Happy 2012

Happy new year, folks, and merry Christmas too, late though it may be.  Just wanted to let you all know I have survived the end of the world, and progress proceeds at its usual (snail's) pace.

Mostly, I wanted to thank you all for the encouraging comments, and apologize for not having more to report.  Things have gotten a little crazy around here, what with my recent separation from The Forces, but so long as I have a phone and a notebook, there will be progress made.

Since last time, I've broken down all of the stats so they can be affected individually (body type and build, hair length and color, things like that).  While minor, this means I can have more items and such affect people in subtle, smaller ways, rather than just turning them into a chick all in one go.  A tramp stamp tattoo that keeps the player's body shape nicely girlish without affecting anything else, for instance...*whistles innocently*

Next up is revamping the lactation system, and finally getting down to some serious work on clothing before I let myself be distracted with tweaking the TF system yet again.  Plenty of time for that later, after all.

Sorry folks.

While I hate to post with nothing really new to offer up, I felt I should at least let everyone know that I'm not dead, that Arena is still a live project, and that all my myriad other projects have not yet been abandoned, either.

Sadly, I've been in a very long creative slump lately, and I don't know why.  I've been tired, bored, restless, and irritable for months now, and it's gotten to the point that I haven't even been wanting to join in the TFGamesSite chat.  My patients for some of the folks there has just been at an all time low.  I only bother to join the chat at all for the pleasure of interacting with some 4 or 5 people there.  Most of the rest are just...depressing.  I'll spare you the rant about all that, though.

In any case, I have not made much progress on Arena 2.0 lately.  Currently, I'm stalled while working on the magic system.  What I have runs, and everything works, of course, but it's far from a playable game.  No AI, for one thing.  The cheats are in, and a magic system is in place, and a map has been set up, and a number of NPCs have been entered.  A debug mode has been implimented, as well as stats and descriptions for various levels of TG.  I'm not satisfied with the quality or variety, but that can be filled in much better later on.  I also have a basic idea how I'm going to handle clothing.

The trouble, at this point...or at least the point I'm stalled on, is fleshing out the magic system.  I have a sneaking hunch I'm just going to say to hell with it all, and build the game the way I feel like building it, and just paint over it with a plot after the fact.  It's totally bass-ackwards...but I can at least ensure that way that the game itself works and looks the way I want it to.  A way I am happy with.  And honestly?  Plots are over-rated anyhow.  ^^

Clothes in Arena

So, thanks to Gunslinger (Or Gunny1), I think I have a pretty workable model for clothing transformations that will still allow them to remain individual objects instead of just text from a table.

"GarmentStyle is a kind of value. The GarmentStyles are studly, manly, boyish, girlish, womanly and slutty.
GarmentSize is a kind of value. The GarmentSizes are extra large, large, medium, small, and extra small.
A garment is a kind of thing. A garment is wearable.
Every garment has a GarmentStyle. Every garment has a GarmentSize.
An upperwear is a kind of garment.
A pullover is a kind of upperwear.
Rule for printing the name of a pullover (called ThisShirt):
   if ThisShirt is studly, say "sweatshirt";
   if ThisShirt is manly, say "team jersey";
   if ThisShirt is boyish, say "t-shirt";
   if ThisShirt is girlish, say "tank-top";
   if ThisShirt is womanly, say "crop-top";
   if ThisShirt is slutty, say "tube-top".

A P1 is in the TestRoom. The P1 is a pullover. The P1 is studly.

A p2 is in the TestRoom. the P2 is a pullover. The P2 is manly."

This, as you can see, will change the name of a garment depending on one stat: it's GarmentStyle.  A simple action or mechanism to change the GarmentStyle will change a sweatshirt to a team jersey to a t-shirt and so forth.

The issue facing me now is simply that of descriptions of the clothing itself, but that's just a bunch of typing, very easily solved.

Now, the next project is to get this all put together and working in a draft model of the game itself, and begin work on the spellcasting system I plan to use.  And update the outline that I keep forgetting to do.  Or just putting off...

Descriptions

So, I've managed to convert the old Arena method of figuring out people's stats and descriptions to a number of simple 'to say' phrases.  This saves a ton of effort on the part of Inform itself.

You see, with the old system, everyone had a set of stats.  Then, every turn, riht after changing those stats, and again before examining them, it would run through every person in the game and figure out what their stats were, run through a bunch of tables, pick out the corresponding text, and plug it into the person's description.  Very wasteful.

In the new system, they still have similar stats, but Inform already knows what to say for each level of each stat.  No more repeating through a dozen different tables all the damned time, no more lines of text assigned to individual people, and so forth.

I have also done the same thing with the descriptions from TG-Tads.  This is mostly because they are nicely written, and do pretty much everything I wanted to do with Arena anyway.  I'm still unsure if I'll use the TG Tads version, or my own.

The issue now is with clothing.  In the old system, clothing was just text.  Every outfit was a seperate table with different levels starting with masculine and normal, and working it's way down to super feminine.  All the tables were randomized at the start of play, so you never knew who would be wearing what.  This was done for replay value.

Now, I really want to make clothing actual things you can interact with.  Take em off, put em on, set em on fire, whatever.  And I can do that pretty easily too.  Already have the code for it.  The trouble is making it reflect the TFs to the body, as well as being able to actually TF the clothes themselves.  Hard to do.  I could be ineffecient and make it replace something with a different article of clothing, which I'd have to set up in advance.  Or I could say to hell with it, and not have it change clothes at all...or I could stick with it just being text.  This would probably be the only tables used for descriptions in the game.

I am leaning toward using the seperate pieces of clothing and just having the TF done to it be pretty minimal, while setting up different things to say depending on how TFed the person wearing it is.  That perfectly fitting shirt and slacks, for instance, will not be nearly so perfectly fitting when you have been reduced to 2'8" tall with GG cup tits and a nice hourglass figure.  It's just...tricky.  Might need to consult with some of my fellow Inform7 TF writers to figure this one out.

Once I've got a fix for the clothes, I think I can actually start (or resume, rather) coding on this.

P.S. Note to self: update the damned outline.

Collaboration?

Yes indeed, Scipio and I have decided to work on a little Inform7 project together in our free time, bouncing ideas back and forth along with snippets of code.  I've already sent him the first draft of what I have come up wit so far.  I have a second draft already on stand by which if better filled out, but I'm waiting to hear back from him before I send it, in case it needs further modification.

List of things to do if I start work on Arena again

1. Re-write the original code to be more effecient, uniform, structured, ordered, and the same throughout.
2. A more story and dialog to the orginal, so as to flesh it out more and explain what the fick is going on, why, how, where, and to whom for what reasons.
3. Give the NPCs stories, appearances, attitudes, motivations and goals of their own, possibly reflected in the actions they take during the game-play itself.
4. Design and develope new maps and 'levels' for the player to play in, after adding interactivity to the original.
5. Design and develope new TFs for the player and NPCs, prefereably themed to match or compliment the map in some way.  ie. Bimbos in the mall, centaurs in the plains, minotaur(or cow girls) in the mountains or on the farm, Mermaids on the tropic island, ect.
6. Devise a method for the TFs to be induced via traps or other inanimate objects, a few of which should spawn in random locations and may or may not be visible to the player.
7. Develope 'safe zones' where the player can rest without fear of being TFed, and interact freely with some of the NPCs for plot exposition, character developement, and interactions depending on the current TF state of those involved.  Possibly the most difficult and tiem consuming part to code for.
8. Seperate different facets of the game into optional extensions, and allow for new levels to be designed as such, with templates for custome-made user content, to include maps, NCPs, TFs, TF-related items, traps, and clothing.
9. Revamp the way the game handles clothing, outfits, clothing changes, and the various states of clothing from being wet, improperly sized, inappropriate, and unremovable for one reason or another.  Also difficult to code.
10. Code any and everything to alter in description and possibly even functionality dependant on the mental state and some TF states (ie. being shrunken or reduced in IQ) of the player.

Much, much more, I'm sure.  This list will be updated as things occure to me.

Discussing Arena

So, yeah.  For those who don't know, Arena was a game I worked on off and on for about a year and some change.  The theme is transformation.  Specifically the Trangender, male to female variety.  The goal is to turn the NPCs into bimbos before they do the same to you.  It's 100% text, no images or fancy user interface.  It was also, I feel, a big success.  It started as random thoughts between myself and a few folks over at the TFGamesSite chat, where I spend waaaaay too much of my time, and evolved slowly but surely into what it is today, thanks in no small part to the comments and contributions of many fine folks.

The game lacks pretty much anything resembling a plot, with some thin reference to you being sent to hell by mistake (you didn't even die yet!), where two demons through you in with a few other guys doomed to be punished for their abusive attitudes toward women.  And for the amusement of the perverted demons, naturally.  So after a brief indoctrination, you are cut adrift in an arena level currently set up to look like a mall designed by airheaded bimbos.  TFs are handled by collecting gems that spawn and drop randomly around the map, and casting the spells associated with each type on either yourself to reverse previous changes, or on the other characters to change them.  Having the right type of gem on hand that matches a spellcast on you will consume both gems, but block any changes, automatically counterspelling them.  This works for NPCs you are targeting too.

I learned a ton of things while making this game, most of it from scratch.  The trouble is, I didn't really plan out things from the beginning.  Whenever something struck my fancy, I just messed with stuff until I could fit it in...which made it damn hard to maintain any kind of smoothness, regularity, or regimentation.  The source code is all over the place with little rhyme or reason.  I didn't get around to adding more levels, more TFs, more story, and more interesting features, environmental interaction, dialog, or much of anything else that I had intended...but the game itself is still a reasonably fun little time waster.  Now, though...I'm strongly considering continuing it.