ALPHA 0.5.7: "Her Girl"

This update addresses three major requests that have been echoed often enough to deserve some work. First, the starting sequence has been revised, with hardcoded slaves having a much less significant impact. For now, the player will receive only one regardless of difficulty options. Second, the Head Girl has gotten some love. Third and finally, it's now possible to customize slaves in facilities in a limited way. I may relax these limits further if possible, but for now they're necessary to keep the game playable.

I'm pretty confident playtesters will find all sorts of delightful ways to abuse the new starting system for fun and profit. A major limitation of my own internal playtesting is that I know the code very well - having a great memory is tremendously useful when creating the game, but it means I can't easily play the game from the perspective of someone who doesn't know its mechanics by heart. Balance feedback is very useful.

Since this is a mechanics-heavy update, bugs are likely. Event-heavy updates tend to be much more stable, since the code in them is usually well tested and doesn't cause serious trouble if it's not. As I've said before, I consider this an alpha, so I'm focusing on creating content, not making sure it's perfect before it goes public. In any case, unless the truly unforeseen occurs, the next several updates will focus on content, events, and bugfixes, making 0.5.8+ more stable than 0.5.6 and 0.5.7.

After three consecutive mechanics-focused updates, the game is now in dire need of some events. The new facilities, leadership positions, the corporation, and the new fetishes all need multiple events. I'll focus on them as much as I can, but that pushes the need for many more generic, sexy events with slaves even further down the list of things to do. This is therefore a good time to post my answer to a question on /d/ about event submissions:

I will now consider event submissions. However, anyone who wishes to submit an event should carefully consider the requirements before spending time on it.

• Authors must be willing to resign all rights to their work. I won't intentionally butcher anything, but I need to be able to make code and lore changes as necessary. That means I need to be able to edit everything in the game freely.
• Authors must be code-literate, or willing to learn. I am not posting a tutorial on doing this. You must be able to open the game in Twine to see how the events work.
• Events must be well coded and code-consistent with the rest of the game. This is my first major project and I usually don't have enough time to fix my own bugs, never mind others'. For veteran coders, this will probably mean copying some of my imbecilities to stay consistent.
• For now, events must be independent in code terms. I will not be adding stats, items, etc. to support event submissions.
• Events must be fairly consistent with my writing style and totally consistent with the existing lore. A new player should not be able to immediately tell that a submitted event has a different author than the rest of the game.

I am aware that these are pretty onerous, and I'll be neither surprised nor disappointed if no submissions appear. On the other hand, if anyone is willing to subject themselves to this, I'd be happy to have FC profit by their enthusiasm. To avoid wasting your time, I strongly suggest you email me an outline of your idea so I can jump in with guidance if your plans don't fit into the game. The ideal first event submission is probably a single-slave scene without major stat impacts, like about half of the scenes currently available.

Also, OldHuntsman discussed FC on his blog! If Google Translate can be trusted, he played it for a while, and had a bunch of feedback. JoNT started me down the path to FC, so this pleases me immensely.

Download: Dropbox, Mega. Previous saves will not work. If you have not started a new game with a fresh download, please do not report bugs. Latest hotfix at 12:20 PST, January 2. Hotfix should address all reported issues up to that time.

0.5.7 Changelog

Major additions:

• Revised intro sequence: the player will now receive a single hardcoded slave and a varying amount of money with which to customize any number of starting slaves at a reduced rate. Starting slaves will be pseudo-random, but after committing one, subsequent slaves can be based on the first one.
• Penthouse upgrade that puts your Head Girl in a suite of her own. A single slave can be assigned to live with her there, improving her effectiveness and subjecting that slave to the HG's tastes in clothes, drugs, surgery, etc.
• Major UI improvements, including the ability to alter some settings, apply surgeries, etc. to slaves in facilities.

Minor updates:

• Three new fetishes: masochism, sadism, and dominance; the last two will be expressed mostly towards other slaves.
• Reviewed preexisting fetish content, including how fetishes interact with assignments and relationships.
• Nicknames for all leadership positions.
• Cash-rich corporations can now invest in assets at an accelerated rate.
• The corporation will now track how many people it's enslaved, to keep the player informed as to approximately how much human misery they've profited from.
• Slaves' stats will now track how many kills they have in lethal pit fights, and the arcology will track how many slaves have died in pit fights.
• The rules assistant will no longer put slaves in positions in which virility is advantageous on female hormones.
• Bugfixes.