This is the post I made on AnimeOTK a few minutes ago, repeated here for your viewing pleasure:
I’ll be starting to play Etrian Odyssey tomorrow, so here are the remaining three characters. Note that they are inspired by Zae’s suggestions, though I did take them and tweak them a bit. In particular, I’m replacing the mischievous bard with a mischievous hexer, mostly because I can’t write music, and I think the bard’s appeal would come out of there actually being concrete little ditties about this or that misadventure. While I could play it as the bard being hilariously bad at songwriting to justify any atrocious things I would write, the thought of trying to concoct songs, even bad ones, wearies me. On the other hand, having a playful hexer would be fun because it completely goes against their portraits, which are kind of creepy.
As for the alchemist, I decided to replace “grumpy and well-educated” with “spoiled rotten and well-educated,” mostly because Alchemy seems like the kind of profession a rich girl might take up, and we need some spoiled rotten in here somewhere.
Totally took the Protector idea unchanged, however.
If anyone has any suggestions or tweaks for the characters below (or if my party makeup is doomed to failure), let me know, and I’d be happy to make some changes.
Name: Gwendolyn Karter
Profession: Alchemist
Position: Switch
Age: 23
Bio: Gwendolyn is the insufferably spoiled brat child of some middling lord or other from a different town. As the only daughter in a family with three sons, her father doted on her like no other. Whatever she want, she got, and if
she didn’t get what she wanted, she threw a tantrum like no other. These days, she doesn’t throw quite so many tantrums. Instead, she just explains in exquisite detail why the person refusing her is an unsightly worm who shouldn’t
interfere with their betters if she thinks she can get away with it, and works some prank or other to ruin the other person’s day if she can’t. That being said, she is a gifted Alchemist, and the only time she is anything
approaching bearable is when she’s focused on Alchemy. And even then she’s just brusque and impatient rather than snotty.
Name: Samantha Star
Profession: Protector
Position: Mostly Bottom
Age: 28
Bio: Gwendolyn’s bodyguard. Samantha Star’s father is the bodyguard of Gwendolyn’s father, and it has been pounded into her from birth the importance of serving and protecting Gwendolyn. This includes taking responsibility for
any of Gwendolyn’s mischief that run the danger of being traced back to her. She is calm, quiet, and unassuming. Pretty much the exact opposite of Gwendolyn. She treats Gwendolyn with deference, and Gwendolyn eats it up, treating
Samantha as her own personal manservant. Gwendolyn also doesn’t seem all that appreciative of Samantha’s unfailing loyalty. She takes Samantha for granted and has no inkling of how helpless she’d be without the quiet Protector.
Name: Wendy “Hexy” Wellington
Profession: Bard
Position: Mostly Bottom
Age: 18
Bio: An obnoxiously cheerful, and cheeky brat. She’s a friend of Allison’s, and was babysat by Andrea. She vanished a few years ago when she started to develop uncontrolled hexing talent. She’s recently returned, completely
out of the blue. She takes a ton of delight in messing with people. One of her favorites is to act overly melodramatic and creepy, playing to Hexer stereotypes. Of course, she can’t maintain it for very. She hates it when people
get all melodramatic and serious, and will try to lighten the mood. Of course, her “lightening” usually consists of casting some harmless hex on one of her teammates (such as making them trip into the mud, or lose their pants, etc),
much to her teammates’ chagrin. She’s also a very fast talker, and will try to talk her way out of a punishment. In short, whereas Gwendolyn has a cruel streak to her pranks, Wendy has a more playful streak.
————-End AnimeOTK post——————–
Also, this is completely unrelated, but I’ve taken the past week off from Potion Wars (been writing like a fiend, and needed a break) and I’ve been playing Shadowrunner Returns.
It is amazing. Seriously, this game is the closest I’ve ever come to my ideal RPG:
1. Gameplay that is challenging enough to keep me engaged, but not so challenging that I have to restart half a dozen times.
2. Gameplay that is deep enough that it’s not just a click fest (in particular, the true depth in this game comes from finding cover and positioning your characters properly. Whoever has the superior position has a HUGE impact on battle).
3. Status spells that are actually useful. Damage spells that can do some damage.
4. An AMAZING setting. It’s this mind-blowing combination of cyberpunk, high fantasy, science fiction, and pulpy detective novels (my favorite character type is a fast, smart, pistol-toting hacker-type called a decker).
5. Superb writing. The dialogue is very well done. I love their slang. Unique, flows wonderfully, and the writers make an expert use of context to make the slang clear. Wish I could write slang like that. The stories (at least for the main campaign, and the expansion campaign) are also engrossing. Dead Man’s Switch isn’t anything particularly new, but it’s very well executed and the setting is unique enough that the core store doesn’t need to be. Haven’t finished Dragonfall yet, but that’s shaping up to be superior to Dead Man’s Switch in every way.
6. The quests are plots (including the subquests). It’s not just a bland “I need the Talisman of Muldour! Bring it to me!” It ‘s more like you have conversations with the characters, connect with them, and then they might ask for your help then, or later on. Plus, many of them build on themselves in a very natural and engrossing manner. Furthermore, just about every quest sheds some new light on the setting, so with each quest you feel like you understand a little bit more about the world these characters live in. Sure, they usually boil down to “kill that guy.” or “bring me that doohickey” but those are just the skeleton they use to shape the story.
6. Streamlined gameplay. I don’t waste time slogging through dozens of pointless subquests just to get strong enough to beat the main quest (hate subquest heavy games. 98% of those “hundreds of quests!” are filler). At any given time you have a main quest, and maybe one or two subquests, all of which are usually accomplished by taking one or two steps off the main quest’s path. I know some people like the whole “open world exploration” thing, but I don’t. Give me an engrossing plot, an interesting setting, and good gameplay over 100 areas and 200 inane sidequests any day. It’s not like you have any real choice in the open world games anyway, so why dilute the story pretending you do?
7. I create my own character. I want to play a female elven, pistol wielding decker? I can. I want to play a female human, pistol wielding decker? I can. There are other things I can be. Like male. Or a troll. Or a street samurai. But light footed deckers are way too much fun. Also I have some strange obsession with playing as a woman in all my games. Just so much more fun than playing a man. Don’t know why. Probably because I’m a man for the rest of my day, and I need a little variety.
8. Short animations. The graphics and music do an excellent job of capturing the setting, but the combat animations are fast and simple enough that they don’t slow things down. Furthermore, the game has high damage and low hitpoints, so combat is fast (plus it encourages you to use the terrain, your items, and your magic wisely).
The only major flaw is that the roleplaying is more in your head than in the game. Sure, your character periodically gets to respond to people, and they are very good responses. It feels like your character is actually talking to people instead of just blandly nodding and saying “uh-huh.” Plus, they do a great job of implementing the classic “I’m a kind person”, “Eh, whatevs”, “I are asshole!” triad. However, whichever response you pick, the other character will usually have a few sentences of difference, before returning to their main thread,completely unaffected by whatever you said. So your responses have a minimal impact on the flow of conversation. However, it’s a metric ton of work to have player responses have a real, noticeable impact on conversation. Plus, the flaw is pretty standard for the industry, regardless of the quality of the game, so it’s not a huge blow.
I’ve been enjoying this game so much that I’m thinking my next game will be in a similar cyberpunk-fantasy-science fiction mashup. Unfortunately, that’s years away, and I want to play with the setting now. But I don’t want to take time away from Potion Wars. SO, I’ve started concocting the premise for a series of short stories set in my own cyberpunk-science fiction-fantasy world. I’m currently working on the first story. The hope is that in between Potion Wars development (which remains my absolute top priority), and my Etrian Odyssey Let’s Spank, I’ll be able to write up a few stories here and there that let me build up this new setting. Hopefully, they’ll give me an opportunity to pull it away from its Shadowrunner roots, and give some nice background to my (very hypothetical and not at all guaranteed) future game.
That being said, Shadowrunner has a pretty crapsack world (it has to, because you basically play as a criminal, and it’s hard to make criminals sympathetic in light settings), so my world is also pretty crapsack (because you know, criminals), which means the plotlines will probably be a bit darker than the Etrian Odyssey Let’s Spank. Not sure where it will be in relation to Potion Wars, but probably a bit darker, because I don’t have Emily keeping me under control (still won’t go full Game of Thrones though. I want people to actually enjoy these things after all). Plus, while there will be sex and spankings, there won’t be as much emphasis on them as in Potion Wars. This is not a world where everyone is running around spanking everyone else. That being said, this is a spanking blog so I will strive to give every story at least one lovingly crafted spanking scene.
Edit: I’ve uploaded new versions of the game with the bugs mentioned on the previous post (plus a few others that I found!) fixed. Also, I’ve discovered that the permissions on the Ubuntu executable downloaded from Mediafire are wonky, and I haven’t figured out a good way of fixing them (I love Ubuntu, but sometimes it really pisses me off). Basically, you can’t make the file executable by right-clicking on it, because you can’t get administrative privileges from the properties dialog, like you can in Windows. So in order to make Ubuntu recognize my game as an executable program, you need to open a command-line in the same directory as the executable and write:
~> sudo chmod +x PotionWars
Ubuntu will ask for your password (note that passwords do not appear when typed on the command-line. However, the computer is reading your keystrokes. Just type in your password and hit enter). Once you’ve provided your password, the program will be made executable.
So I recently went out and purchased a Nintendo DS and the first two Etrian Odyssey games (relatively modern old-school dungeon crawls, my favorite kind of RPG). Looking through the character classes I discovered that there is basically a dominatrix class called Dark Hunters:
Dark Hunters were the mistresses of sword and lash
Their binding skills could sway the tide of any clash
Their blades carried affliction with every slash
The monsters they faced reduced to cinders and ash
Complete with a dominatrixy outfit.
This got me thinking that it’d be kind of fun to do a Spanko Let’s Play (well more of a sequence of short stories inspired by the events in the game), with a group of adventurers led by a Dark Huntress who believes firmly in corporal punishment for wayward party members.
The way I currently envision it, it would be an F/F adventure with an all female party (because that’s my favorite pairing), with the Dark Huntress as a mostly top, and the other party members switches/bottoms (the Dark Huntress wouldn’t take kindly to others administering discipline without her approval).
I’d shoot for a bi-monthly update cycle (though a lot of that depends on how much time I get to play the game, and how much material each play session gives me).
I also want to try my hand at a more zany, over-the-top style as opposed to the more angsty tone of Potion Wars.
However, my primary focus will still be on Potion Wars, and if I need to cut back on spanko projects, this will be the one to go.
I’m looking for party member suggestions (I can have five characters in a party, so I’m looking for an additional four, all characters must be 18+). Suggestions would be much appreciated. Here are the other eight classes pulled directly from the manual:
The Landsnknecht had a sword that could cut you in twain
[Her] powerful might was known as the monster’s bane
With sword or axe, [she] caused the foul demons much pain
From the front line [she] lost count of the monsters slain
Survivalists were [mistresses] of the woodland lore
You’d mark them by the hats and the scarves that they wore
Their specialty was the firing the arrows that soared
The Labryinth explorers sought them for their corps
Protectors bore a shield in their holy quest
Under its aegis did her companions rest
This noble knight was up to the hardest of tests
No enemy could tarnish that virtuous crest
The Medics healed their wounded comrades in need
The poison stings and the injuries that bleed
At great expense did they perform their kind deeds
Their frailty prevented them taking the lead
The learned ones with magic were the Alchemists
The elements they controlled by flicking their wrists
Their magic made up the weakness of their fists
Without one in the party their presence was missed
Now Troubadours, my own kind, brought cheer and gave mirth
Both menfolk and ladies were the salt of the earth
Our songs boosted the party and proved our own worth
In returning the Labyrinth’s beasts to the earth
From foreign lands the mysterious Ronin hail
Their skill with swords came also from that unknown vale
They’ll fight down to the last [woman] with tooth and with nail
And flay the beasts’ hide empty of stinger and scale
The rarely spotted Hexer controls with a word
The curses [she] let fly with are the last things heard
By [her] command, monsters to suicide are spurred
When recruiting, placement on the back line’s preferred
To start things off, here’s the team leader:
Name: Allison Kat Andrea
Profession: Dark Huntress
Position: Mostly top
Age: 27
Bio: A rathy bossy gal, whose parents couldn’t decide between “Allison,” “Kat,” and “Andrea” so they picked All of the Above. Goes by Andrea because Allison and Kat are names for simpering, perpetually distressed damsels who’re probably sissy medics to boot. Andrea is not a simpering, perpetually distressed damsel whose probably a sissy medic to boot, and any suggestions otherwise is a shortcut to a smarting bottom. She is laser focused on exploring the Labryinth, and doesn’t have the time or patience for silly things like “fun,” “friendship,” or “stress relief.” No one knows [I]why[/I] she’s so obsessed with the Labryinth, and asking her only leads to a brusque “That’s my business.” She thinks having mysterious motives makes her a deep, three-dimensional heroine. They do not.
Her mother had this to say: “Eh, she’s probably just looking for an excuse to get out of the house. Thank goodness, too. I love my little Aly, but she’s incapable of doing the simplest of chores without a bottom warming first. All she wants to do is play with her whips. Which is silly, by the way. Proper young ladies become medics.”
You can make your suggestion less or more detailed as you prefer. If I can get enough suggestions to form a full party, I’ll consider interest high enough to justify doing the Let’s Spank.
Note: This will not impact Potion Wars. I’ll be playing/writing for Etrian Odyssey during time that I wouldn’t normally spend on Potion Wars anyway.
Spankers and Spankees,
I’ve posted a new version under Downloads. Just like my last few posts, this just contains a few tweaks:
1. I’ve reduced the hitpoints of your enemies (including the dungeon boss) by a few points to make the combats go a bit faster (and make the boss fight a bit easier).
2. I’ve removed the Song of Roland from the tavern scene. That scene is obnoxiously long as it is, and the Song of Roland doesn’t really fit in a festive tavern atmosphere like that. It’s not gone permanently. I’ll probably have Elise sing it at hers and Roland’s wedding as sort of a wedding present, or something. I don’t know. The point is, I’m not removing it so much as moving it into a part of the game that I haven’t written yet.
3. I’ve also rewritten the pillow talk the male player has with Carrie after sex. I wrote the original dialogue just before posting the first version of the game, and I had originally conceived of it as a subplot for Carrie. However, subsequent discussions with Emily led to a much better (and sillier) subplot for Carrie. We’ve got enough angst flying around as it is, and the dialogue didn’t really fit with Carrie’s character anyway.
You can find the link in Downloads, as always.
Anyway, on to progress on episode 2. First, Emily has agreed to help me write spanking scenes, in addition to her other duties of reading obscenely long e-mails from me. Therefore, we’ll actually have F/M scenes now, since I can foist the writing of those scenes onto Emily.
Second, we’re currently at about 76 pages, and a little over 130 nodes. Not as much progress as I’d like, but I’ve had a lot of trouble writing the scene where the player wakes up in Maria’s home. It’s been one of those write two lines, erase three types of things. I think I’ve finally got something that’s flowing naturally.
Furthermore, that damned LaTeX-to-Python translation script is spanking me like a naughty schoolgirl. I’ve tried three different approaches to writing the damned thing, and every single time it’s dissolved into an impossible to maintain morasse of kludges and workarounds. Basically, I keep trying to be too clever, and then running into all sorts of corner cases. This time around I’m doing things properly with a lexer, parser, etc.
On a happier note, I’ve recently learned about the magic of graphics toolkits, and I’ve found two that look like they’re meant to be used with Pygame. What is a graphics toolkit? Well, basically it gives me a scaffolding for constructing GUI’s. My current GUI is very low-level, which is why it’s so static and shitty. With the aid of a toolkit, not only will creating the GUI be easier, but it will also be much more stable, and I’ll be able to do more complicated things behind the scenes that lead to an easier-to-use interface. I’m not going to start working with these toolkits until episode 3, because I’ve got enough other things to program for episode 2, and I’d like to release episode 2 sometime this century.
However, I have started sketching out interface options during lunch, and I’m really excited about that.
Finally, as a little reward for reading this far: It has come to my attention, based on conversations with Emily and Jeffrey the Jungle Ape that people may not know about a certain scene involving Ildri. Basically, before you see the Kitchen scene, try wearing baring underwear (such as a thong. I believe the lacy panties are also baring. It should say in the underwear description), and no pants/skirt/dress. Basically the only thing covering your lower body should be a pair of panties that don’t do a good job of covering your ass.
Spankers and Spankees,
So as part of the previous update, I was fiddling with how I position text, because of problems with displaying multiple people in the party. I got a new approach that seemed to work. This evening I realized that I forgot to make sure this text positioning scheme worked for party display in the dungeon, and in combat.
Guess what? It didn’t.
So, I’ve uploaded a new version where I reverted back to the previous system. I also recalled some weird workaround I have to use that I don’t understand that magically gets my text positioning to work across multiple lines (I hate graphics programming. Even simple graphics programming like splitting text into separate columns. Hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it) which I wasn’t using in the party display screen, which I am now using, so the problems with text positioning are fixed!
I don’t know if that paragraph made any sense to you (it doesn’t to me). But the point is, download this version. The combat screen isn’t messed up in it.
Anyway, please make sure to read the previous post as well. In addition to more information about the updates contained in versions 1.14/1.15, it also has some sketches of the potential automap. Thoughts on the automap’s design would be greatly appreciated.
Spankers and Spankees,
While messing around with transitioning from episode 1 to episode 2, I discovered that the game crashed every time I tried to save during episode 2. I managed to narrow it down to the problem line of code, but I had no idea why that line was a problem, or how to fix it, because I was using a very complex third-party module that solves a highly non-trivial problem (turning program state into text is a lot harder than you’d think) so I didn’t really understand the module I was using.
Therefore, since I had no idea how to fix the problem, I decided to go back to rolling my own save format. Unfortunately, the new format is completely different from both of the previous formats. I think it’s superior to both (at least in the context of my game), but it’s still very different. So, once again, old saves are no longer compatible with this version, and you’ll have to start over.
I’m really really sorry about that. However, once episode 2 is released the save format is pretty much locked in forever, so I really need to make sure to get it right before that happens.
On the bright side, I think the reason the most recent versions of the game dont work with PlayOnMac is because PlayOnMac doesn’t know how to handle the third-party module I was using. Since I’ve gone back to generating plain text files for my saves, PlayOnMac might start working again. So if there’s anyone out there with a Mac, please try it out with PlayOnMac and let me know if it works or not.
I’ve also fixed a few bugs and typos, including a bug where the game crashed when you tried to end the episode. I’ve also modified the logic of the dungeon events. Now, once you’ve completed the event in each room, the entrance squares will no longer display text. Hopefully, that will make going back to Paloma less of a hassle. You can find the most up-to-date version of the game in the Downloads section.
I’ve also been doing some preliminary designing for the automap. Below are some sketches that I’ve made of my proposed design. Criticism would be greatly appreciated. Note that I haven’t implemented anything yet for the automap, so I have absolutely nothing invested in this design. So feel free to tear it apart. Furthermore, the top-down perspective will look very similar to this, so keep that in mind when critiquing these sketches.
Suppose we are in a dungeon. It’s dark and scary. Or maybe it’s a sunny day in the middle of a forest with dinosaurs rumbling happily. We’ll never know.
Now, suppose we press A to trigger the (A)utomap command. That gives us the following screen.
This screen displays what we’ve seen of the dungeon so far. Note the J. That’s the first letter of the player’s name (in this case, I’m assuming the name is Juliana), and indicates where the player currently is. Now suppose, we want to define a route from our current position to the stairs down to the first level. I start pressing the arrow keys. Pressing the up arrow twice, and the right arrow once (or twice, this thing isn’t exactly to scale and it’s hard to tell) gives us the following screen:
We continue flailing at the arrow keys in a random (yet totally logical) manner to complete our route. Note that while you are selecting your route, your party isn’t actually moving. Therefore, you will not experience any random encounters while selecting your route (you will however, have random encounters once you start walking the route). Anyway, once we’ve finished selecting our route, we have the following:
Now, suppose we hit Enter. The party starts walking the path above. Note that this is not displayed to the player. From the player’s point of view, the party will simply teleport to the desired square. However, behind the scenes, the party is traversing the dungeon one square at a time. So from the system’s point of view, travelling by a path is exactly the same as travelling manually. Therefore, once we hit the red square, we trigger combat!
After combat, we go back to the main first person display:
Except clearly on a different square (a red square). Note the blue (W)alk command. Pressing W will resume the path. Note that the command will vanish as soon as the player moves off of the current square. However, suppose we open the automap again instead. This gives us:
Observe that the J has now moved to the red square. Furthermore, the game has remembered the part of the route that you haven’t traversed yet.Pressing (Enter) will allow you to continue the path, the arrow keys allow you to edit it.
Your thoughts on this would be much appreciated. Also, I’ve been giving some thought to how to make combat faster without inhibiting clarity. I’m thinking that a combination of colors and sound-effects could get you the information you need, without boring lists of
“Juliana slapped Vengador.”
“Vengador lit Juliana’s face on fire.”
“Juliana cursed loudly.”
But we’ll have to see. So, expect similar storyboards for a new combat interface in the coming months.
Spankers and Spankees,
Apparently, it’s already the first month of October. The good news is I recently adopted a dog from the local shelter. He is the most gorgeous little thing you ever did see. At 20lbs (9 kg), he’s little bit smaller than I would prefer, but a perfect size for my apartment. Right now, he’s plopped down on the couch next to me (I know, I know, I’m spoiling him) after a long, exciting morning full of pre-dawn walks (*grumble*), three attempts at getting him to take some goofy anti-biotic (*grumble*), a visit to the vet, a visit to the pet store, and a walk through the park.
Also, I have a job offer for a job that won’t totally suck, which means that when I graduate, I won’t be homeless. This also means that I’ll have more time this month to work on Potion Wars because I won’t be preparing for as many interviews.
The bad news is that this month has been a little bit crazy, so I haven’t had as much time to work on Potion Wars as I would have liked. So, I think that’s all there is to talk about. Till next time.
walks away.
Time passes.
Faint grumblings can be heard from all 5 people in the audience. Someone tries to start a slow chant for Potion Wars, but everyone else gives him weird looks and he stops.
There is an awkward silence.
More time passes. The audience starts glancing at their watches, wondering how long before AKA gets tired of this stupid joke. They then get confused, because nobody wears watches anymore.
AKA comes running back on stage.
Sorry, sorry. Forgot to tell you about Potion Wars progress.
Someone coughs. It sounds suspiciously like “bollocks.” But that’s just silly. “Bollocks” isn’t even a word.
“I didn’t cough it you twat, I shouted it!“
Anyway, despite the crazy month full of dog adopting, and job searching, and what-not, I have managed to find time to work on the game. I’ve uploaded a new version, version 1.13. See the download section for links. What I’ve done:
1. Fixed a few stealth bugs caught by PyChecker, before they led to crashes on your ends.
2. Did some writing. I’ve currently written about 60 pages, with about 100 nodes. And that’s just about finished the scene you get at the beginning when you sleep at the guild. I now need to write:
a. The scene for when you sleep at Maria’s.
b. A brief conversation with Elise and Sister Samantha about Carrie’s party
c. A subplot with Carrie (I know what the subplot is. I just don’t want to reveal it because spoilers).
d. A scene involving the teaching of Anne, Peter’s daughter.
e. The whole damn dungeon.
f. Carrie’s party.
3. Upon realizing just how much I have to write, and how I don’t have 16 hours everyday to dedicate to writing, I’ve recruited Jeffrey the Jungle Ape to help me write the scenes that tend to be the most intricate, detailed, and hardest to write: the spanking scenes (I’ve also asked Emily, but she hasn’t responded yet). I’m not recruiting anyone else just yet. Partially because I want to see how things go with Jeffrey first, and partially because if you offer and I turn you down, it’ll be awkward. My fan base is small enough as it is. Don’t need to be scaring anyone away.
4. Sent Emily an outline of the episode for her feedback.
5. Completely revamped the setting. The game is now basically taking place in the Jurassic period (plus a few dinosaurs from the Triassic, magic, humans, elves, and maybe other things) on the supercontinent Gondwana, way down at the south pole, because:
a. Dinosaurs.
b. Fuck yeah.
c. Of the various periods in history, the Jurassic was probably the closest to your standard fantasy world: Lots of giant monsters running around, only two giant continents (which were close enough they could almost be considered one), a ginormous desert in the middle of the planet.
e. Pet dinosaurs.
f. Fuck yeah.
g. During the Jurassic period, the only parts of the planet where you could find
a cool temperate climate (which near as I can tell is roughly the climate that I grew up in) were at the poles.
h. Clothing made out of dinosaur skin.
i. Fuck yeah.
Also, it gives me an excuse to rekindle my boyhood love of dinosaurs.
6. Had to make a variety of small changes to the first episode to line up with the new setting (birds didn’t exist yet, though they did have Archaeopteryx, mammals are few and far between so they don’t have access to milk, and cheese, no flowers or deciduous trees. Also, no wool.). I probably missed something, so if you notice anything that doesn’t make sense (i.e. clothing made out of wool, flowers, birdsong, people munching on cheese) let me know. Note that they didn’t have grasses, so you wouldn’t have grains (which are grasses). However, bread can be made out of things other than grains, so bread is safe. Furthermore, I’m assuming that they have a cottonlike plant that I’m calling cotton. Mostly because dinosaur skin would probably make a scaly leather similar to alligator skin (though some of it, like Iguanadon skin, would be quite supple, others like Stegosaurus skin stiff and hard), which might not be flexible enough for some of the clothing effects in the first episode. I don’t know, I’m not a clothing expert.
7. Replaced those horrid X’s in the dungeon with filled in squares (actually trapezoids, thanks to the magic of perspective). I’ve also rearranged the colors. Now, the entrance of the dungeon (and exit for dungeons that have exits) are blue. Events are yellow (because they may or may not involve combat). Combat is red. Stairs are green.
8. I’ve made it more obvious when you’ve stepped on a stairs square, so that we don’t have the problem of people wandering around for an hour because they didn’t notice the damned “(D)own” command. Seriously, I think someone on AnimeOTK said that he was wondering around for an hour or two because he didn’t realize that stupid grey X was a set of stairs. Thank you person-whose-username-I-could-look-up-but-I-won’t-because-I’m-lazy for not just shoving my game in the Recycling Bin like I might have in the same situation. In particular, now the (D)own/(U)p command is bolded and colored green, and the direction you’re facing is replaced with the word “Stairs.” Hopefully that will make it obvious enough for people to notice.
9. Tried to add a new non-trivial command to my LaTeX -> PDF translator. Unfortunately, my code was so confusing and hacky that I couldn’t debug the new command. So I’ve started rewriting that from scratch (well, nearly. I think I saved two of the functions from my previous implementation) in a much cleaner, easier to follow way. Kind of sucks, but when they say that “good writing is rewriting” they’re not just talking about poetry and prose.
10. Reworked some of my planned future plotlines.
P.S. According to google analytics, I’ve broken 1,000 page views. Nifty.
Spankers and Spankees,
As promised, here is my first weekend of the month update.
I’ve uploaded a new version with some bug fixes:
1. Fixed a bug where Spectral Spanking/Strapping weren’t inflicting the Humiliated status properly.
2. Fixed a bug where the game claimed you couldn’t find Maria’s home, even when you add directions.
3. Fixed a bug where if you try to argue with Adrian about the price of guild membership, and then leave the game crashes.
4. Fixed a bug where the player was getting access to tier 1 spells at a Talent of 5 rather than 10.
5. Fixed a small typo in one of the in-combat spanking messages.
6. Fixed a bug where the spankings administered by the Warslinger’s Companion, and the caning administered by Adrian weren’t being registered by the game (while this doesn’t affect gameplay, it did mean that your character’s bum was magically not being affected by their spankings).
I’ve also made a few small tweaks to some of the episode text. Nothing major that would make it worth replaying. I decided that Alondra’s siblings would NOT move into the Guild because as I started working on Episode 2, I realized that having a bunch of kids move into a building filled with dangerous objects, occupied by rough adventurers who probably don’t have children themselves just didn’t make any sense. I also threw in some text making it clear that Alondra and the player share a room, if the player decides to live in the guild.
Note that you can expect similar small tweaks in the future. I won’t make any fundamental changes to any of the episodes, but if there’s some throwaway line that I later decide doesn’t work (either it doesn’t many sense for the character to say/do that, or it contradicts something that’s pivotal to a future episode), I will go back and remove it.
Finally, I have a question. One of the things I plan to add is a minimap to make it easier for players to navigate (while building your own maps is fun for direhard RPGers, the number of direhard spanko RPGers who are willing to play a hard-core RPG when they just want to enjoy some spanking porn can probably be counted on one hand).
Then, it occurred to me that it would be really convenient if players could input a route into the minimap, hit enter, and then have their character automatically take that route. It would make it very easy and convenient for the player to enter and leave the dungeons when they need to heal (of course, the player would still have the same chance of having a random encounter when executing a pre-planned route, so it wouldn’t make the game any easier).
Then, I realized that if the player is just going to be selecting a route on the minimap, why not cut out the middleman and replace the first person dungeon view with a topdown view?
So my question is, which of the following three options would people prefer:
1. The current status. A first-person view without an automap, so for complicated dungeons the player has to either create their own maps, borrow maps from other people, or resign themselves to getting hopelessly lost.
2. First person dungeon navigation, but with an automap and the ability to give the game a preplanned route through areas already explored, allowing them to quickly reach the frontier.
3. Replace the current first person view with a top-town view. Note that you would no longer have the ability to provide a preplanned route. Using the arrow keys would move you around just like they do now in the first person view.
Attached is a rough idea of what the topdown map would look like on the first floor of the first dungeon, after the player has explored the first two rooms, but hasn’t yet walked down to the end of the hallway:
http://www.mediafire.com/view/t7tjing2x8kc2b2/sample_topdown.pdf
Let me know in the comments which one you would prefer. It should be noted that I’ve written the code to make it fairly easy to change how the dungeon is displayed, so 2 and 3 would constitute roughly the same amount of work (in fact, 3 would require less work than 2, because I don’t have to implement any of the route planning).
Spankers and Spankees,
I’ve managed to find a bit more time, so I can explain in a bit more detail some of the overhauls I’ve made to the latest version of the game. But first, I want to talk about my update schedule.
My plan is to make a new post when one of the following two things happen:
1. I have a new version of the game to post (either bugfixes, or a new episode).
2. It’s the first weekend of the month.
The second type of post will simply be to reassure you that I’m still alive, and still working on the project. I’ll probably also give you some idea of where I am in the process of creating the next episode. Furthermore, at the top of each monthly post, I’ll post the version number of the currently released game.
The version numbers are structured as follows:
max_episode_number.update_number
So, version 1.11 (the currently released version) can be played through the end of episode 1, and it is the 11th version that (in theory) allows you to play through the end of episode 1.
So, when I first release episode 2, the version number will be 2.1. You’ll be able to play through the end of episode 2, and it will be the first version that plays to the end of episode 2.
This way, if you don’t want to have to check my blog every day, you can just check at the beginning of each month.
Furthermore, I’ll be traveling all in a vain effort to attend my brother’s wedding, and get back to school in time for classes, so for the next few weeks I’ll basically vanish. That shouldn’t stop you from posting feedback, bug reports, etc. if you feel so inclined. Just don’t expect me to respond until the last week of August.
Now, on to changes in Potion Wars 1.11. Be warned: Wall of Text ahead. I don’t expect anyone to read this from beginning to end. I’d recommend playing the game first, and if something happens that trips you up, then reference either this blogpost or the manual. If after looking at both you’re still confused, feel free to ask me. I might not be able to respond right away, but I will as soon as I can.
———————————————Mac Compatibility———————————————
Unfortunately, the latest version of the game is no longer compatible with PlayOnMac. I don’t know how it broke, but it broke and I have no idea how to fix it. I even borrowed a friend’s install discs and tried to create an OS X VM so that I could compile directly to Mac, and I failed miserably. Mac’s business model is basically “You want access to our OS? Shell out obscene amounts of money for our hardware or STFU” (FYI, my mild dislike for Apple has now turned into a burning hatred). Needless to say, I’m not going to give over a thousand dollars to a company that I detest. And no, I can’t just ask said friend to compile the game for me, because I’d rather not tell my real-life friends that I spend the majority of my free time writing spanking porn (I’m not very trusting).
So, sorry Mac users. I tried, but you’re reduced to using a virtual machine or dual booting (or getting a better OS 😉 ).
———————————————Save Game Format———————————————
Unfortunately, this version of the game is no longer compatible with old saves, so you’ll have to start over. When more episodes are released, I will strive to make the games backwards compatible. But for now, the first episode is short enough that it isn’t really worth the effort.
I’ve massively overhauled the format of your save games. Now, instead of rolling my own function for saving state, I’m using an extended version of Python’s “Pickle” module that I stole off of the ‘Net, called “Dill.” This grossly simplifies my save and load code, and makes it much easier to maintain.
I’ve also consolidated all of the game’s state into a single object, making the whole thing much more centralized, and therefore much simpler to save, restore, and modify. This change required a lot of small changes across a lot of code, so if you see anything weird happening after loading a game, let me know. It’s possible that the game isn’t being saved/loaded properly because I forgot to change some small piece of the code.
——————————————-Character Customizations———————————————–
I’ve added some basic options at the beginning of the game for character customization. You can now select your character’s height, body type, hair length, and hair style. Of these choices, the only one that will eventually be changeable is your hair style (changing hair style is implemented, but rather buggy, so the player can’t currently access that choice). Everything else is fixed.
You can also select your character’s starting equipment. You can choose one of three types of weapons: a spear, a sword, and a dagger. You have access to the same clothing (with the exception of the quality shirts) that you can buy at Terry’s Taylors.
——————————————-Equipment——————————————————————–
I’ve laid the groundwork for modifying the enchantments on equipment. Essentially, you’ll be able to transfer enchantments between different pieces of equipment, so you don’t have to choose between the “Modest Mail of Mauling” and the “Sexy Schoolgirl Skirt of Sucky.”
Each piece of equipment will have a different max enchantment level. Typically, you’ll have a choice between having a higher defense and fewer enchantments, and more enchantments and a lower defense. For example, clothing will almost never provide a defense boost, but will have a high maximum enchantment. Plate armor will provide a large defense boost, but won’t be able to contain more than one enchantment.
Essentially, I aim to implement a quasi-item crafting mechanic without all the obnoxious “get three suits of leather armor, six peacock feathers and a demon testicle” fetch quest crap that weighs down every item crafting mechanic ever. Seriously, I will never understand why game designers seem to think that going grocery shopping is fun. Fighting the Divine Demon of Destruction for the Shiny Sword of Super Slaying is challenging and fun. Cluttering up my inventory with a dozen rare items scattered about the deepest, darkest corners of the gameworld only to discover that I am one plank of wood away from forging the Shiny Sword of Super Slaying is not.
——————————————-Statistics———————————————————————
We now have both primary, and secondary stats. The primary stats are:
1. Strength
2. Dexterity
3. Talent
4. Willpower
5. Alertness
The secondary stats are:
1. warfare
2. grapple
3. magic
4. resilience
5. stealth
Strength and Dexterity influence warfare and grapple (strength primarily influences warfare, dexterity primarily influences grapple). Talent and Willpower influence magic and resilience (Talent primarily influences magic, Willpower primarily influences resilience). Alertness influences stealth, and improves your character’s initiative.
——————————————-Spells————————————————————————-
I’ve shuffled the spells around, and drastically slowed down how rapidly you reach the next tier. Distort Magic is the new Tier 0 Advanced Status spell, and the Spectral Spanking family is the new
Tier 0 Spectral family.
Furthermore, the Combat spells now do a range of damage, instead of a fixed value. The range is affected by the difference between the caster’s and recipient’s magic. For some spells, it might influence the lower end of the range, for others the higher end. For others, it might influence both.
In addition to keeping the combat spells from being too overpowered with the new statistics, this will also make those spells more interesting. For example, combat spells whose minimum damage are influenced by stats are good to cast on enemies that have a low magic, but should definitely not be cast on enemies that have a high magic (or you might find yourself doing zero, or worse negative damage!). Meanwhile, spells whose max damage are influenced by stats are good to cast on enemies with a high magic (you’ll always do some damage), but will not be very reliable on enemies with a low magic (you might still get unlucky and do a tiny fraction of the damage you could do).
Furthermore, instead of requiring a magic of 3 to reach Tier 1, you now need a Talent of 10. Unless you’re the kind of person who spends 8 hours every day slaughtering boars in WoW, you shouldn’t hit a Talent of 10 until Episodes 3 or 4 (if you do hit Talent 10 before Episode 3 without excessive grinding, kindly let me know).
—————————————Combat—————————————————————————-
At Emily’s request, I’ve added a new command, the (S)pank command. When you are grappling your opponent, you will be given the option of trying to spank them. Your chances of success are influenced by your grappling skill. If you are successful, you will inflict on your enemy the Humiliated status, which inflicts a -1 penalty to all their primary stats. If you fail, nothing happens. If you get reversed, your enemy will humiliate you. So, use with caution.
In future versions of the game, I’ll probably add an option to turn off the (S)pank command, for those who don’t like the “Spankings at every turn” style of spanking porn.
I’ve also sped up the combat interface some. Attacking an enemy is as simple as pressing the enemy’s number (or pressing Enter if you want to attack the first enemy, or the enemy you’re currently grappling).
I’ve also added Quick Spells. Essentially, you can have up to 12 spells assigned to the function keys (F1-12). In combat, you select that spell by just pressing the appropriate function key, instead of slogging through the (C)ast-Select Tier-Select Spell command sequence. There is a command (M)odify Quick Spells on the main interface (outside of combat) that allows you to change the spell assignments. Currently, they default to:
F1 – Firebolt
F2 – Weaken
F3 – Heal
F4 – Spectral Spanking
Every time you learn a new spell, that spell is automatically assigned to the first empty function key. In addition to being able to change a key’s assignment, you can also swap keys. So if you’d rather have heal at F2 and Weaken at F3, you can swap the two by pressing M-F2-F3, instead of assigning each one manually.
I believe that’s everything major. Hope you enjoy the latest and greatest version of Pandemonium Cycle: The Potion Wars!
Spankers and Spankees,
Hella busy right now, so I can’t say much. Latest version is uploaded (see Downloads page). Made a lot of changes. Most of them are either behind the scenes, or obvious.
A few things that might trip people up:
I’ve drastically overhauled the code for saving and loading games. As a result, your old saves are no longer compatible. You’ll have to start over. Sorry, but the changes were so massive that making the game backwards compatible would have been more trouble than it’s worth, especially since only one episode is posted so far. If I have to modify the save format in later episodes, I’ll strive to make the game backwards compatible. But for now, you’ll have to start over.
I’ve streamlined combat a little, so that now you can attack an enemy by either pressing the number of the enemy directly (instead of first selecting (A)ttack), or by just pressing Enter. If you press Enter, then your character automatically targets the first enemy, or whoever your character is grappling, if your character is grappling someone. This option of pressing either a number or Enter is represented by (#Enter).
I’ve also set up the function keys (F1-12) as quick spells. Now, you save up to twelve spells as quick spells. Instead of having to slog through the “(C)ast-(#) Select a Tier-(#) Select a spell-(#) Select a target” sequence of commands, you can go through the “(F#) select a spell-(#) Select a target” sequence. When you learn a new spell, it is automatically added the first free function key. You can rearrange and change the quick spell assignments. If you see (F#) it means you need to press one of the function keys.
More details on quick spells can be found in the updated manual.
I’ve also drastically slowed down how quickly you achieve spell tiers. Now, instead of achieving the next tier when you reach a Talent (originally called Magic) of 3, you get the next tier when you reach a Talent of 10. I’ve also made Distort Magic the advanced Tier 0 status spell (instead of Mass Weaken), and Spectral Spanking, Spectral Strapping, Spectral Caning the Tier 0 Spectral spells (rather than Spectral Push, Spectral Pull, Spectral Shove).
I’ll write a more detailed post early next week, but that should be enough to get you started for now.
Also, many thanks to Uninventive, Johny741, and an anonymous fellow I’m referring to as Jeffrey the Jungle-Ape without his permission (because permission is for pansies) for their patience and willingness to play the game over and over again to find bugs and crashes. Especially Uninventive. The guy (or girl) is either really really bored, or really really dedicated to helping me improve my game. Either way, I appreciate it.
Spankers and Spankees,
I’m currently working on some fairly major extensions/modifications to The Potion Wars‘ engine, and at this stage I’ve sent the game out to my editor (Emily) and beta testers (Johny741, and Uninventive).
Unfortunately, we’ve run into a problem where the changes I’ve made to the game have made it incompatible with PlayOnMac. I have absolutely no idea how to fix that, or even if it is fixable without dedicating all my time to it.
It’s patently absurd that the woman who has volunteered some of her precious free time to edit my game can’t then play it. So, I’m looking for someone who owns a Mac, and is moderately tech-savvy, who could compile the game from source.
What you would need to do:
0. Receive from me a zipped file containing the game’s source code, plus some third-party stuff you’ll need to compile the game.
1. Make sure Python 2.7 is installed on your machine (I’m 99.999999% sure it comes pre-installed on Macs these days).
2. Download and install Pygame.
3. Execute a command on the command-line that I give them.
4. Basic troubleshooting, so I don’t have to try to fix any compilation errors you come across over e-mail (obviously I would be willing to help with any errors you find, but the more you can fix on your own, the faster the game will get compiled).
5. A willingness to recompile the game every time I come out with a new version. Note that this should be much simpler than the first time. All you’ll need is the updated source code, and any new songs/images that I add to the game.
Ideally, I’d also like it to be someone who knows/can figure out how to use git so that most compilations are as simple as pulling the most up-to-date source code off of git and executing a command on the command-line.
If you’re willing to help, you get the following “perks:”
1. A name of your choice under my Acknowledgements page in the game.
2. The (rather buggy) next version of the game a week to two weeks (depending on how buggy the new release is) before anyone except the beta testers.
Furthermore, if you’d like to also be a beta tester (since you’ll have the new version of the game at the same time as the beta testers anyway), you can be. Just let me know that you’re interested in that as well.
If you’re interested, then please send me an e-mail at sprpgs@gmail.com.