Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
Sorry I missed last week’s update. RL got in the way. Anyway, as far as progress on the game goes, I have been working my ass off on the codebase. I started out refactoring my GUI code to make use of a very cool library ReactiveX. The Java implementation includes some very nice bindings into JavaFX, allowing me to write my GUI code using a paradigm that makes sense to me (message passing) rather than the utterly obfuscated callback-based approach that JavaFX encourages. This has allowed me to clean up my GUI code _massively_ including removing some of the bugs that came from various hacks I tossed in to get the whole thing working.
While debugging this refactor, I discovered that ReactiveX doesn’t like it when operations are not idempotent (in particular, if they have side-effects, weird things can happen). So I solved this problem by rewriting my entire codebase to make everything immutable except for the GUI, and a small stack of past commands in the combat code (to make undoing easier).
Yyyyeahhhh. Did I go a little bit crazy and overboard? Fuck yes. But that’s the best part about being the sole coder on a project that you are spearheading. You can do all sorts of crazy shit, and nobody can stop you! Muahahahahhahaha!
Besides, this has forced to me clear up some techdebt that’s been bugging me almost from the moment I wrote it. It also makes a lot the code that was before hard to test much easier to test. So that’s a plus. Probably won’t be writing those tests now, but that’ll probably be something I poke at as time goes on. Add a test here, add a test there, and so on.
That being said, the refactor wasn’t really that crazy. It didn’t really affect the design of my code all that much. It just required a lot of mechanical “methods that inflict side-effects, now return modified copies of whatever they were modifying before.” Some of my types are bit crazy now, and could probably stand to be reworked, but whatever. I’ll poke at that later.
Anyway, at this point my code compiles, so next I need to update all of my tests (I have about 200). Fortunately, these changes should dramatically simplify most of my tests. So I should have all of that modified by the end of the month.
As far as the actual game content goes, Chaosnova has been working on that, so it hasn’t stood completely still. Going a bit slowly, alas, but most people don’t have as much free time as I do. I’ve also been working on some of the planning for the rest of the season in between working on the codebase.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
So I tried (again) to figure out how to turn my game into a Mac App, and failed (again). Basically, I can’t figure out where to put the external data files (i.e. character information, outfit information, game events) so that the game sees it, so the app crashes immediately. Honestly, I’m not even sure that the reason the app crashes immediately is because it can’t find the resource files, because the stupid App swallows all the error messages (as opposed to Windows and Linux which nicely print errors to the terminal and logs when they barf).
So after a very frustrating morning, I’ve decided that I will not be officially supporting Mac. Sorry guy and gals. Take it up with Apple and their insistence on obfuscating where, how, and what is going on when, they execute their applications.
Note: I understand that bundling everything into one file, is what you’re “supposed” to do. However, forcing me to do that in such an obfuscated manner, rather than just having a small executable surrounded by external resource files like Windows and Linux, really makes it hard to support the OS when you’re one guy writing a porn game as a hobby. Besides, I don’t want to hide all the game data behind an executable. I want people to be free to edit the game content and even their save files if they so desire.
However, I have introduces one more last-resort way to run the game if you are having trouble running any of the variants posted (i.e. you’re on a Mac and can’t run linx_mac_no_jre, or all of the versions just don’t work):
1. Download the source code.
2. Extract the source code into a folder (doesn’t matter where).
3. If you’re on windows, execute ScarletMoon_windows.bat. If you’re on Linux or Mac, execute ScarletMoon_linux_mac.sh.
Essentially, what you’re doing is compiling the code, and then executing it directly. So it will take a bit of time to get started (on my old-ass Macbook it took about 16 seconds the first time, and 10 seconds the second). Furthermore, you won’t have any music if you execute the game this way. If you want to play the music, do the following:
1. Download music.zip from the release.
2. Unzip music.zip and copy the resulting “music” folder into the “data” folder. So “data” should have the following folders:
a. characters
b. events
c. items
d. music
And inside “music” should be a bunch of music files (.mp3 and .ogg mostly).
I’ve also released a new version, 0.1.22. This fixes the directory problems in the previous release that kept the no-jre variations of the game from running. It also converted all of the .wav music files into .mp3 (which are significantly smaller) and removed a (rather large) library that I’m not actually using. So that should hopefully save us a few megabytes.
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
There is a problem with the directory structure for the windows version of the game without an embedded JRE (the one that has a .bat file rather than a .exe). I’m not currently in a position to fix it, but you can do the following as a workaround until I fix the build:
1. There should be two folders: ScarletMoon-0.1.21 and ScarletMoon-0.1.21-windows-no-jre. They are supposed to be the same folder, I just have a setting wrong somewhere in my build tool.
2. Open the ScarletMoon-0.1.21 and copy both directories (bin and lib) into ScarletMoon-0.1.21-windows-no-jre. Now, when you run the .bat file, the game should work as intended.
Sorry about that.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
Sorry about the delay in the monthly post. Fourth of July is a thing where I’m from, and I had a pretty busy weekend.
Anyway, I’ve stopped receiving complaints about the game being broken, so either people’s problems have been fixed, or a bunch of you have given up on ever getting the game to work. I hope it’s the former, and not the latter…
Anyway, there are now four variations you can download: The original two versions for Windows and Linux/Mac/Unix that don’t come with an embedded JRE, and a version for Windows that comes with an embedded JRE and a version for Linux that comes with an embedded JRE. The windows version may or may not work with PlayOnMac, I haven’t tested it. I would recommend one of the first two initially, because they are a smaller download size. Only download the version with the embedded JRE if you are having trouble running the version without an embedded JRE.
Now that all the fires have either been put out, or burned you all to ash, I’ve been working on a significant refactor of the parts of the codebase that are responsible for displaying the GUI, and processing input from the user. Both of those two pieces were rather heavily intertwined and fugly, but the new version is looking much cleaner (makes heavy use of a rather awesome library called ReactiveX).
I’m performing this refactor partially because my codebase desperately needed it, partially support some additional GUI work I’ll need to do to support the second episode, and partially because one SpankerOfOmens on animeotk has expressed interest in using my engine, and this refactor is the first step to pulling the Scarlet Moon specific stuff out of the more general game engine stuff. I’ve tried to keep the two logically separate, so hopefully pulling them apart won’t be too difficult, but we’ll see.
Bonemouth and I have written static text for the bulk of day 2 of episode 1 (he handled the beach scene, while I handled the scene immediately after). The only thing lacking is the climax of the episode (a rematch with Buzzsaw). However, Chaosnova (the one who wrote those two shorts that I posted a while back) has agreed to write that up while I work on cleaning up some of the warts in my code, and making it ready for other projects to use. Once Chaosnova has finished their scene, I’ll edit it and make it dynamic. Then we’ll have to make sure the combat is properly balanced, as well as implement a few more skills (though those should be pretty quick). Chaosnova has also provided a third bit of flash fiction that I’m looking over right now. I’ll post that once I think it’s ready.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
I’ve released a new version of the game, version 0.1.20. You can get it under the Downloads page. The key change is that now I have proper executables for Linux and Windows, and the game comes bundled with a version of Java. It means the download is significantly bigger, but hopefully it will alleviate some of the weird issues some of you have had with Java crashing when you attempt to play the game.
However, note that the bundled JRE’s are for 64-bit Java, so if you have a 32-bit machine (if you’ve bought anything within the past few years, you probably have 64-bit) you will not be able to run the game.
If you do have a 32 bit machine, please let me know, and I can post versions that don’t come bundled with a JRE.
I don’t yet have a Mac app, because Mac apps are weird, and I have not yet navigated their weirdness.
Update: Uploaded a new version (there are variations both with and without an embedded JRE for Windows and Linux) that fixes a crash when attempting to restart combat.
AKA
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
Today, I am proud to release the first day of the first episode of The Scandalous Scarlet Moon.
You take on the role of a Silver Age style superhero(ine) Scarlet Moon. Aided by your best friend Juliana, you must protect the City of Generica from a host of villains, from brutish thugs to sensual seducers, grinning giants to evil masterminds, honorable hunters to cheating thieves. But don’t spend too much time superheroing! After all, you’ve got a job to keep down, studies to keep up on, precious precious beauty sleep, and you might even want to have fun every now and then! Neglect them at your peril (to your bottom). But don’t spend too much time focusing on your regular life either! After all, every one of those villains will happily put you over their knees and give you the kind of a spanking a meddling superhero deserves if you let your guard down for even a single second!
So join me as we embark upon an epic quest across, over, and under Generica City!
In this release experience the epic, action-packed origins of Scarlet Moon! Fight your way through an abandoned business park crawling with the Evul gang, the Whistlers, learning skills as you go that will be absolutely essential to getting out of there with an unmarked bottom. Come face to face with your very first supervillain: the boisterous Buzzsaw and learn up close how they earned their menacing name!
This release contains the following:
- Customize your character however you want! Pick their gender, name, appearance, and clothing.
- Pick the genders of most other characters! Most NPCs are broken into one of three roles: spanker, spankee, and switch. Pick their genders universally at the beginning of the game, or select the gender of each character as you meet them.
- Experience a rather generic superhero story, where you get to make some choices that dictate how your character reacts to the situations! This episode is alas, rather linear, and your choices don’t impact gameplay much. But that will come in subsequent episodes.
- Engage in turn-based tactical combat. Most of your enemies don’t pose much of a threat, but be careful! Your health and mana are combined into a single stat, energy, you have no way of restoring energy, and you lose energy each round (this can be turned off). You’ll have to make intelligent and efficient use of every skill in your ever-growing arsenal if you hope to survive!
- Get annoyed when you discover that you gain nothing from combat!
- Experience in-combat spankings! Be mildly annoyed at how utterly impractical they are at this point in the game, and hope they become more useful as the game progresses!
- Experience lovingly crafted in-story spanking scenes that eschew sound effects in favor of purple prose, and clunky back and forth between the spanker and spankee! How many different ways can we describe getting slapped on the ass? Play and find out!
- Prefer to play a Domly Dom of Domliness and don’t relish the idea of your character getting their fanny whacked? Every spanking scene is avoidable! Turn off in-combat spankings (which also turns off losing-to-the-supervillain-spankings)! Naughtiness is inevitable, but spankings are not!
- All sorts of bugs and crashes that have slipped past myself and my beta testers, because let’s be honest, I’m a hack whose too busy jerking it to use proper design, write enough unit tests, and don’t even talk to me about integration tests! (If you happen to discover one of these, please let me know, and maybe we can trick a few people into believing I know what I’m doing).
The next major release will contain the following:
- Beach scene! Because who doesn’t love the idea of buxom women in thong bikinis getting spanked in public at the beach?
- The kidnapping of a character you’ve only just met, and probably don’t like very much, but are expected to save anyway!
- The unveiling of Scarlet Moon’s costume! Will she have a modest, practical outfit, or the type of sexy skanky skimpy spandex slip you secretly enjoy but publicly denounce because there’s something terribly wrong, yet dirtily sexy, about a genre where the mainstream works have already done the work of designing the outfits for the inevitable porn parodies!
- Stat gain through roleplaying! Rather than getting stronger in combat, some of the choices you make during the story will give you stat bonuses, and let you learn new skills! Will you be a character with high Strength, who punches her way through problems, or a fast-talking charmer with high WIllpower who talks her way out of scrapes? The choice is up to you!
- Balance short-term gains with long-term benefits! Do you eavesdrop on your opponent, and try to learn her motivations, or do you ambush her now, and gain the upper hand in what is sure to be an intense battle that could go either way?
The game is written in Java, so you need to make sure you download and install Java 8 if you don’t already have it installed. Be warned, Oracle apparently has a shady deal with Yahoo! where they try to trick you into making Yahoo! your default search engine, so keep an eye out when installing Java.
The game’s code is licensed under the GNU GPL-v3, while the content of the game (events, characters, etc) is released under the CC-BY-SA. What this means is that you are free to take my work and do whatever you want with it (release a slightly modified version of my game, write stories featuring my characters, etc.) and release them so long as you:
- Give me proper credit
- Release your work under the same or a compatible license
Edited
I’ve uploaded a new release that fixes an issue that may have caused the game to crash when attempting to save.
I’ve uploaded a new release that fixes an issue where the player will not learn the skills they are supposed to if you change the font size on the character creation screen.
I’ve uploaded a new release that fixes several issues: Character skills are now properly loaded when loading a game, so skills don’t bleed over from one game to another. The player can now defend at the distant range. The option where you defeat Buzzsaw and spare them a spanking now transitions to the correct event. Struggling during a grapple no longer automatically breaks you out of it. It now reduces the duration based on your grapple skill. Buzzsaw now knows the skill Soaring Leap, where she jumps at you, which puts both you them at armslength. So you can’t just move to distant and spam Scarlet Beam until she falls over. Well, you can but she now has a way of getting close to you.
Spankers, Spankees, and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
Sorry about the delay in this post. This past weekend was crazy, being mother’s day weekend and all. Anyway, the first day of the first episode is in beta testing right now. I have managed to play it from beginning to end (though I’m not sure if any of my beta testers have yet, they’ve all been kind of quiet. Probably because it’s a busy time of year). That being said, we’ve gone through about five releases of bug fixes and enhancements.
My current plan is to release it at the beginning of June unless there are game breaking bugs that we have discovered and I haven’t fixed yet. We may release it earlier if I get approval from at least four of my beta testers.
AKA Russell
Spankers, Spankees and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
As promised, as follows are two little scenarios written by Chaosnova to get a handle on the various characters, and which he has kindly agreed to share. A few things to note before we get to the juicy bits:
The Courageous Crimson Glow by AKA Russell and Friends is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What this means is that you are free to create your own derivative works so long as you.
1. Give us credit for Crimson Glow (attributing the work to “AKA Russell and Friends” along with a link to spankingrpgs.com will be sufficient)
2. Release your work under a compatible license (for simplicity, you can just release it under the same license). Here’s a link that will make it really easy to license your work: https://creativecommons.org/choose/
The scenes themselves are not necessarily canon. They take place around the midgame (which is very much not set in stone). Characters will certainly grow in unexpected ways. Superheroine names may change, etc.
The scenes have been tweaked a little bit to minimize spoilers.
With that, here is the first scene:
In the stressful (and often dangerous) life of a superheroine, there were a couple of things you learned.
First of all, that fighting crime is a pain in the ass, both figuratively and literally. You’d think I’d be joking, but I’m not. It’s almost amazing how often you see a new bad boy on the streets, doing all sorts of things from robbing convenience stores to bringing about the extinction of mankind. And if they’re not new faces, they’re the veterans – the bunch of bad guys so good at their job they’ve escaped capture – so you can bet a shiny nickel that they have a good chance of giving you the slip this time too. Either way, it makes keeping the peace an utter chore.
Well, in comparison, it probably isn’t that bad. Figurative pain in the asses was alright; you just needed a bit of extra effort to get through the ordeal. Literal pain in the asses, however, required a little more than willpower.
“Oww! P-please! I’m sory!”
As unbelievable as it was, even superheroes and superheroines get their tushes whupped from time to time. No, scratch that; a lot of the time. Those idiots at the Superheroes Police Agency aside, every villain in this place seems to be a pro when it comes to the art of thrashing one’s rear end. Mess up and fail to apprehend the bad guy, and you can say goodbye to sitting for a good millennia or three. If you happened to rack up some collateral damage along the way and the Agency catches you, then may Lord have mercy on your soul.
“Ouch! It hurts! Not there! Not there! Owww!”
If I could help it, I wouldn’t even want to think about it. But as much as it pains me to admit it (in more ways than one), spankings were a part of every hero’s life.
“I-I’m really sorry! Pleeease!”
… Then again, I might be thinking about it simply because of the scene happening before me right now.
“Generalissima. Do you mind explaining the situation?” I asked.
“What’s there to explain?” asked Generalissima, continuing in her harsh punishment of the girl draped over her lap. “I’m spanking her. Isn’t it obvious?”
I considered asking Delphi, the recipient of Generalissima’s ire, but she was too preoccupied with kicking, squirming and yelping in pain, so I turned to the only other person I could on the rooftop (Yes, we were on a rooftop. I have no idea how that happened either).
“Bright?” I asked hopefully.
“Little miss leader’s experiencing her time of the month,” the light-bending heroine replied.
Generalisima shot her a very dirty glare.
I let out a heavy sigh. Bright and Generalisima had failed to bond in the most spectacular of ways. None of us will never forget the things they called each other back then (most of which were terms I didn’t know and had no idea how in the world Generalisima came to know about. It took considerable effort for me to make her rear as red as my face had been after that). Perhaps Bright wasn’t the most unbiased of individuals.
“Generalissima?” I repeated.
With a sigh, Generalissima stopped her peppering of Delphi’s rump, leaving the girl sobbing like a toddler over her lap. Given how red her flesh was, not that I could really blame her .
“This little brat,” said Generalissima with a hearty slap to Delphi’s bum, eliciting a yelp from the girl. “Decided it was a good idea to put herself in danger. Again.”
“What, did try to save a kitten in a tree again?” I asked exasperatedly. “That’s hardly a spankable-”
“Replace ‘climbing a tree’ with ‘jumping out a second floor window’, and you pretty much have the gist of it,” said Generalissima. Delphi whined like a sad puppy, burying her face in her arms.
I felt my jaw drop. Had it been someone like Anklyana, a reckless act like that might have been understandable. When you can get hit by a semi without flinching (don’t ask), a fall from the second story isn’t exactly a big deal. But Delphi’s powers are…less than conducive to second story window leaping.
“… Then why aren’t you using a paddle?” I asked. “Just hand doesn’t seem to be enough.”
“M-miss Crimson!” exclaimed Delphi, raising her head in panic. She got accustomed to calling me ‘Miss Crimson’, after my superheroine alter ego Crimson Glow. I never quite got used to it, but it wasn’t as if I could just give her my real name.
“I was kidding, I was kidding,” I said. She was way too trusting sometimes. “Don’t make that face.”
“No, no, I agree,” chipped in Bright. “She should totally paddle her ass into the middle of next Tuesday. That’ll teach her to try a stunt like that again.”
“Don’t be a jerk,” I said. “You know she’s trying her best.”
“Irrelevant,” said Bright with a dismissive flick of her wrist. “If you can’t get punched through a wall, you shouldn’t be fighting.”
She sounded pretty cold, but Bright probably liked Delphi more than she cared to admit. Someone with her personality just can’t completely hate someone who tries their best. Maybe she’ll never admit to it, but she was a superheroine after all. She doesn’t have it in her to truly hate anyone, regardless of what she says.
“Well then, back to our ‘discussion’,” Generalissima said. “Are we going to have this conversation again, young lady?”
Interestingly, Generalissima likes to go all ‘mother mode’ during times like this with Delphi, despite their ages being pretty close. And Generalissima’s tendency to childlike behavior. Of course, pointing that out would probably lead to her heating my seat, so I keep my mouth shut.
“N-no,” Delphi said timidly. “Ma’am,” she added hastily.
“Will you do something dangerous like that ever again?” Generalissima asked, the look in her eyes softening a little.
“…Y-yes.”
Bright hastily hid her laugh behind a hacking cough. I didn’t have the finesse, so I simply ended up choking.
“What did you say?” asked Generalissima. She was using the Demon Generalissima voice, and that was not a good thing. Especially when there was someone over her lap with their bottom exposed. I’d consider buying some lotion for Delphi and her soon-to-be flaming rear, provided I wasn’t in such a desperate need for a nuclear bomb shelter right then. “Care to explain, miss Delphi?”
“I-I can’t just ignore someone in need of help,” Delphi replied softly. Whether she was more embarrassed or more scared was anyone’s guess. “B-but I don’t want to lie to you either, miss Generalissima… I-I’m sorry…”
If I wasn’t scared out of my mind, I’d have praised her courage in the face of an elemental horror beyond the darkest musings of Lovecraft. Generalissima wasn’t the leader of the Crimson League, a superhero league. As in a bunch of super passionate people with the ability to put holes in concrete. So it went without saying how terrifying she could be when someone really pissed her off.
But instead of going Armageddon on her butt, Generalissima just heaved a long, drawn-out sigh and lifted Delphi to her feet.
“Stand there,” she ordered, pointing to a random corner of the roof. “Don’t pull down your skirt or pull up your panties. Crimson, keep an eye on her until I get back.”
“Uh… okay,” I said.
“Let’s go, light bulb,” she snapped, walking off.
“Bite me, Spaniard,” Bright countered, though she did follow after her.
“I’m Latina, you bastard spawn of Phreatichthys andruzzii,” said Generalissima.
“You know insults don’t work when the insulted doesn’t understand them right?” said Bright.
“So you think.”
And so I was left with Delphi. Luckily for her, she wasn’t told to stand on the edge of the roof, so no one would be seeing her rump unless they came up here. Not that it made the experience any less embarrassing.
“That was some response,” I said, sitting on the floor and keeping watch on the sobbing girl. “Do you hate sitting down so much?”
“I-I was just being honest…” whined Delphi. “I didn’t mean to make miss Generalissima angry…”
“Well, you-” I paused, noticing the purple spot on Delphi’s right ankle. “Delphi. Did you sprain your ankle?”
“Eh?” Delphi jumped, hastily shuffling her feet to keep it hidden. It was a futile effort, of course, but it didn’t stop her from trying. “E-er, well… I-I… Yes, I did…”
“Does Generalissima know about it?”
“N-no…”
“I swear,” I sigh. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“I-I’m sorry…”
“Come over here,” I said, causing her to flinch. “I’m not going to make you endure another round. It’s tough to stand like that, right? C’mere.”
“Y-yes ma’am,” mumbled the terrified kitten that was Delphi, limping over. As soon as she was close enough, I spin her around, and pull her gently into a sitting position in my lap. “Eep!”
“Well, I gotta give you credit,” I said. “You’ve mastered every possible means of pissing the General off.”
“I-I’m sorry…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, examining the bruise. It wasn’t that severe, but it probably still hurt pretty badly. “Just don’t be so stupid next time, alright?”
“B-but, the little boy was crying, and…” Delphi trailed off, the rest of her words left unsaid. Well, I could roughly guess what she wanted to say anyway.
“Leave that to us,” I told her. “If you put yourself in danger or hurt yourself, that’ll only cause us more trouble, you know?”
Of course, that alone wouldn’t stop her. If something like that sufficed, she would have stopped a long time ago.
“I’m sorry,” said Delphi again. I swear, apologies were her catchphrase. “I didn’t mean to…”
“We know,” I cut across her. “The General knows better than anyone else. That’s probably why she gets angrier than anyone else.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, simply put, you remind her of her,” I explained. “This is a secret between us, but Generalissima used to be a little like you – simply reckless. She was more of a daredevil than you were, though, and she just did things for the heck of it most of the time. She didn’t really put much thought into what she did either, which often ended up with her crying in a corner with a flaming red butt. Like you right now.”
“T-that…” Delphi mumbled. “B-but miss General is so cool and smart… I’m nothing like her.”
“Well, in that aspect, maybe,” I shrugged. You have to admit, it’s difficult to compete with a girl who has enough brains to beat Cray Titan in a math competition. “But she sees a lot of herself in you. That’s why she can’t bear to see you put yourself in danger; she doesn’t want to see you make the same stupid mistakes she did and hurt yourself. And, well, hurt those around you because you didn’t think. If you hurt yourself, you’re effectively hurting your family and friends as well, you know? Knowing that you of all people are doing that makes her even angrier, I imagine.”
I paused, letting the weight of those words sink in. I’m not usually this chatty, but there were times where I could speak like an adult too. I am a superheroine, after all.
“… I guess I really made her mad,” Delphi muttered.
“Well, as long as you’re safe, she can’t stay too mad at you,” I comforted, stroking the girl’s hair. “I can’t make guarantees about the state of your bum, though.”
“Say, Miss Crimson,” she said. “Do you think I should-”
Before she could finish, the disaster duo returned, pushing open the door to the roof and freezing where they stood.
“… What are you two doing?” asked Generalissima, her tone… well, I hardly need to explain, do I? “Crimson, I gave you a job before I left, right?”
In retrospect, I probably should have explained the situation. If I just simply told her about Delphi’s sprained ankle, maybe everything would have turned out alright. But in that moment, I was feeling a more than a little mischievous.
Also, remember what I said before about elemental horrors? Yeah.
While cradling a very confused Delphi in my arms, I dashed and jumped off the roof, expanding my forcefields to catch an updraft and glide to another rooftop.
They would catch us eventually; Bright could fly circles around me while infected with the West Nile Virus. But for the moment, I’ll just run for my life while carrying a girl whose panties were still around her ankles and whose red butt was on full display.
Because if I were smart, I wouldn’t be a superheroine.
And the second scene, which follows shortly after the first:
Tarzana woke to the sight of a bright red sun.
Her first reaction was one of panic. She had fallen asleep indoors, so waking up outdoors was certainly a cause of concern. Several horrible possibilities flashed through her head in that instant, ranging from a fairly harmless
prank (in which case she’d have to tan a few hides into oblivion) to an assault on headquarters (in which case her hide was probably in danger).
All of those worries dissipated, however, when she realized she was still indoors. Then she realized that “red sun” was actually a pair of impressively red bum cheeks. She smirked mischievously.
“Wow, you really are Crimson Glow,” she said.
The superheroine standing in the corner of the room groaned. Crimson Glow, or Crimson for short, was a fellow hero in the Crimson League. She was the field commander, and and had been the first superheroine to appear on the scene.
Field commander or no, at that moment all she looked like was a thoroughly chastised teenager in a rather risgue Halloween costume.
“Shut up,” mumbled Crimson Glow with a sniffle. If the deep shade of red wasn’t proof enough, her voice certainly conveyed just how much her punishment had hurt. “Generalissima said she’ll deal with you for dozing off later.”
“Hey, it’s a comfortable place to nap,” Tarzana strecthed and stifled a yawn. The prospect of being paddled by Generalissima worried her more than a little, but for now, she was going to milk the moment for what it was worth.
“And I get such a nice view all to myself.”
“Up yours,” Crimson snapped, then gasped. “U-um, I…”
“Ho ho,” Tarzana beamed, her voice laced with mirth. With the air of a predator that had found fresh prey, she got up from her seat and walked towards Crimson. “Language, young lady. What was that I heard you say just now? Did
you by any chance just say ‘up yours’?”
“Um…” Crimson shuffled her feet. “L-Listen, Tarzana, I-”
“Oh dear me,” said Tarzana. She couldn’t contain her smile, which was so wide it could very well split her face in two. “If memory serves, the Superheroes Police Agency issued a little something that stated heroes had to behave
in a way that set a good example for civilians, didn’t they?”
“Ugh,” Crimson clicked her tongue, her interlocked fingers tensing up as she waited for the inevitable verdict.
“Amongst many other things, I’m pretty sure there was a rule that prohibited the use of profannies,” Tarzana said.
“Profanities.”
“Oh my, what could’ve gotten into me?” said Tarzana. “I’ve clearly got fannies on the mind. I wonder why?”
“Come on, Tarzana-”
“Oh right. It’s probably because the punishment for breaking that rule was a hearty spanking,” said Tarzana. “With their awful, awful paddles, too. Indestructible I hear.”
“If you’re going to beat my butt black and blue, just get on with it,” said Crimson with a sigh. Even without looking, Tarzana could tell she was slamming her eyes shut and bracing for impact. “J-just make it quick.”
“Well, alright,” Tarzana said, landing one solid smack to the girl’s ample butt, making her squeak and jump up and down. Reminded her of Bunni. “There we go. I’m not that heartless, dear; I’m not gonna wallop you with your rump
in that state.”
“You could’ve abstained from that slap too…” whined Crimson, wiggling her hips in pain. The Generalissima must’ve told her she couldn’t rub, and she was keeping to it. “Ouch… That really stung.”
“Look on the bright side.” Tarzana shrugged. “It’s way better than what you’d get from SPANK.”
“Says the one who walked away from their paddling with hardly a mark,” grumbled Crimson.
“You know what, I changed my mind. I’m going to paddle you till you cry a river after all.”
“Okay okay okay!” Crimson said hastily as Tarzana rested her palm on the other woman’s burning derrier. “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!”
“Thought so,” Tarzana chuckled. She walked away and sat on a chair by the meeting table. “What’d you do, anyway? I haven’t seen your ass that red since the Hiccup Incident-”
“Don’t bring that up,” Crimson said sharply, shuddering. “Ever. Like seriously. No. Please.”
“Alright, alright,” said Tarzana. She certainly couldn’t blame the other hero for not wanting to think about it. Everyone present for it could testify that no human’s butt had ever been (or would ever be) walloped so hard.
It was a mark of true heroism that Crimson had managed to endure something like that and lived to tell the tale. Rumor had it she couldn’t sit straight for a good few months after the dreadful event. “But really; what’d you do?”
Before Crimson could reply, the door to the meeting room opened, and a sobbing girl walked in. Delphi.
“M-Miss Crimson,” Delphi sobbed, wiping fresh tears from her eyes with one hand as she rubbed her skirt with the other. “M-Miss Generalissima said you could come out of the corner now. O-oh, hello Miss Tarzana…”
“Hullo.” Tarzana turned her wolfish grin on Delphi. “You got walloped too? Were you two partners in crime or something?”
“You could say that,”said Crimson, coming out of the corner and walking over to Delphi, her own rump completely ignored. “How’s your ankle?”
“B-better,” said Delphi, calming down a little. Tarzana noticed that one of Delphi’s ankles was bandaged. “Miss General… still p-punished me, but she went easy and… apologized for not noticing…”
“Well, that’s great isn’t it?” Crimson said. “Want a hug?”
Delphi dived into Crimson and wrapped her armed around her waist.
“Did you tell her what we talked about?” Crimson whispered.
“Mm,” Delphi nodded into Crimson’s costume.
“Well, this is fun and all, but I’m a busy gal,” said Tarzana, raising an eyebrow at the weird but heartwarming sight. “So I’ll leave you two-”
“You’re not going anywhere Jungle Lady.”
Tarzana froze on the spot the moment she heard that voice.
“H-hey, boss,” she said with a nervous smile. “W-what brings you here?”
“Well, I considered sending Delphi to get you,” said Generalissima crisply. “But then again, you’d probably run away if I did, so I decided to come here myself. I’ve had enough of people running away from their punishments
today, thank you very much.”
Crimson suddenly put a lot of effort into avoiding everyone’s gaze.
“And Delphi,” the Generalissima called out, making the girl flinch. “Geez. Calm down. I want you to come to my room later. I… owe you an apology. For not, well, noticing your injury and making you stand there.”
“Y-yes ma’am,” said Delphi, clearly unsure of how to react.
“Now then,”the Generalissima said, more authoritatively this time as she turned to Tarzana. “You know what to do.”
“Oh, come on-” Tarzana groaned. Then she saw what Generalissima was holding. “Whoa whoa! I-I only dozed off! Don’t tell me you’re going to use t-that!”
The only reply to her panic was a wide, wide smile.
“Bend. Over.”
In the face of that sweet voice, Tarzana could feel her blood freezing over in her veins.
Oh my god, she thought. I’m so not gonna be sitting down anytime soon.
Spankers, Spankees and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
**Insert obligatory crappy April Fool’s joke here**
Now that that’s out of the way, I’m getting very close to having a playable beta. I have everything implemented that I need for the first episode except for the combat code, which I’m working on now. As far as combat goes, I need to implement the following:
- Functionality for selecting skills.
- The logic to actually execute a round of combat.
That’s pretty much it. I already have the AI implemented, as well as the code that actually executes each action. I just need to glue all that together, and I’ll be good to go.
So I’m expecting to have all that done by the end of the month at the latest. What’s the next step after that? The next step is to pass the game along to my beta testers. I’ll consider it ready for release when I’ve gotten four approvals from my beta testers (or it’s early June, and I haven’t heard anything at all from my testers, depends on how responsive my testers are).
So we’re on track for a release in early June. My view and controller code still isn’t particularly pretty, but at least it works (far as I can tell anyway), and I have some understanding of how it works (though not complete. JavaFX has some infuriating and unintuitive bits around event processing that I haven’t fully grokked just yet).
So, to taunt you all, here are a few screenshots!
First, we have a screenshot of character creation
Character creation provides just as many options as Potion Wars, only thanks to the magic of libraries (instead of rolling it my own stupid self), it’s arranged very pretty in something approximating a real UI. Character options will include:
- gender: male, female
- bodytype: slim, average, voluptuous, heavyset
- eyecolor: blue, brown, green, hazel, grey
- haircolor: blonde, brown, red, black, rainbow
- hairstyle: down, pig tails, ponytail, single braid (something like this), buns, mohawk
- height: short (5′ – 5’3″), average(5’4″ – 5′ 7″), tall (5′ 8″ – 5′ 11″, gargantuan (6′ and up)
- musculature: soft, fit, muscular
- skincolor: ivory, peach, tanned, brown, caramel, black
- clothing: There are a ton of clothing options (mostly female-oriented, I’m kind of biased, alas) and all are available from the beginning, so that you have a high degree of control over the civilian appearance of your character. More clothing options may be added over time as people request them (clothing is very easy to add).
Next we have the options.
Crimson Glow provides the same and more options as Potion Wars:
- You can control whether or not your player can be spanked in battle. This will also affect supervillain story spankings. If the player is not allowed to be spanked in battle, then neither will the player be spanked after losing to a supervillain. Other in-story spanking scenes are possible, but since all of those will be avoidable by selecting the right dialogue option, rather than winning a challenging battle, those are not disabled.
- Artificial Intelligence controls how smart enemies are. Dumb enemies pick targets and actions at random. Average enemies pick their skills based on what they’re good at, but pick targets at random. Smart enemies pick their skills based on what they’re good at, and are more likely to pick targets who will be weakest against those skills.
- This game takes full advantage of the fact that both genders have an ass, and disciplinary spankings (which make up 99+% of the game’s spankings) focus exclusively on the bottom and thighs. “Spanker Gender” sets the gender of all characters who are tops (almost always administering rather than receiving). If the gender is UNKNOWN, then you will be given the opportunity to pick the gender of each top individually when you first meet them. The same for the spankee gender. All supervillains are considered spankees. If the genders for both top and bottom are the same, then all generic enemies will also have the selected gender.
- Energy Lost Per Round of Combat controls how much energy all characters lose at the end of battle (note: You cannot go below 1 energy through attrition). NONE means allies don’t lose any energy, and enemies lose a lot. MODERATE means enemies and allies lose at the same rate. SEVERE means allies lose a lot of energy, but enemies don’t lose very much (though they do lose some).
Next, an event screen.
This is the first event of the game. There is one, very important improvement over Potion Wars: Even text is now displayed with a scrolling bar. So no more multiple pages. The text of an event is now displayed all at once on the screen, and allows players to scroll through it (though moving on to the next event clears the view).
Finally, combat!
The first thing that should be obvious is that I’ve expanded significantly on the positioning system. Rather than having spanking/grappling/armslength, we now have spanking/grappling/armslength/distant. Different characters will be able to attack at different ranges, and will have different skills that work at different ranges. Positions are also displayed in a simple visual view. The top rows are enemies, the bottom rows are allies. The combat log is also a scrollbar, like events, and will display all feedback on user commands. The —-Character Name— tells you which character you’re selecting commands for, and will be displayed after the feedback of every command.
This view relies a bit too heavily on the combat log for feedback, but this damn thing is being complex enough to program. I may improve it in the future, but this should be enough to make the game playable.
One very important differences from Potion Wars:
There are no longer dungeons with mazes. It was decided that those really weren’t worth the effort of designing, and implementing. Furthermore, I don’t think they always work well for superheroes (which tend to focus on small-scale battles between heroes and villains). Not all villains have a billions minions at their beck and call, after all. Instead “dungeons” will be a sequence of events, like CYOA. In these events, the player will be able to make choices, many of which may involve using skills to get by obstacles, or gain the upper hand in battle. Furthermore, the player _does not_ get better through combat. Instead, in most dungeon events, the player will have a range of choices. Each choice will increment at least one skill by one point. For example, you may be faced with a thick fence. You could choose to ram through it (which improves strength), jump over it (improve speed), or find the guardhouse and convince the guard to let you through the gate (improve willpower). Of course, you might fail (bounce off the fence, land on the fence, get spanked by the guard) if your stat isn’t high enough, but you’ll still get the stat gain.
In short, unlike Potion Wars, battles are very painful (even easy ones will drain precious energy), and should be avoided when necessary. Of course, that doesn’t mean you might not get bonuses for charging into some battles, especially if it involves saving people.
This might seem like an odd decision, but there are a few reasons for it:
- This allows us to do much more interesting things. For example, the “dungeon” could consist of playing cat and mouse with a single villain, in which you try to find them, or manipulate the environment in a way to give you an advantage, occasionally having skirmishes with the villain if you fail an event, or get the upper hand.
- It provides more opportunity to roleplay. The time I would have previously spent designing dungeons, and getting them to display can now be spent writing up events.
- It removes a rather frustrating balancing act. If combat made you stronger, then on the one hand you’d want to get involved in combat as much as possible to become stronger, but on the other save your precious energy for the boss. While in theory this might be fun, I think it would mostly be frustrating, because you don’t know how strong you need to be later in the game, or how much energy you’ll need to fight the boss. So I think removing the built-in incentive structure from combat will make for a much more interesting gameplay experience. It will now be about “How do I efficiently get to the supervillain and defeat them?” rather than “RAAGH HULK SMASH!”
As an added note: One of my writers has written up a few short scenes to get a handle on some of the characters. He’s given me permission to post them, so you’ll see a few short snippets coming up in the next few days. Think of them as sneak peeks (though they take place around the midway point of the game, so they’re a little bit spoilery, but the only thing they really spoil are the superhero names of some of Crimson Glow’s allies).
Spankers, Spankees and Switches of All Ages (18 and above),
So, I fired up the game the other day and… watched as the GUI did crazy shit. I was using IntelliJ’s GUI builder thing as a sort of shortcut, because I find GUI programming obnoxious, and was hoping to take a shorcut. However, it looks like IntelliJ’s GUI Builder SUCKS in a billion different ways. It is clearly geared towards creating a bunch of static popup windows with minimal dynamic content changes. Also, it’s really hard to keep things consistent across screens, and for whatever reason I couldn’t update the static placeholder text I put in there. It doesn’t help that the tool uses this weird combination of Java code and XML, and I’m not really sure how they interact, or how the program knows to go to the Java vs. the XML and… basically too much annoying, not easily debuggable magic.
And having a bunch of different screens that you have to constantly make fullscreen (i.e. for a game) leads to much flickering and is utterly unacceptable.
After much swearing and cursing and just general being pissed off, I blew away all that garbage, took a week off, and am starting the GUI (and possibly much of the Controller) code from scratch. I decided to buckle down and actually learn the JavaFX library, and am using that now. On the bright side, shit be making a lot more sense, and I have the TitleScreen done (probably the simplest screen), and am currently working on the Character Status/Creator screen (which is one of the more complex ones, only the Dungeon and Combat screens are more complex). The Character Status screen actually works, and displays stuff. I just need to tweak it to make it look good.
So, the bad news is I’ve had some setbacks. The good news is I’ve learned some stuff, and I am pretty happy with the JavaFX library so far. Makes a ton more sense to me than Swing ever did.