Jump to content

[UE4] Feign - An Adult Fantasy RPG [In Development]


Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, slaen said:

Something I've been struggling with is how to have some content that people really want but is a complete turn off to other people.  I'm currently thinking that the general overall world would have relatively vanilla content everywhere.  But then specific subjects or interactions that some people might not enjoy would be in localized to a specific area.  Like, as an example, if there was a dungeon of just tentacle monsters.  If the player doesn't enjoy tentacle monsters then they don't ever have to go there.  

 

Is that enough that the player could know where to go for the content that they want but the world could still be populated with things that they didn't want?  Or is it too much of a turn off just knowing that specific content is in the game and ruins the experience of the content that the player does enjoy?

 

The only limitations this puts on the game design is that any "main quests" would need to only interact with the vanilla content.  Or else give an option to only interact with vanilla content.  Maybe giving an option of going to tentacle monster dungeon or vanilla dungeon.  Both would result in the quest being completed and it would be up to the player's choice as to which content they interacted with.  It would be a bit more work but if it made people enjoy the game more it would probably be worth it.  


Which brings me to:

Maybe but probably not.  I guess it also would depend on how in depth that feature would need to be.  


Here's my current thoughts on the subject -
In the rough ideas I have for quests and campaign stuff I have plans for male and female characters.  I also have plans for some races to be one gender or the other.  

 

Possible ways to handle the issue:


Make no male characters spawn at all
- Quest design would get more complicated trying to keep track of if this specific character would spawn in a specific game.
- Effectively cutting out half of the characters in a town and also half of the possible game content

 

Spawn all male characters as female characters
- Pronouns would get funky in dialogue.
- If there is ever voice over work done that could also get kind of strange or would mean recording every line twice.
- There could also be bugs if a specific sex scene was hard coded for a specific gender

 

What if there was a specific area of the map, like an amazon village, that right around that village all of the enemies happen to be female or gender neutral?  

 

Or is it a matter of genitals only?  Currently every human character, male and female, shares the same base body.  There is a version that has no genitals of any kind, sort of like a plastic doll.  It could be possible to just set any of the undesired gender / genitals to have doll anatomy by default.  Would that sort of be what you're looking for?

 

I guess I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for as far as a gaming experience.

 

 

You do give good points, to be honest I wasn't exactly sure how to describe what I was meaning. I guess what I would want to ask is if there is a way to turn off certain interactions, like malexmale, or femalexmale, and so on and so forth. I realize now after what you said that my initial question was half baked and not well thought out. What I should ask instead of being able to disable certain genders, is have it so we can choose what genders we want to interact with? I mean if there are hardcoded ones that are for say story, you could always just keep that out of the options. I apologize if I am confusing or not understanding, I'm not tech savvy in the way of making video games and am not sure all the craziness that would be required to do something like this. This game looks interesting nonetheless and I hope it takes off for you.

Link to comment

I think in order for any of us to weigh in on a good way to do things would be how much randomization you're intending to put into this.  Do you want to craft all your dungeons by hand or have the game generate them?  I personally think procedurally generated dungeons could be an effective way to tackle this particular issue, but it will almost certainly mean more work getting your tiles to match up nicely on generation and ironing out errors.  A good example of a game like that would be Bloodborne with it's chalice dungeons.  Every time you place a new root chalice and create a dungeon, the tiles for that dungeon are matched up randomly to each other following an area theme and enough logic to make sure there's actually a path to the goal, and everything else is just about free game.  If your dungeons were generated rather than built by you for their singular purpose (like with Bethesda games), then you could leave these themes and fetishes that people might not like as options that can be toggled in and out of the list the generator can pick from.  If a person doesn't like tentacles, they turn it off and dungeons aren't generated with tentacles.

 

The problem is that's going to take some doing to get working.  The other option I see is what you said, keep mandatory areas pretty vanilla and let players seek out certain content.  If it's optional I doubt anyone will be overly upset that it's simply in the game, it's not like they're forced to experience it if they don't like it.  This way you can build an area without having to worry about the computer breaking it as it tries to build on the fly, and you can personalize them much more for a specific feeling.

 

I don't know, I feel like there's no elegant, magic bullet solution here.  Both have merits, both have drawbacks.  I guess it's just what option sounds good to you.  You know, there is that other project, LifePlay by Vinfamy, who has a number of modules that can be enabled when you play to unlock certain kinds of content.  You could make certain fetishes correspond to their own module which will make those optional areas appear or not appear at all.  That way if anyone doesn't want that in their game, they just disable the module and it's not in.  Don't know what coding modules takes, though, so that again might be more work than it's worth just for the risk of not upsetting someone who can't avoid an area with a giant neon sign over it detailing why they shouldn't go there.

Link to comment
13 hours ago, slaen said:

Something I've been struggling with is how to have some content that people really want but is a complete turn off to other people. 

Stop, It's not necessary to please everyone and I think you won't have enough energy to do so

 

Build up the framework and the main quest is enough, let others (modders, helpers) to think about these content would be better

 

Though if you like, in my opinion you can build sperated "game world" for different fetishes

Link to comment
On 5/10/2019 at 12:08 AM, Chiisai said:

What I should ask instead of being able to disable certain genders, is have it so we can choose what genders we want to interact with?

No worries, I just wanted to make sure I was answering the right question.  But, yes, probably, this will be in the game.  I already need to write logic to determine which sex scene goes with whatever gender combination of the characters involved so there will be something to determine the sex of characters.  From there it should be easy to just run a check to see if the player wants to see this specific content or not.  I might also include another option just to disable sex scenes entirely.  It might not be in the game for a little while at least until I have the code polished up to handle sex scenes.

 

On 5/10/2019 at 6:10 AM, Just Checking said:

Do you want to craft all your dungeons by hand or have the game generate them?  I personally think procedurally generated dungeons could be an effective way to tackle this particular issue, but it will almost certainly mean more work getting your tiles to match up nicely on generation and ironing out errors.

Oh man, I'm a bit scared to touch procedural generation.  It would be a lot of fun to learn but it might be a huge undertaking too.  It is something to keep in mind though moving forward for when it's time to start tackling dungeon creation. 

 

I've also been meaning to check out  LifePlay but haven't had the time yet.  But the module system you're talking about is even more reason I should pick it up. 

 

On 5/10/2019 at 10:59 AM, alcurad90 said:

Build up the framework and the main quest is enough, let others (modders, helpers) to think about these content would be better

You're right.  It's just very easy to want to make everything all at once.  Just need to stay focused and get the core game ready.  Then later there will be time to worry about other stuff.

 

On 5/10/2019 at 4:59 PM, FlamingNinja said:

loving the look of everything so far. any chance of a public play test release or something? lol. just so we can check for bugs, glitches, etc.

Hopefully soon.  I'm working on all the pieces for the initial version of the sex system right now.  Then I need to hook up dialogue and do a polish pass on the options menu and character creation menu.  After that there should be enough to put out a proof of concept build for people to mess with.  As for a timeline on that, uh, maybe the end of next month?  I have a ton of animations to do and I keep finding things that I need to fix on the rig so it's been slowing me down a bit.  I don't want to make any promises or set up unreasonable expectations.  But the first version when it's ready I'll put a download link in this thread. 

 

On 5/10/2019 at 7:41 PM, xaraaji said:

Are you still thinking of implementing transformation?

Yes, still planning on getting some sort of transformation system into the game.  Fenoxo has done an amazing job with the types and quantities of transformations.  I won't be able to support everything from CoC unfortunately if I did I'd be working on making a character editor for a year or two.  But everything that is in the current character editor will be supported in realtime (there's a quick demo video of the character editor in the first post of this thread to give you an idea, assuming that gfycat loads it).  Things like the overall body type of the character, skin/eye/hair color, gender "parts and pieces", will all be supported, at least once I create the items to do so. 

 

Given the time and resources I would also like to implement things like tails, wings, and horns.  These would probably be cosmetic and wouldn't allow the character to fly or anything. 

 

And I'm going to try and keep all the transformation stuff semi optional or at least clearly telegraphed.  Things like potion descriptions would at least hint that they would transform the player.  and if there is quest content that does something similar I would also try to make the player know that before hand and give them an alternative option. 

 

 

Link to comment
6 hours ago, slaen said:

No worries, I just wanted to make sure I was answering the right question.  But, yes, probably, this will be in the game.  I already need to write logic to determine which sex scene goes with whatever gender combination of the characters involved so there will be something to determine the sex of characters.  From there it should be easy to just run a check to see if the player wants to see this specific content or not.  I might also include another option just to disable sex scenes entirely.  It might not be in the game for a little while at least until I have the code polished up to handle sex scenes.

 

That makes sense. I apologize for the confusion, I'm not always the best with words when it comes to describing things, but thankfully rewording it made more sense.

Link to comment

barmaid_wip_02.jpg.fe1bd227a935bcef57b2fa7c5fe94056.jpg

 

Finally got the barmaid outfit into the game.  Still messing around with colors and stuff.  The different body slider morphs need some love as well.  But the heavy lifting for this is done. 

 

I've been working a lot on animations and the sex systems this week as well.  Some of the assumptions I made about how things would work were pretty much wrong.  Or wrong in the sense that doing them without a professional tech artist would be very difficult and even if I did have that tech artist I'm pretty sure they would want to kill me.  But I still have a few more things to test out.  It looks like there will be either camera cuts or the character will teleport a bit when initiating a sex scene.  It's not exactly how I pictured it but trying a test where the player would have to try and pathfind to the correct spot, then get into position, and then start the animation just felt really tedious.  Spending 10 seconds or more to trigger an animation I don't think is worth the trade off in immersion. 

 

I haven't touched the first person view yet either.  Which hopefully won't be too much more of a headache.  If it is then I'll just do the cut to third person instead. 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment

Well, this week sucked.  I ended up breaking and then fixing the character creator, main menu, and save system.  I also dumped a ton of time into setting up some of the gender swapping mechanics in the character creator.  That was all under the assumption that I could toggle UV channels at runtime - which apparently you can't do or else I just haven't found out how.  Those are still broken but I'm going to try and get them working tonight or tomorrow. 

 

But...

 

The sex system is coming along!!  In the first version when the player reduces the enemy to no health the enemy will go into a "knocked out" state and fall to the ground.  The player can either damage them more, which will ragdoll the enemy and make them non-interactive, or else press a hotkey to initiate a sex scene.  The scene will have an intro animation, then a looping animation (that will continue until a hotkey is pressed), then a finishing animation and then the scene will be done.  The camera when it is in third person will be able to rotate around and zoom in and out.  The camera in first person will probably be a fixed angle and won't be moveable by the player.   The player will be able to toggle between first person and third person whenever they want. 

 

I'm sort of thinking that eventually, given time and resources and all that stuff,  that it would be cool to have the sex scenes sort of branch out.  So the player would see almost like a dialogue wheel on screen with possible positions to switch to.  The position tree could go a couple layers deep into variations on positions and also branch back to the very beginning of the tree.  That would give the player a bit of control over how the entire scene played out, what positions were played, and how long things would go for. 

 

BUT

 

What do players want to see?  I've seen other games use sort of like minigames during the sex scenes or timed button presses almost like quick time events.  I'm hesitant to do something similar.  I could also make the looping animations end after a certain amount of time on their own rather than waiting for hotkey input.  But that seems almost like why not watch a video instead? 

 

Not totally set on any features but that's sort of where I'm at.  If anyone has opinions, suggestions, or examples let me know. 

 

 

Link to comment
3 hours ago, slaen said:

What do players want to see?  I've seen other games use sort of like minigames during the sex scenes or timed button presses almost like quick time events.  I'm hesitant to do something similar.  I could also make the looping animations end after a certain amount of time on their own rather than waiting for hotkey input.  But that seems almost like why not watch a video instead? 

 

Not totally set on any features but that's sort of where I'm at.  If anyone has opinions, suggestions, or examples let me know. 

 

 

I've played an embarrassingly large amount of h-games over the past 10 or so years and I cannot recall a sex minigame ever being something that was anything more than a distraction. Some games have you slam left and right to get out of a hold (female "run or rape" games typically), some have ddr (or qte as you've said) like mechanics that require you to press arrows or keys as they fall while others have you destroy your mouse by clicking a thousand times to raise a bar. All of them took me out of the action. If you really wanted some sort of player interaction mid-coitus that had a failstate then having some sort of gallery/animation viewer that doesn't have the minigame would be a reasonable compromise. The best system in my opinion is just view the animation, press a button to advance to the next state until finish. Some games allow an option to toggle having the scenes progress naturally or require direct input which I think pleases everyone, those who want more control or those that like less control during scenes.

Link to comment
12 hours ago, slaen said:

 

What do players want to see?  I've seen other games use sort of like minigames during the sex scenes or timed button presses almost like quick time events.  I'm hesitant to do something similar.  I could also make the looping animations end after a certain amount of time on their own rather than waiting for hotkey input.  But that seems almost like why not watch a video instead?  

For me I'd recommend a simple QTE stuff like press the E button as quickly as possible.

When you've pressed enough botton then it could ask for another botton and play the finish animation or change to another pose

 

And of course the speed of sex aniamtion should depend on the speed of QTE

 

 

QTE stuff could keep the player's passion and focus since they are playing some combat sex stuff

While the story sex scene could be treat as some minigame

Link to comment
19 hours ago, slaen said:

What do players want to see?  I've seen other games use sort of like minigames during the sex scenes or timed button presses almost like quick time events.  I'm hesitant to do something similar.  I could also make the looping animations end after a certain amount of time on their own rather than waiting for hotkey input.  But that seems almost like why not watch a video instead? 

 

Not totally set on any features but that's sort of where I'm at.  If anyone has opinions, suggestions, or examples let me know. 

 

no QTE or button mashing thing please, we only have two hands ;)
like Attrition says above, a simple gallery style viewer thing would be nice, with the animation looping over until the player hits the 'next scene' button :) along with a settings option to toggle manual or automatic scene advancement, as well as multiple POVs.

Link to comment

 

On 5/21/2019 at 11:41 PM, slaen said:

What do players want to see?  I've seen other games use sort of like minigames during the sex scenes or timed button presses almost like quick time events.  I'm hesitant to do something similar.  I could also make the looping animations end after a certain amount of time on their own rather than waiting for hotkey input.  But that seems almost like why not watch a video instead? 

 

I guess it depends how you want to engage the player.

If you let the player wank off to an animation, what happens after they finished their deed? Will the sexual high dissipate making them want to do something else once done.

Maybe if you don't let the player get a chance to let off steam you could keep them on a constant high.

 

Is sex something optional? Is it part of the story? Or is it also part of the game mechanic?

Does the player get any benefits that will help them advance their character if they do have sex? Here are some examples:

  • A succubus for instance absorbs souls or drains the victims life essence and becomes more powerful but might depend on sex to survive.
  • A healing system.
  • The player could maybe give birth to pets.
  • It might be fuel for a magic system. Or used for ritual magic for a long term buffs. Or the sex liquids used in a crafting system.
  • Sex could allow the player to transfer their soul into the victims body to control them. Or allow the player to morph their body to look like the victims.
  • Sexual ecstasy might allow you to enter a higher plane, a pocket dimension or allow you to enter the victim's mind to read their thoughts and memories or allow a metal hack.
  • For fast paced action, sexual ecstasy could be equivalent to the force. As long as there are creatures in the area having sex you gain an additional boost. In a fight against many NPCs you might attach a sexual device to a defeated victim or let your tentacle pet or companions have sex with them while you fight the other NPCs gaining more and more boosts the more victims you create. Even though you are not necessarily concentrating on sex and instead are focusing on the fight you will still have glimpse of the sexual scenes. The sound of the sex cries would be very important to keep the sexual high of the gamer.

 

By just taking one of these examples the game could completely change.

Taking over a victims body could change the game into a stealth game.

Allowing you to read a persons memory could change the game into a investigation / puzzle game.

 

Or integrate all as skills in the sex skill section of a progression tree.

 

My point is that there is a way to make sex more than just pornography by implementing it as a game mechanic where the player wants to have in-game sex not to just satisfy their perversions but to also advance, alter their avatar.

Link to comment

Xaraaji makes some good points about how sexual content will actually impact the game.  Trying to implement some of those ideas could add a layer of importance to managing how often you end up banging goblins, for instance his suggestion of tying sex to magic somehow or something similar.

 

I do have something of a suggestion in terms of sex minigames but my shitty explanation gets a little lengthy so I'm spoilering it.

 



 

As for mini games or something like that, I agree that it's often more of an annoying distraction than anything else, but then again it's also usually something hugely invasive that requires a bit of paying attention to something that's not the actual action.  Things like QTE's, button mashing and wild mouse waving are kinda rough.  Honey Select had a very simple climax bar system where scrolling the mouse wheel up and down changed the speed of the animation, and at a speed sweet spot the girl's bar would fill, or the guy's would fill faster.  Then the sweet spot changes after a moment and you find it again.  Something similar could be kind of ok, if for no other reason than to give the impression that you're working toward someone having an orgasm, as opposed to the way standard LL and Sexlab worked of just running an animation until you decide you're done.  On the topic of Illusion games, Artificial Academy and Honey Select both had a thing where you assign turn ons to created characters.  If characters encountered by the player have a specific turn on, or a couple or something, randomly rolled for them the first time you engage them it could give you a system where you do a little experimenting with a couple different positions and speeds to see what your partner responds to based on their rolled turn ons, animation tags and whether you're hitting the aforementioned sweet spots.

 

An example for a consensual scene would be the character you're interacting with might roll both "rough" and "slow" as their turn ons.  So using positions tagged as rough would cause their bar to start filling, and their sweet spots would tend to sit around the slower end of things, and hitting them would speed up their bar fill.  Or using a non-rough animation but still getting those slow end sweet spots could still get them going but not as fast.  This would make for an easy minigame that barely required any real attention to be paid, could all be done with the mouse and would add just a little more depth to it all than just being an animation to watch.  It could even tie in with Xaraaji's various suggestions by giving you qualities of sex to achieve, obviously with better sex having a better pay off for your gameplay tie ins.  

 

My suggestion here doesn't really interact well with non-consensual encounters if you're just looking to get your own character off.  The gameplay tie ins could still apply through the whole quality of sex thing, but you'd only receive bonuses based on your own character's enjoyment, which would come down to turn ons you'd have to assign them somewhere, perhaps during character creation, or even as part of it's own progression system.  Again from Xaraaji, he suggested a sex skill with a skill tree.  Maybe as you progress along the tree you're presented with the option to add a new turn on, maybe every so many investments into the tree or something, I don't know.  There could be a specific branch for non-consensual to counter the penalties?  I don't really know, even typing that out felt creepy.  Not much makes me squeamish when it comes to simulated sexual preferences in a video game where nothing is actually being hurt, but something about the idea of actively practicing to improve your own raping experience sets me a little on edge.

 

The point here is having characters have preferred positions, or at least kinds of sex, and preferred speeds and stuff that all tie in with simply selecting said speed along a reasonable degrees of variance would make for something to give the animations a bit of interaction, especially if you implement that branching scene idea you were talking about (or at least some way to switch to other positions, it doesn't have to be complicated, I'm sure).

 

 

And here's a second spoiler for the slightly different topic of tying sex to gameplay, based purely on my own opinions and what I've seen from replies to various mods that do just that

 



 

I would say if you're trying to make sex an aspect that ties into the game in other ways, look to other mods hosted here for things like fallout, skyrim and oblivion and learn from them.  For example, mods that add escalating lust, and said lust carrying penalties, exist in basically every game catered to here, so that right there is an indicator there's probably a demand for something like that.  Don't copy them, obviously, but do learn what they do well and what people like about them.  For instance not everyone likes to play with that lust thing I mentioned, and I myself prefer the effects to not be overly punishing.  Some mods practically cripple your character if you don't go out and get her gang banged by trolls every three days (looking at you, Lover's Satisfaction).  However, I do like the combination of Sexlab Aroused and Dripping When Aroused because, while it doesn't punish the character's ability to preform their actions or survive combat, it can be used to add visual and audio indicators of your character's arousal level, which get in the way and tells me my character could really use an orgasm about now without making it impossible for her to swing a sword or light someone on fire or just carry on a basic conversation.  If you want to add things similar, I'd say give players the option to go by degrees.  Maybe a difficulty option type deal where you can choose how punishing it is to let your character go too long without some action, or even disable such things altogether.  I once saw someone post that they don't use any skyrim mod that requires Aroused because they don't want a math equation telling them when their character is horny.  I think giving players the option of deciding just how much impact certain functions will have on their gameplay is important, because that'll swing your game from being an RPG adventure action game at one end of the spectrum to being entirely about sex with the thin pretense of an RPG mixed in at the other.

 

 

All that assumes, of course, that all this is even something that can be put in.  As with all my suggestions, that's more work for the sake of pleasing the widest possible audience instead of just making a game with a clear goal and design that would let you focus much more on the parts you actually want to put in yourself.  My minigame suggestion doesn't sound to me like it would be too unfeasible, but the whole second paragraph...  If you don't think making those suggested things optional is... well, an option, then I say take a light weight approach from the get go.  It might not cater to the more hard core players that like their character to be highly vulnerable and disadvantaged, but it would mean more casual players that just want an easy game with some sex in it aren't put off.  And more casual players will probably make up most of your potential playerbase.

Link to comment
11 hours ago, Just Checking said:

I do have something of a suggestion in terms of sex minigames but my shitty explanation gets a little lengthy so I'm spoilering it.

Haha. There come's to the problem I've said: "how to combine the fast pace gameplay with the slow pace sex scene"

 

For me I've thought for some ideas

 

1,The combat sex

These scenes must have a QTE system and should not be too long.

I would better treat them as part of the combat system. You fight for 90 seconds (for example) then have a 15-30s sex scene. Fight-sex-fight-sex-fight-sex until every enemy is dead

 

2,The story sex

Story sex would better be just some animations. These scenes are for players to have a break, thought of something later , or just ... you know

 

3, the gameplay sex

These sex a mostly for some gameplay use, like some prostitution or seduction gameplay.

These scene could be shorter than the story sex and have more interact, like choose next poses, find the target's weak point

They can be treat as a dialogue system I think

 

4,sex minigame

These a just minigame with sex scenes, like lactate a minotaur, ride a centaur, raise a tentacle monsters ,and so on

Link to comment
21 hours ago, alcurad90 said:

1,The combat sex

These scenes must have a QTE system and should not be too long.

I would better treat them as part of the combat system. You fight for 90 seconds (for example) then have a 15-30s sex scene. Fight-sex-fight-sex-fight-sex until every enemy is dead

I personally don't much care for too many QTEs in my games, I find them less interactive than just distracting, especially in the context of - let's be honest here - porn.  I think we might need an idea of where Slaen wants to take things, just how much of the game he intends to revolve around sex.  If he wants to go with sex as a focused aspect of the game, then making it more action oriented makes some sense, incorporate it directly into gameplay in a way where the player can succeed or fail and what they're doing is then appropriately impacted, thus QTE's.  If it's intended to just be... you know, included as something you can do but not a necessarily central pillar of the game, something a little less intensive would probably fit a bit better.

 

My guess is he has probably been approaching it from a less action oriented direction given what he's already told us, as well as the games he's listed as his inspirations, especially things like Corruption of Champions, where sex is (usually) a consequence/reward, rather than a direct mechanic of gameplay.  Still, it would be interesting to see what way he leans on the topic.  It'd definitely make it easier to focus ideas for what players want to see included if they already know what the general idea is intended to be.

Link to comment

This week has been more backend stuff.  I pulled apart the broken parts where the character creator and save game system were having issues.  Some of the character presets wouldn't save or load or would get carried over from the previous save if still in the same game instance.  Lots of little stuff that added up to the character being broken when it loaded.  I think I tracked everything down but it still needs a bunch of testing. 

 

I added some extra joints to the rig for dynamic objects on the character - right now it's only being used for jiggle physics on the player's boobs.  That meant going back and painting weights, re-exporting a bunch of stuff, and then figuring out the animdynamics stuff in UE4.  I should probably post up a video once I get things a bit more polished. 

 

And I'm still working on the sex scene animations.  I'm not the strongest animator so stuff takes me longer than I would like it to.  But there is still progress being made.  At the moment I'm planning on 4 full scenes for the proof of concept build:  Female / male, female / female, male / male, male/female.  That's the plan at least. 

 

On 5/21/2019 at 10:14 PM, AttritionofContrition said:

All of them took me out of the action. If you really wanted some sort of player interaction mid-coitus that had a failstate then having some sort of gallery/animation viewer that doesn't have the minigame would be a reasonable compromise. The best system in my opinion is just view the animation, press a button to advance to the next state until finish.

On 5/22/2019 at 2:00 PM, FlamingNinja said:

no QTE or button mashing thing please, we only have two hands ;)
like Attrition says above, a simple gallery style viewer thing would be nice, with the animation looping over until the player hits the 'next scene' button :) along with a settings option to toggle manual or automatic scene advancement, as well as multiple POVs.

I'm with you on the no button mashing thing.  I haven't seen button mashing done well for all players.  There's no way of knowing how "good" the player is at button mashing and levels of those fast twitch motions can vary wildly and be super frustrating for the player if they aren't calibrated for them.  So, yes, the first version of the sex system and the vast majority of the scenes will be something where the player can just hit a next scene button when they want to. 

 

There might be QTE's of some sort in the game.  I'll come back to this at the bottom of this post where I linked the example video.  But it would be like the job minigames in Fable 2.  Where it's more of a timing game rather than a button mashing game. 

 

Uh, the gallery viewer though.  I honestly hadn't thought about a gallery until now.  I'll need some time to think out how or if it would work in the context of the game.  How would that work though?  So picture a world like Skyrim with all of the different NPCs.  How would the gallery function in that case?  Would it be like a menu system where the player could load up their current character and then an NPC of their choice?  or even just choose two NPCs?  and then play the animations on those characters?  or would there be something deeper?  or something I'm missing?

 

On 5/22/2019 at 4:51 PM, xaraaji said:

Is sex something optional? Is it part of the story? Or is it also part of the game mechanic?

Does the player get any benefits that will help them advance their character if they do have sex? Here are some examples:

I really like these examples and had been toying with the idea of almost a succubus character class / race.  It's all stuff that will need to be designed out in the future when there's more time.  But I'll come back to this when I get to that time. 

 

For the sex systems I'm still trying to figure out how integral they will be to the overall experience.  Right this minute, and this is definitely subject to change,  but the sex system could be thought of as something that is there and can be really delved into or left almost entirely alone.  In some ways it would be similar to the stealth systems in Skyrim.  The player could base their entire experience around sneaking, from the approach to combat, the equipment that is used, the stores the player shops at, the NPC's that the player interacts with, and the quests that are pursued all revolve around the stealth mechanics.  But the player is never forced into that play style.  It's entirely possible to go through all of Skyrim and never sneak once.  Of course this will limit some of the content the player encounters but it's a possibility.  I want the sex systems to be similar.  Like it would be there and would be an entire playstyle in itself but it isn't absolutely mandatory. 

 

On 5/22/2019 at 6:54 PM, Just Checking said:

I do have something of a suggestion in terms of sex minigames

These are good and could probably be fleshed out into their own tech demos or full games.  I'm still trying to sort out where the line for my game needs to be in terms of gamifying sex.  I've thought about adding a meter like survival games have for hunger and thirst, that just slowly fills over time.  But then that forces the player to engage with those mechanics.  Which at the moment doesn't feel right for the game.  Like gamifying rape or creating skill trees feels off to me. 

 

But I am totally with you on figuring out how to tie in gameplay elements where they fit. 

On 5/23/2019 at 6:31 AM, alcurad90 said:

Haha. There come's to the problem I've said: "how to combine the fast pace gameplay with the slow pace sex scene"

This.  This is pretty much the balancing act.  Like I've mentioned earlier the proof of concept will just have the basic sex systems in place with a button for the player to advance through the scene. 

 

Also do you have an example of the combat sex Fight-sex-fight-sex-fight-sex  sort of system that you're thinking of?  I'm not sure I'm picturing it correctly. 

 

But I've been thinking there are places where QTE's would be appropriate and add to the fun of the game.  As an example:

 

 

I think as a quicktime event this works and fits the overall encounter.  It makes sense that the player's character is trying to fight off a succubus and needs to concentrate on something in the periphery of their awareness.  Which is a similar experience to what the player themselves is going through - watching the visuals on screen but also paying attention to the gameplay cues.   It also looks like it's an issue of hitting a hotkey at the correct time.  Sort of like the old Fable 2 job games, or the active reloading system from gears of war. 

 

So what I'm currently thinking is that the vast majority of scenes will be the more vanilla press hotkey to play next animation scenes without any limits or constraints to anything.  But there will be encounters where it makes sense from a gameplay standpoint, like the above video, where a small QTE could make sense and add to the feeling of the scene. 

 

How would people feel about that?  or does that Succubus video seem distracting and annoying to people?

 

and thanks everyone for the replies.  They're all super helpful and make me think through where the game is going and any of the design decisions. 

 

Link to comment
1 hour ago, slaen said:

I think as a quicktime event this works and fits the overall encounter.  It makes sense that the player's character is trying to fight off a succubus and needs to concentrate on something in the periphery of their awareness.  Which is a similar experience to what the player themselves is going through - watching the visuals on screen but also paying attention to the gameplay cues.   It also looks like it's an issue of hitting a hotkey at the correct time.  Sort of like the old Fable 2 job games, or the active reloading system from gears of war. 

 

So what I'm currently thinking is that the vast majority of scenes will be the more vanilla press hotkey to play next animation scenes without any limits or constraints to anything.  But there will be encounters where it makes sense from a gameplay standpoint, like the above video, where a small QTE could make sense and add to the feeling of the scene. 

 

How would people feel about that?  or does that Succubus video seem distracting and annoying to people?

What I'm getting from that is "player getting attacked" is where the QTE comes in, in an attempt to resist, where as consensual scenes would lack that since there's no need for... shall we say, competition?  I'd say that sounds reasonable.  Puts it in context so situations that are supposed to be safe and relaxed don't have the added distraction.

 

1 hour ago, slaen said:

Uh, the gallery viewer though.  I honestly hadn't thought about a gallery until now.  I'll need some time to think out how or if it would work in the context of the game.  How would that work though?  So picture a world like Skyrim with all of the different NPCs.  How would the gallery function in that case?  Would it be like a menu system where the player could load up their current character and then an NPC of their choice?  or even just choose two NPCs?  and then play the animations on those characters?  or would there be something deeper?  or something I'm missing?

Actually this is another point where Honey Select is a good example, as that game is basically just a sort of interactive animation gallery.  In that one, you design a (or a few) girl(s), you design a guy, you play the animation.  Gameplay is minimal, progression is pointless nonsense beyond just unlocking a couple different animation depending on how the girl in question feels about you after your encounters.  If you were to do a gallery function, I'd say the easiest way is to ask the player to make characters, saved specifically for the gallery, and then just sort of... smoosh them together when used.  Dolls in a toy box, if you will.  Exactly how you put that into the game, I don't know.  Maybe paying for a medieval peep show?  Voyeuristic fortune teller's crystal ball?  Or maybe even just an option in the main menu, not even part of the actual game.  From a practical standpoint on the player's end, once things are fleshed out more and you have an idea for different creatures/characters and their sexual encounters, it could give the player an easy way to look at what each option offers and decide if there's certain enemies or situations they'd rather not bother with sexually, without having to go search them out just to find they don't like what they get.

 

1 hour ago, slaen said:

For the sex systems I'm still trying to figure out how integral they will be to the overall experience.  Right this minute, and this is definitely subject to change,  but the sex system could be thought of as something that is there and can be really delved into or left almost entirely alone.  In some ways it would be similar to the stealth systems in Skyrim.  The player could base their entire experience around sneaking, from the approach to combat, the equipment that is used, the stores the player shops at, the NPC's that the player interacts with, and the quests that are pursued all revolve around the stealth mechanics.  But the player is never forced into that play style.  It's entirely possible to go through all of Skyrim and never sneak once.  Of course this will limit some of the content the player encounters but it's a possibility.  I want the sex systems to be similar.  Like it would be there and would be an entire playstyle in itself but it isn't absolutely mandatory. 

I also just want to say I put my vote behind that idea, where the sex is there if you want it but not necessary.  The idea that it could be more of a playstyle choice than a central point of the game sounds pretty good to me.

Link to comment
7 hours ago, slaen said:

Uh, the gallery viewer though.  I honestly hadn't thought about a gallery until now.  I'll need some time to think out how or if it would work in the context of the game.  How would that work though?  So picture a world like Skyrim with all of the different NPCs.  How would the gallery function in that case?  Would it be like a menu system where the player could load up their current character and then an NPC of their choice?  or even just choose two NPCs?  and then play the animations on those characters?  or would there be something deeper?  or something I'm missing?

I have no experience designing games so I'm just going to reference what I've seen other devs do and express what I believe would be the easiest/best solution from my layman perspective. Create an area that you have to teleport to, either from an item or spell that is a closed off room, in the room are various buttons/triggers/switches you can activate that spawns that particular entity but in an already "knocked down" state that is ready to be sexed. It's kind of to-the-point and wouldn't be very lore friendly but I feel like it would be the easiest way to implement it. Or, instead of spawning them already knocked down maybe spawn them as passive with dialog options that allows you to instantly knock them down or have them instantly grapple/assault you.

If you wanted the gallery to be less "mechanical" you could instead create a capturing system that allows you to summon or spawn captured entities in a special zone like a player home/inn room, but that would be a lot more work. For example, how would the capturing system work? Pokemon-style where you get them down and use a special item? Defeat so many or collect so many of a certain item that only they drop that can be crafted into a summoning charm? Simply have sex with them once and it's unlocked? Personally I prefer the crafting option as it incentivizes fighting creatures for more than gold/experience but I digress, none of that may fit your intended design nor be viable. No matter how you go about it a gallery in any shape or form would be hugely welcome and appreciated.

Link to comment
12 hours ago, slaen said:

Also do you have an example of the combat sex Fight-sex-fight-sex-fight-sex  sort of system that you're thinking of?  I'm not sure I'm picturing it correctly. 

 

But I've been thinking there are places where QTE's would be appropriate and add to the fun of the game.  As an example: 

Nope, during such scene you'd better free the player's hands (at least one hand).

 

What I mean is mostly like this

 

https://youtu.be/6g_2QiIJ0H8?t=90

 

It's from the Bayonetta game and you can see how the simply oress one botton QTE worked

Link to comment

Check this story out.

https://www.webnovel.com/book/11559905206422005/Tales-of-a-Seductress

 

It's written like a game. The protagonist gains experience when she has sex. When she reaches a level she gets to choose one of two a sexual abilities.

This could be  things like not gagging when doing deepthroat;  not needing to breath to give longer deepthroat; the ability to know peoples sexual desires; pain is converted to pleasure.

 

Here is another one.

https://www.webnovel.com/book/12364170906338005/A-Goblin's-Evolution

Link to comment
4 hours ago, alcurad90 said:

Quite a lot of illusion fans don't like such "build the characters and fuck" games...

Oh yeah I know, I just figured it could give him an idea about how to work the "gallery" idea FlamingNinja and Attrition were talking about.  It's got a pretty simplistic design to the whole setup and I thought it would be a good example of an easy animation player with no real gameplay or requirements.  When people mentioned a gallery for just playing animations and nothing much else, Honey Select was the first thing that came to my mind.

Link to comment

 

On 5/29/2019 at 6:24 PM, xaraaji said:

Check this story out.

https://www.webnovel.com/book/11559905206422005/Tales-of-a-Seductress

 

It's written like a game. The protagonist gains experience when she has sex. When she reaches a level she gets to choose one of two a sexual abilities.

This could be  things like not gagging when doing deepthroat;  not needing to breath to give longer deepthroat; the ability to know peoples sexual desires; pain is converted to pleasure.

 

Been thinking about the mini game. It has some influences form the Tales of a Seductress novel (that I linked above).

 

Attributes

 

The player and NPCs have the following attributes:

  • Stamina
  • Arousal

Stamina start out full and Arousal starts out empty. Obviously, certain circumstances might alter this.

 

Playing the game

 

Passive skills drain stamina at a slow rate. Active skills take chunks of Stamina in one go. Stamina replenishes slowly automatically.

The partners arousal increases or decreases, depending your skill levels, your partner's preferences/dislikes and timing.

Timing is important when triggering active skills. If you triggered something in your partner that they like the screen pulsates. If you keep going it will pulsate more frequently. Your aim is to maintain this pulse and increase its frequencies, eventually making them come.


The aim is to make your partner(s) come before you. They will be trying to do the same to you.

 

An NPC's preferences might not be straight forward. They could be things like dressing up in uniform and requires the player to get to know the NPC better or to gain an sexual analysis skill.

 

[ It would be probably more fun if one could add a mechanic  that allows the player to "pick up" stamina and max arousal busters and other types of temporary boosters during intercourse. ]

 

Interface

 

The interface is minimal. Mainly your own two status bars, the active skills  bar and a pull down menu for the various Position. This interface appears when engaging in intercourse or intimate moments. To measure the arousal of an NPC you need to look at their body language, moans and the pulses.

 

If you press the space bar (or what ever designated key) the skill bar disappears and an AR like interface appears over the (still moving) NPC(s). Leaders stretch out from various body parts with a semitransparent boxes at their ends. The boxes are inventory slots. If the NPC is dressed it will have a cloths item in it. If you remove the clothing piece from the slot the item is undressed and more inventory slots appear. If it was a bra, four slots would appear, one for either breast and one for either nipple. The player can equip a hand icon to one of the breasts slots for instance. This would place your avatars hand on one of the NPC's breasts. Sliders next to the inventory slot appear depending what is placed into the slot. With a hand you might get options like massage intensity. Other items might not have any slider but still can have an effect on the NPC like for instance a nipple clamp in a nipple slot.

 

To make things easier for the animator Positions could determine what can be equipped.

 

Progression

 

All skills have levels. Each time you use a skill the skill gains XP and once a certain amount is reached it levels. Maxing a skill will offer you branched/sub skills.

 

New skills, abilities, perks or physical changes are gained when the accumulated XP of all the skills reaches a certain amount. Once that level is reached you can pick one of two skills. Once picked you will never have a chance to pick the other. The skills offered to you are based on what you have done since the last skill offering. Like for instance if you have been trying to do mouth jobs and hand jobs then you are most likely to be offered something related to those things. If you had sex with an Ork you might be able to permanently increase the size of your passage to avoid HP damage. New experiences might also be a factor. An NPC did something to you that you yourself have not learnt might come up as an option.

The player can choose not to pick a skill, they will never be able to pick those sill again but instead are allowed to pick two skills next time. This is stack-able.

 

Some skills gained could be magical in nature like being able to influence the person you had sex with or taking over their body. Or gaining hentai X-ray vision, maybe allowing more NPC inventory slots. Or a physical change that changes the player into a Futanari.

 

The player gains a huge XP bonus for making the NPCs come. Some passive skills  or perks grant you bonus XP like for instance having group sex with the Group Sex Perk or having sex with a race that you have never had sex before with with the New Race/Beast Encounter Perk.

 

Link to comment

Hooked up the dialogue system this week.  It's just the straightforward system from Skyrim.  Hover over an NPC with the crosshair and press 'E' by default.  Need to test a bunch of stuff and do a quick pass on the UI but it seems functional.  It's one of the dialogue systems from the UE4 marketplace.  I've never written a dialogue system before and really don't know where I would start which means it would take a decent chunk of time and probably be rewritten multiple times.  But using a store bought plugin, at least so far, has saved me that entire headache.  It's nice having that to fall back on for some systems rather than making everything by hand. 

 

Still chipping away at sex animations, the starting town environment, and cleanup on pretty much everything. 

 

On 5/29/2019 at 12:33 AM, Just Checking said:

If you were to do a gallery function, I'd say the easiest way is to ask the player to make characters, saved specifically for the gallery, and then just sort of... smoosh them together when used.  Dolls in a toy box, if you will.

On 5/29/2019 at 7:16 AM, AttritionofContrition said:

If you wanted the gallery to be less "mechanical" you could instead create a capturing system that allows you to summon or spawn captured entities in a special zone like a player home/inn room

Ok, I started putting some more thought into the gallery systems.  There's two Skyrim mods I was looking at that might sort of work but would take a decent chunk of development time.  Legacy of the Dragonborn  and Familiar Faces 

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/11802

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/54509

 

What I like is that both ground their systems inside of the world.  It's a cool way of having a gallery the player can walk through rather than just a UI menu system to navigate.  I'm not sure if the gallery should be something that the player decides to like "save" the encounter to or something that will automatically update whenever the player experiences that encounter.  I dunno, still thinking about stuff.  Like I said though it would be a good chunk of time and work to do well and then keep up to date. 

 

But what do people think of this general direction? So the player would drop into their own almost museum gallery lined with different "statues" that could be interacted with to then bring up the scenes associated with that statue.  and there would be a number of empty pedestals for more statues that the player hadn't found in the world yet. 

 

On 5/29/2019 at 10:56 AM, alcurad90 said:

What I mean is mostly like this

Ah, ok I see.  Once I get a chance to put some more time into the combat systems I'll see what I can come up with. 

 

On 5/30/2019 at 5:40 PM, xaraaji said:

Been thinking about the mini game. It has some influences form the Tales of a Seductress novel (that I linked above).

Oh wow, I was expecting a short story when I clicked on the Tales of the Seductress link but that's a legitimate book.  These are good ideas and could easily be fleshed out into a standalone game. 

 

At the moment a lot of it is out of scope for what I can do with my resources and with the direction I'm going with the game.  Like take the deep throat skills as an example.  To do those properly there would need to be levels of bj depth animations, or else a procedural animation system, probably some fancy ik sort of thing that I don't currently know how to do.  Then there would also be something to keep track of breathing levels and then the associated animations and fx when those levels get to a critical point.

 

And the equipment inventory slot system is a good idea but it wouldn't work with how I've set up the current morph and armor systems.  Those just weren't designed with that stuff in mind and were built more for performance to get more characters on screen at once. 

 

There will be a few things that I can put into the game and use.  Like the stamina and lust bars will probably be in the game.  But I'm also trying to figure out how to handle lust in a way that's fun to the player and gamifying the sex scenes so far I haven't found something that feels right for the tone of the game that I'm trying to make.  Usually the systems end up feeling limiting rather than fun. 

 

But they're good ideas.  I just only have 2 hands and no budget and I'm trying to keep my scope limited to something that I can get out into the world in a reasonable amount of time. 

 

 

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. For more information, see our Privacy Policy & Terms of Use