Wednesday, October 21, 2015

ALPHA 0.3.06


There's been a lot of good feedback left for 0.3.05. Rest assured, I read all the feedback I get, even when I don't reply. This update addresses several requests. In particular, maid and cow outfits have been requested many times. They do not improve performance at the relevant jobs: it would be bad for balance, and there wouldn't be much of a real difference anyway. I personally find most pet outfits uninventive, so I went with a Holstein cow-like tattoo option instead.

Anyone who's been here for a while should find it unsurprising that the redoubtable Boney M took the lead in reviewing the hardcoded slaves. Not for the first time, he has my thanks and deserves yours. Since this review is now included, imperfectly hardcoded slaves are now officially off the know bugs list. Any absurdities should be reported.

I've been struggling with the feedback about random event frequency and balance. As a first step towards improving this, nonrandom events no longer prevent a random event from appearing in the same turn.

Buildings now have a supply cap which can be raised with upgrades. I resisted the urge to make the under-supply message you must construct additional pylons. This is a first step towards future balance mechanisms.

Download: MegaPrevious saves should be compatible BUT players must manually make a selection for each rules assistant option before applying any. Latest hotfix at 19:15 PST.
Tip jar: Patreon.

0.3.06 Changelog:
  • Review of hardcoded slaves.
  • Nonrandom events no longer prevent random events.
  • Many new rules assistant options, and better respect for existing rules.
  • More and better information in the summaries.
  • New clothes option, the maid outfit.
  • New tattoo option, a cow pattern. It can only be applied to the whole body.
  • Bugfixes.

45 comments:

  1. YES! Finally, I can put non-devoted slaves in something I like without them losing obedience every turn. While we're on the subject of clothing options, any chance of adding a collar soon? Frankly, a slave wearing a collar seems a lot more common and practical than branding, massive amounts of tattoos and piercings and whatever the slave straps outfit is supposed to be. I've never seen anything that resembles the description of the slave straps, but collars are something everyone associates with slavery. I'd personally be happy with just a naked girl wearing only a collar as a clothing option, but it would also work as another category like branding, with different types of collars for different slaves. A rebellious girl can have a thick, heavy iron collar locked tightly around her neck, an obedient slave can have a slim steel collar, a good, devoted slave can have a nice platinum collar marking her as superior to the lower slaves, and a black leather collar is a classic choice, especially for petgirls.
    Thanks for all the great work as always, I'm loving this game!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Collars are on the list to be added. I'm now doing my best to save additions that require a fresh stat (like a secondary wearable, for example) for an update that adds a lot of them. That way, every other update or so won't break saves.

      Delete
    2. So good to hear that this is coming in a future version. Thinking on it, this is one thing that I'm amazed I didn't find missing right away.

      Delete
    3. Well now that I've actually played the new release I have to retract my previous statement, since the maid outfit counts as fancy clothes and gives slaves below Obedient more resistance per turn because they apparently find a skimpy, slutty maid outfit to be fancy and take pride in wearing it, the silly things. Fortunately I can easily justify them enjoying the outfits via the smart piercing set to submissive on all my servant girls. By the way, in case any others players haven't noticed, personal servants are more effective with the Submissive fetish, taking more off your weekly slave maintenance cost.

      Delete
  2. Awesome, love the new options (you actually save me from having to put the holstein pattern in the custom tattoo slot ;P)

    But uh, did you remove/disable the event where the older sister turns her younger sibling into a shemale and whores her out? Used to get it all the time, now I've gone like 300 turns without getting it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The abusive siblings event requires a head girl to pop. Also, there are now more than 100 events in game, so not seeing a specific event in 300 turns isn't actually all that unlikely.

      And since working on this project, I suddenly understand all those AAA games that beg the player to give permission for stats on their gameplay to be sent to the devs. It would be really useful for me to be able to see everyone's saves at a glance. For example, if there's something everyone uses the custom descriptors for, it should probably be added.

      Delete
    2. But then you would actually have to read through all of them ;)

      Also, minor feedback: Not fond of the height changing change the description to mention oddness on their limbs. Something removable with the improved plastic surgery clinic?

      Delete
    3. I use the custom description for my personal backstory related to my two starting slaves, then mostly use it for collar descriptions. I've got it down to five basic descriptions depending on my plans for the slave (and yes, I'm the first commenter up above who asked about collars). I figure you might want some extra descriptions related to collars if you're planning to add them soon, so:
      A heavy iron collar is locked around her neck, snug enough to be uncomfortable without being dangerous.
      A solid steel collar is locked around her neck, just tight enough to make her constantly aware of its presence.
      A slim steel collar encircles her neck; unlike most slaves, she takes comfort from its constant presence.
      A black leather collar is wrapped snugly around her neck.
      A black leather collar is wrapped snugly around her neck, her leash attached to the ring on front.
      She wears the intricate platinum collar of a devoted servant proudly around her elegant neck.

      Also, custom tattoos for a slave ID barcode-style tag (SID stands for Slave Identification Database, my headcanon name for the joint ID system used to identify slaves across all free cities):
      Her SID tag is tattooed on the back of her neck.
      Her SID tag is tattooed on the back of her neck, just above her collar.
      Her SID tag is tattooed on her pubic mound, just above her bare slit. (I like this wording better personally, but for public release using just 'slit' or 'pussy' might be better to accomodate other tastes)
      Her SID tag is tattooed on the inside of her wrist.
      Her SID tag is tattooed on her forehead.

      And in case you're wondering, yes I am the same anon who posted the massive textwall down below. Just feeling really talky tonight for some reason. Thanks again for an awesome gameworld!

      Delete
    4. 0.3.07 will include steel, leather, gold, and nice jewelry-like collars.

      Delete
  3. "New clothes option, the maid outfit."

    Welp, time to start this up again.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Just want to say, since I don't think I've mentioned it before, but you've managed to hit just about every single one of my fetishes... and given how niche some of them are, that's pretty damn impressive, heh. Literally the only one I can think of that you don't already have in FC is watersports (WTB public and personal urinal assignments with associated pisswhore fetish~)

    On an unrelated note, out of curiosity, what's the average conversion rate of USD to FC... whatever that symbol is?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, also, the first anon's mention of slave straps reminded me - I feel like it would make sense for submissive characters to enjoy the straps (and possibly the latex) the way exhibitionists enjoy nudity

      Delete
    2. Not a fan of watersports myself, but then I'm also not a fan of plastic surgery and large assets-I remove any implants from all my slaves and prefer to maintain them between A-cup and C-cup breasts with small, firm asses. Anyway, I figure since smart drones equipped with stun weaponry costs 5000, major technologically complex facilities cost 5000-10000 and hiring an entire platoon of trained, experienced and well-equipped mercs on retainer costs 10000, it's probably in the vein of 1 FC money to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course, paying 50 FC money per salon use is silly under those circumstances, but realistically FC Author would have to have arcology upgrades cost so much more that you'd never notice salon costs to make it properly proportional.
      Actually, now that I think about it, it might be a more fluid type of currency partially based on how much other arcology owners respect you and your public image, rather than pure currency. Like, the currency represents both your actual funds and your public clout and ability to call in favors and do stuff.
      Or even more reasonable, the FC currency scales exponentially instead of advancing linearly as you accumulate more. Thus you have to spend 50 FC money per salon use or tattoo, equivalent to pocket change, but the expensive and rare smart clit piercing that can actually influence a person's personality and mental state in real time costs 1000, which is more like thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars.
      This actually makes a lot of sense. Buying a small fleet of intelligent, autonomous drones with stun weaponry and AI protocols that act as robocops costs 5000 FC money, which is not 5 times the cost of a single smart piercing, but rather many, many times the cost. Installing advanced water treatment facilities and power generation systems costs a ton due to high technology, using only the best materials and most skilled workers, and the need to import much of the necessary equipment and workforce from outside the arcology.
      This also explains a bunch of discrepancies in the pricing of various items. Hiring a squad of mercenaries to base themselves in your arcology costs 5000, yet hiring a full platoon, usually 3-4 squads, costs 10,000. Rather than twice the cost for 3-4 times as many shooters, a full platoon costs WAY more than just a small squad, and comes with full armor and equipment, heavy support weaponry and all the maintenance and supply needed to keep the platoon combat ready long-term, instead of just hiring a few guys with personal armor and weapons. Same thing with slave prices; instead of improving a slave's obedience and sexual skill slightly bumping up her price by a small fraction of her total price, the difference between a slave that costs 1000 and a slave that costs 5000 is more like a $1,000 slave versus a $1,000,000 slave.
      And the reason for this strange currency system is that all the Free Cities were founded and mostly populated by very wealthy individuals, who are all uptight snobs with superiority complexes and designed a system where they can flaunt their wealth in weird ways, with a currency that seems to have values varying wildly that make no sense to outsiders, letting the rich Free City residents feel like they're in a super special club and feeding their entitlement and self worth.

      Or I could be in a caffeine-fueled haze rambling on when I should have been asleep hours ago, that's also a possibility.
      FC Author, if you like any of this, feel free to add it in whole or in part to the FC Encyclopedia. If not, feel free to ignore it; it's your universe and your game, I'm just happy to enjoy it.

      Delete
    3. Also, sdibolcrif, I think it makes more sense if the slave straps, which present the slave's holes with rings around them, were enjoyed by exhibitionist/humiliation characters, while the latex suit, generally associated with bondage gear, was enjoyed by the submissive personality. Submissive could also enjoy the maid outfit more, for what I feel are obvious reasons, while the plugs would be nice for a nympho who likes constantly having her holes filled.

      And that brings another ranty topic to mind: is it supposed to be a humiliation fetish, or an exhibitionism fetish? These are not the same thing. They can both be present, but an exhibitionist generally enjoys being watched without shame, while a humiliation fetishist specifically enjoys the shame of someone watching, as well as enjoying various other humiliating acts like being used as a cumdump or forced to pleasure someone. Really, the humiliation fetish is a lot more closely tied to the submission fetish, at least in this anon's opinion, whereas the exhibitionist fetish can really stand alone. I would suggest changing the name of the humiliation/exhibition fetish to be more in line with which one you're actually referring to, which seems to me to be humiliation.

      Really, what I'd love is the ability to have multiple fetishes, since that is more realistic than being locked to one, but I'm assuming that would unbalance the game and play merry hell with the game's code, so c'est la vie. I'd be more worked up about bisexual being considered a fetish but it really seems to fit quite well considering Free City gender roles and biases, so that's fair.

      Delete
    4. Heh, yeah, my harems are 100% silicone-free too. I despise fake tits IRL, and it's definitely reflected in the way I play. And yeah, my dedicated whores might have Ds, maybe bigger, but all my "personal" girls are Bs or As (kinda bugs me that Bs are described as "small" and A as "flat" - that's honestly just flat-out inaccurate).

      Yeah, I wasn't thinking too much about the weird scale on FC currency when I asked that. Pretty much impossible to draw a direct comparison.

      As far as the straps - yeah, they've got the holes, but that's kinda secondary to the fact that they're designed to be uncomfortable and demeaning, which I'd say fits the submission aspect a little better.

      Agreed on the exhibitionism vs humiliation argument - I hadn't really thought about it before, but now that I am it's pretty clear it should be one or the other. And yeah, I can't imagine any way to easily handle multiple fetishes per slave, so one per is fine with me. Plus IMO single fetishes are better from a gameplay standpoint, since it promotes specialization (which is why I still kinda hate the tendency for all slaves to eventually gain nympho - IMO it shouldn't even *be* gainable, only determined on slave generation)

      Delete
    5. Fetishes will certainly remain one-only just from a code simplicity standpoint. I've never been happy with the humiliation fetish, it does deserve work.

      And the prices are stand-in. They need work both on the balance and rationality fronts, though balance will always rule. FWIW, though, the buying power of ¤1 in modern USD is pretty high, probably in the $100 order of magnitude. But keep in mind that modern prices don't really apply very well to the FC situation. Some things are ludicrously cheap in the arcology, while others are very expensive outside it. The economy is very, very distorted, and we're only seeing the 0.01%er's view of it.

      Delete
  5. Using the Cheat option here... when i pay 1000 to access the full catalog of slaves i get the below:

    "This is the complete catalog of slaves that you can acquire from other slaveowners. Most of these slaves are not for sale, so persuading their owners to part with them will be extremely expensive.

    Error: cannot find a closing tag for macro <>
    Error: cannot find a closing tag for macro <>
    Error: <>: bad expression: Unexpected token ILLEGAL

    The offered price is ¤38200.

    Buy her slave contract"

    Any ideas what happened?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I spammed restarting about 30-40 times to try and get a pair of starting slaves I really liked earlier tonight, and I noticed I never saw Mrs. Anne, who was noticeable before because she's one of like two over forty custom slaves available and a great Head Girl. Given how many times I saw certain salves like Santa and Adrian pop up, it seems unlikely I just didn't see her. Has she been removed for maintenance work?

      Delete
    2. Ms. Anne is there when you start with the cheat option...

      Delete
    3. Yes, but I haven't yet seen her in normal starts, and I assume the cheat option Ms. Anne is a special cheaty version, not the regular version I want for my Head Girl.

      Delete
    4. You're right, actually... also tried to take a look at the code (as best i can), and can't seem to find her (the regular version), cheat version is there though... does anyone know if they're the same?

      Delete
    5. Miss Anne only appears in the cheat start now, since she's basically an instant win if she randomly appears.

      Delete
  6. An option for the random event problem would be to have a small set of options of where to spend free time through the week. Like chosing to go to the milk farm give you random events based on the girls and options available there like the milk bath, milk sample, or milker sex scenes. So you would be able to narrow the random event pool down to more of what the player wants.

    ReplyDelete
  7. You're right, actually... also tried to take a look at the code (as best i can), and can't seem to find her (the regular version), cheat version is there though... does anyone know if they're the same?

    ReplyDelete
  8. When did so many custom slaves get added? Did the folks doing the proofreading just add a bunch of their own?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I recruited Miss Anne's daughter Katherine, she has same tattoo as her mother. 'Miss Anne' is tattooed in lovely flowing script over her collarbone.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The game is a lot of fun, but I really feel like once you put your slaves on the promenade, dairy, brothel etc you lose most of your interaction with them and it would be fun to have a (collapsible maybe) breakdown of different parts of the arcology in the end of the week summary.

    Also could you make it that players can add the nose ring to slaves without having to pierce the whole body part? And a cowbell could be added too, that would be great.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree about the dairy and such. I'd like to see those additions added as options for your personal attention. Instead of working with one slave, you'd spend the day supervising the dairy or brothel and get interactions that way. Seems like a great way to work in new lactation content too!

      Delete
    2. Not a bad idea; I've wanted more personal attention options for a while.

      Delete
  11. In cheat mode, I tried to buy the catalog of other slaveowner's stock and got this:
    "This is the complete catalog of slaves that you can acquire from other slaveowners. Most of these slaves are not for sale, so persuading their owners to part with them will be extremely expensive.

    Error: cannot find a closing tag for macro <>
    Error: cannot find a closing tag for macro <>
    Error: <>: bad expression: unterminated string literal

    The offered price is ¤33000.

    Buy her slave contract"

    ReplyDelete
  12. Any chance we can have prosthetics added in, to counteract amputation? Like Heels counteract having their tendons clipped, prosthetics (perhaps an all-or-nothing as opposed to one limb at a time, or arms/legs) would allow them to interact 'normally' again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm going to go with "probably not," just because recoding all the limb passages was bad enough once.

      Delete
  13. It'd be nice if the cup size system got improved a bit, though that would probably break saves. H-cup boobs aren't huge hilarious torso-obscuring sized, that's like some kind of P-cup. Mostly I say this just cause I enjoy observing the steady growth in my slaves and/or checking their growth after they've been in the dairy a while.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I played 3.06. All went nice and of course great work. For the first time I was respected enough to visit the others slaveholders stock.
    When I paid the 1000 I got this error
    Error: cannot find a closing tag for macro <>
    Error: cannot find a closing tag for macro <>
    Error: <>: bad expression: unterminated string litera

    ReplyDelete
  15. Hey Dev, could you provide any advice on how to get started with using twine, or just some links to helpful websites? Thanks, and sorry if this has already been asked and answered.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. http://www.motoslave.net/sugarcube/2/

      I keep this open in a tab whenever I'm working on the game, still.

      Delete
  16. Man you weren't messing around when you made hard mode harder. I get that the skyrocketing bribes/upkeep costs from a maxed arcology serve as a clock and lose condition for the game, but it's a little disappointing to only get 4-5 weeks of "safety" after paying 100k.

    Would it make sense for you to be able to have your debt limit go up with renown?

    I'll just pussy out and go back to normal/easy mode.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. FWIW I play on normal, and that's what the game is really designed to be played on. There are some vocal playtesters who really wanted a brutal mode, so I gave them a brutal mode.

      Delete
  17. No. Lack of author appeal, plain and simple.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I fixed it the slave catalogue bug.

    You left out a " between ]] and >>, after

    $activeSlave.weekAcquired to $week]]

    in slave catalog

    so the game was reading the entire page as the string that never ends.

    Here's a mega link for a hotfix.

    https://mega.nz/#!BdkCFRhZ!VtAdiUBvq4qGkEv_qIFN0XtTxcugXUu-LSIzCMViL-U

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm in the process of finalizing 0.3.07, which includes (among many other things) a fix for this exact issue.

      Delete
    2. Oh sorry about that. I just thought I'd get get it out there when I was peeking :x

      Delete
  19. What if someone else authored the content?

    ReplyDelete
  20. Since many anons expressed interest in contributing, I looked into ways for others to add content. The problem is that the real time sink is coding, so it would take just as long or longer for me to oversee and debug crowdsourced additions, and I'd rather spend my time on content that I like. Keep in mind, though, that the raw HTML is visible and editable. (A few HTML-literate anons have already made small code modifications and suggestions.) Even if I were inclined to stop mods, I couldn't.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Yeah. I've approached other Twine authors about putting their work on github and as I understand it, Twine files don't take well to that since the story files are basically large blobs of data that do not necessarily maintain order, so it's very much like working with binary data.

    I presume this is still the case even with Twine 2.0. If not, you should look into it.

    ReplyDelete