HELLGAME

Wow it's Friday already.

Okay, so the crystal dragonoid encounter is progressing; the encounter is at about 12k words now. I should get it mostly-done in a week? Depending on how distracted I get working on the tofix list.

So the plan: once I finish the crystal dragonoid encounter, I'll update the live version of the game with that encounter plus all the misc. bugfixes I've done since then. Then I'll open a new poll and start working on a big gameplay update, since I've been itching to get this game into a state that actually functions as a game for a while now.

Basically 90% of the work I've put into the game since launch has been writing new encounters, and that's getting to the level of diminishing returns without having some game connective tissue there. So I'll be working on that, with polls in the meantime being about adding sex scene branches or new TF nodes or NPC transformations.

(I've also been thinking about changing the map-rendering code. Today I just threw together a little canvas experiment to see how feasible it is, and it looks like the answer is "pretty feasible", so that might be a thing coming soon.)

This week: a bunch of misc. stuff, actually. I mostly wasn't feeling writing, and so in the interests of actually getting stuff done I started working on the big long list of bugfixes/small additions. Let's see...

• I fixed the pluralization code so that there shouldn't be any more problems with it going forward
• I added dryad talk options (because, uh, I had forgotten that I hadn't coded them up)
• I added a new flame demon variation and outlined several more
• I changed the way PC cocks are constructed to fix some contradictory description lines, and added the missing huge-cock description line for humanoid/naga PCs

I also fixed a bunch of random small bugs in scenes: plurality issues, mashed-together paragraphs, a sex scene that just stopped midway through, etc. All that being said, though, I only ended up writing like 1k words for the crystal dragonoid event. Whoops. I'll try to get on track with that for next week.

This week: continuing to write and code up the crystal dragonoid encounter. It's at about 8k words now, with most of that at least slightly coded up. There'll be some excerpts showing up on the patreon over the next week or so.

Also I wrote some minor bugfixes, mostly more plurality/parsing errors. Soon I'll have the spare time to fix all of them for good, but I'm not quite there yet.

I've also been outlining a pretty solid chunk of gameplay/progression stuff. For a really long time that aspect of the game was one I'd basically left as a hazy concept to be fleshed out later, but then when the time came to work on it I realized I didn't have any real idea of how to specifically flesh it out. But I've started making some substantial progress on that -- actually having outlines for planned content even, gosh. That's definitely showing me how much time and effort adding in all this still will take... But I'm in this for the long slog now, so, I'll be working on a lot of that in the near future, since I'd like for this game to get to the point of being, you know, an actual game. Plus I figure I should stop being quite so cagey about the planned-but-unimplemented game features, so, expect some plan outlines to appear in a while: first on the patreon and then here on the site.

Next week: more writing the crystal dragonoid encounter; potentially fully outlining the spirit of flame encounter. I think I should have most of the major scene branches written for the crystal dragonoid in a week, so after that it would mostly be writing the more complex branches (snakes, as always) and adding in more body parametricity.

The rare saturday update post, since I was otherwise occupied friday evening.

The crystal dragonoid encounter is outlined and I've started writing large chunks of the sex scene; it's got around 4k words of text/code written up. The spirit of flame encounter is half-outlined, since it'll have... maybe not a "quest" precisely, but about as much of a quest as "get a dryad to move to a farm" is a quest. Something to make the encounter have interaction beyond showing up, saying hi, and then fucking.

I haven't gotten around to the rpg-stuff aspect of this update, and it's not super clear to me how much of that would be surfaced in the next update anyway, unless I make a bunch of new rpg/combat encounters. So I might just make the next update these two encounters, and fold the rpg stuff into the next chunk of code work so I'll have some stuff to actually show off.

(This is maybe a little early to say, but after this I'm gonna take some dev time to finish some gameplay stuff that's been needing work for a while -- which mostly means "the map code" but also includes more rpg stuff, respawning encounters, fixing existing encounter so they don't error out on orb/formless bodies, and misc. minor events -- and so the next poll is basically gonna be "which of these sex scenes do you want to see added to existing encounters" rather than something more substantial. So, since the update-after-next would be almost entirely gameplay stuff it'd make sense to just do the rpg stuff then. But these encounters are gonna take more than a week to finish so that will still be a ways away regardless.)

HELL GAME update 0.1.0

So a few things. First: version numbers! Between adding in savegames and submitting this to tfgamessite there's actually some reason for me to track update numbers now. I'm not really gonna be attaching too much significance to them so don't be surprised if we eventually get to, like, 0.23.0 or anything like that; these are in practice mostly for determining savedata versions.

What's actually in this update:

• Savegames!
• I fixed like four scenes that were broken when you had two dicks
• The farmer son of Hamar-Tabal/dryad threesome scene should work for quadrupedal pcs now. whoops.

This is pretty small, but I figured you'd all appreciate getting savegames as soon as possible. Also, since this is the first time I've used HTML5 localStorage for anything I'm not 100% sure it'll work in all browsers etc; if savegames don't work for you (not saving, javascript errors, etc) then I'd really appreciate it if you left a comment here saying what browser you're using.

After this: actually working on the new encounters (crystal dragonoid first and then spirit of flame), and also doing some thinking work about how exactly to add in more rpg-y elements. Well, and doing the more boring work of writing all the new skills these bodies can get now.

More generally, I've definitely been wanting to focus more on... progression aspects, so that the game isn't quite as 'horizontal' in its access, I just don't have a lot of immediate, small-scale ideas for how to do that. At some point soonish I might have to spend a few weeks just trying to come up with small-scale storyline 'quests' for various encounters.

EDIT: Since this update changed a bunch of the client-side javascript files, you might have to force-reload them to make sure you're still not using the cached version. If you don't know how to do that, depending on the browser and if you're using a mac, it's probably some variant on Ctrl+F5 or Shift+F5 or Ctrl+Command+F5.

Okay so this week I was busy with some other stuff (taxes, I mean taxes, which I unwisely left to do right up to the deadline) so I wasn't able to do as much work on hell game as I was hoping. But that's all sorted now, so I should be able to focus more next week. What I have done is the UI and basic state-resetting code for savegames. What's left to be done is writing the data storage and loading code -- mostly only an issue since I haven't done much in the way of HTML5 storage stuff -- and figuring out how precisely I want the autosave slot(s) to work. Neither of those should take that long; if I hadn't been distracted this week it would've been done already. So hopefully next week should also see me starting to outline the crystal dragonoid encounter and maybe the spirit of flame one also.

Oh yeah and I also fixed some scene errors. Apparently there are like three or four scenes that error out if you have two+ dicks, whoops. They're all fixed in development, but not in the live game yet, so in the mean time I guess unequip the [MORE] nodes on your dick if you run into an encounter that errors on missing plurals. Probably going forward I'll tweak the way I do pluralization so that I can catch bugs like this before anybody else sees them, so that they don't make it to production anymore.

Okay poll results are in. The vote counts:

• 12 new encounters, refinery: crystal dragonoids & spirits of flame
• 10 SAVEGAMES
• 10 more rpg stuff
• 9 expand allowed bodytypes
• 9 add more branches to sex scenes
• 8 new encounters, water: sahagins & zombies
• 8 new encounters, mine: void worms & mining barracks
• 7 more talking
• 7 finish the map code rewrite
• 7 new encounters, glades: dryads & unicorns
• 5 add in more misc. encounters / locations

So, I'll be working on those top three. Probably savegames first, since that'll probably be a fairly quick thing to add actually, and then from there write the new encounters and try to patch up the rpg system and put in some more challenge stuff that actually uses it.

What I've been doing this week has mostly been map code, since that has to happen at some point, and is basically necessary before I can do any kind of... content-ordering? Gating content even to the degree of "when you go into this section of the map you get a short intro to what this section of the map is". Or putting 'easier' rpg stuff before 'harder' rpg stuff. Or, as is becoming increasingly relevant, sectioning more of the map for factory areas and packing encounters more densely, so that all the different factory encounters can actually be generated in their proper places. So some of the time in the next dev cycle is going towards that, though no guarantees that'll be done before the update. Currently the state of the map recode is that the new maps have better large-scale map structure, but worse individual 'rooms', since I haven't really gotten to fixing that up yet.

Update! Yes, again. This is just some minor bugfixes; I should probably start labeling releases so I can make this an `a` release. What's new:

• Fixed some plurality weirdness with floating snake dick descriptions
• Fixed some half-formed sentences in floating dick descriptions
• Fixed a missing description chunk for floating blob bodies
• Made the gargoyle fucking scene generally more accessible, though it's still gonna read really weird if you go in there as somebody without either a fuckable cloaca or a dick
• Slightly tweaked the farmer son of Hamar-Tabal/dryad threesome scene

That last one is actually where most of the work over this last week has gone into; I worked on the encounter data serialization thing I mentioned last week, and the farm location is basically the sole event in-game so far that sends encounters from one place to another. This opens up the ability to make more involved scenes in the future, including being able to do things like meet the same person in multiple locations, or have encounters evolve dramatically over time. (Like, for example, now it's actually possible for me to code up the 'mining barracks' location, which will have a bunch of mix-and-match minotaur & acid slime threesome/voyeur scenes, triggered by talking to them out in the world and asking them to head to the barracks.)

Also, new development poll! I figure if people still want the things they wanted last time they can just vote for them again. Here are the options; the actual poll is linked on the patreon.

---

expand allowed bodytypes

• add in the nodes [WINGS] [BIRD] [BAT] [DRAGON]
• and then deal with all the implications of that (adding description lines, wyvern bodytypes, wyvern sex scenes, mentions of wings in sex scenes, etc etc etc)
• plus probably finally fixing it so floating dicks don't break all encounters everywhere

add more branches to sex scenes

• being able to bottom for a son of hamar-tabal
• being able to fuck a flame demon even uncaged (or get the caged one to fuck you w/ the cage)
• dealing w/ some body-state edge cases (stuff like: can't slither up inside a son of Hamar-Tabal's ass as a snake if you've got big horns)
• putting in some floating dick sex scenes
• probably going through and working in some better handling for the new armored / flame bodies & cumtype options
• maybe some cock size / cum volume branches
• basically whatever, if people have suggestions for branches that are lacking. either body-specific or encounter-specific, w/e
• (a lot of the planned branches are like, "fuck him w/ yr gigantic slavering tongue" "fuck him w/ yr cock-tail"; stuff that requires body variations that don't really exist yet. but just 'different sex scenes' might be a thing.)

SAVEGAMES

• making those 'load game' and 'options' items on the title card actually do a thing

more rpg stuff

• add in more combat challenge events
• add in skills from all these new bodyparts I just added in
• expand the raw skill pairs (e.g., have [FIRE] give you 'fireball' which actually does fire-elemental damage)
• probably at least start the process of putting in non-combat challenges (like hunting or knowledge or stealth or w/e)

more talking

• more machine shop variations
• social variants for some of the encounters
• more talk options for the sobeks

add in more misc. encounters / locations

• encounters to get items, encounters that're one-off dialog, encounters that're combat challenges, etc.
• this probably goes along with:

finish the map code rewrite

• this would let me pack encounters a LOT more densely & have them cluster around things
• and also respawn new encounters, probably
• plus the maps would look better
• also once this is done I could more realistically start working on bigger 'quest' stuff

new encounters, water: sahagins & zombies

• moving sahagin encounter to shallow water and actually writing the encounter
• zombies you can fuck
• some sobek/zombie interaction

new encounters, mine: void worms & mining barracks

• add in void worm encounter (& void worm quest)
• add in mining barracks for minotaur & acid slime threesomes
• this would also end up requiring at least some work on map stuff to get the 'mine' section set up

new encounters, glades: dryads & unicorns

• add a unicorn encounter in glade areas
• dryad/unicorn voyeur/threesome scene
• potentially getting gangbanged by a herd of unicorns???

new encounters, refinery: crystal dragonoids & spirits of flame

• what it says
• would also involve a little map work

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As usual, you can vote for many options, and I'll be running the poll for a week, so vote before April 7th if you want it to count. In the mean time, I'll be doing some more maintenance/infrastructure work!

Update! Let's see if I can remember all the things I did in these past... two months? Time flies.

• A wholee bunch of improvements (including cock size lines) and bug-fixes to the pc descriptions. Also now you can be a grotesque worm-animal, you know, if you really want to
• Added in new description nodes: [DEER] [BOAR] [LION] [TIGER] [MORE]»x3 [MORE]»x4 [LARGE] [LARGE]»x2 [LARGE]»x3 [METAL] [ICHOR] [FIRE] and a bunch of description lines associated with them
• Wrote snake-body sex scenes for the acid slime and minotaur miner encounters
• Added a variant (cock cage) to the flame demon encounter, with a different sex scene
• Added a bunch of variants (basically: fat; mutated) to the sobek sheut encounter and slightly tweaked the sex scene
• Fixed some weird cloaca-detection code through all the old scenes; now if you're a naga with a cloaca there should be proper cloaca-fucking branches in all encounters (well, all encounters in which you can get fucked). Also, now your description will actually properly say so if you have a cloaca
• There's some more dialog options for the machine shop encounter
• There's some more dialog options for the sobek sheut encounter
• I slightly tweaked the son of Hamar-Tabal encounter sex scene, mostly to start the process of, uh, further tweaking it in the future. The transitions between scenes are less weird and the weird dialog he had is less weird
• misc bugfixes

All that being said... okay one of the major things added in this update is ways to get weird body materials, and I'm absolutely sure there are gonna be some scenes with weird lines about them, so if you notice anything like that I'd really appreciate it if you tell me so that I can fix it.

(Also most of the more in-depth body changes aren't yet written into existing scenes. There are some barbed dick lines in encounters, since, uh, I've been writing those all along kind of forgetting that there wasn't a way to get them yet, and a few four-armed/six-legged mentions, but there still aren't really cumtype / cock size / chain / piercing / etc mentions in any scenes; these mods are currently mostly only showing up in descriptions, not in sex scenes.)

I'm kind of waffling between holding another vote and sitting down to work more on the other leading options -- this update touched a lot of stuff, but it's mostly a description update. But seeing as descriptions was what won, I think that's basically fine.

Though I think regardless I absolutely need to sit down and do some boring intrastructure work. Gotta change the way encounter data is serialized and provide event hooks to directly alter encounter data. Implement a turn counter so I can use that as a way to add in pseudorandom event branches. Finish updating the map generation code. I'm still basically coding the 'engine' here, even as I'm moving to writing more game content. I'll work on that for a week or so and then either call another vote or start working on scene expansion or whatever else.

Heyyy let's see what I've been doing this week. From that TODO list I made last time, I've done:

• Write the rest of the snake-body sex scenes for the slime guy encounter
• Snake-body sex scenes for the flame demon cock-cage encounter expansion
• Write the new talk options for the sobeks
• Prune the body editor options so there are less weird open nodes slots for node types you can't get yet, and also add the new slots for where the element nodes should be able to fit
• Add all the new nodes to the demo shop

As well as some other stuff. I'm currently working on adding the new tf descriptions into the game, with the help of this handy chart I put together:

             | body | head | cock | balls| horns| halo | knot
             +------+------+------+------+------+------+
FIRE         |xxxxxx|xxxxxx|xxxxxx|xxxxxx|  ##  |  --  |
METAL        |  ##  |xxxxxx|xxxxxx|  ##  |  ##  |  --  |
ICHOR        |xxxxxx|xxxxxx|xxxxxx|xxxxxx|  ##  |  --  |
             |
WEAPON»chain |      |      |xxxxxx|      |      |      |  ##
STELLAR      |  --  |      |      |      |      |      |
GEM          |  --  |  --  |  --  |      |      |      |
POISON       |      |  --  |  --  |  --  |      |      |
STORM        |  --  |      |      |      |      |  --  |

xx = done
## = set in build; no prose
-- = notes made

You can expect to see the things marked ## in the next update; all the rest will have to wait. Here's a sample description (with some issues but it's a good example of where the generator's at right now):

You're a flame-headed bull, about fifteen hands high. Your head would come up to about chest height on a human. Your coat is stiff grey. Your legs end in heavy hooves.

Your head is as a whipping candle flame: underside clear enough, but burning upwards into a tapering column, all features indistinct. Your horns jut out and forward from your head, with wickedly-sharp tips.

Between your hind legs, you got a flushed cloaca, with your four dicks tucked away inside, with a pair of low-hanging external balls hanging beneath. Your four cocks all try to push out at once, prolapsing your cloaca lips into a fat rubbery swell. When your cocks spill out of your cloaca, they're blotchy purple, ridged and spiky, all covered in nubbly bumps like gooseflesh where they're conjoined at the base, and they branch up to form short, thick shafts that're ringed in a messy lacework of barbs, with ridges of stiff flesh between them. Your cocks are pierced with thick curves of metal, ones that look like threaded rods wrought from black iron. They're studded across your shafts; in a fat three-quarters circle through each cockhead, more in a dense line down the underside of your shafts, all the way down to where they vanish into your cloaca. They bloat out, half their length hidden by the mounded prolapse, reaching up across your underbelly.

The remaining todo list is something like...

• Finish adding in descriptions for tf nodes
• Break those gigantic cock paragraphs apart into something smaller
• Write the sobek talk-about-other-encounters options

And then in the 'maybe' pile:

• machine shop random openings
• machine shop sex scene(s)
• write a "son of hamar-tabal blows the pc" scene for bipeds (to simplify the scene flowchart, since everybody else has one)
• expanding things so that you can fuck the flame demon even if he's not cock caged

So basically, lots of stuff happening. Okay see you next week!