Dev Journal: Fat Lotta Good (Patreon)

It wasn't my intention for these journals to turn into the “things were hard, but they're finally looking better” markers in what is apparently a certain type of cycle for me, but right now that's what they're turning into.

The short version is, I got sick again, I got caught up in trying to do things the right way and finally pushed all that off to a “maybe someday” to just focus on getting basic features implemented. I'm feeling pretty good about the next update right now.

The long version starts with feeling pretty worn out on coding PWO after the last update was finally shipped. I tried a few different things. I even hoped that editing audio might prove less burdensome than I remembered, but somehow, it seemed worse. Out of practice, I suppose.

I was feeling pretty down when the seasonal flu, which apparently was an especially nasty one, finally caught hold of me. Having barely recovered from Covid, it's hard to describe how frustrating this was getting. That took me out of the loop a while, and when I was finally feeling better, it was pretty damn hard to just get back on that horse with coding again.

But if there's one thing that can pull me in inevitably, it's an interesting design problem. I'd been thinking about how to set up the location system even while I was sick, and I started developing it more seriously once I was healthy. It taps into a lot of fundamental questions of what this game is going to be in the long term, how to keep it flexible but elegant, and what assumptions I was ready to make.

And it didn't take long before I ran into a rather obvious but separate issue: if there are going to be multiple locations, how are you going to navigate between them?

I didn't want to make a full-on map the player would navigate. I've thought about including something like that in the past, but I don't want location to be that big a focus of the gameplay, and if anything, it was something I'd like to push off to a theoretical “PWO v2” for someday so I can focus on what I consider the heart of the game for now.

I developed a lot of concepts for how relative location could work-- playing around with having landmarks in the area that you can interact with or that influence gameplay in various ways, and with having characters that are in eyesight but out of reach and how to handle that arrangement in a way that's easy to understand and fun. I eventually decided to put all of that aside for a later update, but the larger question of location remained.

Rather than using cardinal directions or anything of the like, I thought it would be a lot more interesting and immersive to develop a system for navigation based on scent and sound. You could hear howls in the distance and follow them, come across interesting tracks and follow them, and get an idea of who's just out of sight by their scent. You could wait and listen to get an idea of what they're doing, or jump right in. This would allow much more informed control of the encounters you get in, without having to develop things like AI pathfinding.

But the details of how space should work were still in desperate need of large-scale answers. If you can follow someone's tracks, should there be a way to suppress your tracks? How would it handle questions like “do you catch up with them first, or do they reach their destination first?” How would character speed factor in? If multiple characters hear and follow a howl, how do you determine who gets there first? If two separate characters find your tracks and follow them, should they also find each others' tracks?

I'd considered using a simple sort of “each location tracks its distance from each other location” system to keep travel times consistent, but the more things developed, the more it looked like it might be best to just use a “hidden map” to keep track of where everything is, but let characters navigate “blind” by using only scent and sound.

That was roughly the system I ended up finally getting to a place design-wise I was fairly happy with, but when I finally got in deep on coding again (this had taken so long I had mostly recovered from coding fatigue at least) it quickly became clear there were many technical aspects of it I'd still have to refine and design in turn to make it actually work well. And suddenly, I reached what by now is probably an obvious realization.

I was overdesigning by an order of magnitude or so. Right now, especially for the game's needs this early on, all we needed was for there to be multiple locations. All the realistic navigation stuff would be nice, but not needed now. In my frustration and detachment from the project, I'd let myself spend entirely too much time chasing big ideas and trying to mold them into something workable.

By this point, it had been entirely too long since the last update finished. And just like last update, it had taken a long time but right now there was basically nothing for players to enjoy ready for a new update. I needed to switch focus completely.

There has been a bunch of stuff I've had on my list to work in that I think players will enjoy, things that I've been figuring out how to work in the back of my head this whole time but pushing aside because they aren't as important to things like getting the AI overhaul ready. Some of them were on the survey, and some of them I just knew I'd add sooner or later, not because I feel like it's something players want but because it will make the game better to play.

And more importantly, the fact they were fairly easy and thoroughly designed at this point meant I could just jump in on them-- both to get this update to a point where it's meaningful, and to get myself into a better headspace with the project. Wild One had felt like some terrible burden with how things had gone so rough over the last update, and it was really hard to work up the motivation and creative juices necessary to make real changes. These changes were also things fun and interesting enough to work with that it helped get me back in that groove of feeling like I'm working on this game because I like it and what it's doing.

The big thing out of the lot is that all your energy and health actually “comes from somewhere” now. I've developed a system where you regenerate health and willpower by spending your “Reserves,” a resource that is harder to replenish while you're around other people. This gives both the player and NPCs a reason to end encounters after they reach a certain length, as it'll be harder and harder to continue when your Reserves run low.

Your Reserves do regenerate slowly on their own-- by converting the fat on your body to energy. Your body now has a certain amount of fat on it that is literally used as long-term energy storage! You replenish both this and your Reserves when resting, implying that you graze and drink water and such while resting away from others as well as sleeping. You can also get a quick supply of Reserves by digesting anything nutritious you can get from others, but the more you do this, the more reliant on it you'll become.

As an offshoot of this, your character finally cares how much weight you're carrying around. You have a natural amount of weight you can carry comfortably, and if you carry more than that, it will start slowing you down doing certain things, and certain actions will start draining willpower. If you're carrying way too much, some actions will become unavailable altogether.

The next thing I worked on, which is pretty directly related, is fixing and expanding the system for gushing fluids. It turns out that I made a lot of mistakes writing the code for what happens if you're holding way too much fluid inside you, and it generally just all shot out of you pretty instantaneously. I've refined the formula a lot to hopefully make it more reliably and realistically make you gush out fluids a little or a lot depending on how much you can hold comfortably, how much is in there, how tight the relevant orifice is, and how much it might be plugged by something else. I've also finally added a system for clearly explaining that the gushing is happening, with a bonus note at the end giving a rough estimate of how much “stuff” just gushed out.

The last thing of note was to add the ability to “Give In.” In various cases you might be more or less helpless and just want to let time pass without even regenerating health or defending yourself. This action lets you do that. Good for finishing off enemies, letting a bad encounter end, and making sure vore “completes.”

I'm still adding some of the final elements to all of these, but they're mostly complete and functional at this point, I'm happy to say-- and I was feeling so much more productive after tackling all that, I finally felt ready to turn around and get that simplified Location system installed.

I just finished implementing the basic mechanics for moving around between locations today. It's basically almost identical to v0.04's movement... except that when you leave, the NPCs don't all disappear until they're used again. They keep going without you. All the NPCs are active in the background, in fact-- they can now Retreat and Search and Rest, same as you. And with the new Reserves system, I'm hoping this should make for a more interesting sort of ecosystem with everyone seeking both Satisfaction and a healthy amount of Reserves to keep them going.

That's one of the big pieces I needed in place for AI: continuous existence. I'd hoped the AI would be able to do things like chase after you as well, but it looks like that'll be saved for another day. Right now, one of the big obstacles to letting the AI flourish into something new is finally out of the way. I'm not sure right now where that puts us on approaching the big overhaul, but it feels great to take a big, meaningful step closer to it, at least. The UI update itself was just setting the stage to make this move possible.

So that's where we are right now. I'll have to take inventory and figure out if we're ready for a first iteration of the new AI in the update after this one or if something else needs to be handled first, but we've made a big move and added a lot of nice extra bits besides.

I still need to polish a few bits and add a few components, and the coming days will be a lot of testing all these new components and tweaking them before they're ready for my proofers, but v0.05 finally looks within reach after all the frustrating nonsense that bogged me down after the last update went out.

Right now, I feel like I'm in a good place with the project. I think at this moment, my priority as my own manager is to try and maintain a steady pace where I'm enjoying what I'm doing and looking forward to work tomorrow when I go to bed. I want to break this cycle of feeling like a disappointment to myself and my fans at the start of development for each new update. I'm not going to rush the last steps of this update or stress out, I'm just going to try and keep working at it steadily and keep some momentum up.

Thank you for your patience and your support. I've let fear and worries about what you might think of me cloud my judgment more times than I can count, but you all have stuck by me through all of this, even through the crazy stuff with the economy and covid. Thank you so much.

I still feel like the true worth of this project is waiting to shine through, and with your help, hopefully I'll be able to show the world something really special again.

Cheers.