Cursed and Trials

You may have noticed something new on the right. Yes, Cursed is available for download. I figure the worst thing I can do is work on something in the open and then deny access to it, so it's there. I figure after every stream, I'll post the update, assuming there's something new to do. Feedback in the form of bug reports, comments, and suggestions is strongly requested.

Still hovering at about $30 away from a Trials livestream. Note that, even if I don't make the donation amount, I am still planning to finish the game, just not in the open. So don't feel like you need to donate in order for the game to be completed, because that's not my intent at all. I'm not asking for money to finish the game, but if you're looking to see how it all works together (and I know a lot of people are), well...$30 away.

I might do another Cursed livestream tomorrow. I'm really enjoying it. Turns out, I kind of like teaching and talking my way through things.

Edit: Whoops. Looks like the demo isn't playable yet. Sorry. I'll have it fixed for tomorrow.

Livestream Today

Today's livestream will officially begin in about an hour, at 10am Eastern. However, I may start earlier. It will go until at least 1pm, perhaps longer, perhaps not. Tune in, bring your questions and let's get this thing going!

Edit: Stream is now live. Check it out at www.livestream.com/amgames. It's over!

More Livestreaming (Stay Tuned)

I had way too much fun with that livestream, and got a lot of work done to boot. So I'll be doing it again tomorrow. I will most likely start early, around 10ish EDT, but the guaranteed times are again 12pm to 1pm. I'll update this post (and subject line) when the stream starts.

Edit: Might not be able to do the livestream today. My significant other is not feeling well, and it falls to me to look after her. If the stream is cancelled today, I'll pick it up again tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Edit 2: Unfortunately, there will be no livestream today. Sorry. I will do it tomorrow though, unless she's not feeling better.

In other news, donations are about $50 $30! away from a Trials livestream. Remember that the button is up until the end of the week, and then it goes away (hopefully forever).

Livestreaming Cursed (IT'S OVER!)

So I've decided to get an early start this morning. The livestream is up at http://www.livestream.com/amgames, so feel free to tune in. I reserve the right to get distracted and do something else (I have an extensive game collection), but as I said yesterday, at the very least, from 12pm to 1pm Eastern, I will be working on Cursed.


Note that this is a first time thing for me, so there may be technical difficulties.

It's over! Thanks to everyone who tuned in and helped me actually stay on track, working on the game. I may do it again, even!

Edit: I suppose I should mention that the idea for livestreaming is shamelessly ripped from Fenoxo's blog. He's much better at it than I am, though, so you may want to watch him when he does it to see how unused to it I am in comparison.

Also, because I'm still feeling creative, I'll be streaming for another hour or so. Starting now (3pm EDT).

50,000 pageviews

Wow. That's actually kind of awesome. Thanks for tuning in, folks.

The donate button is staying up all week. Although you awesome, fantastic people have (already!) donated enough money to see the Cursed livestream tomorrow, still a little ways to go if you want to see the Trials of Taihra-Firanae livestream.

No matter how much money is donated, and whether or not you were able to help me out, thanks, from the bottom of my heart. Really. I don't tend to have a lot of faith in humanity, but every so often, people are absolutely amazing.

Thank you all.

Remember, livestream tomorrow at 12pm Eastern.

Something I Really Don't Want To Do

So, here's the deal.

I have a job. It's a job that pays reasonably well, and usually I get by. Unfortunately, the last month as seen my car damn near explode in cost, my only credit card get maxed out from miscellaneous charges, and my life become rather...complicated. And suddenly, I realized that I need help.

You may notice a donation button on the right, and so it is with particular sadness that I'm telling you that I'm doing the internet equivalent to begging. If I'm honest with myself, I'm actually sort of a proud guy, and I really don't like to admit when I'm in over my head. But the problem is that I'm in over my head, and while I'm able to swim, it's only just barely.

I absolutely one hundred percent need to note that this donation thing is completely predicated on the kindness of strangers. There's no bonus for donating. There's nothing I can offer if you decide to throw some money my way. What I can say is that if you choose to donate money, then I won't have to look for a second job, which leaves more time for me to work on games, so I guess that's a bonus of sorts. And that Donate button isn't going to stick around: when I reach the goal in my head ($100), then it disappears, hopefully never to be seen again.

I've actually been thinking about doing this for the last two or three weeks, and each time I decided to do it, I quickly reversed my decision because I don't want to be that guy, the guy that asks for money without offering anything in return. But, while I'm not quite desperate yet, I can see that day inching closer, and it scares me. So I'm biting the bullet, swallowing my pride, and doing what I can to stave it off.

Once again, if you donate, I currently have nothing to offer. I am relying here entirely on the kindness of people I have never met. If you choose to donate, thank you. You are fantastic. If you decide that I'm full of crap, then don't click the button. I will not think less of you.

Edit: This is very much a fluid thing, and I'm really making it up as I go. So here's the deal: if I reach my goal of $100, then I'll do a livestream behind-the-scenes broadcast of Cursed, showing some of the ins-and-outs planned as I rebuild it (more on that later). The Donate button will stay up all week, and if, by some miracle, I reach the $200 mark by Friday midnight Saturday, then I'll do a livestream behind-the-scenes broadcast of Trials of Taihra-Firanae, so that people can see my logic, how things work together, and so on.

Edit 2: My god, you people are goddamn awesome. The Cursed livestream will apparently be tomorrow or Wednesday, I'll have more details soon.

Edit 3: Thanks for the generous donations so far. Tomorrow, at about 12pm Eastern Daylight Time (8am Pacific), I'll start livestreaming here as I try and rebuild Cursed. I'll be streaming for a least an hour, but I may start sooner and it may go longer. I will definitely be streaming from 12 to 1pm, though.

Beta V5

After a significant round of bugfixes, I'm pretty confident in the stability of this particular build. If you haven't been following the fixes over at TFGamessite, then make sure you grab the latest release, which addresses a lot of the problems. You can get it here.

Time Out

So, since posting the beta for Trials on Monday, I've been taking it easy. Bug fixes were significantly less problematic than I'd anticipated, which is actually kind of impressive considering I hadn't done any testing at all, but that's what I've spent the last few days doing. That and recharging my creative batteries, so to speak.

But the plan is to make sure that the beta I released is as close to bug-free as can be expected, and then get back to work. When I released the last beta for TTF, I kept working on the game even while doing bug-fixes and learned that it's a huge mistake to do so. The problem is that, when you have two versions of the game (the beta release and the work-in-progress), you have to fix all the bugs twice. And when bugs are complicated and annoying, the last thing I want to do is fix them twice. I don't even really want to fix them the first time if I'm honest.

In other news, Daisy_Strike gave my game a recommendation on her(his?) blog! Sweet, and thanks!

Shhh!

You may perhaps want to go to this link. I'm just saying, friendly suggestion.

Final Picture Hunt

So I may in fact be on the last picture hunt for Trials. Hopefully. I really hate picture hunts. But, as per usual, the people (i.e. you) have come to expect a certain level of visual stimulation, I wouldn't want to let anyone down.

Day 6 is going to be interesting. More free-form, do-your-own-thing-sort-of. You'll still have an objective that's clearly defined, but there will be some, or at least one diversion that may or may not bear fruit should you choose to investigate it. The trick is to make you feel like you're in a big open space, with lots to do, even though there isn't. Seriously, you're there for one or two reasons, so all of your actions will revolve around those reasons.

Of course, Day 6 will be the only trial with a failure condition. In the previous two trials, the only way you could fail was by getting caught up in the illusion, which wasn't really a failure so much as an ending of acceptance. In the third trial, if you don't play your cards right (there will be leeway, don't worry), or if your stats are truly abysmal, then you can actually fail to meet the objectives. There will be an "I win" button of sorts, but it won't be easy to find, and has better uses, and can be lost forever. So, what happens if you fail to accomplish the objective? Do you fail the trial but get returned to the real world? Does the trial continue indefinitely? Do you get to start over and try again?

Well, I know, but I'm not telling.

What's that?

Did someone say that Day 5 is done?

Oh, right. I did.

Inhibitions

Had a thought today about Cursed. There should be some way to track the player's inhibitions. I mean, sure, you're transformed into a girl, and that's all hunky-dory, but just because your body has changed doesn't mean you're ready to, ahem, use it. I'm not sure if it would be a simple counter, 0 to 100, where if it's high, you're not ready to do certain things, or if it would be almost like a checklist, where once you've danced naked on a stage for money, you're okay with doing that. Most likely it'll be a counter and a checklist, but I haven't put too much thought into it yet (I just came up with it, sue me).

Either way, inhibitions would be tracked separately from femininity. Just because you're comfortable in a woman's body doesn't mean you're comfortable doing anything with it. So you could have femininity maxed out, and inhibitions fully in place, or vice versa (though that would be pretty hard to pull off).

Here's Some News

Day 5 is actually very, very close to being done. And Jesus, I'm thankful for that. Writing the same sex scene four different ways really takes the variety out of life, you know?

In fact, the only thing I have left to do for Day 5 is the Sleep command. Which, sadly, will not be done for some time. The problem arises from the fact that I need to do quite a bit of image searching. I need to find all the variant pictures. I mean, sure, I have pictures for the bimbo TF and so on, but now I need the bimbo-asian TF, and all the other possible subsets. And I can't really search for those pictures until Monday, as I'm busy all weekend.

Still, getting Day 5 mostly complete was a big accomplishment for the day.

Error

The problem with working in RAGS, and especially with the way that I'm making Cursed (whenever I get back to it) is that even if I want to release cumulative demos, a problem arises in that there's an intro that rather severely impacts the game proper. Sure, I could let people skip it and make various option choices, but that's annoying. And even then, with a progressive living simulator, where things happen on specific days, people have to play through a LOT of stuff they've played through before, particularly as the game nears completion. If something happens on day 200, then they have to play through the previous 199 days, even if the previous version allowed them to play until day 190.

Still thinking about doing it that way, but the more I think about it, the more I think it might be a foot-shooting thing.

Speaking of Trials...

I'm still, sadly, working on Day 5. Creativity comes in fits and starts. The problem isn't the coding...in fact, quite a bit of the coding is in place. The problem is, in fact, the descriptions. While I could just put "placeholder" text in certain situations ("You cast the spell, and feel more bimbo-like"), I know that if I do, I'll never go back and actually fix it.

Day 5 is therefore the bane of my existence. Day 6 will be much easier, at least in terms of variability. There won't be any kind of "real world" interactions, as at that point you'll be locked in to whatever feminine form you've acquired. Karma will still change, though. I suppose I could, in theory, build another real world set of interactions, but really, can I have my sanity, please? It's hard enough to hang on to it as it is, dammit.

Day 4 was about a fantasy adventure world. Day 5 was about a fantasy transformative world. Day 6? Day 6 will be about the real world. With fantastic elements.

What saddens me is that Trials was supposed to be a contest game, finished at the end of February. It's now June, and I'm still working on it. I really just want to move on, dammit, get back to working on Cursed, which is honestly much more fulfilling from an intellectual standpoint, but no, I have to finish this. I will. Hell or high water, it'll be done, and hopefully soon, but man, I'm tired of working on it every day.

IN OTHER NEWS

I know this blog isn't like Fenoxo's or Valente's, where the most recent version of a game is posted and playable with just about every update (...yet?), but I do like to know what people think of my ramblings and plans. So, please, feel free to leave a comment, ask a question, whatever. I'll try my best to respond. 

Redesign

I've come to the conclusion that Cursed will need to a redesign. Right now, it's too complicated for not a good enough reason. So I'm going to simplify it slightly. In the current version, there's separate tracking for strength, muscles, weight, and more. In the new version, there will be a strength stat, which will determine your strength AND your muscles, a fitness stat, which will determine your weight and your endurance in various activities, and so on. It won't be too hard to re-code, and the lower level of complexity will make things easier.

Besides, it makes more sense.

Still not working on it, though. Gotta finish Trials first.

Day Six plans

So I figured out what I'm going to do for the third (and final) trial. Should be interesting. Suffice to say it will involve quite a few more characters.

I've also decided that day six will be the last "full" day. Day seven will be involved in aftermath and denouement, but there won't be significant interactions available. Well, there will be one specific significant interaction, but since that will end the game, it should be pretty obvious there won't be anything after it.

As for the end of the game, it will be the single most annoying thing I've ever coded. Think that A Game For Witches had a lot of possible variation at the end? This will have significantly more. First, let's just consider a few variables. The whole point of the game is to gain the privilege of making a wish. Sweet, everyone loves wishes. Of course, if you only had one wish available, that wouldn't make much sense, would it? So there's a few different wishes available. Let's say there's...four wishes available (I haven't really decided yet). For each of those four wishes, there has to be a high karma and a low karma variant (for the sake of simplicity, there won't be a neutral karma variant). For three of the four wishes, I'll also have to take into account the choices you've made before. Remember when I said there would be subset choices? Welcome to a combinatorial explosion. Five different options for the main personality choices, and then a total of 12 more subset variations. There will likely be a lot of copy-paste going on in the endings, just so I don't go insane.

But wait! There's more! What about your sexuality (men, women, both)? What if you're in a relationship (Lynn, Jack, no one)? Those have to be taken into account as well. To be fair, those might vary only slightly between different endings, but naturally karma will affect them.

And then there will be the special ending, available only under very specific circumstances. But, since that will be unique and not affected by quite as much, it'll be easier to take care of.

Well, back to work I guess.