As I'm sure none of you are surprised to hear, I have a big problem with procrastination. It's not just a problem of not getting things done. I could overcome that with determination. Rather, it's a problem where I put pressure on myself to get things done. And when they don't get done, I don't just say "Okay, I'll do them soon." Instead I say "Okay I'll do them soon and then do even more to make up for it." You can see how this might lead to some problems. Because when the time comes to do them again, now there's even more work to do, and so I extra don't want to try and deal with it. So I don't, and then I tell myself I have to make up for it EVEN MORE.
That's why a single missed update will usually start to snowball out of control. Because I want what I give to be worth the wait, but that's almost impossible to deliver. And the longer I put it off, the harder it becomes to deliver. So the longer I put it off because of the self-imposed pressure. This current absence isn't actually caused by that. But it's being made worse by it. Since moving, I've not been legally able to work. That includes self-employed work like Patreon. I could get Patreon money, but it'd have to be taxed in Australia, which is just...an ungodly hassle to work out. So the plan was simply to not update until I could work.
Good plan so far right? Except I told myself I'd put in work during that absence. And I have! Just...not nearly as much as I'd like. I've even scaled back my expectations and I'm still not working towards them. So now that I'm less than a month away from getting the work authorization, I don't have anything remotely resembling an update, let alone one worthy of the time I made everyone wait for it. And because of that...I continue to not update it because not updating means not having to deal with the problem right now. It's a rather vicious cycle all things considered. One that I would like to get better about.
That having been said, there was a comment on the last blog post I made saying they wanted to see my work resumed. I'm going to assume that's referring to Shield High specifically, however in case it doesn't, I am...actually working on other things. I've posted about them before, but there was no engagement and no sign of interest at the time, so I haven't really bothered giving updates on that. If I'm wrong there, and people are just interested in my work broadly rather than Shield High specifically, let me know, and I'll start posting updates on anything else I'm doing.
Anyway, that's just where the situation is at right now. I'm gonna try and pull myself out of this slump and get something going, but I'm not offering any promises. I've made that mistake enough times as it is.
Pudding Earl.
P.S. On a quick side tangent I do think about Shield High quite often. It's not like it's been forgotten, just neglected.
Tuesday, 20 March 2018
Friday, 16 February 2018
Earl's Musings: Action Engagement
Sorry I haven't posted sooner! I legitimately just have not had thoughts to share. It was getting so bad I was thinking about just writing about a mechanic I'm trying to add in to Shield High. But then I was lying there and a thought came to me. Or rather, I studied, played Scarlet Moon a bit, and noticed a common theme between the two. Somewhere in the middle of both I found myself looking ahead to see how much further I had to go. And that got me thinking about when I usually get bored during text-based porn games.
I usually get bored when I have to scroll. A tiny scroll bar is fine, I can forgive that for the texts that end up getting a little long, but not so long they justify being split in two. A massive one however is just...kind of boring. I've spent so long having to perform a task that I start getting anxious to perform the next one. I just want a button press or something to break the flow of reading, to make it feel like a more manageable amount of story, even if it's not.
Ironically, I don't have this issue so much in Shield High entirely due to my own failings as a programmer. Making a scroll bar was too much work when I first started, so I instead opted to carefully curate my content to avoid going over the limits of what the screen can hold. This has created the useful side effect of meaning that even the longest scene still has a regular point where you need to click the button. This has an added bonus of making skimming less tempting overall. The information is going to vanish if you do press the button, so you're more likely to take a moment and read it more carefully. At least the first time or two it comes up.
I suspect this fact is also a contributing factor to the popularity of VNs. I've always felt like the requirement for you to click readily has weakened the overall strength of the writing (especially in sex scenes) however it also serves to compel you forward, and keep you somewhat interested in the story. One could even argue that it's some sort of skinner's box sort of thing. The fact that games typically start off with some reasonably frequent, petty choices, and then space them out after the introduction really just serves to further this idea, since choices would serve as the "reward" for which you keep clicking and reading for. (I realize I am an outlier as someone who reads most of the VN text even if I've seen it before. I've seen how others play them.)
Obviously I don't think VNs make for very good porn games. I don't know if I've openly stated as such before but I'll do it now. The format leads to substandard writing as you're forced to cram text into a relatively small box, and the art rarely makes up for the quality of the writing. They work best as...experiences? I suppose, that run for a couple hours max and culminate in a sex scene. Negligee would be a good example of one I think does it overall well.
But yes, just some broad thoughts as usual, nothing particularly insightful I'm sure, but it's not something I've ever properly thought about before, and since it has come to mind I'm going to write it here for you to consider, and for me to remember in the future. Much like how I had the phrase "Flying Cat Knights. Cats, that are knights, that can fly" sent to me on facebook so I would remember it in the morning. It's still as awesome an idea in my head now as it was a little after midnight.
Pudding Earl
I usually get bored when I have to scroll. A tiny scroll bar is fine, I can forgive that for the texts that end up getting a little long, but not so long they justify being split in two. A massive one however is just...kind of boring. I've spent so long having to perform a task that I start getting anxious to perform the next one. I just want a button press or something to break the flow of reading, to make it feel like a more manageable amount of story, even if it's not.
Ironically, I don't have this issue so much in Shield High entirely due to my own failings as a programmer. Making a scroll bar was too much work when I first started, so I instead opted to carefully curate my content to avoid going over the limits of what the screen can hold. This has created the useful side effect of meaning that even the longest scene still has a regular point where you need to click the button. This has an added bonus of making skimming less tempting overall. The information is going to vanish if you do press the button, so you're more likely to take a moment and read it more carefully. At least the first time or two it comes up.
I suspect this fact is also a contributing factor to the popularity of VNs. I've always felt like the requirement for you to click readily has weakened the overall strength of the writing (especially in sex scenes) however it also serves to compel you forward, and keep you somewhat interested in the story. One could even argue that it's some sort of skinner's box sort of thing. The fact that games typically start off with some reasonably frequent, petty choices, and then space them out after the introduction really just serves to further this idea, since choices would serve as the "reward" for which you keep clicking and reading for. (I realize I am an outlier as someone who reads most of the VN text even if I've seen it before. I've seen how others play them.)
Obviously I don't think VNs make for very good porn games. I don't know if I've openly stated as such before but I'll do it now. The format leads to substandard writing as you're forced to cram text into a relatively small box, and the art rarely makes up for the quality of the writing. They work best as...experiences? I suppose, that run for a couple hours max and culminate in a sex scene. Negligee would be a good example of one I think does it overall well.
But yes, just some broad thoughts as usual, nothing particularly insightful I'm sure, but it's not something I've ever properly thought about before, and since it has come to mind I'm going to write it here for you to consider, and for me to remember in the future. Much like how I had the phrase "Flying Cat Knights. Cats, that are knights, that can fly" sent to me on facebook so I would remember it in the morning. It's still as awesome an idea in my head now as it was a little after midnight.
Pudding Earl
Tuesday, 30 January 2018
Earl's Musings: Art vs Writing
Oh wow, exactly one week since the last post. I was really worried thinking about this before that I'd have been gone too long, but hey, here I am, back on time. This is a topic I've been sitting on since around Christmas, but now I can finally actually talk about it.
So, porn games are really weird in the way they exist as a thing to market around. With a normal video game I can just show you some screenshots, maybe a video of gameplay, and you either know if you're interested or not. With porn games however the gameplay isn't the focus. I mean, it kind of is, it needs to be fun, but no one looks at a porn game and says "Oh damn, that looks *fun*." No, everyone who looks at a porn game is trying to decide if they think it looks hot or not. Will they get off on playing this game?
And that, is where a really big issue crops up. Cause people are inherently visual, so if I show you some images that are really sexy and up your alley, you know that you're going to enjoy the sex content. Except, you don't need to play the game to see still images. In marketing to you the game, I'm giving away some of the content, and diluting the overall experience that you're gonna get playing it. And art, by it's nature, is still, once you've seen it, you've seen it. To be fair, this same restriction applies to writing, but writing is, overall, quicker to produce, as such you're not stuck in one position within the writing for an extended period of time, like you are in art. The result of this is that games with heavy art feel like they're really easy to get someone to play, but then struggle to hold up over time. Especially on replay value.
Writing on the other hand is the exact opposite. How the fuck do you market something that has no pretty art to show off? That's a somewhat serious question, if anyone has any ideas, please for the love of god tell me it might make working on Shield High easier. But it's just as much a rhetoric one for the sake of the discussion. Just screenshots are harder sells when the screenshot is comprised largely of text. However, once you've gotten someone in, keeping someone in with text is easier. There can simply be more of it, and you can keep a scene flowing and more interesting than with art, since there's nothing that your dialogue and descriptions can be conflicting with in front of the viewer. The big downside of this, is that since art takes more time to make a single piece of, it's generally viewed as being a more valuable skill set than writing. Hell, I make this mistake sometimes, and I am writing a porn game and know exactly how hard and painful it can be. But since I can do it, it feels like anyone can, until I read some other writing and realize just how wrong I am.
A QUICK SIDE NOTE: I am in no way claiming to be a great writer. Just good enough that some of you, my adoring fans, have told me that I'm the best in my particular genre. I would never claim such a thing, however if someone else were to do so, which they have, I would be being dishonest not to repeat them.
Like most musings, I feel as though this has been a directionless ramble, so I'll give a brief summary of what I think, and then wrap it up because I really want to finish this burger in front of me. Games that use predominantly art as their source of porn are really easy to get random people interested in, but are difficult, if not impossible, to make truly great products. Games that rely on their writing meanwhile, is where some of the best products can lie, but also some of the very worst products end up, and are generally pretty difficult to market. That having been said, going forward I think I'm just gonna put out screenshots, since in writing this I do recall looking at CK2 mods, which often were just screenshots of events being started that turned out a good way to hook people, so maybe I'm just being over dramatic.
And as a quick aside, Animation-driven stuff is a whole other ballpark of quality that I'm not even going to consider touching here, but probably is just the best of both worlds.
Pudding Earl
So, porn games are really weird in the way they exist as a thing to market around. With a normal video game I can just show you some screenshots, maybe a video of gameplay, and you either know if you're interested or not. With porn games however the gameplay isn't the focus. I mean, it kind of is, it needs to be fun, but no one looks at a porn game and says "Oh damn, that looks *fun*." No, everyone who looks at a porn game is trying to decide if they think it looks hot or not. Will they get off on playing this game?
And that, is where a really big issue crops up. Cause people are inherently visual, so if I show you some images that are really sexy and up your alley, you know that you're going to enjoy the sex content. Except, you don't need to play the game to see still images. In marketing to you the game, I'm giving away some of the content, and diluting the overall experience that you're gonna get playing it. And art, by it's nature, is still, once you've seen it, you've seen it. To be fair, this same restriction applies to writing, but writing is, overall, quicker to produce, as such you're not stuck in one position within the writing for an extended period of time, like you are in art. The result of this is that games with heavy art feel like they're really easy to get someone to play, but then struggle to hold up over time. Especially on replay value.
Writing on the other hand is the exact opposite. How the fuck do you market something that has no pretty art to show off? That's a somewhat serious question, if anyone has any ideas, please for the love of god tell me it might make working on Shield High easier. But it's just as much a rhetoric one for the sake of the discussion. Just screenshots are harder sells when the screenshot is comprised largely of text. However, once you've gotten someone in, keeping someone in with text is easier. There can simply be more of it, and you can keep a scene flowing and more interesting than with art, since there's nothing that your dialogue and descriptions can be conflicting with in front of the viewer. The big downside of this, is that since art takes more time to make a single piece of, it's generally viewed as being a more valuable skill set than writing. Hell, I make this mistake sometimes, and I am writing a porn game and know exactly how hard and painful it can be. But since I can do it, it feels like anyone can, until I read some other writing and realize just how wrong I am.
A QUICK SIDE NOTE: I am in no way claiming to be a great writer. Just good enough that some of you, my adoring fans, have told me that I'm the best in my particular genre. I would never claim such a thing, however if someone else were to do so, which they have, I would be being dishonest not to repeat them.
Like most musings, I feel as though this has been a directionless ramble, so I'll give a brief summary of what I think, and then wrap it up because I really want to finish this burger in front of me. Games that use predominantly art as their source of porn are really easy to get random people interested in, but are difficult, if not impossible, to make truly great products. Games that rely on their writing meanwhile, is where some of the best products can lie, but also some of the very worst products end up, and are generally pretty difficult to market. That having been said, going forward I think I'm just gonna put out screenshots, since in writing this I do recall looking at CK2 mods, which often were just screenshots of events being started that turned out a good way to hook people, so maybe I'm just being over dramatic.
And as a quick aside, Animation-driven stuff is a whole other ballpark of quality that I'm not even going to consider touching here, but probably is just the best of both worlds.
Pudding Earl
Tuesday, 23 January 2018
Earl's Musings: Player Motivation and Initiative (Or, The Earl rants a while longer about why sandboxes are bad)
I know, I know, what am I doing back so soon? Well, it's part of a new initiative that I've just come up with. Right now, I'm achieving fucking nothing. Shield High is stalled, my other game is stalled, my book re-writing thing is stalled. The only work I do is on the roleplaying games I'm running and that doesn't really count. So I'm going to try and make an effort to post more musings about literally any thoughts I have about porn games. With luck this torrent of thought will motivate me to begin working again on actual projects.
So anyway, on to the point. Porn games have, in my opinion, a porn problem. This problem is that porn feels like a band-aid for deficiency in the game. And, to an extent, that's okay. If your gameplay is just mediocre, if it functions just fine, but has some weird imbalances, then, whatever, your porn probably can carry that through. What if your gameplay is solid, but your story is a bit lacking? Well, again, porn can make up for it. But there is something porn can't make up for, which is motivation. Why am I playing this game? What am I supposed to do? What goal can I work towards? None of these questions a player asks can really be answered with just "Porn". Because porn, obviously, is super freely available, no one is going to work on things for *just* porn.
This isn't just a porn game problem obviously, and I'm not saying all games have this problem. The thing that got me thinking about this is how utterly directionless I feel playing Skyrim or Oblivion with porn mods on. Obviously I want to engage in the porn content but it's hard to do so while also advancing a grander story. I had to think about it for a moment after getting this far however to be sure that I've played porn games with this problem, but I know I have. I forget the name of the game, but I remember playing a demo for a paid game and finding myself thoroughly underwhelmed by the whole thing.
The root of the issue, in my opinion, is that porn, while in the name of the genre(depending on what you call it), can't actually be the main draw of the game. There needs to be some other form of engagement to motivate a player to actually be a player, and not just wander off to go and do something else. And it can be something pretty simple. In TiTS for instance, I played through that game with the motivation of beating the shit out of my cousin and taking them as a prize. Will you actually be able to do that? I don't know. I fucking hope so, cause if not that's the biggest tease ever. But it's my motivation for playing on.
The other point besides motivation, as the title suggests, is player initiative. This one is a lot more circumstantial, as there's a lot of genres where you just...don't need it. If your game is linear, or spoon feeds content to the player, initiative isn't necessary. However, again, playing the games I do, it comes up a bit and I want to mention why I think it's a thing worth considering. Player initiative is a strange thing in video games. The rigid nature of video games means that pursuing a goal is a very limited thing. I can't set out in Skyrim to be king. Not unless I have a bunch of mods, at least. Nor can I set out to be a Jarl, or really any figure of authority. Except for all the guild leaders. But that doesn't entail pursuing any real goal, it's just a quest chain. There's no initiative behind it. One time in Oblivion I set out with a goal to build a harem. That actually worked out nicely, I had something to work towards, I had to build up the power to achieve it. In the end I did it. And then promptly stopped playing because it wasn't a very fun outcome. It was the most motivated I've felt playing one of these games, cause I had a clear goal to build towards. The problem wasn't that achieving it was boring. The problem, at the end of the day, was how easy it was. Once I had access to the right spells combat became a joke, and without any threats, and without the game being able to pose a challenge to my success, I didn't feel any need to continue.
I was going to include a bit about Shield High here, but on reflection it's wiser to just stop talking and hopefully I can just...show you how I think things could work better.
Pudding Earl
Friday, 19 January 2018
Earl's Musings: Why I think sandboxes kinda suck
Well gee, I just went ahead and ruined the plot of this musing. You can basically tell what my thoughts are from the title. Great job me. And it doesn't even imply there's anything sexy going on. There might be though, I haven't gotten into it yet and I'm sure I can weave it in somewhere.
So, I've started playing two games recently. I've picked up Oblivion again, and I've been playing Gravity Rush (also Gravity Rush 2 but they're almost the same game). Playing a purely open world game like Oblivion alongside a somewhat open world but mostly linear game like Gravity Rush has kinda made me realize that for all my claims of wanting an open world game, in a lot of ways I really don't. I mean, even looking at the porn games I play, Princess of the Ring remains my favorite, and that's basically an arcade game. It's a shame, because the promise of an open world game is huge. And it's that exact promise that kinda makes them suck.
The big problem I have with an open world is how...inorganic a lot of it can be. I've made at least a hundred characters for Oblivion over the years. Only one ever made it to level 10. My current character is level 4. That having been said, the one who got over level 10(I think they ended up being level 15 or something) was on the Xbox, and so the lack of mods meant all the content was appropriate for my level and I could just walk everywhere I wanted without any fear. So there's still hope for my PC characters one day getting that high. The main reason I don't gain all that many levels is because, in order to gain levels, you basically need to be aimless. The best way to level up is to pick a direction and walk. Any time you see a cave, or a ruin, you walk inside, kill everything, loot some stuff that's good, and then leave to keep going.
The problem with that is that it's the opposite of how the game presents the way of leveling up. Which is completing quests and going on focused adventures. So if you're trying to do the things the game suggests you should, you end up being pretty weak and never growing, and if you level up you find yourself feeling no sense of achievement other than getting stronger. Furthermore, getting quests is...strange. You just sort of, ask around town until you stumble onto something most of the time. Or decide to look things up. And the limited number and scope of the quests means that you can't really have a home in these games. Eventually the content in an area will dry up and you'll have to move on. That isn't inherently bad, but it does limit your options for what to really do in such games.
Even more conventional sandbox games suffer from this sort of hub-based, activity-based approach that prevents you from really *making* a story, instead of simply playing one out. Personally, I think the solution lies in creating a framework by which a player can create and pursue an ambition. To use Oblivion as an example, making it possible to overthrow a count, and become count yourself could be a rather interesting ambition. It doesn't even need that many new mechanics added in, base it off fame and disposition to local NPCs, as well as some authority figure somewhere. Or add in an ability to make a faction. The DLCs allow you to build up a base, simply adding on a few more mechanics to that, territory control and an abstract measure of power would be sufficient to give a sense of achieving something.
And now we get to the sex element. Cause even sex is negatively impacted by this in some ways. Well, it isn't, but it could be better with them. Defeating enemies and taking them as slaves is fun. I've played at least one playthrough of Oblivion along that general premise. Being defeated and taken as a slave is also fun. However these interactions are, ultimately, random and meaningless. I might be enslaved and swear revenge on my captor but most of the time, he's just a random bandit. I might defeat my enemy and capture them but this is our first encounter, there's no history to make it more interesting than just what it is. With ambition systems and the like however, it could be possible to have rivalries that have meaning to them. You could be enslaved by someone you can't just kill when you get out, who you have to work for your revenge on. Enslaving rival leaders would be equally exciting, because you've known them for some time before finally winning out over them.
Thinking about it, what I'm describing is a lot like the Nemesis system. That was a cool thing, I've heard lots of nice stuff about it. Personally I couldn't really enjoy Shadow of Mordor however, so I can't say for sure if it was actually as good as people say. Either way, I realize what I'm talking about is a pretty massive stretch, so I don't actually expect to ever see it happen.
Hope you all enjoyed the ramblings, if there's something that does what I'm dreaming of please do let me know, it'd be lovely to find out about.
Pudding Earl
So, I've started playing two games recently. I've picked up Oblivion again, and I've been playing Gravity Rush (also Gravity Rush 2 but they're almost the same game). Playing a purely open world game like Oblivion alongside a somewhat open world but mostly linear game like Gravity Rush has kinda made me realize that for all my claims of wanting an open world game, in a lot of ways I really don't. I mean, even looking at the porn games I play, Princess of the Ring remains my favorite, and that's basically an arcade game. It's a shame, because the promise of an open world game is huge. And it's that exact promise that kinda makes them suck.
The big problem I have with an open world is how...inorganic a lot of it can be. I've made at least a hundred characters for Oblivion over the years. Only one ever made it to level 10. My current character is level 4. That having been said, the one who got over level 10(I think they ended up being level 15 or something) was on the Xbox, and so the lack of mods meant all the content was appropriate for my level and I could just walk everywhere I wanted without any fear. So there's still hope for my PC characters one day getting that high. The main reason I don't gain all that many levels is because, in order to gain levels, you basically need to be aimless. The best way to level up is to pick a direction and walk. Any time you see a cave, or a ruin, you walk inside, kill everything, loot some stuff that's good, and then leave to keep going.
The problem with that is that it's the opposite of how the game presents the way of leveling up. Which is completing quests and going on focused adventures. So if you're trying to do the things the game suggests you should, you end up being pretty weak and never growing, and if you level up you find yourself feeling no sense of achievement other than getting stronger. Furthermore, getting quests is...strange. You just sort of, ask around town until you stumble onto something most of the time. Or decide to look things up. And the limited number and scope of the quests means that you can't really have a home in these games. Eventually the content in an area will dry up and you'll have to move on. That isn't inherently bad, but it does limit your options for what to really do in such games.
Even more conventional sandbox games suffer from this sort of hub-based, activity-based approach that prevents you from really *making* a story, instead of simply playing one out. Personally, I think the solution lies in creating a framework by which a player can create and pursue an ambition. To use Oblivion as an example, making it possible to overthrow a count, and become count yourself could be a rather interesting ambition. It doesn't even need that many new mechanics added in, base it off fame and disposition to local NPCs, as well as some authority figure somewhere. Or add in an ability to make a faction. The DLCs allow you to build up a base, simply adding on a few more mechanics to that, territory control and an abstract measure of power would be sufficient to give a sense of achieving something.
And now we get to the sex element. Cause even sex is negatively impacted by this in some ways. Well, it isn't, but it could be better with them. Defeating enemies and taking them as slaves is fun. I've played at least one playthrough of Oblivion along that general premise. Being defeated and taken as a slave is also fun. However these interactions are, ultimately, random and meaningless. I might be enslaved and swear revenge on my captor but most of the time, he's just a random bandit. I might defeat my enemy and capture them but this is our first encounter, there's no history to make it more interesting than just what it is. With ambition systems and the like however, it could be possible to have rivalries that have meaning to them. You could be enslaved by someone you can't just kill when you get out, who you have to work for your revenge on. Enslaving rival leaders would be equally exciting, because you've known them for some time before finally winning out over them.
Thinking about it, what I'm describing is a lot like the Nemesis system. That was a cool thing, I've heard lots of nice stuff about it. Personally I couldn't really enjoy Shadow of Mordor however, so I can't say for sure if it was actually as good as people say. Either way, I realize what I'm talking about is a pretty massive stretch, so I don't actually expect to ever see it happen.
Hope you all enjoyed the ramblings, if there's something that does what I'm dreaming of please do let me know, it'd be lovely to find out about.
Pudding Earl
Tuesday, 26 December 2017
Earl's Musings: Sexy AI
Yes hello! I'm not dead! I'm sorry I never post updates, my life is just...kinda busy and structureless. Also I just...don't think about porn games so much these days. I'm sure that'll change again sooner or later. Also, Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you had good holidays! Now, on to the actual rambling.
I've programmed approximately two AI so far. That's technically a lie, I've done one, and then two AI to half completion, but the math adds up to making two AI so I'm gonna stick with that claim. In that limited experience, I've come to the conclusion that programming AI fucking sucks, and if I ever go back to making AI for that other game which is currently on the shelf, elaborate scripting is the way to go. The big hurdle isn't making AI that makes decisions, I've done that with every AI I've made. It's making AI that makes decisions with a purpose. That makes decisions with a clear goal of winning and doesn't miss obvious traps because it's a dumb machine that can't think like a human and thus can't foresee an obvious trap. But let's say you can do all that. You can make AI that doesn't make dumb mistakes, that tries to win, but isn't so brilliantly optimized that players can beat it. Maybe not consistently, maybe it's only a 50/50, but they can, in fact, win, and not just by getting lucky. Now you run into a new problem.
Just winning, in a porn game, isn't very sexy. This wasn't something I'd ever really considered before, but reading r/Healsluts, someone posted about how bad they are at Age of Empires. The point was that the AI didn't just beat them, it also humiliated them in the process. Obviously, this was not the intention when programming them. More likely they're simply not programmed to consider if enemies technically should own places when moving in to take resources, and don't have the highest priority in killing all your stuff. HOWEVER, it raised an interesting idea to me. The idea of AI that actually does try to humiliate the player.
To use Shield High as an example, if you've got two or more damage bars maxed out, and almost no fatigue, while they're still going strong and haven't even taken significant amounts of pain, why shouldn't the AI toy with you a bit? Why wouldn't it drive the point home that you're it's bitch right now? I mean, given that the AI is for a rival girl at Shield High, it stands to reason she'd want to rub it in.
It also opens up an avenue for other types of porn games. In fact, the nature of AI opens up whole other genres, as suddenly the content of the gameplay doesn't have to be sex-related at all. You could make an RTS game that has no sex mechanics, but have a narrative focus where the AI not just beating you, but openly disrespecting you in-game makes sense, and plays into the porn element of it. Obviously, I'm not about to do such a thing. I really do need to finish Shield High and my new project before I dash off to more porn games, however it's something I might be thinking about for the future. Y'know, if I ever do finish anything.
Or someone else could take this and make something of it. Both work. Just tell me if you do.
Pudding Earl
I've programmed approximately two AI so far. That's technically a lie, I've done one, and then two AI to half completion, but the math adds up to making two AI so I'm gonna stick with that claim. In that limited experience, I've come to the conclusion that programming AI fucking sucks, and if I ever go back to making AI for that other game which is currently on the shelf, elaborate scripting is the way to go. The big hurdle isn't making AI that makes decisions, I've done that with every AI I've made. It's making AI that makes decisions with a purpose. That makes decisions with a clear goal of winning and doesn't miss obvious traps because it's a dumb machine that can't think like a human and thus can't foresee an obvious trap. But let's say you can do all that. You can make AI that doesn't make dumb mistakes, that tries to win, but isn't so brilliantly optimized that players can beat it. Maybe not consistently, maybe it's only a 50/50, but they can, in fact, win, and not just by getting lucky. Now you run into a new problem.
Just winning, in a porn game, isn't very sexy. This wasn't something I'd ever really considered before, but reading r/Healsluts, someone posted about how bad they are at Age of Empires. The point was that the AI didn't just beat them, it also humiliated them in the process. Obviously, this was not the intention when programming them. More likely they're simply not programmed to consider if enemies technically should own places when moving in to take resources, and don't have the highest priority in killing all your stuff. HOWEVER, it raised an interesting idea to me. The idea of AI that actually does try to humiliate the player.
To use Shield High as an example, if you've got two or more damage bars maxed out, and almost no fatigue, while they're still going strong and haven't even taken significant amounts of pain, why shouldn't the AI toy with you a bit? Why wouldn't it drive the point home that you're it's bitch right now? I mean, given that the AI is for a rival girl at Shield High, it stands to reason she'd want to rub it in.
It also opens up an avenue for other types of porn games. In fact, the nature of AI opens up whole other genres, as suddenly the content of the gameplay doesn't have to be sex-related at all. You could make an RTS game that has no sex mechanics, but have a narrative focus where the AI not just beating you, but openly disrespecting you in-game makes sense, and plays into the porn element of it. Obviously, I'm not about to do such a thing. I really do need to finish Shield High and my new project before I dash off to more porn games, however it's something I might be thinking about for the future. Y'know, if I ever do finish anything.
Or someone else could take this and make something of it. Both work. Just tell me if you do.
Pudding Earl
Wednesday, 8 November 2017
Earl's Musings: Life Simulators
I thought I'd talked about these already, but when looking at all my old stuff I don't see any reference to them in a title. I'm sure I've talked about what I think inside a topic, but I haven't really shared thoughts on them specifically as their own topic, so here we go.
Life Simulators are kind of strange games. As the name suggests, they're about simulating life. I haven't played many, and I'm not sure all that many exist, on the grounds that it's a big undertaking for a not particularly interesting concept. The only two I've played are Cursed and Girl Life, and Cursed was...not for very long. Despite only playing two though, I'm pretty confident in saying that any others out there (I haven't looked, it's not really my thing), and any others that will be made, will exhibit similar features. The two I have played both have a similar hook for their sex angle, which is you were a guy magically turned into a girl by some means or another. It's not exactly an unexpected angle, as it provides a good framing device as to why you have very little, and have to build up a life from nothing, since you're effectively an adult who's just been born into the world. Basically all the sex that comes up is as a sort of side effect of your own choices, and it's very possible to go for ages without getting into any sex at all, if that's your preference.
I played a LOT of Girl Life. I bounced off it several times, but finally I managed to pick up the rhythm of it, and there'd be weeks where I'd play a few hours every night, trying to reach some event I'd read about on the wiki. Long enough to know that I honestly fucking hate this type of game. There's a lot of issues I take with them, but I think they all really boil down to one core complaint. Life is complex as fuck, and thus simulating it is basically impossible. As such, the "life" in a life simulator is a surreal mirror of the world. Events repeat, and conversations happen again and again in identical fashion. That can be forgiven, obviously, it's still just a game. It's the smallest issue I take with it though. The world isn't the world as we know it, but the world as presented by the game's creator, and as such some things become strained. Moral compasses get skewed in favor of making sex more accessible, and people tend to be more uniform in their action. And finally, there's the issue of survival itself. It suffers from the same problem that every game that makes hunger/thirst/sleep things you need, where they're represented as simple numbers, with seemingly no tethering to real life. Girl Life, at least, tracks weight gain too, which makes things worse. The core problem of numbers for food is that it leads to odd eating times. You don't eat at meal times, you eat at the times you're hungry. Sleep behaves oddly too, and I often woke up at 4am and couldn't sleep more. But the BIGGEST problem of all, comes in the form of time management. Moving around the world takes time. This can cause some stupid issues where trips to places can take an amount of time that you simply didn't account for, in a way that would never happen in real life. Add to that the fact times are rather precise. X activity becomes available between 2 and 4. If you arrive at 1:59, you have to leave and come back to make it past 2. Some places have a wait option, but it's not consistent.
So, to sum up the point I was getting at there. They don't really give you LIFE, so much as a strange, game-y equivalent, filled with busy work. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Until you consider that these are, at least in part, porn games. Girl Life is indisputably a porn game, with how many porn images are in it, and how much casual sex you can witness for no reason other than having sex there. With the porn game nature in mind, it starts to just become an obstacle to the porn. And not a challenging obstacle either. I'm all for porn content being placed behind gameplay, but this isn't really that. It's padding to keep you spending more time doing things between the porn.
And all of this is a shame, because I think a life simulator porn game could be quite interesting. But without the busywork. By all means, keep the getting a job loop, hell, even keep in the paying bills angle, those I won't argue with as being essential. But removing the busywork of eating, managing when you sleep, getting ready in the morning, all of that stuff, could be very beneficial to the game. Boil it down to the meaningful choices, random encounters doing your job, pursuing relationships, and generally finding consequences for your actions.
Theorycrafting my ideal game from this idea, I'd want it to start off with a series of choices. What kind of career you have, how you got there (for instance, high performer, just an average performer there, slept your way into the job etc), what kinds of friends you have, if you have a partner, and how serious. So when you start the game, you have a basis from which to grow. And then it plays out similarly to other Life Simulators, with you being in a location, travelling around and interacting with the world, but with the boring stuff streamlined. Getting ready in the morning isn't a chore of remembering everything, you just hit the "Get ready for work" button, and then you're good. Another button press takes you to work, and then maybe an event comes up, maybe it doesn't. You could put your whole week on auto-pilot like that if you wanted, just waiting for something to come up, or you could be taking the initiative. Relationships wouldn't ever be given as numbers, just as a status, "Acquaintance", "Friend" etc. Obviously there'd be numbers involved, but by hiding it it can seem more believable. The only problem with this dream game is the sheer volume of writing that would go into it. It'd probably be a similar amount to how much I dream of having in Shield High. But I think that's the best way it could be done.
Anyway, just some thoughts. Sadly I don't have the time or money to take on such a project, so it's just theory. If I did have the time and money, I'd probably still take on something else. But if someone else wants to step up, there's an idea on how to do it.
Pudding Earl
Life Simulators are kind of strange games. As the name suggests, they're about simulating life. I haven't played many, and I'm not sure all that many exist, on the grounds that it's a big undertaking for a not particularly interesting concept. The only two I've played are Cursed and Girl Life, and Cursed was...not for very long. Despite only playing two though, I'm pretty confident in saying that any others out there (I haven't looked, it's not really my thing), and any others that will be made, will exhibit similar features. The two I have played both have a similar hook for their sex angle, which is you were a guy magically turned into a girl by some means or another. It's not exactly an unexpected angle, as it provides a good framing device as to why you have very little, and have to build up a life from nothing, since you're effectively an adult who's just been born into the world. Basically all the sex that comes up is as a sort of side effect of your own choices, and it's very possible to go for ages without getting into any sex at all, if that's your preference.
I played a LOT of Girl Life. I bounced off it several times, but finally I managed to pick up the rhythm of it, and there'd be weeks where I'd play a few hours every night, trying to reach some event I'd read about on the wiki. Long enough to know that I honestly fucking hate this type of game. There's a lot of issues I take with them, but I think they all really boil down to one core complaint. Life is complex as fuck, and thus simulating it is basically impossible. As such, the "life" in a life simulator is a surreal mirror of the world. Events repeat, and conversations happen again and again in identical fashion. That can be forgiven, obviously, it's still just a game. It's the smallest issue I take with it though. The world isn't the world as we know it, but the world as presented by the game's creator, and as such some things become strained. Moral compasses get skewed in favor of making sex more accessible, and people tend to be more uniform in their action. And finally, there's the issue of survival itself. It suffers from the same problem that every game that makes hunger/thirst/sleep things you need, where they're represented as simple numbers, with seemingly no tethering to real life. Girl Life, at least, tracks weight gain too, which makes things worse. The core problem of numbers for food is that it leads to odd eating times. You don't eat at meal times, you eat at the times you're hungry. Sleep behaves oddly too, and I often woke up at 4am and couldn't sleep more. But the BIGGEST problem of all, comes in the form of time management. Moving around the world takes time. This can cause some stupid issues where trips to places can take an amount of time that you simply didn't account for, in a way that would never happen in real life. Add to that the fact times are rather precise. X activity becomes available between 2 and 4. If you arrive at 1:59, you have to leave and come back to make it past 2. Some places have a wait option, but it's not consistent.
So, to sum up the point I was getting at there. They don't really give you LIFE, so much as a strange, game-y equivalent, filled with busy work. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Until you consider that these are, at least in part, porn games. Girl Life is indisputably a porn game, with how many porn images are in it, and how much casual sex you can witness for no reason other than having sex there. With the porn game nature in mind, it starts to just become an obstacle to the porn. And not a challenging obstacle either. I'm all for porn content being placed behind gameplay, but this isn't really that. It's padding to keep you spending more time doing things between the porn.
And all of this is a shame, because I think a life simulator porn game could be quite interesting. But without the busywork. By all means, keep the getting a job loop, hell, even keep in the paying bills angle, those I won't argue with as being essential. But removing the busywork of eating, managing when you sleep, getting ready in the morning, all of that stuff, could be very beneficial to the game. Boil it down to the meaningful choices, random encounters doing your job, pursuing relationships, and generally finding consequences for your actions.
Theorycrafting my ideal game from this idea, I'd want it to start off with a series of choices. What kind of career you have, how you got there (for instance, high performer, just an average performer there, slept your way into the job etc), what kinds of friends you have, if you have a partner, and how serious. So when you start the game, you have a basis from which to grow. And then it plays out similarly to other Life Simulators, with you being in a location, travelling around and interacting with the world, but with the boring stuff streamlined. Getting ready in the morning isn't a chore of remembering everything, you just hit the "Get ready for work" button, and then you're good. Another button press takes you to work, and then maybe an event comes up, maybe it doesn't. You could put your whole week on auto-pilot like that if you wanted, just waiting for something to come up, or you could be taking the initiative. Relationships wouldn't ever be given as numbers, just as a status, "Acquaintance", "Friend" etc. Obviously there'd be numbers involved, but by hiding it it can seem more believable. The only problem with this dream game is the sheer volume of writing that would go into it. It'd probably be a similar amount to how much I dream of having in Shield High. But I think that's the best way it could be done.
Anyway, just some thoughts. Sadly I don't have the time or money to take on such a project, so it's just theory. If I did have the time and money, I'd probably still take on something else. But if someone else wants to step up, there's an idea on how to do it.
Pudding Earl
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