How about a moddable adult RPG

[unchained]

Hi there, I'm unchained. I'm new here.

Over the last few months, I've been playing around with a small project, a game I've been calling DisGrace. It was meant to be a 2D RPG, my first thought was essentially CoC with graphics. Then recently, I had a thought - we have a huge amount of adult games floating around this site and others like it, but there are remarkably few adult games with any kind of modding support. The few mods that we do have are mostly either translations, or uncensoring patches. I looked into my game, and I realized it wouldn't actually be all that difficult to implement decent modding support.

Essentially, this is what I'm thinking: instead of hard-coding everything in the game, every single character/location/quest/inventory item/etc would have its data stored in a separate JSON file. With a setup like that, in order to modify something, all you'd have to do is open the file in a text editor and change its values. It would also make it incredibly simple to create mod-making tools, which would basically just be a program that offers a simple, user-friendly interface for changing those values. That would basically make this game the porn equivalent of Skyrim, a game where you can create a new quest/item/character plugin easily using a dedicated mod-making tool.

What I have so far is just a very rough draft, but just to show the idea in practice: I've created a simple file with JSON formatting, one that looks like this:

Spoiler: a bunch of code

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And when I feed that file to the game, this is what I get:

The art itself is hella crude, as I haven't really devoted much time to it, but it should at least be enough to show the concept nicely. For example, if you wanted to give her demon wings instead of fairy wings, all you'd have to do is modify two lines of text, or simply use a mod tool to do it with a few clicks.

Tl;dr: the adult gaming community could really benefit from having a game with Skyrim-like mod support, so I'm thinking about devoting some actual time and effort to this little project. I chose to make it 2D because it's easier to import a custom sprite than a custom 3D model, and making 3D sex animations that look good is in my opinion a lot more difficult than doing the same in 2D.

Right now, I only have unpolished art and a few basic animations, but I'm fairly confident I could turn this into a decent game eventually, which finally brings me to my question: would people enjoy playing a game like that? Before I start to work on it, I'd like to see if it's the kind of game people would actually play, so what do you guys think?

 

[Papa Ernie]

@unchained
Sounds interesting.
Welcome and good luck with your game!

 

[eosar]

People will try anything when it comes to virtual porn, but it is unknown how many will stick around after.

If you hand everything on a silver platter, game and modding tool, you'll get a thread made in the Mods section with a couple of modders doing the heavy lifting and the vast majority just sitting around asking for more, like for most other moddable games.

If you can actually pull off Skyrim level of modding, players will flock because of oh so many dark fetishes illegal to talk about.

But if all you have is a prototype that doesn't do much and what you really want is active participation in development, well i think you're shit out of luck.

There was this project on hongfire to remake artificial academy with extensive modding capabilities, many ideas were given at first, but soon the hype wore off, the development slowed down and the enthusiasts scattered. I don't know what stage the game is in, but i don't see it having a thread here on F95.

My point is, if you have something that can be played with, people will play with it.
If all you have is hype and a prototype, no lazy bum will get anywhere near it.
Remember that most people here are leechers, the only thing we're good at is sticking to someone and sucking them dry.

Good luck and perseverance should you choose to do the work.

 

[anne O'nymous]

There's already (really) few adult games that was designed with moddability in mind. Even few of them where finished, and only one or two effectively had mods wrote for them.
You can't decide that your game will be modded, you can just ease the possibility to mod them. If the Fallout or Elder Scroll series were a big success in the mod scene, it's not because they are easily moddable. It's because, firstly, the stories are interesting enough for the game to succeed. Secondly, because there's many opening to insert whatever someone wanted. And finally because they are easy to mod.

If your game didn't have these three points, whatever how far you'll go to open it to mods, you'll never see a single one of them. Especially since you mostly misunderstood why there isn't "in depth" mods for adult games. It's not because it's hard to mod them ; any game made with Ren'py can be easily modded since you have full access to the source. No, it's because the ones who know how to mod don't necessarily know how to draw or how to find all the assets used by the game then use Daz3D to make their own CG.
And if it happen that they know both, then they prefer to make their own game than to mod an already existing one. This because there's in fact few place to mod "in depth" in adult games. The only mod going this far, is the one that add a character to Rogue like. But, it's also one of the few games that effectively provide enough space for this kind of mod.

 

[GuyFreely]

It's an interesting idea. I think it really comes down to the mod tools. There are a handful of people that might be willing to manually code the art this way, but there would be way more people willing to use a much simpler tool to do it. As Anne mentioned, you need a solid foundation first. You need a game people want to play first, then it can become a game people want to mod.

[Also, as I was scrolling down, I thought the fairy had a dick for a very brief moment. I assume it's configurable, but the outline is really hard to spot at a glance.]