aggressive enemies & event activation
okay, so i did end up doing some stuff on hell game 2. the current thing is getting more involved event logic working, which in this case looks like adding a few more event builtins like "is active" or "is aggressive"
'aggressive' in this case means that the event will auto-trigger if the pc moves adjacent to it. this is useful for being able to force encounters. conceptually my idea of 'hell game gameplay' is still very heroes of might and magic influenced, so i'm envisioning a lot of bits where there's some kind of treasure or event or a special location tucked away in a cubby, with an encounter or two in front of it. you gotta clear the encounter to get the reward, that kind of thing. also, it makes it easier for me to cram forced encounters into hallways, since now an 'aggressive' encounter in the middle of a 3-wide hallway is enough to force the encounter, whereas previously i would've had to add in 1-wide sections with no diagonals to force the encounter. so this working should help me actually lay out a starter map with a certain level of structure. (i've been considering if i want to have encounters move around, since that kinda opens up a whole extra realm of gameplay. currently they're static events, (again like heroes of might and magic,) but having some encounters move around or chase the player or w/e would be... something. maybe not something i want to do, but it might be worth coding up just to see.)
the other builtin i added is 'active'. events that aren't active don't show up, don't activate when you hit them, and can be walked through. it's like they're not even there. this is useful for: having events that turn off and on based on variable state. currently, if you ever walk next to an aggressive event, you're locked in place forever, since after the event finishes it's still there and it's still aggressive. having common combat encounters be aggressive but also have them deactivate themselves when you beat them would set up a very simple progression mechanic. it would also let me write multiple different versions of events and have them activate the next in a sequence to have some kind of story progression. kind of important to have something like that!
this isn't 100% done currently; i still need to fix some bugs and add in the other builtin ("invisible", for events that aren't rendered but still can trigger if you walk over them, for hidden triggers), but it's a step. like i've been saying, i never really got event stuff working to my satisfaction in hell game the first, so getting all that working to the point where i can just write up a quest chain that has you visit multiple places, having various npcs show up or move around based on the quest progress, and have it all 'just work' is kind of a big goal here. that's the point where the engine is finally developed enough to start seriously adding in content.
anyway, i did all that since i shut down the patreon. i should post about this here, i guess, since the patreon post i made about it no longer exists.
so, patreon has had this 'id verification' thing looming for a while now (like, a year? or more?) -- they said that they'd be adding some extra verification for people producing adult content, and then they were extremely vague on what that would actually be. eventually that turned into 'take a photo of your id and send it to us', and i put off doing that, because... i mean, i have absolutely no faith in patreon's long-term existence as a site that will allow porn, plus a bunch of my recent stuff is stuff i haven't really been able to talk about on patreon due to their prohibited content rules, plus my patreon has kinda been an ignored tip jar for a while. so i wasn't really eager to jump through a lot of hoops just so i could go on scrupulously never asking if the part where you can be a giant demon-dog in hell game counts as 'bestiality' under their rules, or w/e. (or never mentioning the ff7 thing that absolutely contains actual bestiality, or the superhero thing that contains maybe-bestiality and rape, etc, etc, etc.)
anyway so i shut the patreon down! rip my founder's account with only 5% fees. we'll see if i ever want to get back into trying to get paid for making weird porn stuff in the future, but for now tbh it's kind of a weight off my shoulders.
'aggressive' in this case means that the event will auto-trigger if the pc moves adjacent to it. this is useful for being able to force encounters. conceptually my idea of 'hell game gameplay' is still very heroes of might and magic influenced, so i'm envisioning a lot of bits where there's some kind of treasure or event or a special location tucked away in a cubby, with an encounter or two in front of it. you gotta clear the encounter to get the reward, that kind of thing. also, it makes it easier for me to cram forced encounters into hallways, since now an 'aggressive' encounter in the middle of a 3-wide hallway is enough to force the encounter, whereas previously i would've had to add in 1-wide sections with no diagonals to force the encounter. so this working should help me actually lay out a starter map with a certain level of structure. (i've been considering if i want to have encounters move around, since that kinda opens up a whole extra realm of gameplay. currently they're static events, (again like heroes of might and magic,) but having some encounters move around or chase the player or w/e would be... something. maybe not something i want to do, but it might be worth coding up just to see.)
the other builtin i added is 'active'. events that aren't active don't show up, don't activate when you hit them, and can be walked through. it's like they're not even there. this is useful for: having events that turn off and on based on variable state. currently, if you ever walk next to an aggressive event, you're locked in place forever, since after the event finishes it's still there and it's still aggressive. having common combat encounters be aggressive but also have them deactivate themselves when you beat them would set up a very simple progression mechanic. it would also let me write multiple different versions of events and have them activate the next in a sequence to have some kind of story progression. kind of important to have something like that!
this isn't 100% done currently; i still need to fix some bugs and add in the other builtin ("invisible", for events that aren't rendered but still can trigger if you walk over them, for hidden triggers), but it's a step. like i've been saying, i never really got event stuff working to my satisfaction in hell game the first, so getting all that working to the point where i can just write up a quest chain that has you visit multiple places, having various npcs show up or move around based on the quest progress, and have it all 'just work' is kind of a big goal here. that's the point where the engine is finally developed enough to start seriously adding in content.
anyway, i did all that since i shut down the patreon. i should post about this here, i guess, since the patreon post i made about it no longer exists.
so, patreon has had this 'id verification' thing looming for a while now (like, a year? or more?) -- they said that they'd be adding some extra verification for people producing adult content, and then they were extremely vague on what that would actually be. eventually that turned into 'take a photo of your id and send it to us', and i put off doing that, because... i mean, i have absolutely no faith in patreon's long-term existence as a site that will allow porn, plus a bunch of my recent stuff is stuff i haven't really been able to talk about on patreon due to their prohibited content rules, plus my patreon has kinda been an ignored tip jar for a while. so i wasn't really eager to jump through a lot of hoops just so i could go on scrupulously never asking if the part where you can be a giant demon-dog in hell game counts as 'bestiality' under their rules, or w/e. (or never mentioning the ff7 thing that absolutely contains actual bestiality, or the superhero thing that contains maybe-bestiality and rape, etc, etc, etc.)
anyway so i shut the patreon down! rip my founder's account with only 5% fees. we'll see if i ever want to get back into trying to get paid for making weird porn stuff in the future, but for now tbh it's kind of a weight off my shoulders.
