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hell game 2 devlogs
lol resurrecting the 'hell game' tag, i guess. so, i've been working on hell game 2 for a bit! uh here are the three images i've been posting when i talk about it so far:
i've also been writing weekly devlogs, more for my own use than anything else, but i figure if i want to keep working on this it would be nice to have some level of public-facing awareness + engagement, so, i guess i will post the weekly update posts here. there's no playable demo yet b/c i'm still very much working on engine code.
saturday, 27 april 2024
i also did some stuff. probably the biggest thing was that i hooked in the old challenge (combat) demo into the event code, so now challenges can be triggered from events, go into a challenge sequence, and then either return back into the main event flow or jump to some other scene page based on how the challenge went. the main problem with this is that i still have only a vague idea of how i want to integrate challenge mechanics into the game.
uh so i've said a few times in a few places that i don't really want to make another one of those sexy rape-fighting porn rpgs. like, sure. fine. but then how exactly do you fit together, narratively, the fact that some of the encounters you can fight are also encounters you can have sex with? like i'm sure there are ways to do it, but it just seems like a thorny issue in general.
also, this means i'm finally gonna have to bite the bullet and start attaching stats and skills to bodypart configurations and doing all of that stuff. the goal here isn't to make some super-grindy combat gating, but just like... to have a mechanic that can guide and control gameplay flow a little & give the player something to do between all the porn. i know there are probably plenty of players who don't want anything between all the porn. we'll see how this all shakes out.
(oh yeah also i updated the parser-evaluator code some to allow for slightly better array handling. now it's possible to have a monster/npc generator that's like, variants = <DRAW 2: horns | tail | halo | wings> to randomly pick 2 of the 4 options, and then test for those with horns in %monster.variants. i'm gonna need to add more array-based primitives for adding and removing values from arrays, but this is probably gonna be a critical part of being able to shuffle npc data around. like, making arrays of npc data available, that kind of thing.
(that's the big concern for event coding, at least: making it possible and practical to marshal & shuffle around npc data. one thing i'd like to be able to do is elevate a random encounter to a more major story character just b/c you keep going back and talking to them. so, like, fitting a random encounter into a story template. but that means being able to actually inspect arbitrary encounter data and move it around. i'm still working on "demo scenario scenes", just in terms of... laying out enough code to be able to figure out what i even want to do, storywise. development is a process and i am mostly still working on engine code here.)
also i guess i've decided i'm going to publish these posts on my dreamwidth? all the old ones in one big post and then the future posts one at a time. i would like to get some kind of feedback as i work on this thing, b/c it can be hard to slog away at a game for the years it takes to develop it, while getting absolutely no engagement.
saturday, 20 april 2024
i did some stuff! most notably i got events fully running start-to-finish from a single function. so now i can load up however many event files i want and just call a single function that generates all the prereq args (like generating random variants for encounters that have variants) and provides the event with actual pc data and then runs it properly. so that's all good!
the event code still needs some more work -- when the event ends the encounter data is just tossed away since i haven't really thought about how to store and reuse it, or how to generate npc data like that in a separate pass from the event running initially, w/e. also not all events have constructors in the parser, so i'm gonna have to add some new syntax chunks for body editing/force tf, or stuff like giving items. nothing super complicated, but it is stuff that still needs to be coded up. the big thing is that i have some vague idea of all npcs having a 'body tree' in the style of the pc, which is there so the player can copy some nodes or something? which implies that i'd have to have body data written up for all npcs and that it has some kind of special rendering/interactivity thing. plus if i want to store npc data, i need to figure out how and where that happens. it's all mostly little fiddly things
development has gone far enough that now i'm thinking about what scenes to actually write. i have a handful of monster types under consideration for being 'starter encounters', but i'm still kinda trying to figure out what kind of feel i'm going for. plus, i haven't touched the old challenge code at all; i still don't really know what the main 'gameplay loop' is going to be here. in a lot of ways something that's just pure exploration and item management is possible; those are all mechanical systems i've already coded up and gotten working. but i would like something a little more 'game-y', i guess. also, without some kind of primary mechanic in mind it's hard to structure gameplay: if i know it's all mpa exploration or dialog puzzles or inventory management i can structure the content to have those kinds of content gates in place; without a clear idea it's just kinda stumbling around with a big '???' lacuna in the middle of the design doc. so that's an issue i will have to resolve at some point.
anyway the current list of potential encounters to write is: zombie, son of hamar-tabal, amduscias, suited demon, shadow, minotaur. mostly a collection of (old) hell game encounters i never wrote. i'm still working on assembling the setting & plot to the point where i can have them be, you know, something other than one-shot sex scenes. one of the main goals for this iteration of hell game is to have a coherent plot that actually goes somewhere, so i might actually work primarily on the dialog-and-plot part of encounters before i work on the, you know, sex scene part. we'll see.
saturday, 13 april 2024
i didn't do much at all this week! i did a little tweaking of the intended syntax to handle stuff like arguments and something like function calls to be able to invoke different scene generators, but i didn't actually update the parser to handle that yet.
when i was working on hell game (1) one of the things that got really demoralizing was having those update posts that were just like "well i didn't actually work on the game much this week", b/c there's only so many of those you can make without eroding your credibility as somebody who's actually, you know, working on a game. but then the natural response to that (and one i've seen in the wild many times) is to try to gussy up not doing much. oooh, this week i worked on expanding the parser syntax structure and did some reasoning about syntax constructs! etc.
(one of the things i've learned from writing parsers has been that it's very easy to just keep extending a parser with one feature and then another and then eventually you reach a point where you realize that there's no real 'language' or 'design spec' there with reasonable, coherent underpinnings. some things work and other things don't and if you want to try to come away with any understanding of the parser, like, operating on values in a principled way you will be disappointed, b/c the parser just does what it's been programmed to do and it turns out you can program anything to work in any way, and there's a much smaller target of 'works in a way that makes sense and has a structure behind it'. so sometimes you do genuinely have to take some time to reconsider how the syntax works and make sure it obeys some rules so it's not a messy of boobytrap syntax constructs. but. that's not what i did.)
anyway right now since i'm not really actively developing this and i'm not even publishing this devlog anywhere, i'm gonna try not to get hung up on sometimes not doing a whole lot.
saturday, 6 april 2024
this week: more event-running stuff. i have all the important events running, although there's still a little bit of glitchiness with nested structures, and i'm still not correctly surfacing the generated vartable for events. pc data isn't hooked up yet either.
(encounters run with a variable table of actor data, which is how they record and change state for e.g., repeated visits to the same person. the actor data is specified in a similar way to encounter data, but there's currently no way in the scene files themselves to connect the two, which is going to be an issue. this also connects to npcs with randomized appearances; that's a different kind of random generation that's not really handled yet.)
but once all that stuff is generated, events can now switch and branch on them correctly, and expressions can be checked and variables can be updated as necessary. it all basically works, even if there are still a few clunky bits
the next thing would probably be to... format actor & pc data as arguments to encounter generators, which gives me some inroads as to how i'd actually run an arbitrary encounter file in game. and then that means i could start properly branching on pc body data. that would take me to the big thing i started on last week: pc descriptions. this time, the pc description generator would just be a custom encounter, which would mean i'd have to actually write all the different branches out in the event data format. that would be kind of big and messy, but it'd also be a great way to test that the encounter parsing code actually does all the relevant things, since basically every possible tf would show up in there & would need to be handled. we'll see about all that.
saturday, 30 march 2024
this week: the rudiments of parsing the body tree into a coherent data structure -- currently it just stores basic bodytype, a handful of special nouns like e.g., satyr, minotaur, and if you have a head, dick, and balls. and dick type (sheathed vs. external). i think my goal currently is to not extend body generation beyond what's actually handled in game scenes, which means 1. not adding any decorative nodes until they're actually totally handled both in the description generator and in game scenes, and 2. actually properly handling all usable nodes in game scenes. since [MORE] is available for centaur/quadruped body parts, this means i already need to handle cases like "two heads" or "two dicks". four arms. etc. we'll see how that goes
the other part of that is currently there is no description generation or in-game scenes. the other part of the week's work was getting any complete parse going, from raw data files to playable events. the old parser was incomplete and didn't handle most things, & all i really did was take its output and convert it into plain narration text. i have a little bit of logic-parsing in place, but that's not really hooked up to anything, so it's not super useful yet. the next steps would be to work on generating the scene actors & get their variables stored in a useful way, so i can read and set variables properly to properly select between scene branches. it's a process. the parser also still needs work to handle all the various other kinds of scene events that can happen. it's a work in progress.
i'll probably be writing the, uh, zombie larvae impregnation sequence as a demo scene & use that to refine my understanding of how i even want scene writing & parsing to look like. some of the syntax isn't 100% pinned down, either.
saturday, 23 march 2024
gonna try out devlog posts again, for my own benefit. maybe i will transfer these over to the website once i 'release' the game, maybe not.
so, i'm working on hell game 2 (working title) in a more directed fashion! i've spent a long time picking at the code, and in the time since i stopped working on hell game i've worked on a bunch of other stuff that has bits and pieces that'll be useful copied over & integrated into the hell game code. there's still a pretty enormous amount of stuff to do
big todo items currently, broadly:
- any kind of event-parsing code
the old hell game did event processing server-side; i don't really want to do that again for a variety of reasons. but that means having to do it in javascript. it also means coming up with my own event data format
- encounter generation & data storage
this was a big one for hell game, which i kept tweaking and adjusting. i need a way to store an encounter's data, surface it in events so it can influence generation, and detatch it and move it to another encounter to simulate e.g., npcs moving around. ultimately it's just storing some vartables and referencing them in the right ways, so it's not gonna be hard, but that's still code that needs to be written
- body descriptions
again, in old hell game they were processed server-side; now i'm going to have to do them in javascript. the body description generator will probably be just a very specifically-written encounter event, so it kinda needs the above to be handled first, but the pc's description is the most complicated bit of generated prose in the game, so it's gonna be uniquely complicated to actually write
- map interaction
currently i have an old canvas-based setup, which works, but i'd like to replace it with some webgl, since that's orders of magnitude faster. that would require redoing all the rendering & interface code, & ideally just easily copying out something from another project into this one.
- map generation
idk if i want to go full procedural for this, but there will likely be some amount of random assembly going on
- art
i never actually drew character portraits for hell game. i'd like to do that here. i also need to draw map tiles & encounter sprites for all encounters, & probably a few different variations for the pc (just based on bodytype, usually).
- general ui
i have events mostly running, but there's all sorts of stuff that's still left to do. i need to be rendering bodytrees for encounters; i need to be laying out the pc's status page, i need a proper save game/load game menu
- save games
this is another thing i'd have to write from scratch again. welp.
- actual game content
i'm currently gonna try to make the game a bit more game-like (i.e., having, like, a plot) so a lot of this work is currently about working on a design doc of some variety. i still have mixed feelings about 'rpg elements', combat mechanics, etc, & i'd like to figure that all out at some point. the meat of the game is all the tf sex you can have, so later on the bulk of game development is gonna be writing encounters, & i'd really like to know what i'd doing with each one, structurally, before i start seriously working on them.
so that's a lot of stuff! there's probably some other things i forgot!
the first big step is getting enough in place that the game is 'playable' in any regard -- that means a minimal playthrough of... start a game, move around the map, trigger an event, calculate & run the event's encounter text, end event, back to the map, repeat. be able to collect a node, put it on your pc's body, and have the pc's description and sex scenes change in response. a lot of the stuff for all that is already in place, but it's not all there yet.
