Earl's Musings: Vision vs Reality

So, this month I'm expanding on the reputation system of Shield High. Up until now, the player has had an invisible, 95% static reputation which has impacted nothing. All of that is changing. Except that they have it. They still have reputation. You can just see it now. And it changes. And it impacts things. Primarily, you need to achieve a perceived power of 20 to get in trouble with Stacy. This provokes an interesting problem, where I have to explicitly make the second plot (a brand new one with a girl named Carmen) function on a much lower requirement than intended, so that it's actually reachable with my current amount of content.

And in seeing these reputation numbers go up, I was confronted with an interesting moment, where I realized Shield High is, very vaguely, starting to resemble the game I've wanted it to be for years. Very, very vaguely. And it occurs I might not have ever shared this vision, so I think I'm going to here. What I want for Shield High now, is a porn game with a *ton* of replay value. I want a game that changes every time you play it. Not just in terms of the random events that crop up, I want the power dynamic of the girls within the school to change as they struggle to enslave each other, or you. I want there to be new opportunities to enslave different girls each time. I want who you enslave to make different people pick fights with you. Ultimately, when it's all over, I want two people to play the game for the first time, try and talk about it and find they have almost nothing in common between the games they played, because of how much it changes. 

But this is where we get to reality. The reality is odds are good this will never happen. Being a text game, everything in the game has to be hand written. I am just one man, and a very stubborn one at that who refuses to accept help from others. So this hand written content is going to take time. So with that in mind, the reality is you'll likely end up with a game that goes about half way. The game will be different every time you play, but not as different as I dream of it being.

That having been said, there is a chance I can get there. After all in under a week I did a plotline and a half, while going through an ungodly amount of emotional turmoil. (Nothing to worry about, just a bad week is all). Those plotlines need to be programmed in now, which is what I'm doing over the next few days, but one day they won't. One day every plot will just be a copy of another. At that time, there's a chance I could turn over a plot in about 4 days. Three of those days being spent on the writing, and one doing literally anything else to take a break from writing. And that's assuming my discipline doesn't get better. And spoilers, it probably will. In which case the only question is if I'll have time to work on it as hard as I'd like to, or if I'll end up being too busy finding a job and things.

So what's the entire point of this? Well, vision is nice and all but you probably will have to accept some concessions along the way, I guess. What a dull ending. Maybe this entire musing was just an excuse to give you guys an update about the reputation system. Who knows?

Pudding Earl.