proxxie
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Hard Mode Poll
🕑 Added 2018-09-10 19:10:51 +0000 UTC Greetings!Last week’s poll has concluded, and it looks like the succubus won! I’ll be featuring her in the next scene I do, and I already have a pretty good idea of what it’s going to be :)
I kind of expected her to win to be honest, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much love there was for Ana out there! I’ve been trying to make sure to include scenes with her, but I wasn’t sure how much interest there was in ‘em. I’m glad to know she’s still pretty popular :D
The rest of this post is kinda tl;dr - if you just wanna get to the poll question, skip to the end!
Plugins
I started writing the scenes and dialogue for 0.6.2, but most of my development time this week was actually spent making plugins. I finally decided to learn how, and it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I’d feared. Plugins let you expand RPG Maker MV’s capabilities through the use of custom JavaScript. My releases have been featuring more and more custom code over time, but I’ve mostly done it through the use of script blocks they provide you in the editor. This isn’t the most elegant way to do it; the script blocks are meant for little snippets of stuff, but I’ve sometimes been using them for much more. I avoided making plugins up ‘till now because I thought it would probably be really complex and take a huge time investment to figure it out, but I was wrong!
I got my feet wet writing a plugin to help manage the Broken Augur’s Orb messages, and I’m in the process of finishing up a plugin that will handle the central mechanic of the dungeon (not telling what it is yet :) ). What does this mean for you? Better performance and fewer bugs. It means I’ll be able to do more complicated things than I’ve done in the past (I’m going to think about starting that threat plugin project, for starters). It also makes it much easier to reuse some of this stuff, so you could see the same mechanics show up again later in the game. Basically, it should make the game part of it better.
Hard Modes
One of the complaints I heard - frequently - during the early stage of this game’s development was that it was too hard. I don’t think people found the RPGM-style combat difficult, but some found the minigames very frustrating. I think part of it is what people go in expecting - I guess people think of TPE as a ‘porn game’, and while a lot of porn games may have repetitive grinds you have to go through to get to the bewbs, they’re usually not difficult.
The thing is, I really hate repetitive grinds. They always bring to mind Skinner boxes, and I don't find that a very flattering way to think of myself. So when I made a game, I decided I'd rather gate content through the use of challenging encounters rather than "keep doing X over and over until something interesting happens".
I think a lot of folks enjoyed the challenge, but clearly a number of folks didn't. Some found 'em boring, some found 'em irritating, and I guess it gets really frustrating when you try and repeatedly fail to complete a task in a game you otherwise like. People play to have fun and/or fap, not feel bad about themselves. And, of course, there were some folks who had problems with 'em because of physical disabilities.
I tried to solve these problems through the use of easy modes. For pretty much everything I thought could be challenging within the game, I added a way to make it almost trivial. (When you see torches in odd places, that's why they're there.) There's a cost for using them, though - while you'll be able to see all the story content through easy modes, there are a few H-scenes you won't be able to see (Note: only dungeons have this penalty). I figured this was a good way to balance my own desire to make a challenging game and the interests of folks who couldn't or wouldn't complete those challenges.
Still, 'normal modes' were never intended to be incredibly challenging. It occurred to me that some folks may enjoy an especially challenging experience, so I started exploring the idea of hard modes.
My Vision For Hard Modes (And the Poll Question!)
In hard mode dungeons, everything would be harder (who'd have guessed?). Enemies would hit harder and/or have more challenging abilities, the challenges (aka minigames) and boss fights would be less forgiving and maybe have one or two extra mechanics to deal with.
So what do you get for beating a dungeon on hard mode? It was tough figuring this part out - I don't want it to be extra story content; the story should be available to all. I don't want it to be extra H-scenes; those should be available to normal mode folks. So hard mode rewards would end up being things that are neat to have or that let you do interesting things outside of combat, but are not particularly relevant otherwise. I'm thinking things like new outfits or items that lets you violate certain game mechanics. And I suppose more powerful gear so that you'll be able to beat other hard modes.
Before I get too far down this path, though, I want to see how much interest there is for this sort of thing. My poll question is:
Should I make a hard mode for the dungeon in 0.6.2?
Thank you for your support!
Comments
Dead silence... :(
Proxxie
I won't necessarily be going with the majority. I'm just trying to get a sense whether there's a sizable minority of folks who are interested in it. The way I'm writing/rewriting the logic for game mechanics makes it much easier to implement a hard mode - though the real time sink for hard modes would be tuning it to be hard but not *too* hard.
Oof, not looking too good for the hardmode :x Personally, as long as the dungeons still have a fair amount of challenge and fun and there's an easy mode for those struggling with it, it's fine with me either way. Be kind of fun to have an optional dungeon that has some of these things, just so it's not a slog for people trying to get Hscenes but still has something for the hardcore of us to work towards.
Brendan O'Donnell
Hmm, one possible way to increase the strategy could be a mechanic of blocking doorways against contagion, though with the counter mechanic that the people moving from room to room can throw that off. Just off the top of my head.
Proxxie
That was my original vision for the game, and I'm going to try to work toward it. To that end, I'm planning a pretty major revamp of a lot of stuff in a future release (probably 0.8, I'm thinking). I'll probably start discussing those plans more between the releases of 0.6.2 and 0.7. I need to improve my mapping skillz a bit more first, though!
Proxxie
To address some of the comments about the 'flu' minigame above, I'll end up tweaking it in 0.6.2. I noticed some performance issues with it on my Windows desktop, and if it'll lag that, it'll lag anything. (I made sure to play it from my HDD rather than SSD, though, so I think the lag was caused by file seek times, which I can probably address by preloading.) I'm also probably going to rewrite it to use my plugin, which should also improve performance. I wanted to make it so that the flu was more local in how it spread (ie, it would be unlikely to jump all the way across the hospital), but I didn't think I had time to work it out. I might also introduce a potential for it to fail to infect others, as suggested above. I'd like to make it so that one can kinda sorta use strategies to beat it rather than crossing one's fingers and hoping for the best.
I'll give him a small, small loan of a million dollars. :)
PaddyOFurniture
But his expenses will all be up-front. Let him build his business first.
His game will sell millions. Millions!
PaddyOFurniture
Sounds expensive.
Agreed! A lot of games are dumb down nowadays to provide instant gratification - the problem is that they often don't end up memorable. I often remember the games I struggled with and had to repeat challenges and get a grasp of how a boss worked or something along those lines, like Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia or Diablo II. Make a legendary game that'll list for the ages. :)
Please make a hard mode, if just for me. :( The only other porn game I've seen that has some difficulty is Swegabe's LOQO, but a lot of that stems from needing to do a shit-ton of grinding to get the equipment and levels necessary. I know many of your audience don't want to know, but I want a revolutionary break-through in the porn game industry to make it more game with traces of porn, rather than a fapfest.
Wendy Knightshade
I, sadly have not had a chance to play new update :( but I have enjoyed the game so far and regardless of what wins I expect to continue to enjoy it. 2 4 6 8 who makes me want to masterbate?!?! PROXXIE PROXXIE GOOOOOO PPPPRROOOOOXXXIIEEEE!!! Yes I know.... I am the worlds worst cheerleader... but I try lol
Quiverclaw
I do have to say that I despised the plague mini-game. The spread timer was just a hair too fast and I'd often get insight of the last victim to have the counter jump straight to 4. Was very frustrating.
Brendan O'Donnell
Well it's hard to say, in the current playthrough the frog minigame took three infuriating tries to pull off in easy mode, but the dungeons offered no serious issues in hardmode. (also that cure minigame was seriously frustrating to grind through. Is there any way to tweak it so patients get more resistant after being cured a few times?) I'd say it comes down to the frog game forcing you to split your focus, while the dungeons let you keep focusing on one different thing at a time. Basically hard mode vs easy mode depends entirely on what's upping the challenge. In my case something different calling for different focus is a great change of pace, suddenly having to juggle a dozen things at once, no thank you.
OhioOkie
I want the game to progress.
BrokenRose
I feel that people who aren't prepared to put a little effort into reaching the scenes they want to see shouldn't be playing porn games. It's called a game for a reason. In my opinion, if you don't want to put in some work to get to your porn, you should go back to watching videos, or reading stories.
