Monday, August 29, 2016

ALPHA 0.8.3: Meet the Neighbors


This update introduces a wider ecosystem outside the walls of the player's arcology. At game start, a handful of neighboring arcologies within the same Free City as the player's arcology will be generated, and they'll develop as gameplay progresses. This system is in an early state, and mostly exists as something the player can watch, but not manipulate directly. That will change; it's not necessary to request interactions with your neighbors until I've had a some time to implement the ones I've already planned out.

This update does trememdous violence to existing code. Some bugs are inevitable. If you prefer to play FC periodically when a stable build drops, hold off. Also, the number of arcologies present in the Free City is configurable, and the code that handles interactions between arcologies will have to perform a total number of operations in which the number of arcologies present is an exponent. If FC runs slowly, try creating a Free City with a smaller number of arcologies.


Save compatibility
This update breaks saves. This is true of almost every update, but it is especially true of this one. If you started a game using 0.8.2 or a previous version, do not load that save using 0.8.3+ and expect it to work. It won't. If you're experiencing trouble, check the options screen, which gives the version used to create your save. If the version shown there does not match the version in the filename of the .html you're running, don't report bugs. Using New Game Plus will update the version tag in your save, in addition to everything else, so if you use it on any 0.8+ save, you'll pass this check.

Submitting content
Every 0.8+ update has included mod content. That's outstanding. If you'd like to contribute, email me, at least until I decide what FC's next step is in terms of web platform. With different mod formats and levels of modder expertise, that's the best way for me to offer assistance and feedback to modders. Finally, as a request to all modders and players considering modding: all contributions are great, and I'll consider anything, but what the game needs most is more random events. It would be great if FC's library of random events could have the benefit of creative impulses other than my own. The most beneficial way to do this is to play until you see a placeholder event, and then create a sex scene between the PC and that slave.

Web platform
I've created a subreddit as an experiment. I decided to do so mostly because reddit makes it very easy, so there's little cost in running the experiment for an update or two and seeing how it goes. This update is posted in both places, and I'll continue to do this until the experiment has produced results. I will read feedback in both places, as well. I'd like to thank everyone who offered input on this; there were some great arguments raised. To give them their due, here's a review of the alternatives and why I don't see them as advantageous right now:
  • Continue using Blogspot as FC's primary web platform. Blogspot is cumbersome and unreliable. It lacks basic readability features in its comment sections, and it persistently deletes some users' comments.
  • Move to a subforum at an established lewd game's forum. Most western lewd games have their own fan subcultures, and any such forum is not going to be friendly territory for at least some FC players. There are also independence issues.
  • Move to a subforum at a broader lewd games forum. This presents the same culture issues as moving to another game's forum, and/or would place severe restrictions on my ability to exercise and delegate necessary mod power.
  • Create a forum using a western free forum host. I have not been able to find a decent western forum host that does not ban adult content under its TOS. You have to read the fine print, anons.
  • Create a forum using a non-western free forum host. Many western users (including myself) try to avoid any site in Cyrillic out of prudence. I'm sure there are reputable ones, but finding out which is which can be painful.
  • Create an FC site with a forum. This is a last resort. I'm sure the funding issue could be addressed through Patreon, but anonymous web hosting is a monstrous pain that I'd rather avoid. As things are, I'd remain on Blogspot over this.
Download: DropboxMegaSaves from previous versions are incompatible, but 0.8+ saves are eligible for New Game Plus. Known bugs in this version include subordinate slavery assignment issues. Latest hotfix is 0.8.3.4 (1700 PST August 31), completely save compatible.

0.8.3.1 fixes
  • New games will now set up retirement milestone policies properly.
  • Set a new path to properly commit custom slave descriptions.
  • Incorrect advancement of play after manually retiring a slave.
0.8.3.2 fixes
  • Prevented gingering from appearing in inappropriate events.
  • Misleading descriptive omissions for slaver PCs detecting gingering.
  • Walk by scene error messages.
  • Addressed a bug that was preventing menial to bioreactor conversions.
  • Patched code omissions that were preventing some /d/ slave buyers from appearing.
0.8.3.3 fixes
  • Added a check for errant hormonal effects.
  • The PA should no longer decide she really wants to be a monstergirl.
  • Based indenture costs on the fraction of five years remaining on the indenture.
0.8.3.4 fixes
  • It should no longer be possible to create more than nine arcologies in a Free City.
  • Addressed issues that would occur if a manually set retiree was otherwise removed.
  • Added virginity checks to random events.
  • Patched minor femPC description issues.
  • Typos.

0.8.3 Changelog

Anonymous modpack
  • Provides additional starting slave customization options.
  • Adds string implants for tits and asses, which grow without further input and may even have to be drained.
  • Improves the rules assistant fertility options and logic.
  • Creates a new announcement event for personal assistant future society appearance options.
  • Provides relative and relationship interactions between schoolteachers and students.
  • Adds an aging toggle to Cheat Mode.
  • Adds belly branding.
Neighboring arcologies
  • Much existing code has been rewritten to handle the PC's arcology as one of several arcologies in a Free City, rather than as a unique entity.
  • The number of arcologies in the Free City in which the story takes place can be set between one and nine at game start.
  • The game will randomly generate and follow the other arcologies in the Free City.
  • Other arcologies will appear with different systems of governance, with various impacts on their development.
  • Neighboring arcologies' prosperity will develop along a simplified path.
  • All arcologies' economies will impact one another, with prosperity tending to move towards the average within the Free City.
  • Should neighboring arcologies' prosperity fall far behind, they will experience dissention and a likely change of government.
  • Neighboring arcologies will make their own Future Society choices, based on other arcologies' societies and their own development.
  • All arcologies' societies will experience cultural crossover, accelerating or slowing societal progress.
  • Each neighboring arcology has its own area in the slave market, offering slaves that vary based on the source arcology's prosperity and culture.
Other updates
  • Disabled the backwards compatibility mod function pending updating if necessary by that mod's author.
  • Added a pair of policies for Gender Radicalism and Fundamentalism that boost beauty for slaves with classical feminine porportions.
  • Provided better descriptive distinctions between slaves who can't speak and slaves who haven't learned how to speak the lingua franca.
  • Changed some events to prevent generation of slaves over the arcology's retirement age; instant retirements should be reported as bugs.
  • Rebalanced some hormonal effects which were not handling the interaction between ovaries and hormone therapy properly.
  • More slave customization options at game start.
  • Enabled fertility drugs for all slaves and added more descriptive support, since they now have the secondary purpose of starting lactation.
  • Buffed unfocused sexual subordination so that it is no longer strictly inferior to targeted sexual subordination.
  • Added a Chattel Religionist naming scheme that uses traditional virtue names: Patience, Charity, etc.
  • Extended the rules assistant's contraceptives regime to address more ways a pregnancy can end.
  • Recoding for better performance.
  • Encyclopedia updates.
  • Bugfixes, many of which were coded by CornCobMan or reported by Ryllynyth.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Web Platform Discussion

The question of whether to stay on Blogspot or move to a forum-based platform elsewhere is interesting and important enough to deserve its own post. I've read all the comments on the subject left on the 0.8.2 post, and it seems like there's a lot of support for the idea. It's an exciting possibility, and could provide much better community engagement, modding support, and feedback response than happens here. A forum could even support fun stuff like worldbuilding threads and writing.

On the downside, I'm extremely cautious about keeping my hobby authorship of FC and the rest of my life strictly segregated. (Longtime players have probably seen this tendency in action before.) As far as I can tell, securing a domain, getting web hosting, etc. are all possible anonymously, but it's a chore that I don't want.

A clever alternative suggested in several comments was to create a subforum elsewhere. This has its own issues. I'd want quite a lot of moderator authority, with the intention of handing it over towards community members willing to exercise it on my behalf, and not everyone seems willing to just hand that kind of thing over.

If anyone can see a good way past this, let me know. Alternatively, if you've got experience with these issues and are willing to help a novice, email me and we can hash it out.

Monday, August 22, 2016

ALPHA 0.8.2: Love Nest


Player feedback suggests that the Master Suite is one of the more popular facilities, so this update gives it some attention. The existing luxury upgrade has been supplanted by two mutually exclusive options. The first is a luxurious remodel with a big bed, which retains most of the features of the old luxury upgrade, but downplays sex between slaves in the Master Suite in favor of dutiful service. The second builds a cushioned pit into the floor and expects slaves in the Master Suite to have group sex there at all times. The old Master Suite syngergized well with slave marriage, and the luxurious bed upgrade continues that. The fuckpit alternative works best when filled with nymphomaniac sluts. This may sound similar to the way the Futanari Sisters live, and that's intentional; in fact, former Sisters will want very badly to be included in the fun.


Request for feedback: Web platform

Blogger has been functional as a platform from my perspective: it allows me to post patch notes and received feedback; it's also simple, stable, and free. I'm aware it does have some limitations, however. Some commenters are having persistent problems with their comments disappearing. Also, though blog posts with 200+ comments work perfectly well for me from a feedback perspective, they're terrible for discussion of the game.

I've looked into some possibilities for setting up a dedicated forum for Free Cities, and it seems feasible. It'd take some effort to set up, there would be some minor costs, and I'd be obliged to recruit a mod or mods, but those are all surmountable issues. I'll only bother surmounting them, though, if there's enough interest to justify the effort. So: is there?

Edit, August 23: after much positive feedback on the forum idea, it now has its own post for further discussion.

Download: DropboxMegaSaves from previous versions are incompatible, but 0.8+ saves are eligible for New Game PlusLatest hotfix is 0.8.2.2 (1415 PST August 23), completely save compatible.

0.8.2.1
  • Implemented CornCobMan's subordinate targeting fix.
  • Removed unintentionally included mod content.
  • Old references to FemPC as a guy.
  • Typos.
0.8.2.2
  • Addressed an oversight that was defaulting NGP games to bad UI options. If you are missing main menu links to Head Girls, personal attention, etc., manually reenable them under Options.
  • Reverted an accidental overwrite of a random event.
  • Addressed the usual event virginity oversights. (Reverted bunker build time.)
  • Height description fixes.
  • Typos.

0.8.2 Changelog

CornCobMan's modpack
  • Adds an extensive set of cheat options available when cheat mode is active, including slave, arcology, and society editors.
  • The main menu leadership slave links block can be placed above or below the slave list, or both.
  • Adds an option to abbreviate nationality in slave summaries.
  • Makes the form of address for slaves speaking to the PC customizable.
  • Moves braces entirely outside the extreme content filter.
  • Fixes bugs.
Facility redecoration
  • Facility decor must now be purchased after being unlocked by minimal societal progress, and any unlocked decor can be applied.
  • Added decor for more facility and future society combinations, for a total of 210 unique possibilities.
  • Productive facility decor will help to advance the associated future society, based on the productivity of the facility.
  • Private facility decor will give slaves there a small Devotion boost.
Master Suite upgrades
  • Continued code and balance updates to existing Master Suite functions, building off the anonymous contribution integrated with 0.8.1.
  • Reworked the Master Suite luxury upgrade to focus more on worship of the PC, and downplay but not eliminate sex between slaves in the Master Suite.
  • Added a fuckpit upgrade, mutually exclusive with the luxury upgrade, that focuses on group sex with slaves in the Master Suite.
  • The fuckpit upgrade adds an intense form of fetish generation to the Master Suite, based on the physical characteristics and libidos of the slaves there.
  • Living in a suite with a fuckpit filled with sexually energetic slaves shares many effects with other intensive sexual assignments.
  • Former Futanari Sisters have a special affinity for a suite with a fuckpit.
Other updates
  • Updated the code that generates rivals for the current endgame event chain to produce more valuable and interesting outcomes.
  • Gave enslaved rivals extremely powerful career bonuses as Head Girl, Concubine, or Bodyguard.
  • Random event for PCs with both boobs and a dick with slaves attracted to exactly one of those things.
  • Adapted old descriptions to better reflect a PC with a vagina.
  • Encyclopedia additions.
  • Code revisions for efficiency.
  • Bugfixes.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

ALPHA 0.8.1: Smoke Break


Affording the player the ability to be an idiot is an interesting part of game design. Working on this update, I was reminded of the No Man's Sky press; I haven't played it, but I was disappointed to see reviewers note that the game will not allow the player to crash spacecraft into planets. That's bad. Yet I now have personal experience with at least one reason why that decision might have been made: dev time. This update adds quite a lot of Head Girl content, but it also removes the option to appoint a Head Girl who hates you. The time that would have gone into writing and coding alternative outcomes for terrible Head Girls, which few players would ever see, was better used elsewhere. On fixing the extraordinary number of bugs in 0.8.0, for example.

The extreme content filter is a work in progress, which is why the encyclopedia does not include a comprehensive list of the content it suppresses. If you're wondering where harsher content available during your last playthrough went, check whether you have extreme content enabled. A good example of a minor thing you won't see unless you play with extreme content enabled is the interview with a slave in a Degradationist arcology in the Encyclopedia.

Download: DropboxMegaSaves from previous versions are incompatible, but 0.8+ saves are eligible for New Game Plus. Latest hotfix is 0.8.1.4 (1350 PST August 18), completely save compatible.

0.8.1.1

  • Fixed summarized race errors.
0.8.1.2
  • Fixed Head Girl formality rule setting.
  • Reduced the lip size target under Stacked RA setting.
0.8.1.3
  • Fixed surgery reaction error message.
  • Corrected bad trigger for height differential fight outcome.
  • Added mute support to the relationship advice random event.
0.8.1.4
  • Fixed error on subordinate targeting menu.
  • Addressed virginity inconsistencies in the new ignorant horny random event.
  • Fixed the broken NGP 5 slave limiter.
  • Corrected the lack of distinction between beautiful and very beautiful faces in some menus.
  • Slaves selecting their own clothing will now hurry up, and be less code inefficient.
  • Slave hair length descriptions should now properly adapt to slave height, e.g. ass-length hair is longer for a very tall girl than a petite one.
  • Typos.

0.8.1 Changelog

Anon's modpack
  • Provides an option that enables partial end week reporting for slaves in the Master Suite.
  • Adds a Wardrobe in which clothing options for which the player does not qualify can be purchased.
  • Allows the player some control of which FS appearance the personal assistant uses.
  • Adds more interactions between facility leaders and slaves.
  • Greatly expands descriptions of pregnant bellies.
Facility improvements
  • Leadership position selection lists now highlight slaves with applicable career experience.
  • The Engineer PC background arcology upgrade cost reduction now applies to facility upgrades.
  • The Schoolroom will now admit any slave capable of receiving any of its benefits.
  • Added a Schoolroom upgrade that improves linguistic training, and broadened eligibility for linguistic training.
  • Added a Schoolroom upgrade that raises the trainable skill cap for oral, entertainment and whoring skills.
Head Girls
  • Provided a Head Girl punishment rule, ranging from a hands-off policy to mandatory rape of anyone who steps out of line.
  • Head Girl punishment event in which the HG decides that a minor misdeed is best punished by a scrub down in the showers.
  • Provided a Head Girl formality rule, which can be used to allow the HG permission to call the PC Sir or Ma'am in private.
  • Falling below Accepting status will automatically demote Head Girls, since allowing the player the freedom to be a total idiot wasn't worth the code complexity.
Supermassive breasts
  • Supermassive breasts will now impose additional mental effects and upkeep costs due to inconvenience.
  • Added a penthouse accessibility upgrade that removes many negative effects of supermassive breasts.
  • Amputees will no longer receive maluses from not being muscular enough to lift supermassive breasts.
Other updates
  • Nationality can now be included in slave summaries: idea is anon's, implementation is mine.
  • Reworked slave categories: idea is anon's, implementation is mine.
  • Random individual event for new girls who don't understand why they're so horny.
  • Added an orgasm as reward smart clit setting which trades sex drive for devotion.
  • Added a new relationship rule that permits nonsexual friendships only.
  • Refined orifice tightening surgery rules to prevent some absurdities and pointless surgeries.
  • Descriptive refinements to leverage the height granularity introduced with 0.8.
  • Encyclopedia additions.
  • Minor UI improvements.
  • Recoding for better performance.
  • Bugfixes.

Monday, August 8, 2016

ALPHA 0.8: Bell Curve


As I've mentioned several times over the course of 0.7+, I intend to use major version numbers like 0.8 to designate breaks in save eligibility for New Game Plus. This update makes some changes to slave stats that would have required some significant coding to import, so previous saves are not eligible for New Game Plus, and this update gets a major version number. The version number does not imply that this update is larger or smaller than usual in terms of the work that has gone into it.

What this update does do is give slaves' faces some long-overdue attention. Faces can now be extremely ugly and extremely beautiful. I felt that perfect facial attractiveness was too easily attainable and too common: this change addresses that by providing another level of beauty that few slaves will present naturally. This is an intentional buff to pro-surgery arcologies: a stable of perfect faces is now difficult to maintain without surgical intervention.

In addition to a broadened attractiveness stat, faces now have one of six shapes (cute, sensual, exotic, androgynous, masculine, and normal). Though I expect there will be mixed feelings on this, face shapes do present another challenge to complete feminization. They also provide further distinctiveness between slave schools. The Futanari Sisters come off best out of this; their practices make them a unique source of slaves with both highly feminine face shapes and large dicks.

This update also expands the stats that govern slaves' intelligence, height, and teeth. As with previous mechanical updates, the content for slaves at the extremes of the new possibilities is thin. I intend to spend some time over the next updates giving geniuses, imbeciles, and slaves with braces (among others) the attention they deserve.

Download: DropboxMegaSaves from previous versions are incompatible, but 0.8+ saves are eligible for New Game Plus. Latest hotfix is 0.8.0.2 (1340 PST August 9), completely save compatible.

0.8.0.1 fixes:
  • Fixed a bug that was massively inflating the impact of height on attractiveness
  • Typos
0.8.0.2 fixes:
  • Fixed the manual retirement setter link
  • Removed some misleading recruitment event costs as an interim measure
  • Corrected several obsolete heights for event-generated slaves
  • Corrected several obsolete height descriptions
  • Bad variable limiters on custom retirement milestones

0.8 Changelog

Facial stat expansions
  • Added six different facial shapes, with various Future Society compliant impacts on attractiveness.
  • Facial shape can change naturally as part of many existing effects on facial attractiveness, including drugs, hormones and more.
  • Broadened the range of facial attractiveness to include new extremes of ugliness and beauty.
  • Reworked random slave generation to make extreme facial outcomes less likely: most slaves should look pretty average.
  • Added support for the new facial variations to starting slave customization.
  • Updated facial surgical options to allow but not require changes of facial shape when applying facial surgery.
Height stat expansion
  • Grandularized height into centimeters and reworked height generation to follow a rough bell curve.
  • Extreme hormonal balances can produce slight height gains or losses in younger slaves.
  • Description of height in centimeters can be suppressed in the description options menu.
Intelligence stat expansion
  • Broadened the range of intelligence to include new extremes of brilliance and stupidity.
  • Geniuses are extremely rare by design: the most reliable source of them is the starting slaves.
  • Rebalanced the price premium for slave education to reflect the ease of educating smart slaves and the difficulty of teaching idiots.
Dentition stat expansion
  • Made crooked teeth possible, with slaves from educated backgrounds and more developed countries being less likely to have them.
  • Added braces to fix crooked teeth, which can also be applied to straight teeth if the player so desires.
  • Updated the Rules Assistant to support various orthodontic regimes.
Other updates
  • Added reliable assignment-based checks for Emotional Slut (public service) and Emotionally Bonded (fucktoy duty).
  • Expanded the citizen retirement text.
  • Added a scanner upgrade to the Clinic that provides an estimate of slaves' chem damage.
  • Lowered both the floor below which Clinic filters can no longer remove chem damage and the associated damage requirement for Clinic admission.
  • Rebalanced some of the worst Reputation exploits: the most absurd was a prestigious Concubine to whom the player was married.
  • Prevented several nonsensical combinations of characteristics for randomly generated slaves.
  • Made the Encyclopedia accessible during the introduction.
  • Encyclopedia additions, including a full list of the new facial effects, for a total of 225 encyclopedia entries.
  • Bugfixes.

Monday, August 1, 2016

ALPHA 0.7.11: Nominal Consideration


This is a mechanical update that adds some functionality to the retirement system and extends it to allow indentured servitude as well. Indentured servitude is a rich basis for events and other new content, but the mechanic is limited to an indenture market for now. Once it's playtested and working properly, it'll be fleshed out. (For those who haven't been following this project, that's my standard approach: add a mechanic in one update, fill it out over succeeding updates.) Indentured servants are called slaves in most scenes, and I'm writing them into FC as a subset of slaves, simply because "slave" appears in the HTML more than 53,000 times. Real world debates about the nature of indentured servitude are going to have to defer to practicality, here.

This update also adds an automated alternative to rules assistant applied curatives for players who prefer to keep their girls drug free but don't want to micromanage slaves' health, either. The universal rules menu now has an option that directs the personal assistant to automatically reassign unhealthy slaves to spend the week resting, and then return them to their original assignment once they are healthy. This is not a change to the effects of curatives or rest; its impact is exactly the same as if the player manually directed rest for anyone with a negative health value before ending the week.

Download: DropboxMegaSaves from previous versions are incompatible, but 0.7+ saves are eligible for New Game Plus. Latest hotfix is 0.7.11.2 (1345 PST August 2), completely save compatible.

0.7.11.1 fixes:
  • Starting a game normally will no longer produce an errored event and then retire a random slave
  • Slaves who decide to get treatment in the Clinic will no longer be condemned to a quasi-existence from which there is no escape
  • Error message on automatic rest toggle
  • Typos
0.7.11.2 fixes:
  • Fixed milking pointing to the servant code, which broke all milking assignments
  • Corrected effects of penis enhancement, again
  • Pro-enslavement policies now have the correct effects
  • Multi-slave events should now fire only when enough qualifying slaves are present
  • Corrected version number: this will have no impact on compatibility or NGP
  • Added sell all and buy all options to the menial slave market
  • Typos

0.7.11 Changelog

Indentured servitude
  • Added indentured servitude to the game; in most situations, indentured servants will continue to be referred to as slaves.
  • Indentured servitude works as an alternative to the retirement system, so indentured servants cannot retire.
  • Being an indentured servant has several long term mental effects, most of which will tend to make unhappy indentured servants disobedient.
  • Added a straightforward expiration event similar to the retirement event with differing outcomes based on a slave's feelings about the PC.
  • Indentures are either Protective, Restricted, or Unrestricted, with the first two placing some restraint on what the PC can do.
  • Restrictive indentures forbid invasive surgeries, service in an industrial Dairy, confinement in a glory hole or service in an Arcade, and subordination to the Head Girl.
  • Protective indentures additionally forbid most elective surgeries, any Dairy duty other than free range service, most drugs, and intensive hormonal regimes.
  • Higher indenture restrictions and lower indenture time remaining will both depress indentured servant prices.
  • Added a source of indentured servants to the slave markets.
  • Updated the Rules Assistant and other automation features to respect restrictive and protective indentures.
  • Added a miniscene for Dairy restraint setting changes, which will eject indentured servants protected against the new settings.
Retirement updates
  • Slaves can now be manually slated for retirement from their individual menus.
  • Added several milestone retirement policies with customizable goals, available if citizen retirement is active.
  • Slaves in committed relationships can have their partners retired with them if citizen retirement is active.
  • Added alternative versions of the jewelry and steel collars with counters that display a slave's retirement status, if any.
Other updates
  • Added an automatic rest universal rule, which will allow the personal assistant to temporarily rest slaves who need it.
  • Devoted and intelligent Bodyguards will now pass combat training on to responsible slaves if they feel there are not enough replacement bodyguard prospects available.
  • Added a universal rule to forbid Bodyguards from training successors.
  • Reduced positive and negative effects of character customizations on reputation.
  • Restored and improved shape impacts of breast expansion lost with the transition to non-random boob growth.
  • Encyclopedia additions.
  • Minor code consolidation.
  • Minor code revisions for performance.
  • Bugfixes.