I don’t have to worry about that yet.
Furthermore, once I have the first third of the episode written (i.e. up to entering the maze), then I’ll release it to the public. My original dream had been to release each episode only once it’s complete, however that was before I understood the full scale that each episode will end up being. Plus, the whole throwing out most of what I wrote during the fall thing has seriously slowed me down. Clearly however, I’m going to have to seriously pick up the pace and impose more discipline on my writing in the future. Otherwise, we’re going to be here for a few decades. I’d really like to release at least two episodes a year, but I won’t be surprised if episode 2 doesn’t get released in its entirety until the summer.
Now the bulk of the first third of the episode are the opening sequences. After that, there’s an encounter with Peter if you’re tutoring his daughter Annie, the start of a subplot with Carrie: “The Mystery of the Clothing Shop and Its Mass Production in a Medieval Setting”, and a brief conversation with Elise. So hopefully I’ll be able to actually release new content before the end of February, but don’t hold me to that. I’m notorious for underestimating how much time I need to get stuff done.
I’m also working on the second episode for Etrian Odyssey, and am on track to release that next Sunday. I’ll talk more about that next week, but suffice to say that I’ve made it to the 21st floor in the game itself, and have enjoyed (almost) every minute of it.
I have posted a new version of the first episode of the Etrian Odyssey Let’s Spank. It contains fixes for a few typos, and proper chapter titles. It also contains a small retcon. The story blurb at the beginning of the instruction manual gave me the false impression that the Labryinth appeared relatively recently. However, characters in the game itself speak like the Labryinth has been around for a while, so I’ve had to change the time at which the Labryinth has mostly recently appeared from 3 or 4 years ago to 30 or 40 years ago.
I’ve also reorganized the LaTeX a little to make it easier to release compilations (though this doesn’t affect the PDF). Basically, each time I complete a stratum, I’ll release one large PDF with every episode that takes place in that stratum. I’m planning on 1 episode per level, with a few exceptions. For example, the first level will have two episodes dedicated to it. So unless the game is lying to me, that’s a little over 25 episodes for the entire story. Which means that if I can keep my schedule, the story will be complete sometime next March or so.
The first episode of my Let’s Spank of Etrian Odyssey can be found here.
Or you can go to the new fangled Etrian Odyssey page in the tabs above. I post all the episodes there as well as in blog posts. They’re all PDF’s. Originally, tried converting them into html from latex, but it seems the HTML generated by htlatex isn’t quite compatible with the html read by blogspot (blogspot mangles my paragraphs), so you’re just getting PDF’s. Sorry.
Sorry about my lateness. Turns out that waiting until Sunday morning and then spending sixteen hours straight writing (with a few breaks for meals, grocery shopping, and dog walking) isn’t the best way to write a story.
Anyway, I’ve made a few changes to the characters:
1. Allison Kat Andrea is now Allison Kat Amelia, because I forgot my character sheet when first playing the game, and I gave her the wrong name. Unfortunately Etrian Odyssey doesn’t let me rename my characters >:(
2. Amelia is now 23 years old instead of 27. 27 was just a little bit too old.
3. It turns out that Hexer’s need to be unlocked, so I wasn’t able to create a Hexer. I considered going for a troubadour, like was suggested on AnimeOTK, at least until I could get a Hexer, but again there was that whole “I have no songwriting talent.” So instead, I created a Landsknecht named Naomi. My plans are for her to be a temporary character (I have a few ideas on how to gracefully retire her, and I have a few ideas on how to expand on the unlocking Hexer events, if it needs expanding (I have absolutely no idea of what’s involved). So we’ll see what happens.
Also, the episode is rather long, sorry. Turns out that it’s really hard to introduce five distinct characters, and have something approximating a plot, and a few spankings, and do so in a minimal amount of pages. Hopefully, future episodes will be shorter. But who knows, I tend to ramble.
Anyway, it’s mostly dialogue, so hopefully it’ll be a quick read.
Finally, I’m playing around a little bit with the density of spankings, trying to go for a more drawn out build up, rather than the turn around and get spanked approach I’m taking in Pandemonium Cycle. I may have gone a little bit overboard. But then again, maybe not. Some of my favorite spanking stories have been relatively long ones that built up to the spanking. So let me know what you think.
Finally, don’t expect another episode until end of December/beginning of January, because I’ll be spending all of next week visiting my family (holidays blow), and it’s hard to work on spanking porn when you’re visiting your family. Not sure yet if I’ll go for a first week/second week update in January before settling into my proposed schedule from my previous post, or whether I’ll wait until the second weekend of January to post the next episode. Depends on how much feedback I get from people 😉
Spankers and Spankees,
Hope all the Americans in the audience had a good Thanksgiving. Mine could have gone better. Could have gone worse too. On the bright side, I managed to get down to the 7th or 8th floor in Etrian Odyssey, and I’ve got enough material to keep us busy for a couple of months. I’m shooting to have the first gameplay-inspired-story written for next Sunday. The dream is to have an update schedule like the following:
First week of the month: Pandemonium Cycle updates
Second week of the month: Etrian Odyssey
Third week of the month: Nothing!!! You schmucks aren’t worth it!
Fourth week of the month: Etrian Odyssey
Anyway, on to Pandemonium Cycle updates.
Anyway, before we get started: I’ve added two new pages to my blog: Contributors and Helping. Contributors contains a list of people who are helping me in some official capacity in developing the game. Helping contains a few blanket requests for help, if people are so interested. I have more details on the one I consider most important further in this post.
First, the latest version has had 78 downloads, which is a few downloads shy of the record (version 1.10 with 82 downloads). That’s pretty cool that my code has infected been executed on about 70 machines or so when you account for the occasional repeat download. It’s hard to gauge, though since most versions have only been minor tweaks so I wouldn’t be surprised if some people skip versions. It’ll be interesting to see what the download count is when we (eventually) release 2.0 (i.e. episode 2).
I’ve uploaded a new version. It has hardly any changes at all. A few tweaks to a few of the conversations with Elise (I removed the ability to refuse the option of going to the bar, because I was too lazy to write a path for skipping the bar in the second episode, and then put it back in when an interesting subplot that only shows up if you skip the bar occurred to me). I also fixed a typo or two. Don’t feel like you have to download this version, unless the typo in the combat spanking is really getting to you.
Speaking of the combat spankings, I’m really not satisfied with it. It feels so…gimmicky. In fact, I originally had a combat spanking mechanic, but then removed it before releasing it, only to put a watered down version in when Emily started whining sagely suggested that some in-combat spanking would be nice. My original conception had been that each enemy would have three different spanking positions available, say OTK, underarm, and over-one-knee. Each position would have different bonuses and penalties across three numbers: humiliation, difficulty, and length (which affects how many smacks you get off). For example, OTK would be a balance of humiliation, difficulty and length. Underarm would last a while, but wouldn’t be particularly humiliating, and relatively difficult to pull off. Something like neck-between-the-legs would be very long, and very humiliating, but very difficult. The severity of the humiliation status, and how long it lasts would then depend on how humiliating the position is, and how long you held it. However, the higher the difficulty, the higher the chance of failure, or reversal.
I really want to put that back in, just to make the spankings less gimmicky. However, writing six different spanking scenes (two for each position: a successful spanking, and a reversal), plus some failure text was really really tedious. It was also rather difficult. It turns out writing spanking scenes without much context is rather difficult. So I removed it, and now I’m stuck with this gimmicky non-mechanic that contributes almost nothing to gameplay, and since the text is the same for every enemy, really isn’t that sexy.
So, I’m looking for anyone who would be willing to volunteer their time to write some generic, in-combat spankings. It wouldn’t require that much of your time. I’m thinking about having roughly ten spankable enemies for the second episode, including bosses. Either I or Emily or Jeffrey will probably write the boss scenes to minimize spoilers, so you’d only have to worry about generic enemies. Furthermore, I’d start sending you details about the enemies who need scenes right away, so we can spread the writing across the entirety of the episode, so it will never be too overwhelming.
If I can get a couple of volunteers then we can spread it out further, and the volunteers will still be pleasantly surprised by other people’s combat spankings.
Furthermore, this will give you a chance to get some inkling of the work involved in creating a game, in case you’re interested in writing your own. It will also give me a chance to gauge your writing skill and dependability. If I’m sufficiently impressed by both, I may in the future ask you to write a full spanking scene complete with interaction between characters. And the more people I have helping me write this thing, the faster I put out each episode, and the more content I can have in each episode. Finally, the more people involved, the lower the chances that this game will die. I’m still freakishly dedicated to crafting this game, but life happens. I might die in a car crash and vanish off the Internet, or suffer a family tragedy that keeps me from writing for a few months. Or meet a woman, get married, and have children, drastically reducing my free time. If others are involved, then maybe they can keep pushing the project forward with me serving an advisory/occasional coding role if life gets in the way.
If you’re interested, send me an e-mail at my gmail account sprpgs. As a little carrot, I already have the spanking scenes for the episode 1 enemies written, from back when I first conceived of the spanking system. If I get enough people interested, then in my next game update I’ll unleash the more in-depth combat spanking mechanic upon you. And then watch it wreck game balance. But such is life when writing an rpg.
If you have any thoughts of writing your own game, I would highly recommend helping me first. There are a few reasons for this. First, it will give you a chance to test how dedicated you are to writing a spanking game (or any large project, really). It turns out that a spanking game becomes a lot less sexy when you’re the one implementing it. Trust me on this. Second, if after writing a few scenes for me, you decide that you just don’t have time to develop a game, then you’ll still have contributed to a living game, rather than just leaving another abandoned project on the Internet to tease people for all time with what-might-have-been. Also, I’m a selfish bastard who doesn’t want to deal with the competition.
Important: You will NOT be expected to write your stuff in LaTeX, or write any Python code. You will only be expected to write some plain text, and I’ll put it in the program.
Anyway, on to updates about episode 2 progress. I’ve written over 100 pages of content, only for Emily and I to decide that it’s garbage. Well, the content itself isn’t garbage, but rather the organization. Basically, in my old system, I only planned out down to the scene level. So I have a rough idea of the main plot for each episode, subplots for each season, and character arcs for most of the main cast. I also have a pretty good idea of what I want to happen in each scene for episode 2. However, I used to stop there. I wouldn’t plan out the scenes themselves. Instead I’d sit down, and just let my muse floooow like the river.
Well, it turns out that my muse sucks at giving different paths a balanced treatment, and making sure I’m actually making progress. So after about six weeks of furious writing I ended up with 115 pages of content before you even get out of the guild/Maria’s home, and most of it was found in obscure paths that you’d only find if you:
a. tried everything imaginable. Even things you didn’t know would matter (i.e. wearing a thong and no pants when you go into the kitchen for the first time)
b. Asked me about alternative paths and I remembered the path when I responded.
c. Happened to pick just the write sequence of choices scattered across different unrelated conversations.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love having scenes showing up in obscure little corners you wouldn’t think to look in (or even knew existed). Nothing gets the sex juices flowing like getting surprised on your sixth playthrough (assuming you guys play that often. In which case, you’re not playing enough I’m flattered.). However a single easter-egg scene really shouldn’t take up 30+ pages. Unless I outsource it to someone else. In which case, sure, whatever.
In light of these problems, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks recharging and reflecting. Based on those reflections, I’ve decided to make a few changes to my writing process. From now on before I write up a scene, I’m going to work out an outline of how the scene should go, all the way down to the nodes of the conversation trees. Then, I’ll write up a brief outline of the scene, with one or two sentences describing how I think each node should go, and send it off to Emily. That way, if there are any glaring omissions, or I’m putting too much emphasis on one path, but not on another, we’ll be able to catch it before I’ve churned out a novella’s worth of material.
From there, it’s a “simple” manner of filling in each node, and making sure I don’t add more than one or two nodes to a particular path. Hopefully, that way I’ll be able to give each path a more balanced treatment, and make sure I don’t have one path with 20 nodes, one with 7, and one with 2.
I’ve written up an outline for the opening of episode 2 and sent it off to Emily for her perusal. Fortunately, I should be able to rework most of what I already have written into the new structure, and the rest I’ll push into a might-come-in-handy-later pile. So I should be able to get back to where I was before Thanksgiving relatively quickly.
However, for now I’m going to use my simple outline as sample input for my LaTeX-to-Python translator. I want to get that damned thing written and (mostly) working before I dive back into the writing.
I’m so sorry that things are taking this long. I promise that I’m working hard on it. It’s just that I’m still new at this, and haven’t worked out a good system. Plus, there is still a lot of coding involved, and coding takes time. Hopefully, once we hit episode 4 or 5 I’ll have hit my stride (and have finished the bulk of coding) and I’ll be able to bust out episodes at a more reasonable pace. Plus I might be able to recruit some additional help to get this thing moving that must faster.
This is the post I made on AnimeOTK a few minutes ago, repeated here for your viewing pleasure:
I’ll be starting to play Etrian Odyssey tomorrow, so here are the remaining three characters. Note that they are inspired by Zae’s suggestions, though I did take them and tweak them a bit. In particular, I’m replacing the mischievous bard with a mischievous hexer, mostly because I can’t write music, and I think the bard’s appeal would come out of there actually being concrete little ditties about this or that misadventure. While I could play it as the bard being hilariously bad at songwriting to justify any atrocious things I would write, the thought of trying to concoct songs, even bad ones, wearies me. On the other hand, having a playful hexer would be fun because it completely goes against their portraits, which are kind of creepy.
As for the alchemist, I decided to replace “grumpy and well-educated” with “spoiled rotten and well-educated,” mostly because Alchemy seems like the kind of profession a rich girl might take up, and we need some spoiled rotten in here somewhere.
Totally took the Protector idea unchanged, however.
If anyone has any suggestions or tweaks for the characters below (or if my party makeup is doomed to failure), let me know, and I’d be happy to make some changes.
Name: Gwendolyn Karter
Profession: Alchemist
Position: Switch
Age: 23
Bio: Gwendolyn is the insufferably spoiled brat child of some middling lord or other from a different town. As the only daughter in a family with three sons, her father doted on her like no other. Whatever she want, she got, and if
she didn’t get what she wanted, she threw a tantrum like no other. These days, she doesn’t throw quite so many tantrums. Instead, she just explains in exquisite detail why the person refusing her is an unsightly worm who shouldn’t
interfere with their betters if she thinks she can get away with it, and works some prank or other to ruin the other person’s day if she can’t. That being said, she is a gifted Alchemist, and the only time she is anything
approaching bearable is when she’s focused on Alchemy. And even then she’s just brusque and impatient rather than snotty.
Name: Samantha Star
Profession: Protector
Position: Mostly Bottom
Age: 28
Bio: Gwendolyn’s bodyguard. Samantha Star’s father is the bodyguard of Gwendolyn’s father, and it has been pounded into her from birth the importance of serving and protecting Gwendolyn. This includes taking responsibility for
any of Gwendolyn’s mischief that run the danger of being traced back to her. She is calm, quiet, and unassuming. Pretty much the exact opposite of Gwendolyn. She treats Gwendolyn with deference, and Gwendolyn eats it up, treating
Samantha as her own personal manservant. Gwendolyn also doesn’t seem all that appreciative of Samantha’s unfailing loyalty. She takes Samantha for granted and has no inkling of how helpless she’d be without the quiet Protector.
Name: Wendy “Hexy” Wellington
Profession: Bard
Position: Mostly Bottom
Age: 18
Bio: An obnoxiously cheerful, and cheeky brat. She’s a friend of Allison’s, and was babysat by Andrea. She vanished a few years ago when she started to develop uncontrolled hexing talent. She’s recently returned, completely
out of the blue. She takes a ton of delight in messing with people. One of her favorites is to act overly melodramatic and creepy, playing to Hexer stereotypes. Of course, she can’t maintain it for very. She hates it when people
get all melodramatic and serious, and will try to lighten the mood. Of course, her “lightening” usually consists of casting some harmless hex on one of her teammates (such as making them trip into the mud, or lose their pants, etc),
much to her teammates’ chagrin. She’s also a very fast talker, and will try to talk her way out of a punishment. In short, whereas Gwendolyn has a cruel streak to her pranks, Wendy has a more playful streak.
————-End AnimeOTK post——————–
Also, this is completely unrelated, but I’ve taken the past week off from Potion Wars (been writing like a fiend, and needed a break) and I’ve been playing Shadowrunner Returns.
It is amazing. Seriously, this game is the closest I’ve ever come to my ideal RPG:
1. Gameplay that is challenging enough to keep me engaged, but not so challenging that I have to restart half a dozen times.
2. Gameplay that is deep enough that it’s not just a click fest (in particular, the true depth in this game comes from finding cover and positioning your characters properly. Whoever has the superior position has a HUGE impact on battle).
3. Status spells that are actually useful. Damage spells that can do some damage.
4. An AMAZING setting. It’s this mind-blowing combination of cyberpunk, high fantasy, science fiction, and pulpy detective novels (my favorite character type is a fast, smart, pistol-toting hacker-type called a decker).
5. Superb writing. The dialogue is very well done. I love their slang. Unique, flows wonderfully, and the writers make an expert use of context to make the slang clear. Wish I could write slang like that. The stories (at least for the main campaign, and the expansion campaign) are also engrossing. Dead Man’s Switch isn’t anything particularly new, but it’s very well executed and the setting is unique enough that the core store doesn’t need to be. Haven’t finished Dragonfall yet, but that’s shaping up to be superior to Dead Man’s Switch in every way.
6. The quests are plots (including the subquests). It’s not just a bland “I need the Talisman of Muldour! Bring it to me!” It ‘s more like you have conversations with the characters, connect with them, and then they might ask for your help then, or later on. Plus, many of them build on themselves in a very natural and engrossing manner. Furthermore, just about every quest sheds some new light on the setting, so with each quest you feel like you understand a little bit more about the world these characters live in. Sure, they usually boil down to “kill that guy.” or “bring me that doohickey” but those are just the skeleton they use to shape the story.
6. Streamlined gameplay. I don’t waste time slogging through dozens of pointless subquests just to get strong enough to beat the main quest (hate subquest heavy games. 98% of those “hundreds of quests!” are filler). At any given time you have a main quest, and maybe one or two subquests, all of which are usually accomplished by taking one or two steps off the main quest’s path. I know some people like the whole “open world exploration” thing, but I don’t. Give me an engrossing plot, an interesting setting, and good gameplay over 100 areas and 200 inane sidequests any day. It’s not like you have any real choice in the open world games anyway, so why dilute the story pretending you do?
7. I create my own character. I want to play a female elven, pistol wielding decker? I can. I want to play a female human, pistol wielding decker? I can. There are other things I can be. Like male. Or a troll. Or a street samurai. But light footed deckers are way too much fun. Also I have some strange obsession with playing as a woman in all my games. Just so much more fun than playing a man. Don’t know why. Probably because I’m a man for the rest of my day, and I need a little variety.
8. Short animations. The graphics and music do an excellent job of capturing the setting, but the combat animations are fast and simple enough that they don’t slow things down. Furthermore, the game has high damage and low hitpoints, so combat is fast (plus it encourages you to use the terrain, your items, and your magic wisely).
The only major flaw is that the roleplaying is more in your head than in the game. Sure, your character periodically gets to respond to people, and they are very good responses. It feels like your character is actually talking to people instead of just blandly nodding and saying “uh-huh.” Plus, they do a great job of implementing the classic “I’m a kind person”, “Eh, whatevs”, “I are asshole!” triad. However, whichever response you pick, the other character will usually have a few sentences of difference, before returning to their main thread,completely unaffected by whatever you said. So your responses have a minimal impact on the flow of conversation. However, it’s a metric ton of work to have player responses have a real, noticeable impact on conversation. Plus, the flaw is pretty standard for the industry, regardless of the quality of the game, so it’s not a huge blow.
I’ve been enjoying this game so much that I’m thinking my next game will be in a similar cyberpunk-fantasy-science fiction mashup. Unfortunately, that’s years away, and I want to play with the setting now. But I don’t want to take time away from Potion Wars. SO, I’ve started concocting the premise for a series of short stories set in my own cyberpunk-science fiction-fantasy world. I’m currently working on the first story. The hope is that in between Potion Wars development (which remains my absolute top priority), and my Etrian Odyssey Let’s Spank, I’ll be able to write up a few stories here and there that let me build up this new setting. Hopefully, they’ll give me an opportunity to pull it away from its Shadowrunner roots, and give some nice background to my (very hypothetical and not at all guaranteed) future game.
That being said, Shadowrunner has a pretty crapsack world (it has to, because you basically play as a criminal, and it’s hard to make criminals sympathetic in light settings), so my world is also pretty crapsack (because you know, criminals), which means the plotlines will probably be a bit darker than the Etrian Odyssey Let’s Spank. Not sure where it will be in relation to Potion Wars, but probably a bit darker, because I don’t have Emily keeping me under control (still won’t go full Game of Thrones though. I want people to actually enjoy these things after all). Plus, while there will be sex and spankings, there won’t be as much emphasis on them as in Potion Wars. This is not a world where everyone is running around spanking everyone else. That being said, this is a spanking blog so I will strive to give every story at least one lovingly crafted spanking scene.
Edit: I’ve uploaded new versions of the game with the bugs mentioned on the previous post (plus a few others that I found!) fixed. Also, I’ve discovered that the permissions on the Ubuntu executable downloaded from Mediafire are wonky, and I haven’t figured out a good way of fixing them (I love Ubuntu, but sometimes it really pisses me off). Basically, you can’t make the file executable by right-clicking on it, because you can’t get administrative privileges from the properties dialog, like you can in Windows. So in order to make Ubuntu recognize my game as an executable program, you need to open a command-line in the same directory as the executable and write:
~> sudo chmod +x PotionWars
Ubuntu will ask for your password (note that passwords do not appear when typed on the command-line. However, the computer is reading your keystrokes. Just type in your password and hit enter). Once you’ve provided your password, the program will be made executable.
So I recently went out and purchased a Nintendo DS and the first two Etrian Odyssey games (relatively modern old-school dungeon crawls, my favorite kind of RPG). Looking through the character classes I discovered that there is basically a dominatrix class called Dark Hunters:
Dark Hunters were the mistresses of sword and lash
Their binding skills could sway the tide of any clash
Their blades carried affliction with every slash
The monsters they faced reduced to cinders and ash
Complete with a dominatrixy outfit.
This got me thinking that it’d be kind of fun to do a Spanko Let’s Play (well more of a sequence of short stories inspired by the events in the game), with a group of adventurers led by a Dark Huntress who believes firmly in corporal punishment for wayward party members.
The way I currently envision it, it would be an F/F adventure with an all female party (because that’s my favorite pairing), with the Dark Huntress as a mostly top, and the other party members switches/bottoms (the Dark Huntress wouldn’t take kindly to others administering discipline without her approval).
I’d shoot for a bi-monthly update cycle (though a lot of that depends on how much time I get to play the game, and how much material each play session gives me).
I also want to try my hand at a more zany, over-the-top style as opposed to the more angsty tone of Potion Wars.
However, my primary focus will still be on Potion Wars, and if I need to cut back on spanko projects, this will be the one to go.
I’m looking for party member suggestions (I can have five characters in a party, so I’m looking for an additional four, all characters must be 18+). Suggestions would be much appreciated. Here are the other eight classes pulled directly from the manual:
The Landsnknecht had a sword that could cut you in twain
[Her] powerful might was known as the monster’s bane
With sword or axe, [she] caused the foul demons much pain
From the front line [she] lost count of the monsters slain
Survivalists were [mistresses] of the woodland lore
You’d mark them by the hats and the scarves that they wore
Their specialty was the firing the arrows that soared
The Labryinth explorers sought them for their corps
Protectors bore a shield in their holy quest
Under its aegis did her companions rest
This noble knight was up to the hardest of tests
No enemy could tarnish that virtuous crest
The Medics healed their wounded comrades in need
The poison stings and the injuries that bleed
At great expense did they perform their kind deeds
Their frailty prevented them taking the lead
The learned ones with magic were the Alchemists
The elements they controlled by flicking their wrists
Their magic made up the weakness of their fists
Without one in the party their presence was missed
Now Troubadours, my own kind, brought cheer and gave mirth
Both menfolk and ladies were the salt of the earth
Our songs boosted the party and proved our own worth
In returning the Labyrinth’s beasts to the earth
From foreign lands the mysterious Ronin hail
Their skill with swords came also from that unknown vale
They’ll fight down to the last [woman] with tooth and with nail
And flay the beasts’ hide empty of stinger and scale
The rarely spotted Hexer controls with a word
The curses [she] let fly with are the last things heard
By [her] command, monsters to suicide are spurred
When recruiting, placement on the back line’s preferred
To start things off, here’s the team leader:
Name: Allison Kat Andrea
Profession: Dark Huntress
Position: Mostly top
Age: 27
Bio: A rathy bossy gal, whose parents couldn’t decide between “Allison,” “Kat,” and “Andrea” so they picked All of the Above. Goes by Andrea because Allison and Kat are names for simpering, perpetually distressed damsels who’re probably sissy medics to boot. Andrea is not a simpering, perpetually distressed damsel whose probably a sissy medic to boot, and any suggestions otherwise is a shortcut to a smarting bottom. She is laser focused on exploring the Labryinth, and doesn’t have the time or patience for silly things like “fun,” “friendship,” or “stress relief.” No one knows [I]why[/I] she’s so obsessed with the Labryinth, and asking her only leads to a brusque “That’s my business.” She thinks having mysterious motives makes her a deep, three-dimensional heroine. They do not.
Her mother had this to say: “Eh, she’s probably just looking for an excuse to get out of the house. Thank goodness, too. I love my little Aly, but she’s incapable of doing the simplest of chores without a bottom warming first. All she wants to do is play with her whips. Which is silly, by the way. Proper young ladies become medics.”
You can make your suggestion less or more detailed as you prefer. If I can get enough suggestions to form a full party, I’ll consider interest high enough to justify doing the Let’s Spank.
Note: This will not impact Potion Wars. I’ll be playing/writing for Etrian Odyssey during time that I wouldn’t normally spend on Potion Wars anyway.
Spankers and Spankees,
I’ve posted a new version under Downloads. Just like my last few posts, this just contains a few tweaks:
1. I’ve reduced the hitpoints of your enemies (including the dungeon boss) by a few points to make the combats go a bit faster (and make the boss fight a bit easier).
2. I’ve removed the Song of Roland from the tavern scene. That scene is obnoxiously long as it is, and the Song of Roland doesn’t really fit in a festive tavern atmosphere like that. It’s not gone permanently. I’ll probably have Elise sing it at hers and Roland’s wedding as sort of a wedding present, or something. I don’t know. The point is, I’m not removing it so much as moving it into a part of the game that I haven’t written yet.
3. I’ve also rewritten the pillow talk the male player has with Carrie after sex. I wrote the original dialogue just before posting the first version of the game, and I had originally conceived of it as a subplot for Carrie. However, subsequent discussions with Emily led to a much better (and sillier) subplot for Carrie. We’ve got enough angst flying around as it is, and the dialogue didn’t really fit with Carrie’s character anyway.
You can find the link in Downloads, as always.
Anyway, on to progress on episode 2. First, Emily has agreed to help me write spanking scenes, in addition to her other duties of reading obscenely long e-mails from me. Therefore, we’ll actually have F/M scenes now, since I can foist the writing of those scenes onto Emily.
Second, we’re currently at about 76 pages, and a little over 130 nodes. Not as much progress as I’d like, but I’ve had a lot of trouble writing the scene where the player wakes up in Maria’s home. It’s been one of those write two lines, erase three types of things. I think I’ve finally got something that’s flowing naturally.
Furthermore, that damned LaTeX-to-Python translation script is spanking me like a naughty schoolgirl. I’ve tried three different approaches to writing the damned thing, and every single time it’s dissolved into an impossible to maintain morasse of kludges and workarounds. Basically, I keep trying to be too clever, and then running into all sorts of corner cases. This time around I’m doing things properly with a lexer, parser, etc.
On a happier note, I’ve recently learned about the magic of graphics toolkits, and I’ve found two that look like they’re meant to be used with Pygame. What is a graphics toolkit? Well, basically it gives me a scaffolding for constructing GUI’s. My current GUI is very low-level, which is why it’s so static and shitty. With the aid of a toolkit, not only will creating the GUI be easier, but it will also be much more stable, and I’ll be able to do more complicated things behind the scenes that lead to an easier-to-use interface. I’m not going to start working with these toolkits until episode 3, because I’ve got enough other things to program for episode 2, and I’d like to release episode 2 sometime this century.
However, I have started sketching out interface options during lunch, and I’m really excited about that.
Finally, as a little reward for reading this far: It has come to my attention, based on conversations with Emily and Jeffrey the Jungle Ape that people may not know about a certain scene involving Ildri. Basically, before you see the Kitchen scene, try wearing baring underwear (such as a thong. I believe the lacy panties are also baring. It should say in the underwear description), and no pants/skirt/dress. Basically the only thing covering your lower body should be a pair of panties that don’t do a good job of covering your ass.
Spankers and Spankees,
So as part of the previous update, I was fiddling with how I position text, because of problems with displaying multiple people in the party. I got a new approach that seemed to work. This evening I realized that I forgot to make sure this text positioning scheme worked for party display in the dungeon, and in combat.
Guess what? It didn’t.
So, I’ve uploaded a new version where I reverted back to the previous system. I also recalled some weird workaround I have to use that I don’t understand that magically gets my text positioning to work across multiple lines (I hate graphics programming. Even simple graphics programming like splitting text into separate columns. Hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it) which I wasn’t using in the party display screen, which I am now using, so the problems with text positioning are fixed!
I don’t know if that paragraph made any sense to you (it doesn’t to me). But the point is, download this version. The combat screen isn’t messed up in it.
Anyway, please make sure to read the previous post as well. In addition to more information about the updates contained in versions 1.14/1.15, it also has some sketches of the potential automap. Thoughts on the automap’s design would be greatly appreciated.
Spankers and Spankees,
While messing around with transitioning from episode 1 to episode 2, I discovered that the game crashed every time I tried to save during episode 2. I managed to narrow it down to the problem line of code, but I had no idea why that line was a problem, or how to fix it, because I was using a very complex third-party module that solves a highly non-trivial problem (turning program state into text is a lot harder than you’d think) so I didn’t really understand the module I was using.
Therefore, since I had no idea how to fix the problem, I decided to go back to rolling my own save format. Unfortunately, the new format is completely different from both of the previous formats. I think it’s superior to both (at least in the context of my game), but it’s still very different. So, once again, old saves are no longer compatible with this version, and you’ll have to start over.
I’m really really sorry about that. However, once episode 2 is released the save format is pretty much locked in forever, so I really need to make sure to get it right before that happens.
On the bright side, I think the reason the most recent versions of the game dont work with PlayOnMac is because PlayOnMac doesn’t know how to handle the third-party module I was using. Since I’ve gone back to generating plain text files for my saves, PlayOnMac might start working again. So if there’s anyone out there with a Mac, please try it out with PlayOnMac and let me know if it works or not.
I’ve also fixed a few bugs and typos, including a bug where the game crashed when you tried to end the episode. I’ve also modified the logic of the dungeon events. Now, once you’ve completed the event in each room, the entrance squares will no longer display text. Hopefully, that will make going back to Paloma less of a hassle. You can find the most up-to-date version of the game in the Downloads section.
I’ve also been doing some preliminary designing for the automap. Below are some sketches that I’ve made of my proposed design. Criticism would be greatly appreciated. Note that I haven’t implemented anything yet for the automap, so I have absolutely nothing invested in this design. So feel free to tear it apart. Furthermore, the top-down perspective will look very similar to this, so keep that in mind when critiquing these sketches.
Suppose we are in a dungeon. It’s dark and scary. Or maybe it’s a sunny day in the middle of a forest with dinosaurs rumbling happily. We’ll never know.
Now, suppose we press A to trigger the (A)utomap command. That gives us the following screen.
This screen displays what we’ve seen of the dungeon so far. Note the J. That’s the first letter of the player’s name (in this case, I’m assuming the name is Juliana), and indicates where the player currently is. Now suppose, we want to define a route from our current position to the stairs down to the first level. I start pressing the arrow keys. Pressing the up arrow twice, and the right arrow once (or twice, this thing isn’t exactly to scale and it’s hard to tell) gives us the following screen:
We continue flailing at the arrow keys in a random (yet totally logical) manner to complete our route. Note that while you are selecting your route, your party isn’t actually moving. Therefore, you will not experience any random encounters while selecting your route (you will however, have random encounters once you start walking the route). Anyway, once we’ve finished selecting our route, we have the following:
Now, suppose we hit Enter. The party starts walking the path above. Note that this is not displayed to the player. From the player’s point of view, the party will simply teleport to the desired square. However, behind the scenes, the party is traversing the dungeon one square at a time. So from the system’s point of view, travelling by a path is exactly the same as travelling manually. Therefore, once we hit the red square, we trigger combat!
After combat, we go back to the main first person display:
Except clearly on a different square (a red square). Note the blue (W)alk command. Pressing W will resume the path. Note that the command will vanish as soon as the player moves off of the current square. However, suppose we open the automap again instead. This gives us:
Observe that the J has now moved to the red square. Furthermore, the game has remembered the part of the route that you haven’t traversed yet.Pressing (Enter) will allow you to continue the path, the arrow keys allow you to edit it.
Your thoughts on this would be much appreciated. Also, I’ve been giving some thought to how to make combat faster without inhibiting clarity. I’m thinking that a combination of colors and sound-effects could get you the information you need, without boring lists of
“Juliana slapped Vengador.”
“Vengador lit Juliana’s face on fire.”
“Juliana cursed loudly.”
But we’ll have to see. So, expect similar storyboards for a new combat interface in the coming months.
Spankers and Spankees,
Apparently, it’s already the first month of October. The good news is I recently adopted a dog from the local shelter. He is the most gorgeous little thing you ever did see. At 20lbs (9 kg), he’s little bit smaller than I would prefer, but a perfect size for my apartment. Right now, he’s plopped down on the couch next to me (I know, I know, I’m spoiling him) after a long, exciting morning full of pre-dawn walks (*grumble*), three attempts at getting him to take some goofy anti-biotic (*grumble*), a visit to the vet, a visit to the pet store, and a walk through the park.
Also, I have a job offer for a job that won’t totally suck, which means that when I graduate, I won’t be homeless. This also means that I’ll have more time this month to work on Potion Wars because I won’t be preparing for as many interviews.
The bad news is that this month has been a little bit crazy, so I haven’t had as much time to work on Potion Wars as I would have liked. So, I think that’s all there is to talk about. Till next time.
walks away.
Time passes.
Faint grumblings can be heard from all 5 people in the audience. Someone tries to start a slow chant for Potion Wars, but everyone else gives him weird looks and he stops.
There is an awkward silence.
More time passes. The audience starts glancing at their watches, wondering how long before AKA gets tired of this stupid joke. They then get confused, because nobody wears watches anymore.
AKA comes running back on stage.
Sorry, sorry. Forgot to tell you about Potion Wars progress.
Someone coughs. It sounds suspiciously like “bollocks.” But that’s just silly. “Bollocks” isn’t even a word.
“I didn’t cough it you twat, I shouted it!“
Anyway, despite the crazy month full of dog adopting, and job searching, and what-not, I have managed to find time to work on the game. I’ve uploaded a new version, version 1.13. See the download section for links. What I’ve done:
1. Fixed a few stealth bugs caught by PyChecker, before they led to crashes on your ends.
2. Did some writing. I’ve currently written about 60 pages, with about 100 nodes. And that’s just about finished the scene you get at the beginning when you sleep at the guild. I now need to write:
a. The scene for when you sleep at Maria’s.
b. A brief conversation with Elise and Sister Samantha about Carrie’s party
c. A subplot with Carrie (I know what the subplot is. I just don’t want to reveal it because spoilers).
d. A scene involving the teaching of Anne, Peter’s daughter.
e. The whole damn dungeon.
f. Carrie’s party.
3. Upon realizing just how much I have to write, and how I don’t have 16 hours everyday to dedicate to writing, I’ve recruited Jeffrey the Jungle Ape to help me write the scenes that tend to be the most intricate, detailed, and hardest to write: the spanking scenes (I’ve also asked Emily, but she hasn’t responded yet). I’m not recruiting anyone else just yet. Partially because I want to see how things go with Jeffrey first, and partially because if you offer and I turn you down, it’ll be awkward. My fan base is small enough as it is. Don’t need to be scaring anyone away.
4. Sent Emily an outline of the episode for her feedback.
5. Completely revamped the setting. The game is now basically taking place in the Jurassic period (plus a few dinosaurs from the Triassic, magic, humans, elves, and maybe other things) on the supercontinent Gondwana, way down at the south pole, because:
a. Dinosaurs.
b. Fuck yeah.
c. Of the various periods in history, the Jurassic was probably the closest to your standard fantasy world: Lots of giant monsters running around, only two giant continents (which were close enough they could almost be considered one), a ginormous desert in the middle of the planet.
e. Pet dinosaurs.
f. Fuck yeah.
g. During the Jurassic period, the only parts of the planet where you could find
a cool temperate climate (which near as I can tell is roughly the climate that I grew up in) were at the poles.
h. Clothing made out of dinosaur skin.
i. Fuck yeah.
Also, it gives me an excuse to rekindle my boyhood love of dinosaurs.
6. Had to make a variety of small changes to the first episode to line up with the new setting (birds didn’t exist yet, though they did have Archaeopteryx, mammals are few and far between so they don’t have access to milk, and cheese, no flowers or deciduous trees. Also, no wool.). I probably missed something, so if you notice anything that doesn’t make sense (i.e. clothing made out of wool, flowers, birdsong, people munching on cheese) let me know. Note that they didn’t have grasses, so you wouldn’t have grains (which are grasses). However, bread can be made out of things other than grains, so bread is safe. Furthermore, I’m assuming that they have a cottonlike plant that I’m calling cotton. Mostly because dinosaur skin would probably make a scaly leather similar to alligator skin (though some of it, like Iguanadon skin, would be quite supple, others like Stegosaurus skin stiff and hard), which might not be flexible enough for some of the clothing effects in the first episode. I don’t know, I’m not a clothing expert.
7. Replaced those horrid X’s in the dungeon with filled in squares (actually trapezoids, thanks to the magic of perspective). I’ve also rearranged the colors. Now, the entrance of the dungeon (and exit for dungeons that have exits) are blue. Events are yellow (because they may or may not involve combat). Combat is red. Stairs are green.
8. I’ve made it more obvious when you’ve stepped on a stairs square, so that we don’t have the problem of people wandering around for an hour because they didn’t notice the damned “(D)own” command. Seriously, I think someone on AnimeOTK said that he was wondering around for an hour or two because he didn’t realize that stupid grey X was a set of stairs. Thank you person-whose-username-I-could-look-up-but-I-won’t-because-I’m-lazy for not just shoving my game in the Recycling Bin like I might have in the same situation. In particular, now the (D)own/(U)p command is bolded and colored green, and the direction you’re facing is replaced with the word “Stairs.” Hopefully that will make it obvious enough for people to notice.
9. Tried to add a new non-trivial command to my LaTeX -> PDF translator. Unfortunately, my code was so confusing and hacky that I couldn’t debug the new command. So I’ve started rewriting that from scratch (well, nearly. I think I saved two of the functions from my previous implementation) in a much cleaner, easier to follow way. Kind of sucks, but when they say that “good writing is rewriting” they’re not just talking about poetry and prose.
10. Reworked some of my planned future plotlines.
P.S. According to google analytics, I’ve broken 1,000 page views. Nifty.