Progress Report 8-3-18

This is a rundown on the progress of Parasite Infection since it was started Jan 20 2016.

- Initial game was a choose-your-own-adventure "game" on a spaceship.  Everything was hard coded directly in Twine.  And by hard coded I mean I did all the navigation manually, page by page.  No macros.  No javascript.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/jp2zi51y8wd0mug/Parasite_Infection.html/file

It had several features - infestation and recruitment of NPC's, parasite infestation, the parasite speaking to the player.  The art was web-based.  The map was clunky.  The navigation links moved around so rapidly clicking would send you in circles.

I added art.  This is the first version of the main character: https://i.imgur.com/uxQ0ukL.png

- My memory of the progress arcs that followed is a bit fuzzy.  I believe I added the space station, then the house portion, and then went back to update the game from the beginning.  I learned how to implement macros in Twine and I think a small amount of javascript.  I overhauled the artwork by using Illustrator to draw lining over other hentai art and real life pictures, then modified it to fit the story.

Second iteration of the artwork: https://i.imgur.com/sysFL9y.png

- The mall section was added, as well as an assault on the antari research station and the return to earth.  The story was broken up as Spaceship-Spacestation-Home-Mall-Assault-Return.  For the return section, I tried to build a game engine in Adobe Animate (used to be known as Flash back when macromedia owned it) and merge it into Twine using HTML5.  I got the help of a very skilled programmer, and they did phenomenal work at getting the abomination of code to function together.  I drew a bunch of spritework based off of pokemon sprites, and made a map of the house and some other areas.  I had also planned to try and remake a simpler version of the flash game Pandemic and add it into the game.  After some time, it became clear that the way it was being implemented wasn't adding anything to the story.  It just wasn't sexy.  So the entire thing was scrapped.  However, at this point several core features were discovered and are still going to be put back into the game - the ability to become a parasite and jump bodies, sexual addiction to a specific person based on neck parasite 'brainfucking', and living biosuits.

- Upon scrapping the HTML5 canvas component, a new effort was underway to overhaul the game code yet again because many deficiencies became apparent.  Arrays were used for the first time.  Or maybe the overhaul was at the start of the HTML5 thing - I kind of forget.  But generally the entire game got rebuilt again from the ground up.  Things became more procedural.  It started moving away from 'a complicated way to tell a story' and toward being a simulation.

The art was also redone at this point.  I really wanted the art to be actually good, and to also be original so that I owned it.  The new art looked like this:  https://i.imgur.com/LWM4W6O.png

And by pure luck I also found an artist to redo the parasites: https://i.imgur.com/Co2I37u.png

- At this point, feature progress slowed way down.  It was more about refining what was in the game rather than creating new things.  There was some burnout.  The game felt very close to being 'there' yet still didn't feel like it was real quality in my eyes.  Then one day I got an email from the artist saying "they just couldn't do this anymore".  Not only were they done with it, they also requested that their art be removed as much as possible from the game, probably because of the nature of the fetish.  I can't really get mad at people for being squeamish about this stuff.  Maybe they got blowback.

The quest for a new artist led me to commission a lot of different art styles, none of which felt correct:

https://i.imgur.com/jDxoo40.png
https://i.imgur.com/yKQEzOg.png
https://i.imgur.com/GSxFKta.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/AJqt0Wt.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/qbTT2Cz.png
https://i.imgur.com/sTYTkvy.png

- I kept searching around for another artist and ModeSeven decided to graciously start drawing for the game.  I was elated, because their art style is the epitome of what I was looking for.  It was heavy enough to feel solid, but cartoony enough to not feel overboard.  There were a few design errors made along the way but overall it felt like I had reached the end-goal, at least for the artwork.  If they decide to stop drawing, I know exactly what style to look for in a replacement.

Final art style: https://i.imgur.com/PcvCrkD.png

- The latest coder then decided to stop working on the project.  A good programmer makes >$50,000 a year working at a real job.  I had... around $12,000 a year to spend on the entire project at that time, and most of it was going toward the art.  There was no way to reliably keep programmers around.  Another individual approached and offered to help, and the game was overhauled once more to the current state.  Arrays were replaced by hashes.  The syntax for variables for the entire game changed.  Most of the logic was moved into javascript.  Twine was phased out of the editing process entirely - not by my choice, either.  I would have preferred to edit in that ancient monstrosity but the file system has simply grown too large and expansive.  Also, you can't use control-z to undo in Twine.  The entire thing has been moved into github.  A lot of features were refined and some new important ones were discovered.

- Along the way, key features have been identified and added into a newly created design document for the game.  I can't remember exactly when many of these were created, but the majority of them have happened in the last few months after a burst of creativity.  Anything not in the game currently is going to be implemented in the next few parts.  The new organization of the game is divided into 3 parts, [Spaceship-Spacestation] [Home-Mall] [Research facility-Antari Homeworld].

Features:
- Infestation
- Mind control
- Sex change from infestation
- Sex addiction
- Werms (orifice infestation), chokers (neck, and more recently crotch), starfish (breast), canals (orifice infestation)
- Player gets turned into a parasite, engages in body swapping
- Competing questlines for player vs. parasite using Harmony stat
- XCOM style % chance management
- Resistance, Force stats to determine infestation % success
- Alternative exits from each part that lets you skip quickly through the story
- Parasite merging
- Biosuits
- Alternate versions of parasites (blue starfish, red werms)
- Subservience to NPC's
- NPC's autonomously infest others, spreading infection
- Turn specific NPC's into dedicated breeders
- All-the-way-through penetration from canal parasites
- All-the-way-through penetration by another completely separate parasite based off of a tapeworm
- Trapping rooms, infecting rooms (required rooms to be reorganized as objects)
- Parasite acceptance
- Manual control of infested NPC behavior
- Brain infestation minigame (this was completely reworked like... 5 times at least)
- Antari species hermaphroditic properties

Rejected concepts/features
- Animated gif that grew stronger from infection, obscuring screen
- HTML5 Canvas graphical interface
- Werms inducing sex change on their own
- Tentacle pits (to be redone as Werm pits)
- Grind mechanics
- Action bar
- Clothes shopping (seriously, there's like a million games out there with clothes shopping.  If you want to shop for clothes in a game, go play those.)

I now have a game design document, an art management document, a git repo, and a dedicated list of common macros/functions used in the game.  I'm sure I could have done this better, but I'm also sure it could have been done much worse.  I think a lot of progress has been made and the pace feels like it has been picking up recently.