Answering questions (Patreon)

So I'll be answering some of the questions I got from you for last week. Thanks for everyone who sent anything, I'll try to mention most of small ones in the end of the post. 

Q. Is godot engine hard or easy to learn in your opinion in the terms of time,bugfixes, creating new content and develop your ideas inside the engine 

A. In my opinion, godot is fairly easy to learn if you have no programmer knowledge (hence why I picked it in first place). It uses python syntax which is very straightforward and makes lots of things simpler. I wouldn't advice it for 3d until it unless gets to the 3.0 version, but otherwise it's solid. Bugfixes are pretty easy and quick, as long as they are not a part of engine itself, and adding new content/mechanics is generally easy to do. 

Q.  Hi! Two related questions: Do you plan in future, when things settle down a little bit (right now it seems you are changing a lot of underlying mechanics anyway), add support for custom modding or open up the game for submitting own minimods/changes? Are you interested in community-based submissions to your game or do you prefer centralised approach to developement? 

A. So, lets talk about modding for a bit. I don't really have time, plans and knowledge to develop custom api for modders, so unless some would do it for me, you will have to work with raw scripts. 

In my defence, though, I already distribute nearly open source code so anyone can do anything they like with it. You would probably have to accustom your mods every time new version comes out, but that shouldn't be too hard. There's also some old and bad sections (slave generation could use lots of cleaning honestly), but I often try to redo those. 

In my opinion best model would be: the main strive, lead by me, will have centralized, general lorefriendly features with my main preferences on top of it. Then the modders can go wild with anything they like and might even suggest something for the main game, which I consider accepting or reintroducing in some way, if it fits the main theme. All in all I endorse user made content of any sorts and hopefully soon there will be some sort of centralized place with wiki and stuff, so community can grow outside of here.

Q. Whats the difference you aim for your game compared to other similiar types of games; slavemaker3 ;jack of ninetails; henthighschool HHS+ and Ashford Academy and some popular oldschool japanese game called Princess Maker of which alot of games got their inspiration ?  

A. Basically, I like freedom. I often mention JoNT because to me it felt like I had plenty of freedom there. I like an option to go either way, do quests or not, put myself on timers or not, give away slaves or not. I also not really like when some arbitrary objectives put over me I have to complete. Actually, Strive is a bit problematic, because I chosen to approach it in sandbox way so potentials to expand are nearly limitless. 

If anything, game goes more in the direction of CoC or tainted space, as it can be expanded to infinity content wise, but also takes some of moments from free cities, even though I prefer to avoid lots of terrible nitpicking like areola size and accents, there's still considerable amount of content I plan to add and refine on management side. 

Q. Main character backstory. Maybe bring in the main characters parents. 

Bit of counterintuitive question, since main character is customizable, but for those, who want more flavor, I'm glad to announce, that starting sequence will be changed (it is also one of the old relics requiring considerable upgrade). There will probably be more options regarding your personal backstory, and with recent job rework I considering adding choice for starting location (so you would be able to start in Frostford or Gorn if you wish to do so, at least for sandbox mode). 

For parents, I'd probably need more input. It's a no-brainer to add generic characters loosely resembling you, but if people want more sidequest kind of stuff, that might be way harder to do, because... well, you can choose your race and looks, so it would be hard to fit just about anything into your potential parent. 

Now, Here's some questions which I can answer in short manner. 

Q. Youth potion no longer effects the slaver 

A. I believe there has been no changes on that and it still works for me.

Q.  How do you primarily find out about bugs, glitches, errors or that sort of thing? Is it mostly what people report to you, do you playtest yourself, is there some system that find them or some combination therein? 

A. I try to playtest at least those parts I directly changed before making a release, but 90% of the bugs are generally discovered by community. 

Q. Why dont you give away the part of storytelling to another person, you would safe time by just telling the directions it should head to and if it doesnt suit your taste u can tell him to rewrite it. 

A. Main reason: nobody wants to take writing reliably for free and I'm not ready to hire more people for that. Secondary reason: writing is heavily tied with gameplay mechanics. I often have to keep in mind what is an interesting sequence and what is even possible (or rather what can I write out of these actions we can do). 

Q. Do you have plans to add a system for selling items? I for one would love to sell the extra 50 Tainted Essences I have so I could afford other components I need.  

A. You could do that already, but with the rework it should be more obvious.

Q. Are your going to update the UI 

A. Yes, it's planned to be done in next updates as well.

Q. Will be there possibility to change race and gender of slaves? 

A. Likely, but I can't say how I want to add it into the game yet.

That's about it for today, thank you for staying with me.