Two steps forward, one step back (or maybe two steps back…)

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. 

13 thoughts on “Two steps forward, one step back (or maybe two steps back…)

  1. Thanks for the continued hard work. And the tip about that scene, well done as it is. Will you at any point be releasing a guide for hidden scenes, or at least some hints? Whilst they do add to the replayability, some are quite obscure.
    Since the last couple of updates the appearance options in the menu isn’t showing the accumulated spanking damage description. Is this a bug or are you changing the system?

    1. My plan for future episodes is to release the episode’s transcript a month after I release the episode as a PDF file that people can look at. The transcript will basically be a sequence of nodes, with hyperlinks connecting nodes (basically, the transcript will be very reminiscent of a choose your own adventure game). People can then skim through that to try to find some of the more obscure paths.

      Unfortunately, episode 1 doesn’t have a transcript, because I wrote the text directly in the Python code. I was developing the engine in tandem with the episode, and didn’t want the added burden of figuring out a way of writing and then importing the game’s text.

      I could slog through the code, trace through the various paths and create a write-up of scenes, except that it’s 13,000 lines, and the syntax doesn’t exactly make the paths clear. So it would take a lot of time. Time I’d rather spend working on the second episode.

      The lack of accumulated spanking damage is a bug. While there will be a slightly different system for future episodes, the first episode shouldn’t be affected. The only major change I’ve made is to the save game format. Does the spanking damage accumulate and then disappear if save and reload, or does it not appear at all?

  2. The damage description isn’t included at all in the appearance section, regardless of loading or saving. The PDF idea sounds great. Any hints you can give about scenes for the first episode that we might’ve missed?

    1. Well, I guess that depends on what you’ve seen!

      Truth be told, I think the pantsless scene is the most obscure one there. All the other scenes I can think of follow from dialogue or have hints of their existence in the game (such as the Spectral Caning/Spectral Spanking scene in Airell’s room). One that some people might miss because it’s delayed is a spanking from Peter. If you’re a jerk to his daughter in the beginning of the episode, you can visit Peter at the end of the episode, and apologize. Then you can insist on having him spank you.

      Doing a quick (and very rough) mental count, I think there are about 15 or so spanking scenes? That’s a very very rough estimate, and is based on a quick mental walkthrough of the episode. Plus, there are some scenes that have more than one path that I count as one scene, though each path is different enough that one could count them as different scenes (for example the scene(s) with Mai). Basically, there are more than 10, but less than 20.

      Another one that may not be obvious is: try getting spanked by one of the trainers for not having the white ribbon before you go to get it from Paloma.

      Probably the easiest thing would be for you to give me a rough list of some (or all) of the scenes that you’ve seen, and then I can point out any that you missed.

    2. Also, in the fight with the two Vengadores bullying Paloma, you get different scenes depending on who is still standing after the fight.

      So if you defeat the Warrior, but then lose you get a slightly different scene from one where you defeat the spellcaster and then lose, and a slightly different scene if they are both still standing.

      Probably the hardest of those to get is one where you’ve defeated the Warrior but the spellcaster is still standing. In my playthroughs, usually if you live long enough to defeat the Warrior, the spellcaster has used up all of her mana, and is basically helpless. Don’t remember if the difference is really worth it though.

      But be warned, one of the variations isn’t a spanking scene.

  3. Knew about the one with Peter, but always been too well spanked for him to go through with it. Funny how that happens. Do you mean the white ribbon one where she allows you to spank her? How does the scene with Mai change?
    Does choosing different dialogue before the boss at the end of the first dungeon effect the scene there?

    1. Clearly you need to keep your naughtiness in check 😉

      Yes, I mean the white ribbon one where she allows you to spank her.

      If I remember correctly, the scene with Mai changes significantly depending on whether or not you have the ribbon when you confront her.

      Choosing different dialogue at the end does affect the scene. I don’t remember if the positions are different (I’m pretty sure they are) but I do know for certainty that the dialogue changes.

      The boss scene is also affected by whether or not you successfully recruited Mai to help defend the armory. If you successfully recruit her, then she’ll stop the boss from spanking you when you lose, and that scene is (mostly) unaffected by your decision. So if you want to see the different losing scenes against the boss, you need to make sure you don’t recruit Mai.

    2. I think there may also be some variation in Mai’s scene depending on your outfit. I think that if you go in without pants and in a thong or similarly baring underwear, she only spanks you with her hand rather than the switch.

    3. Oh, and for some reason Peter’s spanking scene only triggers if you haven’t been spanked at all (which is really hard to pull off. Basically, you need to skip Mai’s scene, and win all the optional battles). I’ve modified it so that now that scene will trigger if you’ve been spanked 4 or fewer times (so if your bottom is smooth, dark pink or a deep red, he’ll spank you).

      I’ll upload the updated version this weekend after I’ve tracked down and fixed your bug.

  4. I think I posted somewhere else by accident, but two things caught my attention:

    1) As the person above mentioned, there is no description of the player’s bottom status at all. The line simply isn’t there.

    2) When you go to the Guild bedroom, the game immediately shuts down. Is that supposed to happen, or is there some scene there which is not loading correctly?

    1. 1) That’s a bug that I’ll fix that this weekend.

      2) Sounds like the game is crashing. There should be a text file “errors.log” in the same directory as the game. If you could e-mail me that file (or paste the last twenty or so lines here if you’re squeamish about e-mailing me), I would be grateful.

  5. Here’s what I believe to be the relevant lines in the error log:

    My life is pain!
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “”, line 37, in
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyzsp_rpg_engine”, line 88, in begin_game
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyztownmode”, line 974, in select_destination_interpreter
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyztownmode”, line 983, in go
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyztownmode”, line 1000, in perform_go
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyztownmode”, line 364, in after_arrival
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyzepisode1”, line 570, in guild_bedroom_after_arrival
    NameError: global name ‘person’ is not defined
    My life is pain!
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “”, line 37, in
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyzsp_rpg_engine”, line 88, in begin_game
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyztownmode”, line 974, in select_destination_interpreter
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyztownmode”, line 983, in go
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyztownmode”, line 1000, in perform_go
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyztownmode”, line 364, in after_arrival
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyzepisode1”, line 570, in guild_bedroom_after_arrival
    NameError: global name ‘person’ is not defined
    My life is pain!
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File “”, line 37, in
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyzsp_rpg_engine”, line 88, in begin_game
    File “C:UsersRussellDocumentsPotionWarsbuildPotionWarsout00-PYZ.pyzcombat”, line 475, in begin_round_interpreter
    IndexError: list assignment index out of range

Leave a Reply to A. Russell Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.