Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Overdue Update

I know things have been pretty quiet here, for which I apologize.  Between the work on the new game engine and some stuff on my end, updates have been more sporadic.  With the holidays fast approaching, I wanted to let you know what's up before I fly off to the remote depths of rural Canada for the next several days.

First off, for those of you who do not have access to it via our Patreon, I wanted to start by advising you that Blue Bishop has continued his work on the new FS engine.  We've still got a long road ahead -  but now we can see that road since he's added hunting, locations and navigation in this most recent build.

Also, there's some game additions and updates to cover since my last announcement.

Stripes:
- Bradford: The bull bounty hunter's got more sex, one being a scene added some time ago and another new one as sub-variations to giving him head.
- Steven: An option to fuck the sexy red stallion... if he can be convinced (Charisma check).  If you fail, you'll have try again later.
- Tristian: A new pair of sex scenes as a reward after saving his brother - including a rare offer to top him.
- Garrett: Endings have been added for this guy, triggered by both the Herm Gryphon and Feral Gryphon forms.  His main endings require you to be pure with one of these strains and male.  If not, you'll get the other existing endings, possibly with some small add-on about him.  A basic Herm Gryphon ending's also been added.

Wahn:
- Chris: An expansion with an option to let him fuck you as well as special triggered scene with him at the Library.
- Homo Sapiens: A new 'monster' roaming around the Museum - primitive man looking to go all primitive on your ass.
EDIT: Gabriel: Just added a few hours after my post, Wahn's added two new lengthy scenes with the sexy seraphim.

Game art:
Thanks to our resident artist, Anymouse1968, we've got art for several other characters in the game.  We've got art of Bradford and Lindsey as well as for the Smooth Shemale Collie and the female Yuppie Mink.

Removals:
To make space for some of the above material in a hurry, the following creatures are currently inactive in the game: Rodeo Clown, Squid and Math Teacher.  I know they are all fully-functional and have no particular issues (except some people's aversion to the first), but they have no real ties to other material, and so were easy removals.

Writer For Hire update:

  • More Dom (0/10) - Stripes
  • New Orc scenes w/Mul (0/13.5) - Wahn

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Spooky Scary Halloween-Unrelated Flash FS Update

Greetings again, from Blue Bishop!

If you’re on our Patreon, then you’ll soon find a new version of our “Flash FS” alpha available for download. The focus for this iteration is primarily on re-introducing and refining character creation.

Now, I don’t plan to write up a blog post every single step of the way; I think we’d all enjoy discovering new things on our own, rather than being told them outright. That being said, there’s a key change here that I think is worth highlighting to avoid potential confusion or misinformation.

Specifically, this relates to us phasing out banning in favour of a more robust version of warding.  With this, you’ll still be able to avoid random encounters with selected monster types, but they’ll still remain available for some events and quests. We’re also reassessing a couple of the ward categories to be more concise. Finally, sexual content rules (such as anal level) also still remain.

Quite honestly, the old method of outright monster banning has been a lot of trouble from a design standpoint.  This was especially prevalent when a banned creature was integral for a key quest or for NPC progression, basically making that task unwinnable.  This cut out a lot of potential storytelling options and kept you, the player, from the desirable content that would otherwise follow that task.

Here’s what you can expect to come (in time) from the improvements to warding.  Some of these will appear as those mechanics are built and others are guidelines for the devs to keep in mind.
  • Warded creatures will never be randomly encountered. The exception to this rule is where you go overboard and ward everything in a given zone. At which point the wards are suspended for that encounter roll.
  • This is mostly the case for random events, as well. The exception may be events where the monster doesn’t really “do” anything; I think players will abide the game acknowledging the mere existence of a warded monster, for the sake of keeping event lists relatively plentiful.
  • Players will (almost) never be forced to have sex with a monster for player victory. Way back in ye olde times, this would happen a lot. It should happen less now, but moving forward, we want to avoid these instances (almost) entirely... I say almost, because there may be some rare or extreme cases where we may break this rule, but only when it’s sufficiently justified and, overall, we want to make these the exception rather than the rule.
  • Quests which require you to fight a certain -- potentially warded -- monster will point you in their direction so you can hunt for them, which won’t be affected by warding. Some quests already make compromises in the game when it comes to warding (such as by changing the target), so we’re likely to carry those forward -- but this, by no means, suggests that a writer is obligated to provide a compromise for every time a ward conflicts with a task.
    • Additionally, we have no intention of entirely suspending sexual content for the warded monster, which includes player loss (should you lose fair and square to them) or during certain narrative-driven moments.  For the latter, there will often be an indication as to what you’re getting into, so you need not be completely blind-sided.
  • Chances are, any monster part of the “Humorous” ward list (now called “Silly”) will never be a part of the main storyline, so you can avoid them to your heart’s content.

Now, that being said, as much as we want to make an effort to appeal to the tastes of our players, there’s going to be a point where we, as the developers of this game, have to draw the line. I won’t patronize you by going on a rote diatribe over ownership, rather I’d underline that we can only go so far before the entire endeavour becomes absurd.

After one too many compromises, it then becomes a question of whether or not we should have sex in the game at all, which isn’t what anybody’s signed up for here. It’s as simple as that.

I understand that, if you’re really into banning, it might be a bummer for you to lose this functionality, but it ended up going too far with what we were willing to let the player modify regarding their experience.  This improved warding method should provide what you were looking for without preventing you from partaking in quests and storylines you might otherwise have enjoyed.

Anyways, while you can expect to see a lot of changes to existing mechanics as things progress, this should hopefully be the only significant mechanic you’ll see removed outright. In either case, the goal is to greatly improve upon the old version while still being “Flexibile Survival” as we know it. And with that, I return one more to my coding cave!

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Hot Bovine Action!

I'm back with another update on the new content added to the game.  We've got some new fun with existing characters and a brand new NPC.  The two headliners deal with big bovine studs.  Amazingly, my queue seems to be almost clear, though I know I've got some more big requests looming on the horizon.

Stripes:
- Tiny Tim: There's now a series of scenes involving the player topping Camp Bravo's minotaur.  To have the option appear in Sgt Alexander's menu, you'll need to partake in some of the camp's other content.  You'll also have to be human-sized or larger and have a large (10+) cock.
- Bradford: A new bull Bounty Hunter you can meet while exploring the RLD and he's willing to cut you in on a few small bounty missions he's been commissioned to do.  After a pair of these, he'll be open for some sexy times, though he's mainly an M/F kind of guy.
- Dom Icarus: He's back with 3 additional basement scenes (1 being for avian-pred players only).
- Snow: Triggering for the Wild Squirrels event has been tweaked, making the skill rolls a little easier.  Should you notice the trap in advance, fleeing is now optional.
- Latex Ermine: In a bit of mutual bribery, I've added a broad set of endings to this infection after Anymouse1968 made art of these sexy ermine girls (see next).  Variations are based on gender and being pure or not.

Artwork:
- Latex Ermine: A spontaneous art gift, Anymouse1968 has done six colour variations for these sexy ermines - 5 for the roaming monsters and another in the player's indigo colour.  The latter will appear as part of pure Latex Ermine endings (with breasts).
- Lamia: New Patreon-sponsored art of the sexy mistress of the hospital's maternity ward and also done by Anymouse1968.  It can also be seen on the Patreon page.

Removed Content:
- Reservoir and some background events have been removed temporarily due to space limitations.

Writer For Hire update:

  • More Bradford (0/2) - Stripes
  • Rane/Eric (18.5/20) - Wahn
  • Chris Reservation (0/5) - Wahn
  • Caveman Reservation (0/5) - Wahn

Monday, September 21, 2015

Flash FS!

Boy oh boy, Blue Bishop here and you certainly haven't seen me in some time, now have ya? I've been very busy these past few months, and I'm proud to officially announce my work on a new, Flash-based Flexible Survival. There's a lot to go through here, so sit tight and I'll break it all down for you. First off...

Story Time!

When you last heard from me, I was fresh off Dragonpalooza, with still a few minor mechanics to implement and primarily focusing on minor, quality of life improvements for a bit. Then we... Kinda hit a snag.

Basically, we hit inform7's previously unknown capacity limit; No more content could be added without removing old content. The most we could do, when updating, was shuffle out some really old stuff and when we had new content to produce. For this reason, I pretty much went on hiatus -- having another writer pumping out content would only exacerbate the issue -- until it was resolved.

Sadly, after working away at personal projects (And moving again), a fix never came. Things were looking dire, we needed the matter attended to right away, so I set aside my current projects and committed to creating a proper, long-term solution to our problem.

Using Fenoxo's, open source, Unnamed Text Game as a base, I started work on a prototype to replace our i7 version, and after many long months, I finally have something to show for it. And that leads us to today.

The Game Itself

Currently, the "Alpha" prototype is available exclusive to Patreon contributors. As much as I do encourage your support, I wouldn't stress over this too much if you choose not to. The Alpha functions primarily to illustrate our current progress milestone and only contains the most essential mechanics at their fundamental levels: room navigation, combat, items and inventory, infection and self examination, as well as exploration and scavenging.

There's no significant amount of new content for you to experience here, and we want at least some small way of compensating those who've stuck with us for so long, so you're not missing out here. The game will remain Patreon-Exclusive throughout its alpha stage, which involves adding all the remaining mechanics (pregnancy, pets, npcs, etc), and then become fully public once we enter Beta -- which is the point where we're purely translating content from the i7 FS to the new one.

Talking About Changes

Converting the game from i7 to flash is no easy feat, we basically had to start over from scratch. However, this can be something of a blessing in disguise, because we can now more closely assess and adjust mechanics as they're re-introduced. FS has become something of a patchwork of inconsistent design over the years -- an inevitability of changing hands -- and here is our chance to organize everything into a cohesive whole.

Obviously, the thing that’ll mostly be staying the same is scene prose -- though I imagine you can expect it to be polished/tweaked during the translation process -- so don’t expect completely new content across the board to complement this new version, just an overall better, more consistent experience on an engine that will last for us.

Additionally, simply by virtue of how different the two engines are, some things are lost during the translation process, though you'll be surprised at how much we've managed to preserve regardless. Here's a more in-depth breakdown:

What's going:

  • Text Input
It’s simply impossible for us to implement i7’s robust, in-engine system for receiving player’s text input, there’s no way we were going to preserve this during the move. 

This isn’t that big of an issue, however, as FS generally stopped relying on text input with the advent of hyperlinks. The only mechanic that really makes any use of text input is hunting, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

That being said, text input will see some modest return, if purely for inputting cheats and giving your PC an actual name for once.

  • Undoing
Similarly something built into inform that we were not going to be able to replicate was the ability to undo turns… This is kinda good and bad. On one hand, it’s nice to undo when you commit a serious gaffe, but on another it feels rather skeevy and cheap.

I don’t think any of the developers will really be missing this mechanic, and I’m sure players will find other ways to get around this absence. Of course, there will eventually be an ability to look back at previous text screens, even if this isn’t strictly “Undoing”.

And that’s… Actually kinda it, really. Everything else is wholly doable.

However, I do feel it’s important to highlight exactly what will be staying. This game uses UTG as the base for its prototype, and a “Fenoxo” game has a lot of implications circling around it, and I want to dispel those immediately. Here we go:

What's staying:

  • Hyperlinks
The ability to have interactable text within the main text box is something Fen’s games don’t really have. This is a big deal, because that otherwise means all interactions in the game are restricted to the UI’s button layout. If you want a lot of options, you need a lot of buttons or have buttons assigned to “Scroll” between them. This way gets past that entirely.

Core interactions will still be relegated to designated buttons, but now we can keep the button UI sparse while still having a very wide array of interactions.

  • Robust Inventory and Item Management
This is one such example of why hyperlinks are so important. In a Fen game, you can’t, say… Leave an item on the ground and pick it up later, or have a very large selection of items in your inventory.

This considerable expanse of possible interactions extends to NPC’s, sex menus, and pretty much anything we need. I can’t underline enough how significant this design choice is.

While I’m certain players have no problem with Fen’s work, they should have no fear that the game will end up becoming largely indistinguishable from his work at a design level, and this should be immediately apparent to those who have access to the Alpha… UTG placeholder UI notwithstanding.

Moving on, the translation process to flash means we acquire a number of newfound benefits, either from the engine itself or because of updated design philosophy. While pretty much every mechanic will see improvement, here are some highlights:

What's Changing/Improving:

  • Saving
Perhaps one of the biggest reasons to go flash is the very apparent benefit of being able to easily save the game. i7’s browser-based interpreter can’t handle saves for a game as large as FS, and even with a better interpreter, the saves would not be preserved between versions. Given how rapidly we’ve been known to produce content for the game, this is kinda an issue.

Otherwise, you’d have to use savewords, and those were always something of a wonky, jarring process.

Anyways, this functionality is not yet present in the alpha version, but we do look forward to implementing it much later on.

  • Hunting
The ability to hunt for monsters or events basically has to change, given the lack of text input. Subsequently, hunting opens up a menu displaying any monster you’ve encountered and any event that’s been referenced elsewhere.

This means you can’t hunt for things right off the bat. On one hand, it’s really nice -- as an experienced player -- to know where everything is, but it kinda trivializes the experience of exploration and discovery.

Sure, in a game with physical navigation you’d have the same benefit, but you’d just as easily argue that’s a weakness of those games and not a strength -- at least from a designer’s perspective.

On the flip-side, you’ll never run into that situation where you’re fumbling about trying to remember what the exact name of some monster or event you’re looking for. So there’s that!

  • Time
This may seem like a minor annoyance, but in i7 FS you can only advance time in 3-hour increment “Turns”, which is a bane to anyone who wants to implement shorter increments. This could be fixed in inform, but because of a lot of mechanics presuppose these time increments, you can’t really change it without messing up a lot of timers connected to NPCs and quests.

Thankfully, since we’re starting from scratch, we’re no longer slaves to this annoyance, allowing us to shorten the time of certain actions or possibly provide feats that shorten them even further. Hooray!

And those are the highlights. It’s really nice to finally reveal what I’ve been working on these past few months, but the work still has a long way to go. I’ll be taking a brief break and focusing on producing documentation for writers transitioning between these two engines before development starts up once more.

As always, thank you for your continued support, and I look forward to keeping you updated on our progress!

Sunday, August 23, 2015

It Lives!

Here comes the long overdue update announcement.  Things have been trucking along in the background for the moment.  There's been a bit less generation of new content due to the focus on trying to get an alternative game engine operational, but that doesn't mean we've showed up empty-handed.  In addition to a lot of fixes, tweaks and typo corrections, the following material has been added or adjusted:

Stripes:
- Dominick: This ultra-dom husky is living out of a Corrupt Kennel off in the Urban Forest.  He's got several scenes and provides a new Breederslut infection.
- Feral Gryphon: You're now able to give a sample of Garrett's special "milk" to these guys, resulting in a more consensual anal scene.
- Garrett: Giving some of Garrett's "milk" to a defeated Gryphon (Herm or Feral) will open up a new sex menu option w/Garrett for a threesome, but only if you're pure male gryphon yourself as well.
- James: The medium sledge has been added as another possible weapon to bribe the Central Library's guard.

Wahn:
- Lucifer: The feral mustang now has new fun stuff in his sex menu – joining him as he breeds a mare, as well as being fucked in a sex harness strapped under the proud stallion.
- Feral Gryphon: Victory sex is now all the sweeter, as the player has the option to mount the gryphon’s cock.
- Orcs: There’s more fun to be had with Mul the orc, pushing  him further into a submissive role (if you’re an or warrior yourself).
- Rane: The blue oni and Eric will be able to get it on – with various possible results. A long sex scene is completed, though for now not uploaded yet. I will do so once the followup is further along...

Other:
- Fancy and Nermine now have in-game art by Anymouse1968.  It can also be seen on our Patreon page.
- The Mutant Centaur and some background events have been temporarily removed from active play.
- The Ewe, Ram, Lizard Girl, City Sprite, Pirate Shark and Black Equinoid are now capitalized in name.  This will affect older savewords during restoration.  Similarly, the tainted wool drop item has been corrected to lower case and inventory may similarly be affected during restoration.

Writer For Hire update:

  • More Dom Icarus (5.5/8 - in progress) - Stripes
  • More Garrett (5/8) - Stripes
  • New NPC (0/6) - Stripes
  • More M/M (Patreon) - Stripes
  • New NPC (0/6) - Stripes
  • More Orc fun with Mul (9/12) - Wahn 
  • Rane/Eric (8/20) - Wahn
  • Chris Reservation (0/5) - Wahn
  • Caveman Reservation (0/5) - Wahn

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Chimera Upgrade

Okay, quick post this time.  After a lot of fighting with it over the week-end and multiple attempts to compile, test, compile, test, etc, I have completed the Patreon-sponsored update.  The beta-testing takes a long time this deep into the quests.

Stripes:
Returning from Zephyr to your chosen doctor leads to him offering you a very special transformation opportunity, and each one suitable to them. 
- Dr. Matt: A tantalizing opportunity to regain your humanity thanks to a dose of that restoration spray.
- Dr. Mouse: An offer of greater transformation - turning you into a powerful chimera of his own designing.
- Enhanced Chimeras: On either path, the Mismatched Chimeras get phased out for their newer model: the Enhanced Chimeras.  How they infect the player will depend on your game path. 
- Armour Tweaks: Some adjustments were made to the armour and shield systems.  Mostly background stuff that should speed up combat slightly.  The stopping power of shields have been upped in general, though that may need further tweaking.  I need to rethink some of the implementation when I have more time.
- Food/Water Request: The request for supplies by Doctor Matt has been opened up to players with Automatic Survival active.

Wahn:
- Denise: Now an npc with her own nest in the upper level of the Grey Abbey library. You can pick her up there or drop her off there (as well as still use the old pet summon commands). NPC Denise does have a sex menu and a talk menu.
- Nermine: Jackalman players who fucked Nermine and had a fennec customer walk in on the fun now can play through a followup event - where the fennec comes into the store again with his mistress Bastet. A short quest and not so short sexual contest between the player and Bastet allows for binding her into Nermine's service, adding the sexy lioness to the magic shop as a guard.

Other:
- Shaft Beasts: To deal with the continued compiler issue, we've had to temporarily phase these creatures out of the game.

Writer For Hire update:
  • New NPC (0/7) - Stripes
  • More Dom Icarus (3.25/8) - Stripes
  • More Garrett (0/8) - Stripes
  • New NPC (0/6) - Stripes
  • Lucifer/Ferals (0/6) - Wahn
  • More Orc fun with Mul (3/6) - Wahn 
  • Rane/Hayato/Eric (0/20) - Wahn
  • Chris Reservation (0/5) - Wahn
  • Caveman Reservation (0/5) - Wahn

Friday, June 12, 2015

Hospital Quest 2 Started

Here's another update on the additions to the game.  It's a shorter list because I've had to do a lot of prep/planning/testing, but it does have several significant additions.  As you can see below, there's a lot on my plate planned and coming.  The main new item for this update is the titular one: the roll-out of the first segment of Hospital Quest 2.  The Patreon time for this month will be going towards this, the Main Storyline 2 and/or various creature scenes and this is the first portion of that material.

- Hospital Quest 2:  Did you side with Dr. Mouse or do you enjoy playing in game modes without Dr. Matt, but still want more story quest?  Well now we've got the first few stages of HQ2 active.  They'll be quite familiar to experienced players, as they are retooled tasks from the latter portion with Dr. Matt.  I had originally planned only partial overlap from these, but circumstances require I be more conservative with my writing/coding at the moment.  Going forward will have a mix of mutual and individualized tasks and I might later swap out the nav point task for something different.
- Susan: As part of readying for new storyline content, Susan's gotten some preliminary adjustments.  The main of these is a separation of dialog and sex, and an acceptance of over-sized player cock.  She has also taken one of the HQ2 tasks as a request of her own: you'll need to save her from the horrors of hospital food.  We'll see more of her along with the advancement of HQ2, as I consider her a part of this.
- Aurora: Sexy times have been added to your frost giantess companion.  These are player-activated scenes, so just ask her to fuck.  She's also been given some basic endings.
- Icarus: Dom Icarus has received the first portion of his optional darker content.  After several dommy scenes with the player, he'll try to force an avian pred or feline player down into a utility basement for some extra punishment-sex.

Writer For Hire update:
  • Patreon Time (6.5/18) - Stripes
  • Patreon Scenes: Onyx - Stripes
  • New NPC (0/7) - Stripes
  • More Dom Icarus (3.25/8) - Stripes
  • More Garrett (0/8) - Stripes
  • New NPC (0/6) - Stripes
  • Nermine (0/3) - Wahn
  • Lucifer/Ferals (0/6) - Wahn
  • Denise NPC (0/6) - Wahn
  • More Orc fun with Mul (0/6) - Wahn

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Pet Fix

One thing I forgot to mention during my update announcement that's actually quite important.  I found the bug that was making pets so ineffective and corrected it.  They should now have a reasonable chance of hitting in combat.  I have also slightly increased their odds of trying to attack, to further increase their merit.  And remember: increasing your charisma increases their chance to attack every round.

Thursday, May 28, 2015

More NPC Stuff

I'd completed the remainder of the Patreon request for more NPC scenes several days ago.  To go along with that I did a some added work on a suggestion from the forums and added a new item for both players and NPCs (more on that below).  I also completed a couple more of my Writer for Hire requests, keeping the queue moving.

In addition to this, I also went back through my recent posts and made a lot of updates to the Wiki on the new material and changes I've done.  There's always more to be done there, but the material is more up-to-date now.  Please remember that the Wiki is open for any fan to edit, so please take a moment to add anything you see is missing.

Stripes:
Daisy: Two new sex scenes for the Stablemaster player to enjoy with the mare MILF.
Micaela: A new option to ask Micaela for a bunny-style sex romp.  Only available to 100% Easter Bunny and 100% non-Easter Bunny players.  There are two cycling variations to this extended scene.  It'll result in fully EB transformation and a significant humanity loss - a few hours of constant bunny sex will do that.
Lance: Tristian's brother, the black swan you saved, has a small request of you.
Stella: Added an option for spooning w/her and a threesome with Jimmy.
Newt: A second threesome option with her and Athanasia, again coming with three possible finales. 
Orthas: A new set of variations for herm sex with the dragoness.  You can now end up on the floor or on her desk for the first half, the second or both parts.
Alexandra: A significant fix has been made to her quest content, solving a bug which could knock back your quest progress and lock you out from sex with her.
Macadamia & Yolanda: These two NPCs have been added to the saveword.
Bovine: Some tweaks have been made to how this creature functions to improve mechanics.  The bull's CV scene should no longer become impossible to get.
Fruit Bat: This guy will now occasionally drop a tasty peach.
Ryousei: The royal tiger's been added as another intimidating pet, allowing him to give you a bonus on certain scavenging deals when he's with you.

Libido Pill: This new item I mentioned will boost your libido, which can be handy if you're finding it's too low to trigger certain scenes.  You can also give it to an NPC to speed up their refresh for the next round of sex.  I took the added time to adjusted every NPC I could find so their timer will work with the pills.  There's a few of these pills scattered around the game - I'm sure you can guess a couple of spots to check.  The following all have a 20% chance of dropping them after combat: Ashen Breeder, Succubus, Incubus and Giraffe.  If I missed any of the NPCs or something odd happens that breaks something with them, let me know.

Saveword: A renovation of the back end of the story skipper has been made.  It _should_ not cause any functional changes, but be on the lookout for new bugs or quirks.  Nuku has also made an adjustment so your storage locker contents will also be saved to file along with your regular inventory.

Blue Bishop:
Doran: The last of Doran's bodymodding has been added.

Writer For Hire update:
  • New NPC (0/3) - Stripes
  • More Dom Icarus (0/8) - Stripes
  • New Pet (0/6) - Stripes
  • More Garrett (0/8) - Stripes
  • Nermine (0/3) - Wahn
  • Lucifer/Ferals (0/6) - Wahn
  • Denise NPC (0/6) - Wahn
  • More Orc fun with Mul (0/6) - Wahn

Friday, May 15, 2015

NPC Scenes and More

Having put it to a vote by our Patreon supporters, their collective support was put towards new NPC scenes, so we'll have a lot of those in this new update announcement.  While waiting for the polling to be complete, I did use some of that time to make the long-desired storage locker and add some other game features I'll go over shortly.  This means there'll be no more need to convert a far-off room into your personal dump - well, unless you're into that.

Stripes:
Micaela: The sexy Easter Bunny herm can now be impregnated, producing background offspring.  She even has an ovi-birth scene, should you be present at the time. 
Sidney: Completing her transition to female, she can now be impregnated, producing background offspring.  These children will match their mom's form.

Storage Locker: As mentioned, there's now a storage locker in the bunker.  Looking at it will bring up a menu of options.  You can move single items, all of one item or everything not nailed down in and out of the locker either through its commands (which the menu can list for you) or by calling up your inventory or the locker's via that menu.  These storage inventories aren't in neatly aligned columns or anything, but they work.

Game Features: Two new game modes have been added.  Like 'hard mode', they're meant to provide added challenge to the game and can be selected during game start-up.  They are separate from the scenario, so you can modify your experience with any or all of them.  There's also a new advanced feat.
- No-heal mode: This blocks the regular end-of-turn healing.  Healing items get a +25% increase in effectiveness though.  Currently, there is no change to resting's recovery.
- Blind mode: Prevents the player from hunting and from scavenging for a specific supply.  Instead, exploration has a significantly increased chance of finding something of interest.
- Vampiric: A new advanced (post-Hospital Quest) feat.  Recover some health, thirst and hunger after every victory.

Patreon NPC Scenes by Stripes:
Andrew: Another sex scene with the flamboyant wolf: player tops with onlookers.  The odds of his scenes have also been tweaked to promote better progression.
Brooke: An option to let the clubbing otter have a turn on top, coming with both a first-time and repeatable version.
Elijah: The option for his evil path has been made clearer, popping up any time the player has some demon seed and the 'good' cure does not go through.
Janice: Her posing mechanic's been tweaked to receive a bonus when Kristen is also there to help.
Lindsey: An oral+WS scene for suitably trained Wolftaur players.
Paula: The police station's naughty nurse now has options for a double titty-fuck and giving the player cunnilingus. 
Snow: An alternate version for vaginal sex with the hyper squirrel.
Sven: The snowmeow pet's scenes have been converted to a sex menu after his transformation is completed.  Also comes new scenes for the player receiving anal and for fucking the kitty in your lap.
Tehuantl: A new one-time heat interaction between her and Sarah.
Timothy:  An M/H and F/H scene for Feral Gryphon players with the gryphon breeder.  Also comes with new and modified endings for the Feral Gryphon based on Timothy and/or Denise.

Blue Bishop: 
Doran: The peculiar dragon now accepts cum and milk items for his body modification.
Orthas: You no longer specifically need demon seed for the F/F impregnation scene - any semen item will do.
Tanuki Coin: This odd little item will let you always have external genitalia even if your infection's naturally inclined to be internal.  Keep an eye out for any scenes/descriptions where this isn't working and we'll adjust them.  Pro tip from Stripes: Some of my brand new scenes will need adjustment. :P
Nullification Powder: A peculiar powder has started cropping up in various locations.  It will also be dropped by the Mannequins.  Using it allows you to reduce the size of anatomical features even if you have "One Way".
EDIT: We almost forgot one additional thing.  Two new drop items have been added: hawkman seed and pewter seed.

Wahn:
Orcs: Just added is an Orc foursome with Boghrim, Jason and Mul.

Patreon Graphics:
We've added artwork for the Donkeywoman to the game thanks to sponsor request.  The art can be freely seen on our Patreon page.

General fixes:
Ebonflame Dragator: The odd bug making the Alpha Husky image for this creature has been tricked into going away.  Hopefully shouldn't recur elsewhere.
Pregnancy Issues: Some of the pregnancy issues that were happening involving UB, Orthas and so on have been fixed.  Keep an eye out for any other such problems.
Typos: Strongbird continues his unending battle against the typos of the game.

Writer For Hire update:
  • NPC Scenes for Patreon (15.25/22) - Stripes
  • Stables (0/1.25) - Stripes
  • More Micaela (0/2) - Stripes
  • New NPC (0/3) - Stripes
  • Nermine (0/3) - Wahn
  • Lucifer/Ferals (0/6) - Wahn
  • Denise NPC (0/6) - Wahn
  • More Orc fun with Mul (0/6) - Wahn

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Content Update

With everything that's been going on, it's been difficult to make an announcement on the new content we have been adding.  As mentioned, there's been a lot going on, but that doesn't mean that we don't also have a lot of new content for you.

First off though, some news:
- The material I previously trimmed has been sufficient to allow us to continue making some updates, so nothing new has been removed.  The compiler issue still exists, but we've managed to stay below whatever limit makes it go crazy, at least for now.
- To date the only material of substance that has been removed is Omio and her related quests, which includes Dan and Greg.  If you encounter any strange bugs or find that other parts of Kaleem's material does require this content to advance, please let us know.
- We'll be reporting in soon with more on our attempts to get FS into a new platform once we decide how we'll proceed.
- As you'll see below, Wahn's back to writing with some new updates and content.

Stripes:
- Alexandra: Quest content for Good Alexandra continues, first with a special reward and then a possible lead on dealing with the Automatons.  The fallout from the latter will come later.  The doberwoman cop also now has a sex option menu for your enjoyment.
- Icarus: The blue songbird's had all his content, from capture to sub and dom variations updated to work with the player as a feline.  There'll also be some new attic variations for feline players which will be activated in a couple of hours.  Among these is a rather gory CBT scene that you can opt out of.
- Sidney: Her NPC content has been added, giving her dialog, scents and sex scenes.  Added to the saveword.
- Micaela: The Easter Bunny infection she provides now comes with an egg-tastic heat that could also tempt you into letting the bunny fuck your fecund bunny cunny.  Added to the saveword.
- Alt Vore: New creature-specific vore scenes has been added for the Hermaphrodite Gryphon, the Leopardman and the Elk.  The latter two require some experience in voring before they'll appear.
- Lucy: A special sex scene with you as the Skunkbeast Lord has been added.  Somehow it'd missed posting it.
- Slut Rat Quest: The hint from the Captive Rat event has been made a little more explicit.
- Library Computer: As mentioned in my previous post, this has been reworked to allow a lot of extraneous code (like the password) to be removed.  Still no idea what to do with it though.

 Blue Bishop:
- Ebonflame Dragons: These guys are revamped replacements for the Ash Dragons.  See BB's Dragonpalooza announcement below for more details.
- Doran: The big dragon's got some new tricks up his proverbial sleeve.  Again, details in the Dragonpalooza announcement.

Wahn:
- David + Brutus: Some new material has been added for this pairing.  Something involving a ritual and hot sex, apparently... so good times. :)
- Ryousei: This new Royal Tiger will appear at the park shrine and then become a monster once you're above level 10.

Strongbird:
- Continued typo correction eradication and other minor tweaks.  I feel kinda bad about how much he keeps finding.

Patreon:
- Artwork: Patreon-requested artwork for Blot the inflatable pony and for the Magic Drake have been added to the game.  They can also freely be viewed on our Patreon page.

Writer for Hire queue:
- I'll update this in the evening.  Off to actual-work.

Dragonpalooza... Which one is it now?

Pffhoo boy, Blue Bishop calling in… I’ll spare you of my usual theatrics here to get straight to talking about this update and something of a history lesson regarding it’s exceedingly long development time.

So, as you might remember -- assuming you’re still with us by this point -- my last major update was Dragonpalooza 2. I had finished the Feral Sea Dragons and the Wyverns and was half-finished the Yamato Dragons (The updates to the player loss for the pair has been done and in the game for some time now).

Then… Poof! Asides from the odd commission -- The Phantom Pony and some Bonus Hour tasks, for example -- I had pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. It’s a deeply personal matter, but suffice it to say I was inundated with a lot of personal tumult that prevented me from really being productive. I was barely able to squeeze by the absolutely necessary commissions, let alone my core projects.

This, combined with Wahn’s own physical troubles, explains the slight lull in content as of late, Though Stripes has been truckin’ on, as always.

I managed to deal with my issues, moved to a new apartment, and got right back to work! ...And then got terribly ill, twice. Ick. Nonetheless, I was on a roll, to the point where I was finally on schedule for once! ...And then the compiler overload started to happen. Just my luck...

By some point early on I wanted to make some substantial Doran additions to cover the terrible wait for all this, but by the time I moved even that felt insufficient, so I decided to add the project I had planned following this one, since it happens to be dragon-related, as well.

And now, here we are! Finally, after countless long, sleepless night, I can return to you with all the work I have been piling up over the many, many months.
First off, because this update is so large, I have produced a short version of all the updates made. Scroll further down if you want to see the full breakdown, though:

  • The Yamato Dragon Pair as received their Player victory. It’s in line with the Wyvern for content, and has the body-modifying effects of player loss.
  • The Ash Dragons have been replaced with the Ebonflame Dragons. All of their content has been completely re-written and new mechanics have been added to some of them to better flesh them out. Otherwise, they’re generally the same...
  • Doran can now have his body modified. Two are simple fetch quests, while one is a little more roundabout! You can also regard him as being female, regardless of his/her actual gender.
  • Pregnancy has undergone some back-end changes. There shouldn’t be any major differences, but I’m pointing bringing it up to ask if you report any bugs I missed during testing.
     
Alright, now let’s sink our teeth into the main course!

Yamato Dragon/ess:

While player loss was updated for this pair a long time ago, it was never officially announced, so I’ll detail them here along with the new changes, in case you missed anything.

  • Player Loss:

All scenes received a thorough polish pass. If the Wyvern had the issue of being underwritten, the Yamato pair had the opposite of being absolutely impenetrably dense and over-flourished. While they’re still very meaty, I pared back a bit on my original magniloquence and focused more on what really matters here.

The Yamato Dragoness, when riding the player’s cock, will now attempt to increase its size after sex. This is meant to make her more mechanically consistent with her male counterpart.

All attempts to modify the player’s body now receive a consent check if the player has the “Microwaved” feat. This also applies to Twisted Capacity, past the first time. “Modest Organs” still negate the effect entirely, excluding TwistCap.

Both now have a Vore-Based Bound State. It requires More Vore for both genders, but they completely ignore player scale.

  • Player Victory:
     
Both now have a robust selection of sex scenes for player victory, on par -- option wise -- with the Wyvern and Feral Sea Dragons.

They’re relatively straightforward, though players will find they can engage in a certain tomfoolery with them, if they’re so inclined.

The effects of modifying the body are also available here as with player loss. In the case of Twisted Capacity, it’s faster to obtain in this manner.

  • Endings:
   
The succumb endings for the pair have received a substantive update. This was, perhaps, the earliest version of what would become the succumb ending’s gender designation for the likes of the Feral Sea Dragons, but the idea has since been iterated upon (and I feel I could write them better, anyways).

Additionally, the ending changes for players which defeat the pair enough times. Similar to the Feral Sea Dragon, having their strain will telegraph your progress.

Fairly straightforward, you can see why it simply wasn’t going to cut it for me to return with only this.

Ash Dragonbrood:

The Ash dragons has always been a bit of a dangling plot thread that felt needing to be expanded upon. However -- long before I entered the scene -- there was some tumult regarding the original creator and management. Suffice it to say, nobody wanted to touch this lot, beyond the odd tweak here and there.

I’m not trying to create any drama, I’m just being upfront with you. Let’s leave the past in the past, but the Ash dragons are very much an established part of the game and we can’t simply remove them. In the end, the only solution was to take the ideas these monsters presented and use them to move forward with new monsters that could take their place.

For that reason, all original content for the Ash Dragons have been REPLACED with the Ebonflame Dragons. Their appearances and behaviours should be relatively similar, but they’ve been completely rewritten. During this time, a couple of them have received some mechanical additions, to make them more threatening.

Shall we begin?

  • Ash Whelp → Ebonflame Whelp:
  •  
Players will still find this monster as largely non-threatening as usual, but are now much better endowed, and losing to them will have long-term consequences. They’re also no longer infectious.

Originally, the three infected into a “Single” strain, but the system was wonky and inconsistent. As a rule, infection strains change the player to exact or near-exact specifications, or they don’t at all.

Because of how peculiar the creature happens to be, I decided upon the latter -- though I’m rather fond of making those sort of rules with the expressed intent of breaking them later on, but that’s a topic for another time.

The Ash Nest event has been temporarily disabled. In a future update, it’ll be replaced by a one-off Bound State.

  • Ash Dragator →  Ebonflame Dragator:
  •  
Still a terrible threat, as always. You may sometimes run into ones that are behaving oddly, and somewhat like the Whelp, losing to one of these ones comes with additional baggage.

Also, like their smaller kin, they’re not infectious.

The shifting event no longer has Dragator Guards, since it didn’t make sense for them to be there. They have since been replaced with Gargoyles. Subsequently, the difficulty rating for that event has been raised to 12.

  • Ash Drakenoid → Ebonflame Draken:
  •  
The name for this one was changed more to make it easier to identify -- at a glance -- from its gator kin. When one might be a suitable challenge and the other could bite your ass off in the blink of an eye, easily distinguishing them is something of a necessity.

Perhaps the most ‘normal’ of the lot, she’s the only one who’s still infectious, but as a result she doesn’t come with any additional... ‘complications’… Should the player lose to her.

The Ebonflame’s more... invasive mechanics are just that, such that Infertile or normal male characters may be in for a nasty surprise. If this isn’t to your liking, the cheat “neuter ebonflame” will disable/re-enable the effect. Otherwise, watch out!

Finally, the Ash Dragon Heart has been replaced with the Ebonflame Scale. Disregarding the needed name change, the whole ‘Carrying the heart of your fallen enemy’ idea was both disproportionately macabre with the rest of the game and inconsistent, canon-wise, with the general understanding that one really can’t ‘kill’ most enemies through conventional means.

I bring this up mostly because certain food recipes from Francois called for the item, and has since been adjusted to accept this instead.

Doran:

Since his inception, I’ve been getting pretty much non-stop, positive feedback for the peculiar dragon, which is great because he’s an absolute blast for me to write. By this point, he’s easily the largest NPC in the entire game, and with this update he’s about to get… Just a little bit bigger!

  • NEW! Body Modification:
  •  
Doran can now have certain physical attributes altered, allowing for access to new scenes while altering pre-existing ones.

In order to facilitate this change, ALL of Doran’s core scenes have received an extensive polish pass. Even if you don’t interact with this new mechanic, Doran’s existing content should at least read a little easier for you.

  • Body Modify: Breasts
  •  
You can opt for Doran to have breasts. Is it realistic? NOPE. Can they lactate? If that’s what you want, certainly! Doing so will replace his scavenge ability with a new option...

Currently, only Distilled Milk is necessary for this change. In a future build, any milk will suffice.

  • Body Modify: Balls
  •  
Why, we can’t be forgetting the most important part! I imagine, though, that those heavy things will mean he makes a terrible mess of the whole place…

Like above, this will eventually work for all Cum drops, but for now Earthen Seed will suffice. Also, if you have below modification, you’ll still get the ability to make this change -- it’ll just alter cum production!

  • Body Modify: Internal
  •  
Hey, some like it smooth, and this change is for those kinds of people!

This modification is a little weird however -- dragontits notwithstanding -- as it’s purely cosmetic and only adds some minor scene variations. Also, the only way to obtain this attribute is to defeat Doran when first encountering him while also having internal genitalia. How peculiar... 

A future build will allow you the opportunity to reverse any of these changes, if you’d like to scale back a bit of the excess or try out different configurations. The internal genitalia modification will also, most certainly, get a proper quest associated with it.

  • NEW! Gender Regard (Doran):
  •  
For too long, Doran has had to humour clearly male partners wanting to be treated as female (and visa versa) and he’s had enough! Players can now let the dragon join in on the fun and have his regarded gender changed, so if ‘Mistress’ ever wanted a ‘Dragoness’ instead, ‘She’ll’ be happy to oblige.

  • NEW! Extra Commissioned Scene:
  •  
Someone commissioned an additional core scene for the naughty dragon in his Dominant state. It exists as a variant on one of his power bottom scenes, available to male/herm players of any size. Enjoy!

  • Pre-exising scene changes:
  •  
The ‘Doran Submissive, player giving oral’ scene has received a substantial overhaul. You may have noticed that the scene is a bit different from the others, since I was using it as a bit of an experimentation with scene structure.

Ultimately, the end result wasn’t satisfactory, and the scene is inconsistent in design with all of its peers. The scene remains mostly familiar with the original, but certain things have been removed and added (As a result of the body modification).

Other than that, the ‘player receiving oral’ did get a bit of tweaking, but nothing that major.

And with that, I can say -- with relative confidence -- that this should be the last of any major core mechanics that are planned for the dragon. From here on in, the focus will be on mainly on expanding existing systems, such as roleplay, vore, discuss, and the new body modification system.

Pregnancy:

In order to facilitate the mechanics for the Ebonflame Dragons, the Pregnancy system has been overhauled to more cleanly handle pregnancy-based interferences. This is mostly a “Backendy” sort of alteration and won’t be that noticeable a change (other than the game remembering which hole you were impregnated in, if you’re a weirdo female/herm who picked up Mpreg).

All Pregnancy routines and definition were moved to their dedicated extension under the ‘Core Mechanics’ author. This is a fairly technical matter, and a dedicated forum post will eventually be made detailing future changes to the placement of various extensions.

I mainly bring this up because, though I have tested it out a fair bit, there’s always a chance I mucked something up, so don’t be afraid to report any bugs you might encounter either here or in the forums.

Concluding:

Certain items like the Ash Nest replacement and a broader criteria for Doran’s current body modification quests should be coming in following patch. They were ultimately trimmed so I could send this out a little bit sooner.

...And that should be everything! It’s been a long road, friends. Not only do I hope you enjoy these additions, but they also excite you for the future of this depraved piece of interactive fiction. Let us march forward, hand-in-hand, ever onward to that majestic land, where the smut is ever the plentiful and your family is naught but resentful…!

...At least, assuming we can wrangle this major compile error.

--All puns intended.