Java Corrupted Saviors [Release 54] [CSDev]

[CSdev]

This helps to create a good short term versus long term gain conflict in strategy, while I don't doubt that if the game is around long enough someone will figure out an 'optimal' or 'right' answer to the problem the simple fact that the game has such varied strategies shows a far greater degree of strategic depth than most porn games and bodes well for the games potential.

My own suspicion is that the optimal solution depends on the personality types you get. There are some teams where some of the cores are no more difficult to break than the minors, but there are other teams where you can break a minor even before the third Chosen shows up, which gives you a huge head start since the third one being around makes everything more difficult. Hopefully making the optimal choice is strong enough to reward players who try for it, but still not completely necessary so that players who have a preference for friendly teams or hateful teams can still go after the dynamic they prefer.

CSdev I 100% get that you don't want people submitting pull requests, I am of the same mindset in my own projects; I was suggesting it purely for modding purposes, not for contributions to the master branch. It's your project, let us know if/when it goes open source!

Don't worry, I'll make sure to announce it clearly so that the people who have expressed an interest can find it.

What do you think about "Strengthening" a vulnerability in addition to "breaking" them? The core idea would be that under certain circumstances, the Chosen respond to trauma by doubling down on their ethos. For Dignity, it could entail becoming a defiant symbol of hope even when half their body is crushed; for Confidence, taking full advantage of their inhuman bodies to transcend their physical limits; for Morality, a transcendent love that can break Thralldom. In short, becoming truly more than human.

One of my major design goals for this game is to give the player a good amount of choice in how the corruption proceeds. At the end of a playthrough, the player shouldn't be thinking "I followed this linear path to its conclusion," they should be thinking "I left my own personal mark on this team." The way that the player can influence how the relationships turn out is the initial implementation of that idea, but I would like to add more.

Alternative corruption tracks would certainly be in line with that idea. I'm currently leaning toward having some things turn out differently if you manage to break an endgame vulnerability while leaving a different early-game vulnerability untouched. However, all the possibilities you brought up are thought-provoking. I'll certainly be looking into doing something similar to this once the final battle is done.

You could have Chosen that are in a relationship with an offscreen boyfriend or girlfriend, making their relationship a wholesome, chaste one, much like usual Magical Girls.
And because of this kind of setting, I beg you, allow us to interact with the chosen/other people out of battle. Being able to infiltrate their lives (the "new friend that is actually a villain" trope) to corrupt them from behind the scenes, corrupt those around them or simply go networking (perhaps making use of those human allies upgrade we can get) would make this game much more enjoyable. Networking could be used to get temporary upgrades that constantly use Evil Energy (fighting alone, no passive evacuation, this kind of thing) and, of course, have some events.
Also, please add more cheats. I like to buy all upgrades and only use Evil Energy I make, so a +10 Evil Energy cheat (or an easier way to do that) would be great, even better when you add more uses for EE.

One of the features I'm hoping to include is sending a fully-corrupted Chosen to "join" another team and sabotage them from the inside.

I took a peek at the (decompiled) source for this, and I'd like to say CSdev, I admire your dedication! The way you manage personality types seems onerous to have to write, but you definitely get a lot of granularity for specific descriptions.

For everyone else: the base personalities of the girls aren't based on static archetypes. Their base personality is really 4 (kind of) hidden values: Morality, Innocence, Confidence, and Dignity. These appear to be numbers between 1 - 100 set at character generation, and correspond with how the FEAR/HATE, DISG/PLEA, PAIN/INJU, and SHAM/EXPO sliders are set. Basically all of the descriptive text is decided based on some combination of those values (often multiple at once!), usually based on if a stat is high, low, or in the middle. There's also sometimes differences between starting with a broken vulnerability, or getting one during game-play. So for the people asking earlier about trying to see all of the personalities, basically every meaningfully distinct set of character stats will give you a somewhat different personality.

It's a little embarrassing to have my amateur code looked at, but I will say that your conclusions here are correct. Additionally, that 1-100 value is the base amount of how much FEAR/DISG/PAIN/SHAM the target takes from the basic attacks before applying ANGST or multipliers. 100 minus that value is the base amount of HATE/PLEA/INJU/EXPO they take per turn when targeted by Grind/Caress/Pummel/Humiliate.

Some suggestions though:

You might consider adding an optional 4th Chosen member to a playthrough. Right now team-members seem to restrict each other's personality types a lot to make sure there is always one Core/Minor vulnerability of each type. With 3 members, you always end up with one character having two Cores, and one character with 2 Minors. With 4 members, you could also do 1 Core/Minor each. If you wanted to keep combat balance the same, you could have only 3 of the chosen show up to any fight (the other is taking the night off, or their patrol route is to far away). I think some of your integer indices might get messed up from this though.

This would be more difficult than you might think. The scenes that develop relationships happen between the two Chosen who have a Core/Minor matchup for the same vulnerability. If each Chosen were to have only one Core and one Minor, then they'd only have such a matchup with two of their partners, and they'd never have any relationship scenes with the fourth member of the team.

An optional Body Shift where males and futanari are rendered permanently flaccid. This would probably be from confidence break, with the character internalizing their submissiveness/powerlessness/impotence, and the psychic energy makes this physically true as well. The checks to keep them from being able to penetrate other Chosen wouldn't be that bad, but making variant text for all other mentions of character erections could be tedious.

Easier than above, an optional Body Shift to have futanari become female. Not sure if this would trigger on Inseminate like with males, or somewhere else. The work necessary should be comparable to the male Body Shift, but you'd probably want to include a check in the Fantasize code to make sure that ex-futanari don't just grow it back and get stuck in a loop switching between genders.

In principle, I have no objections against introducing a futanari->(something else) shift as well. I'd just prefer to have each of the shifts attached to an appropriate action. It helps make each of them feel unique, and it makes it so that the writing can be more evocative than just "X condition was met, therefore body change Y happens." The linkage between men being figuratively and literally emasculated is a common fetish, and the notion of girls getting super lusty and growing dicks is too. I'm not sure if there's an equivalent for girls with dicks losing them. I guess it might be reasonable to trigger it with impregnation once that's in.

Permanent flacidity is something I'm interested in adding, but you're correct that there'd need to be a lot of variants added. I agree that attaching it to some level of confidence break would make sense.

This, please. Having them shift into futas/females is too much, this "middle ground" would be perfect.

The whole body shift thing should, in my opinion, be locked behind some kind of manual input that, should the player choose to avoid with a certain Chosen, wouldn't lock their progression. Giving this ability to the special commanders is a nice idea.
The Pleasure commander, with its many tentacles and corrupting substances, could have a "Grow Dick" interaction available after certain conditions are met. Hate, some kind of feral demon, being able to permanently scar a Chosen into doubting their sexuality so much that they are never able to get it up again is fitting.

I'm torn on the idea of adding a direct toggle, because I worry that it could interfere with the impression that the shift happens "naturally" because of the Chosen's own weakness. As a sort of interim solution, note that you can change the settings midway through a playthrough in order to cause some Chosen to shift while keeping others in their original state.

 

[Seamonkey]

My own suspicion is that the optimal solution depends on the personality types you get. There are some teams where some of the cores are no more difficult to break than the minors, but there are other teams where you can break a minor even before the third Chosen shows up, which gives you a huge head start since the third one being around makes everything more difficult. Hopefully making the optimal choice is strong enough to reward players who try for it, but still not completely necessary so that players who have a preference for friendly teams or hateful teams can still go after the dynamic they prefer.

One of my major design goals for this game is to give the player a good amount of choice in how the corruption proceeds. At the end of a playthrough, the player shouldn't be thinking "I followed this linear path to its conclusion," they should be thinking "I left my own personal mark on this team." The way that the player can influence how the relationships turn out is the initial implementation of that idea, but I would like to add more.

Alternative corruption tracks would certainly be in line with that idea. I'm currently leaning toward having some things turn out differently if you manage to break an endgame vulnerability while leaving a different early-game vulnerability untouched. However, all the possibilities you brought up are thought-provoking. I'll certainly be looking into doing something similar to this once the final battle is done.

One of the features I'm hoping to include is sending a fully-corrupted Chosen to "join" another team and sabotage them from the inside.

I'm torn on the idea of adding a direct toggle, because I worry that it could interfere with the impression that the shift happens "naturally" because of the Chosen's own weakness. As a sort of interim solution, note that you can change the settings midway through a playthrough in order to cause some Chosen to shift while keeping others in their original state.

Just wanted to open this message with some further acknowledgment of the amount of detail and variety this game has even in its unfinished state, I have been doing various runs trying out different strategies to see how the events and flavour differs for different actions and different orders and part way through it struck me just how much is acknowledged; whether the vulnerability breaking actions are done by a commander body, thralls or one of the other chosen in an event are all referenced in profiles and events, the different versions of the post battle actions that the chosen can take depending on how corrupted they are, how many chosen are involved and the relationships between them seems to represent a significant amount of content all on there own.

I had suspected that there was unlikely to be one simple answer as to what is 'best' regarding the vulnerability break order. In many a sense it is indicative of good game design even if it does mean I have to strategize a bit more each run.

Its good to hear that you are considering alternative corruption tracks and trying to make the shaping and moulding of the chosen feel unique, one common pitfall in corruption games is they treat it as a simple unidirectional shift in character that results in all coming out of the process the same. I've always felt such 'cookie cutter' corruption misses the point of seeing a characters personality twisted and shaped by their experiences is that it still has to be recognisably themselves even if only as a twisted parody of what they once was.

The notion of a fully corrupted chosen joining and sabotaging another team, (presumably as a new game plus thing?) Sounds like it could be a really engaging thing to include in the game but I do find myself curious as to how that would interact with the normal gameplay as having one of the chosen actively working against the groups goals would in practice likely need there own set of unique actions.

On the subject of the body shifting, the notion of the chosen transforming physically as a result of how there powers work regarding emotion and collective thought is one of the more interesting takes I've seen of physical corruption lately so I would be loathe to lose it on a thematic level but I can sympathise with the notion of not wanting the team to all go through the transformations, it may be an idea to have it so that certain actions will 'prime' a character to undergo a transformation when they have the relevant break event. For example if a character is being subject to forced orgasm or the commander equivalent you could have an additional option to expose them to hermaphroditic images to encourage them to idealise such things sexually, this would then mean that when that character innocence breaks that they have the transformation while those that are not don't. This was just the best compromise I could think of off the top of my head so if any one else has a better idea just say.

 

[SqueeNoEvil]

Don't worry CSdev, decompiled code always comes back a little different than the original, and tends to be more cluttered and sloppy-looking than the real code. You still have time to tidy things up how you want before anyone actually sees it.

For number of chosen, I'd agree that 3 is still the best number for how the game systems currently interact. Once you've gotten the primary features of the game stable though, I think an extra member could lead to some nice variety. That is, assuming I didn't miss something in the program that makes it a large hurdle to implement. I didn't do a full code review or anything.

A futa -> female shift was mostly a lower-effort suggestion as an alternative for flaccidity. I don't think there's an iconic situation to trigger it because... well it's not a very common occurrence! The game does mention that futas seem to be discriminated against in this world though. I could imagine a Dignity Break where if a Chosen is stripped and Broadcast, then the psychic pressure of the viewers could force her body to conform to their expectations/desires of her body. If they think futas are freaks, their collective will could try and "fix" her. This might also help to explain why futas by default keep their penis a secret, out of fear of what could happen to it. Just a thought.

But if you're already interested in flaccidity, you might just do that instead. I did notice, when I was doing a quick check of how easy that would be, that you already have some flaccid content for males where their penis is bound or tied. Futas never get bound or tied that way though, they always have specific alternative text. Is that intentional or coincidence? You could probably consolidate a bit of code if you had futas and males treated the same way. You might even be able to merge some of the torture/sodomize descriptions so that futas have the best of both (a tied/abused penis, as well as anal).

 

[05841035411]

One of my major design goals for this game is to give the player a good amount of choice in how the corruption proceeds. At the end of a playthrough, the player shouldn't be thinking "I followed this linear path to its conclusion," they should be thinking "I left my own personal mark on this team." The way that the player can influence how the relationships turn out is the initial implementation of that idea, but I would like to add more.

Alternative corruption tracks would certainly be in line with that idea. I'm currently leaning toward having some things turn out differently if you manage to break an endgame vulnerability while leaving a different early-game vulnerability untouched. However, all the possibilities you brought up are thought-provoking. I'll certainly be looking into doing something similar to this once the final battle is done.

Thank you, I'm glad that you found my ideas useful .

As regards your design goal - in that case, might I suggest making the game's score an optional mode that's turned off by default? I say this because the player will often feel like they're doing something "wrong" if they're not actively trying to maximize their score, even if it doesn't really fit with their own personal goals. It ends up something that we chase simply because we can.

In my case, for instance, I'm not really interested in destroying the Chosen's confidence or public image - my image of an ideal corrupt Chosen team is one that's still widely admired and full of power, but who chose to side with me for the pleasure and because they really couldn't care less about humans anymore - where our "fights" end in very public victories for them in the Abandoned Warehouse District, but whenever it's someplace actually important... Ooops, for some reason they keep hitting the defenders instead of my thralls.

Now, I don't expect that anything like that will end up in the game, because that would involve a crazy amount of work to account for all of the possibilities - but it does mean that left to my own devices, I'd be aiming for primarily for Morality and Innocence breaks while Dignity and Confidence would only come into play if I really wanted to start a friendship or rivalry. Once the game starts grading me on whether or not I broke the rest, though... Well, then I might as well pick those breaks up as well.

I'm torn on the idea of adding a direct toggle, because I worry that it could interfere with the impression that the shift happens "naturally" because of the Chosen's own weakness. As a sort of interim solution, note that you can change the settings midway through a playthrough in order to cause some Chosen to shift while keeping others in their original state.

On that topic, could I suggest a "Shift the first x number of characters" setting as well? I enjoy the idea of characters physically transforming as a result of their fantasies, but it's more interesting to me if it's only one or two characters instead of the full set.

A chance of transforming would be even better, so that I wouldn't expect it, but I'm under the impression that you'd prefer to avoid any randomness in the game.

 

[bobjones9792]

Ok, I'm having a hard time understanding the circumstances system.

Traumas are straight-forward on a basic level. Chosen have weaknesses to certain traumas, basic attacks can target those traumas and deal more damage. Surroundings can also target those traumas and add a circumstance bonus.

Circumstances can also be targeted, so if you want to boost HATE, then surrounding the chosen and choosing the hate (grind) option will make it go up. You can also make a commander who specializes in a certain circumstance.

However, and this is the part I don't get, the HATE boosting option also inflicts strong trauma on FEAR, and as FEAR goes up, it becomes harder and harder to boost HATE. How am I supposed to boost HATE to a significant level if it keeps nerfing itself because of the FEAR boost? Why can't I have an option that boosts a circumstance, without boosting the trauma associated with it the most?

I wanted to break the Chosen in certain ways while avoiding others, like building hate so I can use the inseminate option but avoiding pain/injury. This feels impossible though in the current version.

 

[alri]

Ok, I'm having a hard time understanding the circumstances system.

Traumas are straight-forward on a basic level. Chosen have weaknesses to certain traumas, basic attacks can target those traumas and deal more damage. Surroundings can also target those traumas and add a circumstance bonus.

Circumstances can also be targeted, so if you want to boost HATE, then surrounding the chosen and choosing the hate (grind) option will make it go up. You can also make a commander who specializes in a certain circumstance.

However, and this is the part I don't get, the HATE boosting option also inflicts strong trauma on FEAR, and as FEAR goes up, it becomes harder and harder to boost HATE. How am I supposed to boost HATE to a significant level if it keeps nerfing itself because of the FEAR boost? Why can't I have an option that boosts a circumstance, without boosting the trauma associated with it the most?

I wanted to break the Chosen in certain ways while avoiding others, like building hate so I can use the inseminate option but avoiding pain/injury. This feels impossible though in the current version.

Every INJU (or ANTI if you have violence turned off) level boosts circumstances by 4x. If you want to avoid INJU for a particular Choosen, every EXPO level boosts trauma and circumstances by 2x of the other Choosen.

 

[ViviX12]

Ok, I'm having a hard time understanding the circumstances system.

Traumas are straight-forward on a basic level. Chosen have weaknesses to certain traumas, basic attacks can target those traumas and deal more damage. Surroundings can also target those traumas and add a circumstance bonus.

Circumstances can also be targeted, so if you want to boost HATE, then surrounding the chosen and choosing the hate (grind) option will make it go up. You can also make a commander who specializes in a certain circumstance.

However, and this is the part I don't get, the HATE boosting option also inflicts strong trauma on FEAR, and as FEAR goes up, it becomes harder and harder to boost HATE. How am I supposed to boost HATE to a significant level if it keeps nerfing itself because of the FEAR boost? Why can't I have an option that boosts a circumstance, without boosting the trauma associated with it the most?

I wanted to break the Chosen in certain ways while avoiding others, like building hate so I can use the inseminate option but avoiding pain/injury. This feels impossible though in the current version.

well, the game mechanics work in a way that for high multipliers you need to compound several, possibly all circumstance damage levels at once

 

[Seamonkey]

Ok, I'm having a hard time understanding the circumstances system.

Traumas are straight-forward on a basic level. Chosen have weaknesses to certain traumas, basic attacks can target those traumas and deal more damage. Surroundings can also target those traumas and add a circumstance bonus.

Circumstances can also be targeted, so if you want to boost HATE, then surrounding the chosen and choosing the hate (grind) option will make it go up. You can also make a commander who specializes in a certain circumstance.

However, and this is the part I don't get, the HATE boosting option also inflicts strong trauma on FEAR, and as FEAR goes up, it becomes harder and harder to boost HATE. How am I supposed to boost HATE to a significant level if it keeps nerfing itself because of the FEAR boost? Why can't I have an option that boosts a circumstance, without boosting the trauma associated with it the most?

I wanted to break the Chosen in certain ways while avoiding others, like building hate so I can use the inseminate option but avoiding pain/injury. This feels impossible though in the current version.

While it is in theory plausible to break a chosen in a given stat while not going for any other vulnerability it is very difficult. Your best bet is to target the chosen who has a minor vulnerability in the associated stat as they gain it far quicker than those who have it as a core attribute. Hate in particular is especially difficult as you noted fear inhibits its gain and actions that inspire hate will almost always increase fear a lot as well while hate multiplies the gains of trauma creating a negative feedback loop. If you do not have any reservations about targeting exposure on the other chosen be sure to get there exposure as high as possible as the gain rate of circumstances is multiplied by the level of exposure of the other chosen, this alongside the injury level of the chosen you are targeting are the two easiest ways of adding multipliers onto circumstances gain.

Regarding why you cant up a circumstance without boosting the associated trauma I imagine it is a mixture of simple logic that things that increase one increase the other but alongside that the game is as much a strategy and resource management game as it is porn game and so having to balance the various stats in order to most effectively corrupt the chosen is a major gameplay mechanic, I must also point out that you would have a far easier time if the circumstance you were trying to raise was anything other than hate which is the hardest to raise in isolation.

 

[bobjones9792]

Regarding why you cant up a circumstance without boosting the associated trauma I imagine it is a mixture of simple logic that things that increase one increase the other but alongside that the game is as much a strategy and resource management game as it is porn game and so having to balance the various stats in order to most effectively corrupt the chosen is a major gameplay mechanic, I must also point out that you would have a far easier time if the circumstance you were trying to raise was anything other than hate which is the hardest to raise in isolation.

All the circumstances work like hate, in that the associated trauma nerfs the growth of the circumstance. Bear in mind the shotgun approach that surroundings and commanders have on traumas also make it hard to manage.

After realizing that INJU and EXPO are the most important circumstances to boost circumstance growth, I'm still left with my original problem. As of now, we don't have a scalpel to focus only on circumstance growth or effective growth for specific, exclusive traumas (basic attacks aren't very good). I don't mind them being expensive upgrades, but at this point its very difficult to avoid unintended breaks while molding the chosen, so its easy for them to get corrupted in ways you don't intend.

If the goal of the game is to corrupt the chosen in the way we want, then we really need better tools to do that or a change to the underlying system so the stats are less interdependent. I could just be missing something here, but again, it feels impossible to mold them as I like, or I need a spreadsheet and advanced algebra to do so.

 

[Seamonkey]

All the circumstances work like hate, in that the associated trauma nerfs the growth of the circumstance. Bear in mind the shotgun approach that surroundings and commanders have on traumas also make it hard to manage.

After realizing that INJU and EXPO are the most important circumstances to boost circumstance growth, I'm still left with my original problem. As of now, we don't have a scalpel to focus only on circumstance growth or effective growth for specific, exclusive traumas (basic attacks aren't very good). I don't mind them being expensive upgrades, but at this point its very difficult to avoid unintended breaks while molding the chosen, so its easy for them to get corrupted in ways you don't intend.

If the goal of the game is to corrupt the chosen in the way we want, then we really need better tools to do that or a change to the underlying system so the stats are less interdependent. I could just be missing something here, but again, it feels impossible to mold them as I like, or I need a spreadsheet and advanced algebra to do so.

Apologies if I gave the impression that only fear nerfed the growth of its associated circumstance, my point about the negative feedback loops wasn't focused on the effects of fear on hate although that is a component of it but rather the inverse. Hate has a direct impact on fear as hates effect as it raises is that it serves as a multiplier on trauma, this is useful as the late stages of corruption require the chosen to have massive amounts of the associated trauma but since the trauma's directly inhibit the growth of there associated circumstance this means that hates growth tends to directly inhibit its own growth, this directly contrasts injury which perpetuates its own growth as its multiplier is applied to that chosen's own circumstances growth.

On the second point regarding the need of more targeted tools, it would likely be more difficult to balance than you might think. The whole system is balanced around the assumption that you are exploiting the synergies between the various circumstances in order to increase growth rates, overcoming major vulnerabilities of the chosen is very difficult without doing so. The one path to brute forcing these things tends to be a highly upgraded commander but as of the current update there more effective upgrades target a minimum of two circumstances, so a further upgraded version of the commander where they target a single vulnerability even more intensely might be a potential solution, although I am not certain how well you would be able to afford such a commander if you have been sacrificing efficiency for the sake of single minded targeting of specific circumstances as it is highly likely the that chosen will be generating very little energy on such a playthrough.

I would say that if you want to get a better feel of how the mechanics interact I would recommend doing a couple of cheats runs as the additional evil energy can help you play around with different commander builds to see how they might influence things. But I must agree that if you have a specific idea for how you want to mould the chosen at this point it can be a bit of a struggle to wrangle them how you want in the current state of the game.

 

[quiboune]

I wanted to break the Chosen in certain ways while avoiding others, like building hate so I can use the inseminate option but avoiding pain/injury. This feels impossible though in the current version.

This. The game is great but too focused on puzzles. If that's the objective it's going well, but it's extremely disappointing to watch so much potential being wasted. A corruption game where the player has no direct control of the corruption feels wrong, since the theme of corruption is about the target losing their control.

 

[bobjones9792]

I gave it some thought regarding targeted tools and came up with an idea.

How about brain slugs/parasites?

As an additional alternative to the commander, we could have a set of parasites that work on targeted mind control. They would boost one trauma and one circumstance of the player's choice. They wouldn't affect the other stats, and would be able to change targeted stats each round and be increasingly powerful with upgrades. They could also induce breaks like the commander. Since they don't affect all the various traumas at once nor have the ability to effect up to three circumstances like commanders, they would be less powerful overall, but being highly targeted they could induce specific changes easily.

If done well the flavor text would also be pretty awesome.

 

[Seamonkey]

I gave it some thought regarding targeted tools and came up with an idea.

How about brain slugs/parasites?

As an additional alternative to the commander, we could have a set of parasites that work on targeted mind control. They would boost one trauma and one circumstance of the player's choice. They wouldn't affect the other stats, and would be able to change targeted stats each round and be increasingly powerful with upgrades. They could also induce breaks like the commander. Since they don't affect all the various traumas at once nor have the ability to effect up to three circumstances like commanders, they would be less powerful overall, but being highly targeted they could induce specific changes easily.

If done well the flavor text would also be pretty awesome.

I've got to say that somehow this never occurred to me despite such things being a corruption genre staple. It would of course depend heavily on the writing to keep the thematic tone of the game the same as a big point is made of how what we subject the chosen to is what transforms them rather any of the more 'direct' forms of corruption.

So some quick brainstorming for potential flavour for such an upgrade.
Hate: Parasite or slug causes the chosen to be subjected to random visions of violence and random voices criticizing them.
Pleasure: Could just be as simple as a parasite directly stimulating them but if we wanted more variety could be directly hijacking the nervous system to cause pleasure.
Injury: Struggled a bit more on this one as injury text makes it clear that it represents more than just pain instead being actual physical damage; possibly have it be a parasite that secretes acid or have this one be some type of constrictor that slowly crushes them.
Exposure: Might cause the chosen to feel as they are to hot and causing them to start stripping maybe also playing voices commenting on there body as they do so to increase the exhibitionist factor.

 

[05841035411]

I gave it some thought regarding targeted tools and came up with an idea.

How about brain slugs/parasites?

As an additional alternative to the commander, we could have a set of parasites that work on targeted mind control. They would boost one trauma and one circumstance of the player's choice. They wouldn't affect the other stats, and would be able to change targeted stats each round and be increasingly powerful with upgrades. They could also induce breaks like the commander. Since they don't affect all the various traumas at once nor have the ability to effect up to three circumstances like commanders, they would be less powerful overall, but being highly targeted they could induce specific changes easily.

If done well the flavor text would also be pretty awesome.

I'm not really sure how this differs from the current specialized commanders; they also focus on a specific trauma and circumstance, and don't trigger vulnerabilities.

I'm also not really sure that this is much of a problem in general - so long as you don't use Inseminate/Broadcast/Sodomize/ForceOrgasm, you won't break anyone's second Vulnerability unintentionally. It's true that it's a bit too easy to break someone's first Vulnerability by mistake, but that has fairly minor effects compared to the others.

As regards unintended first-level Breaks, I'd say the most straightforward option is to give us the ability to cancel Surround attacks to avoid unplanned first-level Vulnerability breaks if their Circumstance damage gets too high, and possibly change surround attacks to only break a single first-level Vulnerability each instead of two; I can see how it might be hard to avoid inflicting certain Breaks if you're aiming for the second associated Trauma.

That said, so long as we're only talking first-level breaks, it does strike me as realistic that you can't really leave the rest of a character's psyche completely untouched considering how much you're abusing the rest of their mind, and the effects of a first-level break are pretty minor overall - it's basically just the character going through a rough patch.

 

[t14thforsaken]

My impression was always that the first level breaks are things that are going to Just Happen and there's no point trying to delay or avoid them. I don't know if they influence the relationships between the Chosen but I think they might not? The other gameplay effects of the first-tier breaks are so small that you should just ignore them. It's like a single multiplier of 1/2 or something in a game that sits squarely in the realm of Very Large Numbers where only factors of 10 or even factors of 100 matter.

Accidentally triggering the third-tier breaks in the wrong order or too early is potentially a real problem, I've done that a few times. It's okay if you do it for PLEA or INJU but accidentally hitting the third tier break for EXPO or especially HATE too early is a real problem since Slaughter and Striptease slow you down a lot. This is a bit annoying since the only way to avoid it is to just do nothing in sufficiently long surrounds and that feels like a wasted opportunity. Changing this feels like it should probably come after the main gameplay loop is finished though.

As far as score goes, right now there is no point in playing to maximize score, since you very easily run into integer overflow problems once you get the hang of the system. Right now score is an okay way of tracking your progress as you learn how the game works, but if it is going to be meaningful for players who have gotten sufficiently skilled it probably needs a complete rework.

 

[CSdev]

The notion of a fully corrupted chosen joining and sabotaging another team, (presumably as a new game plus thing?) Sounds like it could be a really engaging thing to include in the game but I do find myself curious as to how that would interact with the normal gameplay as having one of the chosen actively working against the groups goals would in practice likely need there own set of unique actions.

You're right that it'll be a new game plus thing. Rather than acting as a full fourth combatant, your mole would basically just open up new moves to use during battle and change some of the flavor text (e.g. when you've got all three enemies in an orgy, the fallen Chosen would be described there too pretending to hate it but actually just using it as an excuse to perv out on the others).

A futa -> female shift was mostly a lower-effort suggestion as an alternative for flaccidity. I don't think there's an iconic situation to trigger it because... well it's not a very common occurrence! The game does mention that futas seem to be discriminated against in this world though. I could imagine a Dignity Break where if a Chosen is stripped and Broadcast, then the psychic pressure of the viewers could force her body to conform to their expectations/desires of her body. If they think futas are freaks, their collective will could try and "fix" her. This might also help to explain why futas by default keep their penis a secret, out of fear of what could happen to it. Just a thought.

This is a good idea that fits well with the current elements of the game, thanks.

But if you're already interested in flaccidity, you might just do that instead. I did notice, when I was doing a quick check of how easy that would be, that you already have some flaccid content for males where their penis is bound or tied. Futas never get bound or tied that way though, they always have specific alternative text. Is that intentional or coincidence? You could probably consolidate a bit of code if you had futas and males treated the same way. You might even be able to merge some of the torture/sodomize descriptions so that futas have the best of both (a tied/abused penis, as well as anal).

The reason it works the way it does is that anal was programmed in first as being linked to INJU/Confidence breaks. However, when male Chosen were added, it needed to be different for them, since anal was used for their HATE/Morality breaks. My main priority was just making sure that there was some flavor text to indicate INJU/Confidence breaks for all characters, so rather than writing up a full third variant, I just had futas use the female text for that stuff. It isn't something I'm committed to.

As regards your design goal - in that case, might I suggest making the game's score an optional mode that's turned off by default? I say this because the player will often feel like they're doing something "wrong" if they're not actively trying to maximize their score, even if it doesn't really fit with their own personal goals. It ends up something that we chase simply because we can.

In my case, for instance, I'm not really interested in destroying the Chosen's confidence or public image - my image of an ideal corrupt Chosen team is one that's still widely admired and full of power, but who chose to side with me for the pleasure and because they really couldn't care less about humans anymore - where our "fights" end in very public victories for them in the Abandoned Warehouse District, but whenever it's someplace actually important... Ooops, for some reason they keep hitting the defenders instead of my thralls.

Now, I don't expect that anything like that will end up in the game, because that would involve a crazy amount of work to account for all of the possibilities - but it does mean that left to my own devices, I'd be aiming for primarily for Morality and Innocence breaks while Dignity and Confidence would only come into play if I really wanted to start a friendship or rivalry. Once the game starts grading me on whether or not I broke the rest, though... Well, then I might as well pick those breaks up as well.

This actually ties in to the "alternative corruption path" stuff that came up last page. I do want to have that stuff be acknowledged by the game, including both flavor text and gameplay bonuses that make it worthwhile to pursue. It's true that there are a lot of variants, but I think it's doable with a few updates' worth of work.

On that topic, could I suggest a "Shift the first x number of characters" setting as well? I enjoy the idea of characters physically transforming as a result of their fantasies, but it's more interesting to me if it's only one or two characters instead of the full set.

A chance of transforming would be even better, so that I wouldn't expect it, but I'm under the impression that you'd prefer to avoid any randomness in the game.

I don't mind adding randomness for pure flavor stuff (the in-combat dialogue uses randomization, for example), but I'm always concerned about cluttering the content options too much. The ability to change the shifting rules in the middle of the playthrough is intended to be a sort of compromise option for now.

All the circumstances work like hate, in that the associated trauma nerfs the growth of the circumstance. Bear in mind the shotgun approach that surroundings and commanders have on traumas also make it hard to manage.

After realizing that INJU and EXPO are the most important circumstances to boost circumstance growth, I'm still left with my original problem. As of now, we don't have a scalpel to focus only on circumstance growth or effective growth for specific, exclusive traumas (basic attacks aren't very good). I don't mind them being expensive upgrades, but at this point its very difficult to avoid unintended breaks while molding the chosen, so its easy for them to get corrupted in ways you don't intend.

If the goal of the game is to corrupt the chosen in the way we want, then we really need better tools to do that or a change to the underlying system so the stats are less interdependent. I could just be missing something here, but again, it feels impossible to mold them as I like, or I need a spreadsheet and advanced algebra to do so.

The next tier of commanders should have that scalpel-like quality you're looking for. Your brain slug idea isn't too far off.

This. The game is great but too focused on puzzles. If that's the objective it's going well, but it's extremely disappointing to watch so much potential being wasted. A corruption game where the player has no direct control of the corruption feels wrong, since the theme of corruption is about the target losing their control.

My own view is that if the targets don't have any real control in the first place, then there's no satisfaction in taking it away from them. They need to be able to fight back and do things that mess with your plans - there needs to be challenge and a chance of failure if you make a mistake, along with easier approaches and more difficult ones each with appropriate rewards. That said, I agree that more tools to go for specific breaks would be a good idea. The "sledgehammer" approach is just the simplest one to implement first.

 

[Seamonkey]

You're right that it'll be a new game plus thing. Rather than acting as a full fourth combatant, your mole would basically just open up new moves to use during battle and change some of the flavor text (e.g. when you've got all three enemies in an orgy, the fallen Chosen would be described there too pretending to hate it but actually just using it as an excuse to perv out on the others).


The next tier of commanders should have that scalpel-like quality you're looking for. Your brain slug idea isn't too far off.

My own view is that if the targets don't have any real control in the first place, then there's no satisfaction in taking it away from them. They need to be able to fight back and do things that mess with your plans - there needs to be challenge and a chance of failure if you make a mistake, along with easier approaches and more difficult ones each with appropriate rewards. That said, I agree that more tools to go for specific breaks would be a good idea. The "sledgehammer" approach is just the simplest one to implement first.

The traitor chosen working in the way you described is a decent compromise in terms of being a cool new thing to see on a second run through without adding the complexity that a full fourth combatant with different motives would involve.

It is also good to hear that some finer targeting on the commanders part is coming in the next tier, I don't see myself using it to much in how the game is structured in the current content but depending on what the next tier of break conditions are it could certainly prove useful and it would always be neat tools for those with super specific ideas in mind for how they want to mould the chosen.

I must also concur on the notion of the puzzle aspects being important to the games enjoyment, if it was trivial to break the chosen then it would not be nearly as enjoyable to finally see them fall. It is no coincidence that some of the most beloved porn games are generally known for being good games as well as containing good porn.

 

[kevbrty]

this game is nice. If only it could display some pics as in some other game.

Does the game have an ending? It says there will be a score at the end of the playthrough but I have reached Day 67 but still no end? How do I reach the ending if it has any?

 

[Smallfrie]

this game is nice. If only it could display some pics as in some other game.

Does the game have an ending? It says there will be a score at the end of the playthrough but I have reached Day 67 but still no end? How do I reach the ending if it has any?

if you do not cheat there is on at day 30

 

[Elmsdor]

Whoa this game is insanely nice. I still play Era games and hugely enjoy immersive text based games so this is awesome.

CSdev , have you considered Patreon or Subscribestar or some tipjar? You deserve goodness mate. But also, would you consider an action to perform anal on the girls? I always liked my heroines, lewd but still maiden. And in context/lore of the game, if the world knows the girls are still virgins but sexually developing/buttsluts, the desire/lust levels would be extreme enough to generate more Energy Especially on camera!

Cheers