Monday, September 21, 2015

ALPHA v. 0.1.09 (September 21)


I debated bumping the version number to 0.2 today, because there are several significant additions that bring things forward towards a complete game.

I heard all the feedback about not having enough to do with money, so I've added two big ticket items. First, I threw out the old, fiddly arcology upgrades system and put in expensive upgrades that encourage the growth of your arcology's economy. The PC is a tycoon, not a middle manager.

Second, I added the first two of several planned adjunct businesses to which slaves can be assigned. These should help declutter the late game by giving players something to do with 'completed' slaves. I also intend leadership positions for these businesses; first up is a madam for the brothel. Both of the businesses cannot take rebellious slaves but there will be more restraint-oriented businesses in the future.

Download: Mega. Be sure you have 0.1.09+, since 0.1.09 is broken.
After repeated requests for a link to my Patreon, I now have one. I'm repeating everywhere I can that I am doing this for fun, I consider this a tip jar, and will spend the same amount of my time on this irrespective of Patreon.

Patch Notes:
  • A separate brothel. At the moment, this is very simple, but I mean to get the bugs found and fixed before fleshing it out.
  • A dairy, similar to the brothel.
  • Arcology upgrades. These are likewise simple for now.
  • Sweeping rebalance which mostly focused on reputation. Reputation is now calculated more smoothly which should stop players bouncing between reputation levels. It is now slightly easier to keep, but harder to gain.
  • Permissive rules now cost more. This is a slight nerf to devoted slaves, who deserve it.
  • Continued UI fiddling; with today's additions this may be a mess, since I haven't playtested every permutation.
  • Content improvements.
  • Bugfixes.

31 comments:

  1. Just started playing and the missing semicolon bug from last version is still there. Hit it week 2 this time.

    A shot in the dark: could it be connected to lactation implants? I always start my games with those. Boney M, if you're around, do you rely on lactation in your playthroughs? If you don't until late game, it would explain why I hit the bug right away and you didn't see it until 90 weeks in.

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    1. Goddammit. I just did a huge dairy playtest with lots of lactation slaves, so it isn't that. If you don't mind, it would be extremely helpful if you'd upload a save right before it happens.

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    2. The lactation implants are still my best guess. Just started a new 9.1 playthrough with one starting slave who was unhealthy, so I couldn't implant her. Week 1 went by fine; week 2 I implant her and the flash happens.

      Here's a link to a google drive folder containing three saves. Week 1 is the start (no bug); week 2 is lactation implanted (right before bug), and week 3 is right after.

      https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B06vbjE91kE3c2NwbW1mOVZEV00&usp=sharing

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    3. The witch is dead. Thanks for the upload, perfect.

      Delete
  2. MAJOR problem - the first non-random event (working girls who have no place to work) makes the "continue" link disappear. Unable to progress.

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    1. Does making a selection from the event not advance the game? You're supposed to make one of the three choices.

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    2. The space the "continue" link is supposed to be is blank as soon as the first event screen shows up. Making a selection updates the event, but the "continue" link is still missing.

      Clicking the wiki link and then "back" results in no "continue" link AND no wiki link (both spaces completely empty).

      So no way to advance the game.

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    3. Damn. Reuploaded with the change to non-random event handling reverted. Thanks for letting me know.

      Delete
  3. Some testing for testing's sake here. I didn't think permadeath was in the game, but a slave died on me during my last playthrough. So this time, I decided to purposely run my only slave into the ground to see what would happen. Everything seems to be working normally, but the main screen shows a "bad conditional expression" in the "state.active.variables.activeSlave" clause (as undefined).

    I'm guessing, despite me having no slaves, the game is trying to give me the usual random snippet of slave-using opportunities, and isn't finding any qualities it's set to check for. (It's not set to check for whether slaves exist, but rather to pick a random one and then pick a random "use her" activity, right?)

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    1. Having your last slave die will be an autoloss once I implement the game over passages. Until then, yes, it causes bugs.

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    2. Just discovered debt doesn't auto-lose the game either. Will it?

      I love the ability to crawl back from the brink of defeat. Maybe losing the last slave (to death, a raider attack, etc.) shouldn't be an auto-loss as long as you still have cash to replace her? Similarly, maybe going into debt should let you float a bit on paying interest, but generate "your debts are being called in, time to sell a slave" events instead?

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    3. Once debt goes over a certain point it does indeed charge interest. And yes, debt over a certain point will be a game over, again when I add that function. I'll make it only a chance each turn over a certain debt limit to add a bit more tension.

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    4. Will it be a different game over for no slaves vs high debt? I could see it being something of a forced retirement for having your last slave die; "you're clearly incapable of being a slave owner, so we're 'recommending' that you retire with whatever funds you have left". While high debt would lead to you losing everything you own and being enslaved.

      Delete
  4. Lore consistency issue due to game mechanic changes: picking the third option (set them up independently) in the first non-random event (working girls who have no place to work) still references turning spaces into apartments, though the update screen describing the arcology contents no longer uses these terms.

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    1. Same with the second event in the chain referencing "shop" space.

      Delete
    2. From another version of the 2nd event - picking to take them in, they turn you down. In the first paragraph: "You can see a of bored-looking" = remove "of". In the second paragraph: "a tired-looking streetwalker walking by" would be better as "passing by".

      Delete
  5. From last version's bugrepping, "Working independently is supposed to zero out drugs and such; she's looking after herself. I should make this clearer." Nah man, the lack of clarity is mine. What I should have said to be clear: When a slave on drugs goes on independent work and then comes back, when she comes back instead of having nothing at the end of her main menu profile where drugs usually go, she has the words 'on none', as if 'none' was a drug she was taking. And in the drug menu of the slave's profile, it says 'none' instead of the usual 'no drugs'.

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  6. I like how the buying that brothel to work your slaves in really helps clean up the clutter of the slave list. Is there any plans for a place to send devoted slaves to be pampered and not have sex just as a place to put them? Or maybe somewhere to improve health, like a spa? Because I tend to collect devoted virgin slaves for special occasions and they kind of pile up after a while, but I don't want to send them to anywhere they can lose virginity or face abuse. Oh, and a place to get the equivalent of serving the public would be nice too, because it takes like four slaves to keep reputation high and that clutters things up too.


    I bought Yukiko from Direct Sales and ended up getting the sister recruiter event with her. Her sister was almost exactly the same as her, just a little less skilled. I like the idea of these creepy, long-haired asian, doll-like, always smiling amputee twins, so I propose that Yukiko be given a hardcoded sister. And yes, I got permission from her creator for this change because I AM her creator. Bet you didn't see that coming, one of the slaves AmputeeLover made on that /d/ thread was an amputee, what a twist. Anyways, yeah I want to give Yukiko an identical younger sister and I'm thinking her name should be Yuriko and that you can only get her through the sister recruiter event for Yukiko specifically. I don't know if it's asking too much of you to do all this for just one slave, but I really hope this is something that can be done.

    Also, maybe have it so that all other /d/ slaves don't get randomly generated siblings or relatives from events, just in case it wasn't the intention of their makers for them to have family.

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    1. As noted in the bugs post, the /d/ slaves are imperfect and will remain so for some time.

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  7. Can't believe it took so long for me to notice this: "X will recIEve your attention this week" should be "reCEIve" (main screen, after picking a girl for personal attention).

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    1. I have ~3 words that I misspell without fail, and that is one of them.

      Delete
  8. The training cutoff isn't working again, and it's not because of master/head girl interference. This time I noticed it on a shemale from the "enslave me I'm bored" event - I again got the message for teaching her the basics of polite conversation, which I didn't use to in previous versions:

    "You train Sarah the Bored Slut when she isn't otherwise occupied. Since she's rough and unskilled at entertainment, you teach her the basics of polite conversation, music, and dance. If you want her to become more expert, she will have to get practical experience. Her entertainment skills have improved." (The head girl picked to assist the same subject, but the assistance went to improving health, not training.)

    Afterwards, the main screen showed the same slave was still getting skill training, but the next week's message looked like this:

    "You train Sarah the Bored Slut when she isn't otherwise occupied."

    That's it. Just the first, basic line for training a girl. No actual effect, and no training cutoff.

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    Replies
    1. Good report. With such a profusion of slaves with different skill limitations I'm adding a backup cutoff to catch leakers like this.

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  9. The main interface has been smushed together, which really makes each section indistinct. Old and new version comparison: http://i.imgur.com/3MYqIBo.png Particularly bad is the 'you are not reputable enough' message blurring into the random sex vignette.

    Building a brothel makes you unable to build a dairy - it says a dairy has been built on the arcology management page, but there's no dairy portion of the main menu.

    After you build a dairy, the arcology management page keeps saying you can build a dairy unless you also have a brothel.

    Whoring exhibitionists get the humiliation fetishist line: "She receives extra ¤ for her eagerness to be humiliated by customers"

    Fucktoy assignment is improving the vaginal skill of slaves in chastity belts.

    Fucktoy shemale wearing plugs in the vignettes: "a tight strap around her hips that secures a big dildo up her pussy"

    Breast reductions are increasing areolae size and can't go below a C-cup.

    Plugs don't say that they're taking virginities on the end-of-week screen.

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    1. Good reports. And I know about the UI, I'm trying different layouts version to version to balance readability versus compactness.

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  10. You can't machine-fuck shemales, is this intended?

    The 'closing strip club' and 'arm yourself/your drones' events mention a drone security system even if you haven't bought that upgrade to the arcology. Perhaps change the description of the upgrade so it's an expansion instead of an installation of the drones?

    Suggestion: list the slave's current sexuality in the events where you can choose to turn her into something else.

    In the brothel and dairy screens, slaves that were formerly on drugs are listed as 'On none' after their health, instead of it not saying anything.

    'Build devotion' on a bisexual shemale slave: "she uses a her dick"

    Suggestion: some nicknames for bountiful milk-slaves.

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  11. Got a game-breaker here. In the /d/ game thread, someone was having their cash total bug out. I asked them to upload a save:

    https://mega.nz/#!HQVDCTjZ!2-Ju_2U9H7ncpCZfo5OjxTRam-ECIZ4pho6iV1sFiFI

    It's openable in Chrome. Seems like the culprit is "This week, rents from your arcology came to ¤$rents." It'd have to be an edge case that's causing the rent code to bug out.

    I encountered this bug once myself but didn't notice it until a few weeks later and I had already overwritten the autosave where the bug actually occurred. The one time it happened to me was shortly after fully upgrading the arcology, but then I fully upgraded it in three other games without the cash total bugging out. In the save file the arcology is fully upgraded too, so it might be something to do with that.

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    1. Further info: the kindly Anon said that opening the save in 0.1.08 allowed him to continue on without encountering the bug, so it's definitely something to do with the new rent code.

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    2. Probably. I'm looking for it and applying a backup if/elseif to hopefully catch such issues, as well.

      Delete
  12. Typo in Arcology Management summary:
    "Since you are respected, you base rate of reputation loss is low."
    you base rate -> your base rate

    ReplyDelete