November's Post - Not a rapist.

Okay, so let's start with my game.  No progress, nor was I expecting any.  Could/should get started as soon as the end of the year, so expect some more filler for the next month or so.



Around the interwebs this month there were 2 games that caught my interest.

The first is called Youth Ward, and the demo can be found for free here on Newgrounds.  Let me say straight up that the porn isn't very good.  I was really caught by the story/setting though.  I'm the 'stable' one of all my friends, so I've never had the 'privilege' of being  in a mental house as a patient.  I've visited plenty though, and I'd bet this is pretty much spot on.  So, highly recommend you go play the demo, especially if you know anyone mentally unstable & want to get a glimpse of life on the other side of that door.  Can't recommend it as a buyer, but at only $4, you might consider buying it just to support the artist.  Think of it as a nice donation.

The second game that caught my eye this month is a demo from Toffi.  He's been on a break for a long time, so I was delighted to see him start posting again.  You can find the latest demo on his blog here.  The first two levels kinda left me limp, but this new demon girl boss is damn good.  Toffi has made some of my all time favorite porn games, so I'm just tickled all over to see him back again.   Here's hoping for more in the future.  =)



And now for the meat of this post.

I come back to this question time & time again, & now's a good time as any to pose it.  I'm of the opinion that in order for a game to be a game, it has to have some manner of challenge.  It's a bit trickier to provide a challenge in a sex game though.  The players (presumably) want to see sex.  It's a game, so it makes sense to provide porn as a reward.  The easiest way to do this would be involve gameplay vs  members of the opposite sex.  And as the reward for winning, you get to have your way with them.  Which sounds kind of fun, right up until you take a step back & go - hey, that's called rape.  I don't want to be a rapist.

Consensual sex would of course be best, but if it's consensual then where's the game exactly?  There needs to be a challenge somewhere.  In my racing game, the race was the challenge, and the sex was offered up as a potential reward.  Note the difference between offered rewards & taken rewards.  If the 'dialogue' had been written differently, so that the player was the one offering cars in for sex, the game would have taken on a much darker tone.

In order to avoid this problem, we end up with all manner of befuddled porn games.  In my mind, Illusion is the king of screwy with the sexy.  In "You can't escape the Heroines", the path to porn is to actually lose a fist fight with the girls, so that they will then try & jump you to 'seal your powers'.  Yeah, talk about going around your ass to get to your elbow.  But the more I think about it, it's really hard to provide a challenging game with a sex reward and have the player not come off  as the bad guy.  (There are a few games where the player is the bad guy of course, but let's assume we want to be heros).

We can dodge a lot of these problems by making the hero female & making the computer control the bad guys.  Now we can make the bad guys rapists as well.  They were already bad guys anyway, now we just have one more reason to fight them.   So we get our challenges & we get our sex & we get to be the good guy (girl).  The problem is that in most cases, the sex is provided as a reward for losing, not for winning.  If the player wants to see porn, they have to lose on purpose.  That's opposite the usual goal of playing in the first place.  The player is getting rewarded for sucking at the game.

Oddly, one of the better solutions I've found has been with modded games.  I think I like this because the porn (usually) has nothing to do with the main gameplay at all.  The porn is never there as a quest reward.  About the closest I've ever seen is a whorehouse that required in game money, so in theory your questing pays off with sex, but that's a very loose association in my mind.  Come to think of it, that isn't a bad solution for adding porn to all manner of games.  A brothel on the side means that you can spend your cash however you like, and if the player wants some jollies as well, hey, we just added an easy cash sink.  Perhaps this is why brothels appear in so many role playing games, despite no actual sex?

This is a tough nut to crack, which is why we see so many strange variants on sex games out there.  I'm not planning on fixing it anytime soon, that's for sure.  But it is something my thoughts drift back to constantly.  So I'm ending the post this month with a question to all of you.  If you could make any sex game you wanted, what would it be?  How would the mechanics work?  Would the sex be the main game, a mini-game, or something on the side?  Try to keep your posts short & keep it general, I'm not looking to read dissertations nor am I trying to steal ideas or anything here.  I just think there must be a better way to make fun porn games.

Til next time,
DirtyC101

October's Post - Fallout 3 mods

No real "update" this month, so I'll just call this a "post" instead.  I think I've mentioned before that my other hobbies are mainly spring & fall hobbies.  They're in full swing right now, so I haven't done much with the game other than daydream a bit.  I wouldn't expect any real posts about the game until the end of this year, but I've kinda got in the habit of posting monthly, so figured I'd chat it up for a sec.

Since this is a blog about porn games, let me start this one off with one of my biggest pet peeves.  Video games that have brothels, where you can go to NOT have sex.  I don't know why games feel the need to include prostitutes when there clearly isn't going to be a follow through.  I can't think of the last game that included guns but didn't let you shoot them.  But for some reason, there's a slew of games that feel the need to paint a bright arrow in the sky pointing towards sex, only to stop short with an aborted cut scene (at best).

So where am I going with this you may ask?  Well, I'm not the only person who feels this way.   As proof, I point to the stack of nudity & sex mods for these very same games.  Most of them are crap, but every so often there's a gem.  I had heard really good things about sexout, and figured I'd take it for a spin.

Unfortunately, I didn't get very far.  Turns out sexout isn't for Fallout 3, it's actually for Fallout 3 New Vegas.  (Guess which one I don't own).  So after a few nights of frustration puzzling out that sexout was for the wrong game, I decided to see what sex mods were out there for plain Fallout 3.  Surprisingly, I didn't find all that much.  Err, well, I didn't find much that still worked anyway.  Plenty of dead links & outdated mods.  But that's another story.  Of the ones I found that still worked, the best was "Animated Prostitution - Work in Progress".  As you might guess from the name, it could use a lot of work.  When it does work though, it's not bad:

If you're interested, you can find it on Nexus mods, but you do need to register.  Search is 'funny', so you may need to search for JoshNZ instead of by the mod name.

You will also need to install the Fallout Script Extender or FoSE.  My limited understanding is that this is a game launcher with some of the piracy checks disabled, which you need since Fallout thinks sex mods are fucking with the security settings... somehow?  Whatever.

Anyway, the mod itself is a mix of fucking amazing mixed with broken shit.  It fixes the "Here's our brothel, but your sex is in another castle" problem.  It also has some really smart options integrated into the game, such as the ability to bring a playmate back to your home.  There's even some skills checks (speech) and the possibility of xp rewards depending on how you go about getting your groove on.  Needless to say, I was really impressed with how well the mod fits with the rest of the game.

Sadly, the actual sex is bad.  Eyes stare off into space, the camera is always in the wrong spot, animations are stiff, and the couple rarely line up correctly with each other - even had a few times where one fell through the floor or appeared on the wrong side of a wall.  Oh, & no voices either.  I'll take still images with good voice work over silent animations any day.  (In fairness, there's a separate mod to add some moaning, but it also appears to be outdated / broken.)

Despite all my bitching, it was a fun dive to try & get this all together.  What can I say, porn is a great motivator.  It does make me seriously consider trying to build a sex mod of my own someday.  Not for Fallout 3, but maybe next time I find a game I actually like a lot.  Fortunately for y'all, I don't think RailRoad Tycoon 2 would really benefit from a sex mod.  =D

Til next time
DirtyC101

0.60 Release

The next release is out now.  Like right now.  Like "the link is in the sidebar" right now.

What are you waiting for?  Stop reading, go play it!


Okay, that's out of the way.  Hey again everyone.  Release 0.60 is now out.  Phew!  As I've been saying all year, 2012 has proven to be, well, let's be nice and just say that I've been really busy.  As a result, there's just not THAT much new content in this release.  I've added a lot of polish to the second act, including double teams for the monsters, some nice color & class change options, lots of new gear, and my own spin on gallery mode.  That sounds like a lot (and it is), but the game still ends at the same spot as before.  If you were hoping to explore more of the world, I apologize.  That's going to have to wait until I get to Act 3.

There's always some bugs when I release a game, so I'm going to leave this post up for at least a month, probably more.  When you do find one, please post it below.  If it's really game breaking, I'll see if I can get it patched, but otherwise expect this version to float for a while.

I'm purposely allowing y'all to choose any race/class combo in this release.  I have NOT tested to make sure they are all viable however.  It's very likely that there's some combination of race/class that will not be able to complete the game with a 100% rating.  (When you find it, let me know).

If you get stuck for some reason, also check the "FAQ" link located right below the link to the game.  I'll probably update that today or tomorrow with a list of the usual problem spots.

That's all for now.  Hope ya enjoy it.  =)
DirtyC101




Known Bugs:
-Going through a door with an attack button pressed will hang the game.  Pressing S sometimes helps

-Occasionally the start of a double team grapple will erase the arrow signs, but the game still thinks they are there.  Either try guessing very slowly, or hold the S key to escape the grab.

-Getting re-grabbed immediately as a grab is ending can cause some funny business.  Usually just throws off the color of the grapple bar, but can cause bigger problems too.

-Getting grabbed while channeling a staff special attack will cause the sound to continue looping (possibly fixed as of yesterday).

Additional bugs found as of Sept. 4th:
-Warrior K. Fox and Space Marshal Farah cannot complete Act 1.  At 6 body/4 spirit, they can't get into the crew quarters nor can they create a combination pipe.  For now, I suggest using the codes SlimeTime or OffTheBoat to teleport past this problem.

-The hitbox for the human male's attack is visible.  Not sure why, but I'll add it to the 'needs fixing' list.


Game update Sept 10th.  
So I was thinking... it's going to be another couple of forevers until the next release.  It shouldn't take but a few minutes to fix a door so that Warrior K Fox / Space Marshal Farah can play through the whole game, why don't I knock that out real quick.  And while I'm in there, I can fix that hitbox on the human male weapon.  And the color on the hero's leg in that one grab... and maybe add in that tentacle gallery....

So yeah, I managed to turn 5 minutes worth of work into a weekends' project.  But it's done.  Check the link, game has in fact been updated.  Nothing earth shattering, but still some nice fixes all around.

Oh, and several of you have mentioned that the human throne doesn't seem to do anything if you sit on it.  That's correct, it's just there to be a chair & block the way to the back room.  The elf throne does have a hidden animation however.

Sept 18th.
Just got a note from Google stating that the site where I store the game is being changed.  Something about Google Docs becoming Google Drive?  Anyway, if the link to the game breaks, don't sweat it, I'll get it fixed.  As always, feel free to mirror the game about the interwebs as well, if you're in a position to do so.

August Update

Next game release: summer-ish

I'm sure y'all want to hear that the next release is right around the corner.  From my perspective it is, but I doubt that's comforting right this second.  And I'm going to be busy three of the next four weekends, which means I'm not going to get a lot done in August.  Rest assured, I'm working as fast as time allows.  Game will be released soon.  It just won't feel that way.

Human boss is done, and I think he's about right.  Looks good enough, animations are hot (imo), and there's just a dash of plot/story thrown at ya as well.  More importantly, there's tons of new gear in his tent now.  It is without a doubt the best gear-up spot in the game, especially if you play a warrior.  I suspect folks will be making multiple trips back there to grab gear & play with the different weapons.  If anything, I'm worried I may have made it too good, making it the mandatory 'go here first' of the village.  I guess that's somewhat balanced by the fact that you can't carry enough of it, and the items for the third backpack slot are scattered everywhere but there.  haha.

So now I'm up to the final boss of this act, and I'm sad to say she really doesn't look 'right' to me:

Course it might help if I drew her hands.  Pfft.  Hands.  Who needs 'em, right?  =D  Seriously, there's something I don't like about her face, but I can't quite place it.  I think her forehead might be jutting out too far, or maybe her ears are too small, or maybe I don't have enough detail around the eyes.  Actually, I think her eyes might be placed too high, but moving them lower really makes the forehead look too large.  So not really sure what to do there, but I'll keep piddling with it.

She's supposed to be older.  Not wheelchair old, more like cougar old, so I bumped up the breast size a bit & thinned down the arms & legs.  In hindsight, not sure that was the right direction, as the skinny legs make her look more decrepit than elderly.  Probably should have added some boob sag too, but that's just not sexy so I skipped it.  So we have an anorexic, perky female.  Which isn't bad at all, but it doesn't convey 'older' imo.

Not sold on the color scheme either.  Originally she was grey on grey.  Didn't like that so much, and it's one of Lei-Lei's alternate colors as well.   Tried silver too, but that turned out more 'funny grey' than silver.  And white is downright too bright.  So I settled on off-green for now.  It still  doesn't quite click for me, although it may be because I kept the eyes bright purple.

Anyway, that's the update.  I'd chat more, but some folks want me to actually 'work' on the game.  =D
DirtyC101

Does my foot look too big?

Bonus points for you if you even noticed her foot in the first ten seconds.  =P  For this position I needed to draw new feet for the hero.  I suck at drawing hands & feet, and it turns out drawing crossed legs is a total bitch on top of that.  So I'm cheating slightly by drawing one foot in a straight on view.  It looks too big to me now, but I've been staring at it for a couple of hours now, figured I'd post it here.  Plus, I've found that pausing & coming back to it again later seems to help me.

Side story:  Human boss is a good bit taller than his tribesmen.  And he picks the hero up for his animations.  Turns out this puts a good chunk of the action off-screen, as we only see him from the neck down.  I've fixed it by panning the camera down during the initial grab animation, but that looks really strange the first time you see it.  Guess it's not as strange as having the camera focused chest downward though.  hahah.

DirtyC101

July Update

Next Game Release: Summer-ish

So the only big things left to do are animate the human boss & final boss. So it would make sense that I'd be working hard on that. Naturally, that's not the case. Instead, I've been working on:

Yeah, I think one person commented that the game wasn't as hard as he was expecting. So clearly it made sense to work on that. lol. No really, I've actually been working on Horde mode a bunch. Rather than flood the screen with mobs, I wanted to try increasing their difficulty. Once I had that piece of code, it seemed like it wouldn't be too hard to incorporate it back into story mode as well. Turns out I was wrong on that part, so when the next release comes out, I'll be asking y'all to specifically look for spots where this is broken. heh.

And for those of you who wanted an invulnerability code... well, okay, this isn't it. But I also added the code "Softer", which will reduce the game difficulty. I think you'll find it's getting pretty close. Just don't go overboard with it, or the mobs will just flop over in seconds regardless of how you set the grapple duration.

In related news, I've been going through the tutorials over at http://www.codecademy.com/. My 'formal' programming training stops at loops & if/else statements. So much of "object oriented programming" is just lost on me. I'm slowly fixing that. They don't have Actionscript specifically, but Javascript has been close enough so far. It's also been inspiring me to write slightly better code, so I've been going back & revamping large chunks to use functions, rather than having the same code copy/pasted into 10 different spots. Yeah, I'm sure that will break something too. The great thing about programming - it punishes you for doing it 'right'. =D

DirtyC101

(Edit - For some reason like 1/3 of the text keeps getting hi-lighted in white.  I also think I'm seeing individual words in the wrong font.  Think I've fixed it, but damn, WTF?)

Art - Human Boss

Short post.  I'm done drawing the human boss, & wanted to post him here for feedback before I start animating.  For that matter, I haven't settled on his sex animations either, so if there's a pose anyone really wants, now's a good time to request it.

Still not quite happy with his lower jaw/lip.  It's not bad, but it's more blank than anything.  Was hoping to give him just the hint of a scowl.  Also the axe handle was originally supposed to be regular brown wood.  I often draw in bright colors to make it easier to see as I go.  In this case I liked the blue so much I decided to keep it.  So I guess he's swinging a cobalt axe?  Or it's a smurf-killer.

DirtyC101