This week I mostly worked on the population/encounter generation system, and the base structure for that is nearly entirely coded up. Basically, when the map is generated it'll also generate a big list of npcs, and those will be the encounters you run into and interact with as the game progresses. This has a few advantages -- since all encounters are generated together, I can make sure that there aren't any duplicates (insofar as there are enough variants to generate enough distinct versions to begin with), and I can also tie some of them together, so that as quest stuff starts to get into the game there will be pre-existing relationships of various kinds between multiple named characters.
One of the major things I was doing today was getting some of the code for moving encounters around working -- the same npc might appear in one section of the map and then in a different one later, and the game should recognize that. Right now it would be solely things like changing the blocking in sex scenes to be pushing somebody up against a mine tunnel wall vs. pushing them up against the side of a factory building, but in the future there'll be some more nuanced differences.
Likewise, I did some infrastructural work to merge together the son of hamar-tabal and farmer son of hamar-tabal encounters, so that they're both using a generated character; right now this just you'll be able to have sex with farmer sons of hamar-tabal, rather than just have that threesome with the dryad.
Oh and I also finished a bunch of scene updates -- a lot of the scenes I'd mentioned before had one or two passages left unfinished, and so I went through and wrote the missing bits. Most of the writing I did this week was for that flame demon bj scene, which is at around 4k words now, though I think the linear path through is a lot shorter -- it has a bunch of branches for bodytype and dick type and the like.
Also I should outline the plan for the next few releases, just to keep everybody informed. Right now, the goal is to finish a bunch of these expanded scenes, both the ones voted on and some others, and then I'll make an update that's only the scene updates (without all this map stuff and new encounters and quest stuff), and then I'll finish up the new map code and update with that. Kind of breaking what I'm working on now into two. Partly because now that the dev version doesn't have all those bodytype errors I'd like to get that public as soon as I can, and partly because I don't really like sitting on a big pile of finished content while I work on systems stuff. So anyway, that's the plan.
Are there going to be a finite amount of dryads,writhing worms, roving hellhound knights and glimmers at the riverside?
The other thing I noticed so far is the there being no stat bonuses to various things. Are those going to be implemented soon
Yeah, both respawning encounters and stat stuff are going to be addressed in the next one-or-two big updates, though I can't say for certain if that's "soon" properly, given that it'll probably be another few months before I finish all of it.
Considering your progress, how relevant is the "more info" page? Is there anything that changed/postponed/deemed not viable?
@Nox
I should probably split it into "currently existing in-game" and "planned content" categories, but I don't think there's anything on the list that's been pushed back into oblivion -- zombies are still planned; hellhound studs are still planned; there's already a sliver of size difference stuff that'll get expanded depending on how the next "add more tf options" vote goes; there's an [ICHOR]»infested node outlined, and "having encounters that force special nodes onto your body" has been in the design doc for ages; some dryad plant-genitalia tfs are in the works for when I get NPC transformations in, etc.
The problem is of course it might take me a good long time to finish, or even to _introduce_ all of that; ultimately I just need to do more work, faster, so that all the listed stuff gets into the game without taking years to do so. I'm really hoping this next map update will get me a decent slate to start building up more complex content on, since there's only so much I can do with contextless sex scenes with unnamed characters.
Can you tell me about forced transformations? Would they be reversable/telegraphed in advance? Am I asking too much questions?
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if this game took more than a year. I just hope you won't tire yourself out in the meantime.
nah, questions are fine!
the 'forced transformation' aspect is going to be... very light. i mean, there's a reason 'involuntary transformations' is in the 'no' section.
basically during certain scenes in certain encounters you'd get a node like `[CUMFLATED]` or `[PREGNANT]»hounds` shoved onto your body root. these nodes would be removable, but not swappable -- removing it would just destroy it. (depending on how deep i want to get into automatically-changing nodes, they could also have a timer on them where they wear off or trigger a scene or w/e; really i don't see how else i would do pregnancy)
that would be the mechanism by which you'd get some semipermanent change to your body via a sex scene, whether that's just like "yr bloated and dripping come" or something more involved. this is mostly relevant to the "parasitism / symbiosis" bullet point; this would be how you pick them up. those kind of scene triggers would only be used for special bonus stuff, no "standard" forced transformations like "whoops you're a centaur now b/c you chose this path", and they would be pretty clearly telegraphed -- i don't want to 100% copy corruption of champions and have the worm enemies give you dick worms, but basically you'd literally have to pick an option that was like "yes, i want dick worms"; the game isn't gonna spring any of this on people without warning.
and yeah it's gonna take... a while before all of this has born fruit. looking over last year's progress, the main thing i've taken away is that i'd _really_ like to make a lot more progress this year, so right now i'm thinking of ways to do that without burning myself out. but a lot of it is just... keep working on it, and it'll get done.
Oh, I see. Thanks for clarification. Do you have a favourite NPC yet? Not necessarily in a sex way, maybe just a story/lore way.
hm, maybe the sons of hamar-tabal? they were the first monster design i got sorted, and the first one i started writing the encounter for, so they're kind of archetypal as far as design and planning go. though the ganzer workers actually have a lot more in terms of written backstory that hasn't been mentioned so far ingame; i'm pretty eager to get to the point of fleshing all of them out so that i can actually introduce all the story/lore stuff in the game, rather than just having it exist in my notes.