Wednesday, November 30, 2016

ALPHA 0.9: Incrementalism


This update recalibrates the Devotion, Trust, Health, Weight, and Fetish strength stats. This is long overdue, and provided a good opportunity to clean up the code, resolve some ambiguities, address some gameplay issues, and simplify some ugly math, all in one pass. It's very far from revolutionary in gameplay terms: if you have no interest in modding, the only differences you're likely to see are that effects will show up more regularly and a few decimals will be gone.


Rather than attempting to review the hundreds of little balance changes, I'll focus on one stat and what I did to it. In 0.8 and before, a perfectly devoted slave had a ~10% chance of her fetish intensifying each week based on each potential source of intensification. This meant that for such a slave with a single potential source of fetish intensification, fetish advancement would have a mean time to happen of 10 weeks. In 0.9, the fetish strength stat is hidden and much more granular, with fetish levels being ranges of the stat rather than values. All sources of fetish intensification now contribute steadily to eventual fetish advancement, rather than offering additional chances at sudden advancement. Fetishes have gone from being almost completely random to a mix of randomness and deterministic behavior, which I think is appropriate for mental stats. I see physical stats like Weight demanding a much lower degree of randomness. Of all the stat changes included in this update, the fetish strength change is probably the most significant from a gameplay standpoint, turning a noisy, unstable system into a slower, more predictable process.


Download: DropboxMegaSaves from previous versions are incompatible. Latest hotfix is 0.9.0.2 (1645 PST December 2), save compatible. Hotfix 0.9.0.1 was erroneously released as 0.9.1.


0.9.0.2 changelog

CornCobMan's modding

  • Personal attention health increase changed from 1 to 10
  • Added missing " in the conditions for the RA autosurgery.
  • Fixed "relocate" surgery description bug.
  • Added missing tag to serve your other slaves assignment code.
  • Added more chastity checks.
  • Addressed various other bugs and inconsistencies.
Other updates
  • Corrected numerous obsolete stats pointed out by Anon.
  • Fixed a bug in paraphilia incitement.
  • Removed event exploits.
  • Personal training can now default to flaw softening if one is present and chances of success are good.

0.9.0.1 changelog

CornCobMan's modding

  • New chastity options, including combined and anal chastity.
  • Recoded existing chastity options.
  • RA updates to support 0.9 stat changes.
  • Backwards compatibility function updates.
  • Added more stats to the Cheat Edit function.
  • RA bugfixes.
Other updates
  • Corrected a frequency bug in slave generation for nearsightedness.
  • Fixed a bug that was setting weight based on fetish strength.
  • Added birthdays to starting slave customization.
  • Emotional Sluts will no longer be dissatisfied with assignments they choose themselves.
  • Addressed various minor descriptive issues.
  • Added a suggested Gender Radicalist fashion policy, Bottom Heavy Radicalism.

0.9 changelog


Slave stats updates

  • Recalibrated Devotion and Trust from a -20 to 20 scale in steps of 0.1 to a -100 to 100 scale in steps of 1.
  • Recalibrated Health from a -10 to 10 scale in steps of 0.1 to a -100 to 100 scale in steps of 1.
  • Recalibrated Weight from a -3 to 3 scale in steps of 1 to a -100 to 100 scale in steps of 1.
  • Recalibrated Fetish strength from a 0 to 2 scale in steps of 1 to a 0 to 100 scale in steps of 1.
  • Updated many calculations to reduce randomness and make effects slower but more predictable.
  • Rebalanced the way stats progress to make slaves less inevitably identical.
  • Reviewed Devotion and Trust qualifications to eliminate ambiguous cases.
  • Added bracketed numerical displays of more stats to abbreviated slave summaries.
Training rebalance
  • Recoded player character and Head Girl training to use a hidden training tracking stat.
  • All training tasks now take a nonrandom number of turns based on the trainer's and trainee's stats and the complexity of the task.
  • Trainee intelligence is now a disadvantage for all mental training: flaw removal, softening, and creation.
FireDrops's modding
  • Provided new, standardized body modification scoring.
  • Added a new publicity function to the Recruiter, allowing her to boost reputation and society progress once a large number of slaves are present.
  • Bugfixes.
CornCobMan's modding
  • Continued Rules Assistant work.
  • UI sanity improvements, including link hiding when options are no longer available.
  • Descriptive refinements to avoid confusion between Buttsluts and Anal Addicts.
  • Cheat menu improvements.
  • Bugfixes.
Anon's modding
  • Continued pregnancy, blindness, and other content expansions.
  • Fertility recoding for efficiency and reliability.
  • Bugfixes.
Other updates
  • Recoding for efficiency.
  • Updated to the current version of Sugarcube 2.
  • Bugfixes.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

ALPHA 0.8.12: Obsessive Behavior


Over the past couple of months there have been scattered requests for various extreme mental states in slaves. I've addressed these in what I hope is an interesting way without adding new mechanics by incorporating them as sexual flaws. I believe the flaw system works well when slaves are new, but rapidly becomes irrelevant for individual slaves, since with no advantage to flaws, there's no reason not to fix or soften them automatically. Thus these new flaws are rare, powerful, and will tend to happen to sexually advanced slaves. Furthermore, they have narrow but powerful benefits, so it may be advantageous to retain them.


0.8.11 was not satisfactory from a bug standpoint, and I hope this version will be better, as it makes no major mechanical changes at all. I have also blocked out significant amounts time this week to fix bugs as they appear.

Known issue: Error messages will occasionally appear in the slave description block of the starting girls customization menu. Refresh the description to get rid of them; they are a display issue only and will not break the game.

Download: DropboxMegaSaves from previous versions are incompatible, but 0.8+ saves are eligible for New Game Plus. Latest hotfix is 0.8.12.5 (1600 PST November 11), completely save compatible.

0.8.12.5 
changelog
  • Fixes for clit and labia issues in starting slave customization, by CornCobMan.
  • Minor descriptive pregnancy updates, by Anon.
  • More blind and pregnancy support in random events, by Anon.
  • Fixed a bug that could return errors and prevent enslavement in many recruitment events.
  • Fixed a missing parenthetical in weekly pregnancy mental effects.

0.8.12.4 
changelog
  • Addressed an issue with bad outcomes of the birth scenes.
  • Industrialized Dairy assignment scene error message.
  • General update of standard weekly pregnancy effects code.
  • Fixed manual braces removal.
  • Addressed an issue that could generate family members with less distinctiveness than intended.
  • Fixed Chattel Religionist universal naming.
  • The RA should now address pubic hair properly.

0.8.12.3 
changelog
  • Rules Assistant fixes, by CornCobMan.
  • Birth effects should now be properly applied to all slaves giving birth during a single week.
  • Recoded the way industrialized Dairies apply flaws.
  • Working in an industrialized Dairy will now satisfy Cum and Anal Addicts if the appropriate upgrade is installed and active.
  • Addressed an issue that prevented all check-in events from displaying properly.

0.8.12.2 
changelog

By CornCobMan

  • Added revivalist nationalities to the Slave Summary page
  • Added missing lisped custom titles for some passages that I missed
  • Fixed a minor typo in the Rules Assistant porn spending link
Other
  • Error message in starting slave creation for virgins.
  • Addressed an economic issue that could lead to extended leadership struggles.
  • The mercenary in love event should no longer repick slaves if the chosen slave is examined.
  • Fixed the Dairy error message spam.
  • Resolved an issue that could erroneously assay starting slaves as too expensive.
  • Fixed the origami napkins for the office display case.

0.8.12.1 changelog
  • The Fuckdoll upgrade for the Arcade will allow slaves to be sent straight to a full Arcade.
  • Provided industrial Dairy assignment scene variations for Breeder and Self Hating slaves.
  • Inducing Odd will now work properly instead of inducing Bitchy.
  • Fixed the unintended crossover between Maliciousness and Abusiveness.
  • Humiliation sluts on public assignments will now gain Attention Whore rather than Neglectful.
  • Typos.

0.8.12 changelog

New sexual flaws
  • Added paraphilias, a subcategory of sexual flaws that have powerful positive effects, but cannot be softened.
  • Head Girls can remove paraphilias, and can also be instructed to ignore them.
  • Paraphilias can develop from fetishes if certain other requirements promoting the paraphilia are met.
  • Paraphilias will cause the slave to retain of the parent fetish, to the point of constant devotion loss if another fetish is forced.
  • Slaves with a paraphilia will lose devotion if they're denied the object of their obsession, usually an assignment.
  • Provided complete paraphilia encyclopedia entries.
Other updates
  • RA refinements and bugfixes, by CornCobMan.
  • More pregnancy and sight descriptions and references in events, by Anon.
  • Completely recoded the way hormone effects are assessed to offer all qualified hormone effects a reasonable chance of happening.
  • Implemented a population cap for menial slaves, based on arcology upgrades and ownership share.
  • Rebalanced arcology share prices and added a transaction cost to arcology share purchases.
  • All flaws can now be induced through abusive personal training.
  • Descriptive improvements.
  • Recoding for better performance.
  • Bugfixes.

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

ALPHA 0.8.11: Carrot and Stick


My new content time for this update has mostly gone into new events, but I've also added a little rules feature that I've been meaning to add for more than a year now. As I do my best to make clear in the descriptions, there's a lot of life going on offscreen in a game of FC. Specifically, there are a lot of little rewards given and punishments meted out that the game doesn't show. This is a fundamental design choice; one of the irritations I had with other slave games that I wanted to keep out of FC is the reward/punish grind. So, I've added rules that allow the player to determine what the standard rewards and punishments for any given slave are. It's now possible to specify, for example, that slaves get whipped if they're bad and get sent to the Spa for some time with your sexy spa attendant if they're good. There are some interesting little tradeoffs to be discovered, and there's no perfect combination. I've tried to balance this system so that it recreates previous versions' gameplay if the rules are left on default settings, for players who feel the complexity is high enough already. This is also the kind of thing that can be added without increasing lag, since I'm less terrible at doing this kind of thing, and ongoing revision of bad code is easily outpacing additions in terms of performance.


If you're experiencing a serious bug, such as, for example, your money being replaced by $cash or slaves disappearing, the most helpful thing you can do is save your game to disk and send it to me, along with a description of what happened. If you have a save from right before the issue arose, send me that too.


Finally, I understand a Free Cities play-by-post roleplay is being organized, and they're accepting more players. I'm not involved, and questions should be directed there.

Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fw960fumgeswq7q/Free%20Cities%20v%200.8.11.4.html?dl=0

Latest hotfix is 0.8.11.4 (0025 PST November 5), completely save compatible. 0.8.11.3 is badly bugged; posting this update from mobile.

0.8.11.3 changelog

By CornCobMan
  • Fixed the RA not changing rules properly due to a mistake in the condition.
  • Fixed the taste test and anal cowgirl events.
Other
  • Corrected application of bonuses for a Chattel Religionist customization of the PA.
  • Reworked the way interarcology opinion is applied in the slave markets.
  • Addressed an issue with HGs giving their girls curatives.
  • Added checks to prevent absurd hostage stats.
  • Limited shipping container event outcomes to affect only slaves acquired during that specific iteration of the event.
  • Revised the way agents are retrieved from their arcologies.
  • Addressed an issue that could prevent the retirement and indenture expiration events from firing.
  • Descriptive fixes.

0.8.11.2 changelog

By CornCobMan
  • Fixed Rules Assistant not working for selected slaves.
  • Fixed living standard rule selection in the Rules Assistant.
  • Fixed several prosthetics bugs including issues with sex focused limbs and the weeks to completion.
  • Added a discard button for limbs not yet completed.
  • Added an option to toggle whether the Rules Assistant will apply to newly acquired slaves.
  • Recoded the Custom Slave order menu links to not refresh the page.
  • Typos, descriptive fixes, and other minor improvements.
Other
  • The starting girls customization screen will occasionally throw error messages; refreshing the page should remove them and they do not seem to damage saves.
  • Fixed an oversight that would lock the game on a blank screen if the arcology was manually renamed during or before the week of August 3, 2037.
  • Addressed a potential issue with standard arcology upgrades.
  • Corrected HRT bone structure effects to apply to slaves under 25, not over 25.
  • Addressed the endowment event error message.
  • Applying and instantly removing braces will no longer straighten teeth.
  • Natural lactation should now start very reliably late in pregnancy, especially for healthy slaves.
  • The wealthy refugee aid event should no longer give MILFs in all cases.
  • Descriptive fixes.

0.8.11.1 changelog
  • Fixed a bug that was assessing inappropriate school subsidy costs.
  • Corrected application of scrotum and foreskin implantation costs.
  • Minor descriptive fixes.

0.8.11 changelog

CornCobMan's modding

  • Added ethnicity and skin color options to starting slave customization.
  • Starting slave customization UI improvements.
  • More automatic rules applications for slaves obtained from events.
  • Bugfixes.
Anon's modding
  • Extended CornCobMan's custom title lisping support to cover most random events.
  • Many more mentions of blindness and pregnancy in random events.
  • New paired slave sale solicitation event with identical twins.
  • Continued birth event improvements.
New events
  • Nonrandom event in which leading citizens offer to help subsidize a slave school branch campus if one isn't present in the arcology.
  • Random event for devoted amputees equipped with P-Limbs.
  • Random event for slaves happy enough to dance alone and skilled enough to do it well.
  • Group sex event for slave relationships with at least one dominant partner.
  • Random event for slaves unhappy enough to be tormented by bad dreams.
  • Resistance events for slaves who don't like the cock feeder or dildo suppository upgrades.
  • Random event for devoted slaves in which the slave falls and the PC catches them.
  • Surgery request event for slaves troubled by hormonal conflicts.
HRT changes
  • Hormone replacement therapy can now cause moodiness; devoted slaves will not suffer this effect.
  • Added a pharmaceutical upgrade that eliminates the moodiness penalty for all slaves.
  • Rerolled the existing hormone therapy kitchen upgrade as two separate pharmeceutical upgrades.
  • Made some hormonal effects less rare, especially if the appropriate upgrade is purchased.
Punishments and rewards
  • Standard punishments and rewards can be set to guide what slaves get offscreen.
  • Different punishment and reward standards make tradeoffs; the default setting replicates the preexisting balance.
  • Reduced trust and devotion impacts of several other mechanics to keep slaves from breaking too easily.
  • Added RA support for standard punishments and rewards.
Other updates
  • Added an oceanic option for arcology location which leaves the slave market nationality balance completely unprejudiced.
  • Provided a pair of policy options for encouraging or discouraging the local effects of interarcology cultural influence.
  • Capped the total amount of bonus cultural influence neighboring arcologies can bank.
  • The surgical PC career now reduces drug upgrade costs and reputation unlock thresholds.
  • Reaching a moderate level of prosperity without a slave school will inhibit further prosperity growth.
  • Rerolled the subsidy and undermining options for slave schools into policies.
  • Categorized the policy menu.
  • Transformation Fetishists now strongly approve of girls with P-Limbs.
  • Added the office description to the penthouse menu and expanded it with a display case for mementoes gained through gameplay.
  • Slaves with the Edo and Chinese Revivalist nationalities now qualify for Japanese and Chinese nationality bonuses, respectively.
  • Reduced the reputation malus for feminine player character traits.
  • Refined some event triggers to be more respectful of content restrictions.
  • Slave price and arcology share price rebalancing.
  • Recoding for performance and reliability.
  • Bugfixes.