Wednesday, September 16, 2015

The Future


I've just made the first steps in code to lay the foundations for the future of this project, which makes this a good time to announce it.

As some who came here from /d/ may recall, and as my introductory post here mentions, this is actually my second crack at a game in Twine. My first was a post-apocalyptic slave management and warband management game, with the eroticism and warlordism being more or less balanced in terms of content. (I'm calling it Wasteland as a project name; it needs a better one.) It quickly became apparent that I needed to aim lower or fail, so I aimed lower, and Free Cities is the result.

Free Cities playtesters who read the more descriptive passages closely may have noticed strong hints that the world outside the player's arcology in Free Cities is going to hell. I will now confirm what several anons have suspected: Free Cities, in addition to being a sequel of sorts to the present, is indeed a prequel to Wasteland.

It's my intention that there will eventually be a “continue this game in Wasteland” option in Free Cities. When it is selected, the final collapse will begin. The lights will grow dim, never to burn bright again. And the player, along with his slaves and those free men wise enough to follow him, will leave his crumbling arcology in its collapsing Free City and strike out across the sand.

52 comments:

  1. And then Mad Max comes around and kills everyone but a couple sluts. Roll credits.

    J/k. Will there be any global plot in Free Cities itself ? Something to work towards, like requiring your girls to cover a wide gamut of skills and interests, to proceed to the next phase ?

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    1. Probably not; I'm desperately trying to keep the feature creep under control.

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    2. Yo it's ya boy Vargas, I got the following errors on the "enslave mother + daughter" scenario: http://i.imgur.com/a4lLhLy.png

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    3. Vargas again, the turn after buying both of em got a bunch of undefined operators again: http://i.imgur.com/yq6C4Rw.png

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  2. So long as there are more amputee events to come, I'm all for this! Sounds neat!

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  3. That. Sounds. Awesome.

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  4. That sounds great, are you already accounting for that in Free Cities coding? If so, you're a GOLDEN GOD. Really coming to enjoy Free Cities as I play it more, it's much more depraved than other Slave Sims around (With the possible exception of New_Haven, but that one is earlier in development than yours so there's not much of a comparison, as much as I enjoy them both.) and after getting used to some of the options and becoming more familiar with the effects of different equipment, I'm quite happy with it.

    I remember reading a comment criticizing the lack of indication of what clothes and such things do, perhaps it would be nice if you do end up fixing that to keep the vague lack of information in hard mode. (Since you're just some presumably rich, or foolishly self-betting chump who won his entire business in a card game).

    It would also be nice to feminize men who aren't yet altered who still identify as male, sissification and feminization are already quite prominent themes in your game, having them expanded that much further would be fantastic if at all practical to implement. If it isn't very practical at where you're at in development, then of course disregard that last part. Keep on keeping on!

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    1. I am already accounting for the transition. In fact, the coding structure of the eventual Wasteland is going to look very similar to Free Cities, with the content seen by the player changed out for harsher stuff, and cars, guns and troops added. I'd guess I'll manage 50% code commonality.

      The way I'm planning to handle lack of information is to explain everything in the encyclopedia. If players want to figure stuff out the hard way, they can just stay out of it.

      Feminization is tough content for me to write because it skirts (heh) along the edge of what doesn't appeal to me personally. For now, there's one random event that takes a dude and turns him into a female slave; I might write one or two more. But that's likely to be the limit.

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    2. I'm glad to hear it! As for the feminization, I can perfectly understand that. I believe that games, even the rather twisted porn games, are a form of artistic expression. If it makes you uncomfortable or you aren't confident you can give the content the passion it deserves, it's better to just leave it or have somebody else do it for you(Which as you're an independent dev, I can see you possibly being reluctant to do so).

      I also actually forgot to comment one complaint I kind of had, shemales in the general normal setting are very rare to see being sold, and if you increase their likelihood then it reverses and females are then in turn the rare occurrence. It would be nice to have a balance somewhere down the middle, which I personally think would be more realistic in your setting anyways, what with feminization from a young age being generally accepted in slave culture. Thanks for taking the effort out of your day to respond to this random internet denizen :P

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    3. It's not that dudes banging dudes makes me uncomfortable (I mean, sex! whoo! good for them!), it's that I need at least a little personal appeal to write well. I can create decent shemale content only by focusing on its corruption and transformation facets. And I've had taking writing submissions suggested to me, but I'm a bit territorial when it comes to writing.

      At present, I believe 20% of the randomly generated slaves will have dicks. I think that's where it ought to be, more or less; as I'll explain a little more in later encyclopedia entries. As implied by some of the events and entries thus far, slavery is new. For a slave in 2032 to be feminized for 10 years, she would have had to start in 2022 - when slavery was almost unheard of. If I wrote a sequel set 50 years into the future in an arcology, I'd write it with the world consisting of almost 95% slaves by population, of which obviously nearly 50% would be feminized. It's just that the FC world isn't there yet.

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    4. Also, forgot to mention: you can always get what you want by spamming "show me another slave" at the market. I intentionally set it up that way so that people with specific tastes can find what they're after, even if it's rare.

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    5. Re: feminization not being your cup of tea: you could always call on people to provide text for kinks that are not your kinks. If it's just a paragraph or two at a time, you'll be surprised how many people are willing to spend a couple of minutes helping out. A lot of the text I put in hggmod for Jack-o-nine-tails came from kindly Anons at 8chan /hgg/.

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    6. Oh, missed you saying you were territorial about writing. I was the same, but having full editorial control really eased it. A lot of the text that was submitted needed to be basically butchered and rebuilt from scratch before I was happy for it, but it was a lot easier than writing not-my-kinks.

      But hey, at the end of the day it's your call, and if you're happiest being the sole contributor of writing to the project then don't let anyone else try to tell you it should be otherwise.

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  5. A title/name idea "Wasted Opportunity". This is a great game so far im glad I just found when visiting TF Games, definitly love the freedom to customize characters over the fixed characters of other games.

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  6. How about a title for the eventual wasteland project... "Slaves to the Wastes/Wasteland" The "Wasted Opportunity" above sounds pretty good too.

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  7. Great game! Just started playing around with it, and I love the world building/setting, combined with the intricate slave controls.

    My personal favourite thing to see would be Bad Ends, but if that's not in the cards then just keep doing what you're doing because it's awesome!

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    1. Thanks. So, question about your favorite thing. I'm not familiar with the term bad end, though I've seen it kicked around on /d/. Would slaves meeting a well-described Bad End do it for you, or would it have to be the PC?

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    2. He probably means in relation to the PC, although it's rather difficult to actually go bankrupt or end up in a very challenged position at the moment with the lack of antagonists (As far as I've seen) this far into development. When you posted this on Tfgamessite you were appealing to a community who mostly thrives on bad ends from what I've seen, which generally ends in the MC being feminized or sex-slaved in some way shape or fashion, or being turned inanimate. Perhaps even just MC that dictates the characters behaviour to be terribly slutty (Maybe from overusing aphrodisiacs and having it actually seep into the building and start affecting the MC), some would give bonus points for "Somewhere deep inside he's still aware of what's happening" which is sickly deviant, but admittedly kind of hot in a "I really hope I never ever see this happen to somebody in reality" kind of way.

      I personally don't really care for Bad Ends for the PC so much as others do, because I prefer to play a dominant role (Though I can enjoy reading the submissive roles as a dom who is attracted to such an idea or personality as his own personal toy, really helps if things are left a little vague so I don't get too attached to the character though, easier to objectify them that way)

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    3. By "Bad End" I mean adding game over / you lose / failure states to the game, with explicit details being optional but making it more fun.

      For example, the background information for the setting suggests that debtors are often enslaved. To test the current bounds of the game, I intentionally drove myself into 10k debt. It would be cool if some sort of game over (or least a bad setback type event) condition were imposed upon failure, making it possible to "lose" the game in some way. In this case, a Bad End would involve the player being enslaved for his debts with all the unpleasantness that the background setting implies.

      That's just one example, and it doesn't necessarily need to be instant-game-over if you go into the red. Some sort of fail condition or possibility of "losing" spices up the game, however!

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  8. Super psyched to see that you've produced something, especially something so well done! Even just what you have now is already worlds ahead of most other attempts, so keep up the good work!

    Now, for feedback: 1) There seems to be a bug with clitoral piercings. Clicking the regular clit piercings seems to enable regular labia piercings instead.

    2) While I really like the altered dialogue for slaves with super huge lips, I wish that you would either change the 'accent' or at least offer an alternative. Having the lisp cause 'Master' to come out as 'Massa' doesn't really make sense. A lisp from fat lips would almost certainly come out as 'Mathter' or something like that. Using 'Massa' really just conjures images of american slavery and minstrel shows, which is kind of a boner-kill :P

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    1. The piercing thing should be fixed in the patch that's just been posted.

      And on the accent, goddammit you're right. This is the problem with cranking out text like I do. I probably wrote that last month and have copy-pasted it about fifty times without really reading it. The text is in alpha just like the code. Thanks for the feedback, I'll change that in the next patch.

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  9. Oh, this is brilliant! Could really differentiate this from the other slave/brothel games out there. And it actually provides an opening for including something that I was surprised wasn't in the original content. Would you ever consider including "the player" as a moldable character?

    I understand if you're worried this will push you into writing scenes you don't want, but I think there's a simple way to avoid that. Also, it actually creates an interesting strategic choice, especially as the game transitions to the Wasteland, which wouldn't take too much additional coding to implement. Basically, just give the player the option to transform themselves, as well. This would grant them an additional money making (shemale) slave named after the player, but leave them with a lower starting reputation, and faster reputation decay.

    It might not be thematically appropriate in the "Free Cities," but it could be an interesting potential occurrence ('accidentally' selected by the player) when society crumbles and he enters the Wasteland.

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    1. The player is non-customizable in Free Cities to keep the coding reasonably doable for a novice, and will remain that way. When Wasteland rolls around, I think that will change. As the author I find I can do almost everything with an out-of-focus character for this game, but building your own Immortan Joe is too good an opportunity to miss.

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    2. Haha! True. Having an in-focus character would make the Wasteland experience pretty awesome!

      For Free Cities, though, if you treated the player as just another slave character, who had certain things flagged (e.g., couldn't fully feminize, just so you could keep writing the same slave/master interaction scenes), that could be a very alpha-level way to try it out. This game is great; keep coding what you wanna code, obviously. Just food for thought.

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    3. The problem with that is the scenes.

      I could add the code to store, describe, and alter the PC very easily. The problem is that there are at least 20 different variables per slave that often alter the prose you see in game. If the PC were also alterable, the number of possibilities would be 400, not 20. As you may have seen in past bug reports many scenes don't properly deal with a slave without a vagina, for example. If it were possible for the PC to be without a dick it would be insupportable.

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  10. Eh, I hate to be a downer but "Wasteland" as a name is both taken and a fairly old game that has also spawned "Wasteland 2". I know because I own "Wasteland 2" & it is awesome!

    Link to the wiki: [http : // wasteland . gamepedia . com]
    copy and paste without the spaces & brackets will take you there.

    Also considering the upgrades you can make to the arcology why can't we fortify the place and turn it into a stronghold?

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  11. I would like more modularity with the game architecture...
    All I can do is surgery and most of it is a bit teddious.
    I would liek that being replaced by sorcery or something like a mutation or a biological mutating power.
    Players could choose to be a dark wizard, a warlord, an evolving Zerg, etc.
    The object slaves should have a collection of body parts, which can be upgraded either slowy with doing activities or transformating (adding a bit to their stats) or quickly by spending somekind of mutation-xp in a nice tech-tree.

    Same tech tree could be used to allow the Warlord to upgrade his abilities and stats.

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  12. A few ideas / questions:

    1) Would it ever be possible to play as a female? I doubt it since it has been written as a male PC, but are the systems coded in a way that would make it really hard to add, or would it be more a matter of just creating the content?

    2) Will we see additional features for the arcology or penthouse? Would like to be able to further customize them, with gameplay emerging from that. For example, building a Dungeon for additional BDSM activities.

    3) Would like to see more detail / choice in how we train / punish slaves. For example, specific ways to punish / torture with specific effects. Ie: let us choose to whip, spank, beat, target body parts, etc. Slaves would receive the specific marks / injuries, and be impacted psychologically based on their traits / interests.

    4) Additional slave actions / reactions that help to build them up as unique individuals would be great.

    Keep it up - amazing effort so far!

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    1. I'd definitely would like to see more torture options even it's just a daily/routine of torture that damages the health of the slave (according to the intensity) and increases obedience.

      As far as playing female is concerned, that will never be implemented because of code/workload limitations.

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  13. Love the game and wish you the best of luck in coding it!

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  14. Is Wasteland still planned? Also, since FC is half done (according to the version numbers), could you give us a rough estimate of your vision for Free Cities: what do you plan to implement for sure, what may happen etc?

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  15. Just to be clear Wasteland has not yet started right?

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  16. Is it available somewhere?

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  17. you mentioned another game you made. Is that game still available elsewhere?

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  18. Hey Fcdev have you checked out Degenesis? It might be good inspiration.
    Here are the books mega:///#F!4llFxaSJ!-s8AP4HjornW2PDjuMfl1w

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  19. If I may make a suggestion... do everything you described in reverse.

    Meaning start off as a Mad Max style wandering warlord who then works their way up to master of the Citadel, er I mean Arcology through work & determination.

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  20. If you want a different name for your expansion project rather than wasteland, "Fallen Cities" seems the obvious choice as an expansion from "Free Cities."

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  21. So if your arcology is almost completely self sufficient, why does it go to hell when the rest of the world does? You would think the arcologies would fare just fine so long as they could defend themselves.

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    1. It's seems the weather has something to do with it.

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  22. defend + enough resources (be it already machined one (stock take room) or trough ground reserve who are then processed troiugh be useable as needed ? If future, the current tech of the Fablab could well be able to use crude standardized ressources as to create anything as long it has a 3D file + can be created (size).

    This said, it is quite an heavy subject as to options. Given the way a complete out of ground (what a choice once it has been clamored in the "final" state), an underground one would have been quite more efficient, or even other, mobile aerial one (with spatial compatibility). Who then could go from one resource spot to another, endlessy.

    Options arent limited, in any case, looking forward content as it is.

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  23. Mildly curious about expanding some of the fetishes to include turning the gurls into human "pets" tail plugs and either clothing or surgical alteration to restrict them to all fours, modify ears into feline or dog shape or train a particularly strong girl into a pony slave, major rep bonus for being pulled around in a small cardiage with a team of beautiful girls pulling it

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  24. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Annnnd I just posted modding stuff to the wrong page again. Damnit.

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  25. Hi,
    Thanks for the game, just wondering if you are going to add;
    1. Upgrades for the Arc owner, MC? like body mods or just work outs to be best owner i can, :P
    2. An Attitude slider or switch, something like 1 Ez going, 2 neutral, or 3 hard ass. in how you treat the slaves. Some of the traits would seem the require a more cruel master while other would require a more ez going master to cater to whichever kink she has.
    Again thanks for the game

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  26. That sounds like an excellent ending, but makes it a little depressing. Doing All that work for nothing to be blown away to dust, great way to set up a sequel. I had a few ideas but I doubt anything would come of them.
    1 Sanctuary- Your Arcology is only survivor from Armageddon, becomes "Safe Zone" from outside.
    2 Empire- You attempt to expand your influence and recreate civilization in your image.
    3 Order- Becomes Dictatorship to keep peace, enslave whole city.
    Of Course there would have to meet certain requirements to get these, but just thoughts based on some fiction I read. tend to notice this stuff in Post Apocalypse themes.

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  27. The total technological and social collapse of mankind due to their own greed and egoism? One final blaze of glory before midnight and humanities complete and utter extinction?

    Now THAT is my fetish!

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  28. I'm curious if the slave-management part of Wasteland will be more haremesque. With the way FC is set-up, a more corporate approach is beneficial; making all the slaves homogenous, super-skilled sex workers who rake in the credits and reputation, with player interaction more of a secondary feature, relegated to events. Assuming a lack of standardized currency (and a lack of standardized economy in general), to me it follows that slaves take on more of a role as comfort items for the warband, with the leader (naturally, the PC) having something of a harem. Though if FCDev is planning for something more like what FC has, it'll sure be interesting! Keep up the great work!

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