XaiJu
manyeyedhydra
manyeyedhydra

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House of Hellish Harlots - Update Nov 30th

Just a quick update as I've mostly been away this Fri and Sat (although I will have most of Sunday to catch up).

This week I finished all the dialogue for The Portly Gentleman (aka NPC Money), implemented it and tested it.  The NPCs have been slightly awkward to implement because of my stubborn desire to make the dialogue natural and avoid the one-brainless-line problem common to RPGs, and The Portly Gentleman was no exception (although I think I'm getting the hang of what the generic structure should be across all NPCs).

This week was also especially stodgy as I wanted to rejig the scoring system.  Rather than a single number, I wanted to track which bits were being scored so The Portly Gentleman can give more precise feedback to the player.

The other thing I wanted to accommodate was repeat visits.  It wouldn't make sense for The Portly Gentleman to pay the player again for the same info, so I need to keep track of what was scored last time and only pay the player for new information.

There is also the possibility that going back to a harlot in the same run might give a slightly different scene (I would advise against revisiting Arana Solfugis...)

I haven't implemented repeat visits yet, but I am planning to in a later release, so I'd rather build that into the scoring system now rather than have to make a lot of changes later.

It works.

The next step is to update the existing harlot scenarios to add the score system.

One that's done I'll start on the new harlot scenarios.  As I mentioned last time, I have 5 sort of planned out (For two of them I've already written half of the 1st draft) and a couple more ideas that are promising.

I want to try and get the next demo out Mid-December or slightly after.  As before, I want 5 or 6 new harlot scenarios to go along with the new NPC.  If I get them done quicker, I'll add more, but I suspect the next release will be as soon as 6 new scenarios are done, whenever that is.

Please keep commenting your feedback and thanks for your continued support.

-manyeyedhydra 

Comments

I had a lengthy period like that. Just break things down small and keep ticking off little chunks at a time.

Many-Eyed Hydra

Awesome to see you still work on this, I've honestly dabbled in literature related to my Succubus vice, made a few things other than that to go with it. But never dedicated the time to actually finishing an CYOA/text adventure, or finish any of my story ideas.

I've thought about adding more tiers. I think patreon and Western eroge developers have earned a (sometimes deserved) bad rep for promising things and then not delivering. I don't want to be another example, so I want to keep things small and cheap at the moment. Because I'm working solo there are always risks of getting hit with crippling burnout or hitting an insurmountable technical issue. Keeping it pegged at $1 keeps things fair as far as I'm concerned (although if people want to donate more, I'm not going to turn it down!) The key point I'm aiming for is having all the NPCs in place, the main game loop fleshed out, and maybe a third to a half of the harlots done. That will be comparable to games as they enter Early Access. Then I might take stock and look at hiring more qualified people for artwork, etc. That will require more funding and higher tiers giving patreons some choice on harlot scenarios would be a perfect way to do that. For now, I don't want to be greedy. I need to get the early milestones done so I can justify asking for more backing.

Many-Eyed Hydra

The opportunity to vote on harlot scenarios would be a wonderful reward for a higher Patreon tier.


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