I remembered that I had this blog up, and I remembered that I didn’t save any of my documentation, so yeah, development is back on (sorta) after the unannounced hiatus.

I’m refactoring the code a little, dividing the story-specific stuff from the inner workings (which is now going to be called gamzee), and I still haven’t done combat or anything.

notasenator:

As you may know, Homestuck Book 1 came out.

For tax purposes and other VOODOO MOJO REASONS, I’ll be acquiring an extra copy of this tome of eldritch horrors. Rather than keeping it to let its dark magicks infect the corners of my home and befuddle my electronic devices, I will be passing it…

One of the things that initially interested me about Corruption of Champions is the way adjectives are chosen at random (to see this in action, read your appearance a few times and note how the words used to describe you change, even though the stats don’t). It’s one of those things that shouldn’t take too much effort to program in, but the impact feels pretty huge in the long run. My implementation is a little less elegant than I wanted, but it works well. There is an array of flags that represent the attribute to be described. When we start paginating an event, we loop through the array looking for instances of flags (currently denoted with $attribute) and look at the character’s status for that attribute. We then match that attribute to an object (really an associative array, which allows us to use strings to access the members of the array, yes we’ve been over this already), the key of which is the status, and the value an array of possible adjectives. We get an item at random, and whammo, descriptive text that isn’t repetitive.

The design docs that I have for this have a really in depth explanation for the mechanics of combat, with all these crazy equations and dicerolls (it is, of course, completely untested and more than likely overcomplicated). Once I find some webspace that’s free and isn’t too annoying to type in (kodingen has done me well in the past), I’ll post it. In the interim, I did have some more ethereal thoughts on combat and stats that lead to the design of those equations for damage.

First things first, one thing about Nimin that I like opposed to Corruption of Champions is the simplified main stats. There are essentially four stats that govern your combat effectiveness (sex would make five, but it doesn’t really come into play unless you entice). Corruption of Champions has six, but sometimes the rationale behind them seems a little off.  For example, what is the difference between libido and sensitivity, and when the hell does corruption impact anything (this is an exaggeration, of course, but it is a bit obtuse). So, starting out, I wanted a 3 stat setup (atk, def, int). This ballooned to a 5 stat setup (attack, defense, intelligence, special, luck). While attack, defense, and possibly luck are self explanatory, intelligence and special are more fluid in definitions. Both stats have similar connotations in video games (see my complaint with CoC above, mr. ADD). But in SextStuck, the differences between the two are most apparent in combat. Intelligence is supposed to mitigate damage from lust-based attacks, while special is supposed to increase it. So, in a way, Special and Intelligence are Attack and Defence for Lust, which I like a lot. Luck is only included because Vriska’s combat effectiveness is based entirely on the fact that she can affect her and other people’s luck. However, it does allow for critical hits and misses, as well as influencing random events, which is a Nice Thing.

I breifly considered speed as a stat, but realized that it doesn’t really have a use other than running from battle, as damage calculation is computed in the same order every time. As such, the effectiveness of it could be smooshed into intelligence and luck.

Other than that, it’s roughly the same as Corruption of Champions, in that you fight your opponent until:

• They lose all their HP
• They get too horny

Or the same happens to you. I am considering Nimin’s feature of raping during combat instead of just after combat, because it allows for a little more strategy in managing your character’s lust during protracted battles. The issue that I find with it is that it makes things a bit too easy. Missing a rape attempt doesn’t have very harsh consequences and it’s more a way to keep you from losing due to lust. Perhaps raping costs HP, and failed rape doubles the cost, making it a risky option with a lot of payoff (massive hit to lust/HP).

One thing that I’m considering is an opponent’s fighting style changing depending on the player’s relationship. As an example, if you’re in black relationship with a character, they might be more prone to lust-based attacks rather than a more physical approach. On the flipside, combat with matesprits would end quickly as your opponent acquiesces for the sake of the relationship, or they would try to hold back on fighting. The issue that I have with that is from a writing stance, I don’t feel like I have a good enough grip on the quadrants to model that sufficiently. Also, I’m not sure how to program that in based on the current engine, and I have no idea where I would start with that.

Thus far, I have a sort-of-workable framework for the game. This post will focus on the method used to give players choices as well as descriptions of situations. As it stands, the basic object (yes javascript has objects) for anything displayed to the user is an “event”. Events usually contain text to show the user and choices for the user to take, although events can just be a function (for custom inputs like names and dates). The text of the event is split into objects called pages, which are just the text with either option to continue on to the next page unless it is the last page in the event, where the user chooses. The user choices are objects called choices, which consist of the text of the choice, the effect of the choice (usually a function to change stats of the character), and the name of the event to go to next (the events are stored in an associative array, thus selecting a member of the events object is as easy as knowing its name (or key in this matter), the third field is essentially a glorified goto statement, but this is a text adventure we’re talking about.

A NOTE ON PAGES: all the pages in an event are held in an array variable. on clicking the next link, the next page is shifted off of the array and displayed. The next links are actually choice objects without an event to pass off to and an effect that shifts off the next page to display.

What needs to happen next: There needs to be a method of choosing an event at random for encounters, this paradigm doesn’t work for combat just yet.

SextAdventureStuck

working title: 900 Wilshire, TextAdventureStuck

Summary: The player character is held against his will in a strange apartment building, meets characters from homestuck, transformation and fetishes occur.

That’s what I have written on my desktop wiki for a general description. It’s pretty much all I have figured out about this story-wise, as it’s more a challenge to my out-of-practice Javascript skills than a creative writing task. As you can probably tell from the title of this blog, I looked at Corruption of Champions as inspiration. It irked me that the game was in flash, when it seemed to me that one could do all this in html and javascript. So, that’s what I’m doing. The other posts will probably have to do with limitations of javascript and whatnot right now, as I want a good framework so I don’t have to switch from writing porn to writing code further on down the line.