Spankers and Spankees,

As promised, here is my first weekend of the month update.

I’ve uploaded a new version with some bug fixes:

1. Fixed a bug where Spectral Spanking/Strapping weren’t inflicting the Humiliated status properly.

2. Fixed a bug where the game claimed you couldn’t find Maria’s home, even when you add directions.

3. Fixed a bug where if you try to argue with Adrian about the price of guild membership, and then leave the game crashes.

4. Fixed a bug where the player was getting access to tier 1 spells at a Talent of 5 rather than 10.

5. Fixed a small typo in one of the in-combat spanking messages.

6. Fixed a bug where the spankings administered by the Warslinger’s Companion, and the caning administered by Adrian weren’t being registered by the game (while this doesn’t affect gameplay, it did mean that your character’s bum was magically not being affected by their spankings).

I’ve also made a few small tweaks to some of the episode text. Nothing major that would make it worth replaying. I decided that Alondra’s siblings would NOT move into the Guild because as I started working on Episode 2, I realized that having a bunch of kids move into a building filled with dangerous objects, occupied by rough adventurers who probably don’t have children themselves just didn’t make any sense. I also threw in some text making it clear that Alondra and the player share a room, if the player decides to live in the guild.

Note that you can expect similar small tweaks in the future. I won’t make any fundamental changes to any of the episodes, but if there’s some throwaway line that I later decide doesn’t work (either it doesn’t many sense for the character to say/do that, or it contradicts something that’s pivotal to a future episode), I will go back and remove it.

Finally, I have a question. One of the things I plan to add is a minimap to make it easier for players to navigate (while building your own maps is fun for direhard RPGers, the number of direhard spanko RPGers who are willing to play a hard-core RPG when they just want to enjoy some spanking porn can probably be counted on one hand).

Then, it occurred to me that it would be really convenient if players could input a route into the minimap, hit enter, and then have their character automatically take that route. It would make it very easy and convenient for the player to enter and leave the dungeons when they need to heal (of course, the player would still have the same chance of having a random encounter when executing a pre-planned route, so it wouldn’t make the game any easier).

Then, I realized that if the player is just going to be selecting a route on the minimap, why not cut out the middleman and replace the first person dungeon view with a topdown view?

So my question is, which of the following three options would people prefer:

1. The current status. A first-person view without an automap, so for complicated dungeons the player has to either create their own maps, borrow maps from other people, or resign themselves to getting hopelessly lost.

2. First person dungeon navigation, but with an automap and the ability to give the game a preplanned route through areas already explored, allowing them to quickly reach the frontier.

3. Replace the current first person view with a top-town view. Note that you would no longer have the ability to provide a preplanned route. Using the arrow keys would move you around just like they do now in the first person view.

Attached is a rough idea of what the topdown map would look like on the first floor of the first dungeon, after the player has explored the first two rooms, but hasn’t yet walked down to the end of the hallway:

http://www.mediafire.com/view/t7tjing2x8kc2b2/sample_topdown.pdf

Let me know in the comments which one you would prefer. It should be noted that I’ve written the code to make it fairly easy to change how the dungeon is displayed, so 2 and 3 would constitute roughly the same amount of work (in fact, 3 would require less work than 2, because I don’t have to implement any of the route planning).

Spankers and Spankees,

I’ve managed to find a bit more time, so I can explain in a bit more detail some of the overhauls I’ve made to the latest version of the game. But first, I want to talk about my update schedule.

My plan is to make a new post when one of the following two things happen:

1. I have a new version of the game to post (either bugfixes, or a new episode).

2. It’s the first weekend of the month.

The second type of post will simply be to reassure you that I’m still alive, and still working on the project. I’ll probably also give you some idea of where I am in the process of creating the next episode. Furthermore, at the top of each monthly post, I’ll post the version number of the currently released game.

The version numbers are structured as follows:

max_episode_number.update_number

So, version 1.11 (the currently released version) can be played through the end of episode 1, and it is the 11th version that (in theory) allows you to play through the end of episode 1.

So, when I first release episode 2, the version number will be 2.1. You’ll be able to play through the end of episode 2, and it will be the first version that plays to the end of episode 2.

This way, if you don’t want to have to check my blog every day, you can just check at the beginning of each month.
 
Furthermore, I’ll be traveling all in a vain effort to attend my brother’s wedding, and get back to school in time for classes, so for the next few weeks I’ll basically vanish. That shouldn’t stop you from posting feedback, bug reports, etc. if you feel so inclined. Just don’t expect me to respond until the last week of August.

Now, on to changes in Potion Wars 1.11. Be warned: Wall of Text ahead. I don’t expect anyone to read this from beginning to end. I’d recommend playing the game first, and if something happens that trips you up, then reference either this blogpost or the manual.  If after looking at both you’re still confused, feel free to ask me. I might not be able to respond right away, but I will as soon as I can.

———————————————Mac Compatibility———————————————
Unfortunately, the latest version of the game is no longer compatible with PlayOnMac. I don’t know how it broke, but it broke and I have no idea how to fix it. I even borrowed a friend’s install discs and tried to create an OS X VM so that I could compile directly to Mac, and I failed miserably. Mac’s business model is basically “You want access to our OS? Shell out obscene amounts of money for our hardware or STFU” (FYI, my mild dislike for Apple has now turned into a burning hatred). Needless to say, I’m not going to give over a thousand dollars to a company that I detest. And no, I can’t just ask said friend to compile the game for me, because I’d rather not tell my real-life friends that I spend the majority of my free time writing spanking porn (I’m not very trusting).

So, sorry Mac users. I tried, but you’re reduced to using a virtual machine or dual booting (or getting a better OS 😉 ).

———————————————Save Game Format———————————————

Unfortunately, this version of the game is no longer compatible with old saves, so you’ll have to start over. When more episodes are released, I will strive to make the games backwards compatible. But for now, the first episode is short enough that it isn’t really worth the effort.

I’ve massively overhauled the format of your save games. Now, instead of rolling my own function for saving state, I’m using an extended version of Python’s “Pickle” module that I stole off of the ‘Net, called “Dill.” This grossly simplifies my save and load code, and makes it much easier to maintain.

I’ve also consolidated all of the game’s state into a single object, making the whole thing much more centralized, and therefore much simpler to save, restore, and modify. This change required a lot of small changes across a lot of code, so if you see anything weird happening after loading a game, let me know. It’s possible that the game isn’t being saved/loaded properly because I forgot to change some small piece of the code.

——————————————-Character Customizations———————————————–

I’ve added some basic options at the beginning of the game for character customization. You can now select your character’s height, body type, hair length, and hair style. Of these choices, the only one that will eventually be changeable is your hair style (changing hair style is implemented, but rather buggy, so the player can’t currently access that choice). Everything else is fixed.

You can also select your character’s starting equipment. You can choose one of three types of weapons: a spear, a sword, and a dagger. You have access to the same clothing (with the exception of the quality shirts) that you can buy at Terry’s Taylors.

——————————————-Equipment——————————————————————–

I’ve laid the groundwork for modifying the enchantments on equipment. Essentially, you’ll be able to transfer enchantments between different pieces of equipment, so you don’t have to choose between the “Modest Mail of Mauling” and the “Sexy Schoolgirl Skirt of Sucky.”

Each piece of equipment will have a different max enchantment level. Typically, you’ll have a choice between having a higher defense and fewer enchantments, and more enchantments and a lower defense. For example, clothing will almost never provide a defense boost, but will have a high maximum enchantment. Plate armor will provide a large defense boost, but won’t be able to contain more than one enchantment.

Essentially, I aim to implement a quasi-item crafting mechanic without all the obnoxious “get three suits of leather armor, six peacock feathers and a demon testicle” fetch quest crap that weighs down every item crafting mechanic ever. Seriously, I will never understand why game designers seem to think that going grocery shopping is fun. Fighting the  Divine Demon of Destruction for the Shiny Sword of Super Slaying is challenging and fun. Cluttering up my inventory with a dozen rare items scattered about the deepest, darkest corners of the gameworld only to discover that I am one plank of wood away from forging the Shiny Sword of Super Slaying is not.

——————————————-Statistics———————————————————————

We now have both primary, and secondary stats. The primary stats are:

1. Strength
2. Dexterity
3. Talent
4. Willpower
5. Alertness

The secondary stats are:

1. warfare
2. grapple
3. magic
4. resilience
5. stealth

Strength and Dexterity influence warfare and grapple (strength primarily influences warfare, dexterity primarily influences grapple). Talent and Willpower influence magic and resilience (Talent primarily influences magic, Willpower primarily influences resilience). Alertness influences stealth, and improves your character’s initiative.

——————————————-Spells————————————————————————-

I’ve shuffled the spells around, and drastically slowed down how rapidly you reach the next tier. Distort Magic is the new Tier 0 Advanced Status spell, and the Spectral Spanking family is the new
Tier 0 Spectral family.

Furthermore, the Combat spells now do a range of damage, instead of a fixed value. The range is affected by the difference between the caster’s and recipient’s magic. For some spells, it might influence the lower end of the range, for others the higher end. For others, it might influence both.

In addition to keeping the combat spells from being too overpowered with the new statistics, this will also make those spells more interesting. For example, combat spells whose minimum damage are influenced by stats are good to cast on enemies that have a low magic, but should definitely not be cast on enemies that have a high magic (or you might find yourself doing zero, or worse negative damage!). Meanwhile, spells whose max damage are influenced by stats are good to cast on enemies with a high magic (you’ll always do some damage), but will not be very reliable on enemies with a low magic (you might still get unlucky and do a tiny fraction of the damage you could do).

Furthermore, instead of requiring a magic of 3 to reach Tier 1, you now need a Talent of 10. Unless you’re the kind of person who spends 8 hours every day slaughtering boars in WoW, you shouldn’t hit a Talent of 10 until Episodes 3 or 4 (if you do hit Talent 10 before Episode 3 without excessive grinding, kindly let me know).

—————————————Combat—————————————————————————-

At Emily’s request, I’ve added a new command, the (S)pank command.  When you are grappling your opponent, you will be given the option of trying to spank them. Your chances of success are influenced by your grappling skill. If you are successful, you will inflict on your enemy the Humiliated status, which inflicts a -1 penalty to all their primary stats. If you fail, nothing happens. If you get reversed, your enemy will humiliate you. So, use with caution.

In future versions of the game, I’ll probably add an option to turn off the (S)pank command, for those who don’t like the “Spankings at every turn” style of spanking porn.

I’ve also sped up the combat interface some. Attacking an enemy is as simple as pressing the enemy’s number (or pressing Enter if you want to attack the first enemy, or the enemy you’re currently grappling).

I’ve also added Quick Spells. Essentially, you can have up to 12 spells assigned to the function keys (F1-12). In combat, you select that spell by just pressing the appropriate function key, instead of slogging through the (C)ast-Select Tier-Select Spell command sequence. There is a command (M)odify Quick Spells on the main interface (outside of combat) that allows you to change the spell assignments. Currently, they default to:

F1 – Firebolt
F2 – Weaken
F3 – Heal
F4 – Spectral Spanking

Every time you learn a new spell, that spell is automatically assigned to the first empty function key. In addition to being able to change a key’s assignment, you can also swap keys. So if you’d rather have heal at F2 and Weaken at F3, you can swap the two by pressing M-F2-F3, instead of assigning each one manually.

I believe that’s everything major.  Hope you enjoy the latest and greatest version of Pandemonium Cycle: The Potion Wars!

Spankers and Spankees,

Hella busy right now, so I can’t say much. Latest version is uploaded (see Downloads page). Made a lot of changes. Most of them are either behind the scenes, or obvious.

A few things that might trip people up:

I’ve drastically overhauled the code for saving and loading games. As a result, your old saves are no longer compatible. You’ll have to start over. Sorry, but the changes were so massive that making the game backwards compatible would have been more trouble than it’s worth, especially since only one episode is posted so far. If I have to modify the save format in later episodes, I’ll strive to make the game backwards compatible. But for now, you’ll have to start over.

I’ve streamlined combat a little, so that now you can attack an enemy by either pressing the number of the enemy directly (instead of first selecting (A)ttack), or by just pressing Enter. If you press Enter, then your character automatically targets the first enemy, or whoever your character is grappling, if your character is grappling someone. This option of pressing either a number or Enter is represented by (#Enter).

I’ve also set up the function keys (F1-12) as quick spells. Now, you save up to twelve spells as quick spells. Instead of having to slog through the “(C)ast-(#) Select a Tier-(#) Select a spell-(#) Select a target” sequence of commands, you can go through the “(F#) select a spell-(#) Select a target” sequence. When you learn a new spell, it is automatically added the first free function key. You can rearrange and change the quick spell assignments.  If you see (F#) it means you need to press one of the function keys.

More details on quick spells can be found in the updated manual.

I’ve also drastically slowed down how quickly you achieve spell tiers. Now, instead of achieving the next tier when you reach a Talent (originally called Magic) of 3, you get the next tier when you reach a Talent of 10. I’ve also made Distort Magic the advanced Tier 0 status spell (instead of Mass Weaken), and Spectral Spanking, Spectral Strapping, Spectral Caning the Tier 0 Spectral spells (rather than Spectral Push, Spectral Pull, Spectral Shove).

I’ll write a more detailed post early next week, but that should be enough to get you started for now.

Also, many thanks to Uninventive, Johny741, and an anonymous fellow I’m referring to as Jeffrey the Jungle-Ape without his permission (because permission is for pansies) for their patience and willingness to play the game over and over again to find bugs and crashes. Especially Uninventive. The guy (or girl) is either really really bored, or really really dedicated to helping me improve my game. Either way, I appreciate it.

Spankers and Spankees,

I’m currently working on some fairly major extensions/modifications to The Potion Wars‘ engine, and at this stage I’ve sent the game out to my editor (Emily) and beta testers (Johny741, and Uninventive).

Unfortunately, we’ve run into a problem where the changes I’ve made to the game have made it incompatible with PlayOnMac. I have absolutely no idea how to fix that, or even if it is fixable without dedicating all my time to it.

It’s patently absurd that the woman who has volunteered some of her precious free time to edit my game can’t then play it. So, I’m looking for someone who owns a Mac, and is moderately tech-savvy, who could compile the game from source.

What you would need to do:

0. Receive from me a zipped file containing the game’s source code, plus some third-party stuff you’ll need to compile the game.

1. Make sure Python 2.7 is installed on your machine (I’m 99.999999% sure it comes pre-installed on Macs these days).

2. Download and install Pygame.

3. Execute a command on the command-line that I give them.

4. Basic troubleshooting, so I don’t have to try to fix any compilation errors you come across over e-mail (obviously I would be willing to help with any errors you find, but the more you can fix on your own, the faster the game will get compiled).

5. A willingness to recompile the game every time I come out with a new version. Note that this should be much simpler than the first time. All you’ll need is the updated source code, and any new songs/images that I add to the game.

Ideally, I’d also like it to be someone who knows/can figure out how to use git so that most compilations are as simple as pulling the most up-to-date source code off of git and executing a command on the command-line.

If you’re willing to help, you get the following “perks:”

1. A name of your choice under my Acknowledgements page in the game.

2. The (rather buggy) next version of the game a week to two weeks (depending on how buggy the new release is) before anyone except the beta testers.

Furthermore, if you’d like to also be a beta tester (since you’ll have the new version of the game at the same time as the beta testers anyway), you can be. Just let me know that you’re interested in that as well.

 If you’re interested, then please send me an e-mail at sprpgs@gmail.com.

Spankers and Spankees,

Fixed a few crashes pointed out by Uninventive at AnimeOTK (thank you!), and a bug in Cosima’s encounter (some of her path’s weren’t properly triggering unlocking the ability to ask Paloma about getting a white ribbon).

Get the latest and greatest version over at Downloads.

Spankers and Spankees,

I’ve taken full advantage of the long weekend, to finish up a fairly significant update.

First, I’ve fixed (hopefully) the various crashes that people have pointed out to me.

Second, I’ve modified your encounter with Paloma. Now, Paloma does not give you the ribbon after the two Vengadores harassing her leave (if she does give it to you without you asking, please let me know because that’s a bug). Instead, she just heals you and send you on your way.

Once you encounter one of the other guild trainers, they’ll tell you to go get a ribbon. Now, if you return to Paloma you have the option of just accepting her offer of healing, or asking about the ribbon. If you’ve been spanked as a result of not having a ribbon, you’ll also unlock a chance to spank Paloma.

Third, I’ve now included the beginnings of a manual (potionwars.pdf). It doesn’t have everything (for one thing, it doesn’t explain what the colored x’s on the floors of the dungeons mean), but it’s a start. It’s meant primarily as a reference, so I wouldn’t recommend trying to read it cover-to-cover. I would however recommend looking at the chapter on combat. Also, there’s a little seven page frame story at the very beginning, so I’d suggest checking that out.

Fourth, I’ve tweaked the combat some. First, I’ve made your enemies more powerful, and given you a few more hitpoints to start out. Second, I’ve tweaked the initiative system so that there’s a bit more randomness in who goes when.

Fifth, Emily over at AnimeOTK has graciously agreed to serve as my editor for future episodes. This will have the following impacts:

1. It will take a little bit longer for you guys to get each new episode, but since we don’t really have a set update schedule, that doesn’t matter anyway.

2. I have a much better chance of properly growing all the seeds I’ve planted in the first episode. I can’t begin to stress how important it is for a writer to have someone else whose willing to look at a story and poke holes in it. Especially for a multi-year project like this.

3. If you ever find yourself overcome with rage at low quality episodes, character derailments, or idiot balls, you can now blame Emily, because it will totally be all her fault.

Finally, one comment about the Paloma spanking: I’m sure you’ll notice that you have an unusual amount of control over the spanking. This was an experiment on my end. I wanted to try giving the player maximum control over the direction the spanking went. Unfortunately, the experiment is a failed one. Writing this scene was very time consuming and very boring. Seriously, there’s only so many ways you can describe essentially the same spanking scene. I also didn’t really want to have some sort of lego block thing, where the same thing happens just in different orders, because that would feel like a bait and switch: “Oh hey, look at how much control you have over this spanking! Hah! Sucker, looks like you don’t have as much control as you thought!” (That ended up happening anyway, because I got bored and wanted to finish the damn scene.)

Furthermore, having so many branches discouraged me from writing much in the way of dialog, because it would feel weird for the player to give Paloma a proper scolding in one path, and not in another when the only difference is that Paloma’s getting spanked with the bare hand instead of wooden spoon. Finally, testing it was a butt, because there were so many branches. So don’t be surprised if that encounter crashes a few times.

In short, don’t expect that kind of hyper-branching to happen again. I think it made the spanking scene duller than it could have been, it was tedious to write, and it doesn’t really contribute all that much anyway.

Spankers and Spankees,

On the previous post I got a question about learning Distort Magic, and I realized that I have yet to make explicit what the level-up mechanics are. I threw in a few references in game, but it’s not always possible to see those, and they’re very vague.

 I had been planning on working on a manual at some point over the past few weeks, but between bug fixes and a bad head cold that struck me down at the end of last week, I haven’t had a chance.

So, until I’ve actually written up the manual, here is a brief rundown of level-up mechanics.

The basic idea is that your character improves depending on what you do in combat. That will get you 90% of the way to understanding the level-up mechanic, at least enough to beat the game.

In particular:

———————————————–Stats—————————————————————
Warfare – Increases if you attack often
Willpower – Increases if you cast status spells (explained below) often, or if you defend.
Grapple – Increases if you use grappling actions (grapple, break grapple, throw)*
Stealth – Flat chance of increasing**
Magic – Increases if you cast spells
Health – Flat chance of increasing every combat. Chance increases if player grapples or attacks often ( grapple and attack bonuses do not stack. Takes whichever is higher).
Mana – Flat chance of increasing every combat plus chance of magic increasing.

*Starting with the next update, attacking while grappled will improve warfare and grapple.

**Starting with the second episode, there will be a new command “Hide” that allows you to ambush your opponents (or just not get attacked). Hiding will increase stealth.

——————————————-Spells—————————————————-
Spells are broken into four schools: Combat, Status, Buff, and Spectral

Combat – Deal straight damage. Tend to be expensive, but can be devastating, especially against enemies with low magic. Firebolt is the first combat spell

Status – Interfere with your opponent’s ability to fight (typically by reducing stats, or paralyzing them, etc.). Weaken is the first status spell.

Buff – Improves your characters’ abilities to fight (also includes healing spells). Heal is the first buff spell.

Spectral – Weird spells. Typically have more than one effect (i.e. damage plus a status effect), or allow spellcasters to “simulate” other combat actions using a different stat rather than the stat the other action depends on. Spectral Push is the first spectral spell (Spectral Push simulates the “Break Grapple” option, but uses willpower rather than grapple to determine the chances of success. I’ll probably end up changing that to magic, however so that you can specialize in say combat magic, without grappling being dibilitating).

You learn spells of a given type by casting the spell of that type. So in order to learn Icebolt, you need to be casting Firebolt.  Casting Firebolt will not allow you to learn Mass Weaken. Only casting Weaken will get you Mass Weaken.

Spells are further broken into tiers: 0 – 9.

Each tier has three spells: Basic, Advanced, Specialized. As per the name, specialized is available only if your character specializes in that school (the path to specialization will begin in the second episode). You must learn the basic spell before you learn the advanced spell, and the advanced spell before you learn the specialized spell. Advanced and specialized spells tend to be stronger and/or cheaper versions of the basic spell. Firebolt is the basic tier 0 combat spell, Icebolt is the advanced tier 0 combat spell. Magic bolt is the specialized tier 0 combat spell (at this point, you’ve only seen Magicbolt used against you).

Every 3 levels of magic*** a new tier opens up. Note that you do not need to learn all the spells of a lower tier to begin learning spells of a higher tier. You learn spells of a higher tier the same way you learn advanced spells of a lower tier: cast spells of the appropriate type. So if you want to learn Distort Magic (which is a Status spell) you first need to get your magic up to three, and then cast Weaken/Mass Weaken a bunch of times.

When learning spells, it does not matter which spell of the appropriate school that you cast. Once you’ve unlocked Tier 9, you will be able to learn Tier 9 combat spells by just slinging Firebolts all over the place. On the other hand, if you haven’t learned Icebolt, and you start slinging Tier 8 spells around, you may learn Icebolt rather than a Tier 9 spell. However, you have a better chance of learning higher tier spells than learning lower tier spells (assuming the higher tier spells are available to you). So if you unlock Tier 1, and you haven’t learned Icebolt yet, you’ll have a better chance of learning Lightning Bolt than of learning Icebolt.

***This will change. Based upon how stats are increasing in the first episode, if I keep this across the board, you’ll be learning Tier 9 spells by about a third of the way through the game. At that point, you should be only up to Tiers 3-4.

—————————————Spells by School———————————————————

Here are all the spells currently implemented, sorted by school and tier. Basic is at the top, advanced at the bottom. Remember, the player cannot yet cast specialized spells:

Combat:
Tier 0:                           Tier 1:
Firebolt                         Lightning Bolt
Icebolt                           Thunder bolt
Magicbolt                      Magicstrike

Status:
Tier 0:                           Tier 1:
Weaken                          Distort Magic                 
Mass Weaken                 Mass Distort Magic
Weak Charm****            Charm****

Buff:
Tier 0:                           Tier 1:
Heal                               Shield
Fortify                            Magic Shield
Super Fortify                 Super shield

Spectral:
Tier 0:                            Tier 1:
Spectral Push                 Spectral Spanking
Spectral Pull                  Spectral Strapping
Spectral Shove               Spectral Caning

****Technically, this hasn’t been fully implemented yet, because these kinds of spells are tricky to implement, so I probably won’t implement them until I need to.

———————————————Sneak peak at next update———————————–
As a little sneak peak for rewarding you for reading this far, it occurred to me that the vast majority of the material for the various guild trainers is only available if you don’t have a white ribbon (and some if it will have small long-term consequences). Unfortunately, the only way to avoid getting a white ribbon is to basically avoid Paloma. Since at the beginning your character is really only good for one battle without healing, this means that you’d have to spend a very frustrating play session running from everyone, and then you’ll be painfully underpowered for the second episode. Neither of these is particularly fun. So I’m working on overhauling Paloma so that you can help her, get healing, and not get a white ribbon. Basically, after your first encounter with her, she’ll forget to give you the ribbon. Once one of the trainers tells you to get a ribbon, everytime you return to her you’ll have the option of asking her for healing, or asking about the ribbon. In terms of explaining why you never bother to get a ribbon (other than a recalcitrant “you can’t tell me what to do”), here are two possibilities:

1. If you help her, but never get a ribbon, it may be because you keep forgetting to ask. While it’s impossible for the player to forget (because the option to ask about it is staring you in the face) I think it’s reasonable that the PC could forget. After all, she’s running around getting stabbed, burned, and thrown all over the place, and she’s on the verge of collapse when she finally stumbles back to Paloma. Kind of pushes everything else out of your mind.

2. If you don’t help her, but never get a ribbon, it could be because you forget (see above), or you’re intimidated by her (since she’s kind of angry at you), and are afraid she’ll say no (or you’re ashamed, and feel like you don’t deserver a ribbon).

When Adrian confronts you about never getting a ribbon at the end, I’ll probably just assume one of the two above, because introducing new comments where there weren’t any before is a bit of a hassle (hopefully that will change, once I implement a script to convert some LaTeX with custom environments into Python source). However, keep in mind that just because a character says something (including the PC!) doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true. So feel free to rationalize never getting a ribbon however you want, and if the PC says something that contradicts your rationalization, just assuming the PC is fibbing a little to keep Adrian from getting too mad.

Spankers and Spankees,

I’ve finished fixing the latest round of bugs and crashes. I’ve also modified the status spells (weaken, mass weaken, distort magic, etc) a little bit. Before, status spells had an average chance of increasing magic, and a small chance of increasing willpower. However, because willpower affects the chances of a status spell working (whereas magic only increases its duration), I realized that willpower is much more important to having powerful status spells than magic is. Furthermore, whereas buff, combat and spectral spells all have an average chance of increasing magic, there are no other actions that improve willpower. So now, status spells have an average chance of increasing willpower, and a small chance of increasing magic.

Also, as a reminder: the old save games will no longer work. I made a poor choice when designing the save game format, and had to correct that choice, so old save games will no longer be loaded properly. So please make sure that you don’t try to load any of the old games, otherwise you’ll at best get crashes up the wazoo, at worst all sorts of weird behavior.

Spankers and Spankees,

No update today (sorry). Rather, I wanted to give you a warning. While fixing some of the latest bugs and crashes, I realized that I made a mistake when structuring the save file format. I had a choice between modifying the save game file, and trying to implement some sort of kludgy hack. Since the game is still new and very much in flux, I decided to modfiy the save game file format.

Your current save games will NOT be compatible with the next release.

I’m sorry about that, and I hesitated to modify the save game format. However, since there really isn’t that much content yet, I felt that losing your save games wouldn’t be too painful, especially considering all the paths I tried to put into the game for the sake of replayability.

I haven’t finished testing my fixes yet, so don’t expect a new version until tomorrow evening or Wednesday. Until then, I would recommend against playing because you will lose all your progress.
 

Spankers and Spankees,

I’ve fixed a whole slew of new crashes and bugs that people keep uncovering (jerks I mean, thanks!). Many of which were subtle, and very annoying to fix. I’ve also done a lot of rebalancing, so that hopefully now grinding won’t be as necessary to beat the boss. Though, this does of course depend on how your character develops (I was able to defeat the boss on the first try with 3’s across the board, health in the low 30’s and mana in the low 20’s, but it was close).

Finally, I’ve added a fancy new item: the staff. A staff is very similar to a spear, except that the damage is nowhere near as good, and it provides much better protection against grappling. Basically, it’s a defensive weapon for spellslingers.

I was planning on working on the manual this weekend, but I’m tired and grouchy from some of these bug fixes (maintaining consistent state is hard and I’m really bad at it), so I’ll hold off on that for now.