Hey everyone, thought I might as well tell everyone what's going down on the pipeline.
I wrote a ton last year, only a fraction of it was ever seen by the community at large. Combined altogether, it would have made a rather large AIF game, but the fact it was spread out into three or so incomplete projects makes me cringe a bit. I've got a few projects in the pipeline (I'm also collaborating with someone on something, but I won't say any more about that.)
My primary objective this year is to finish up Version 1 of the AIF Toolkit and to release at least one major game.
So far, people have really like Simpler AIF and I'm happy with that. Version 0.5 is on its way and it will include things like improved handling of non-standard sex organs and anatomies, tribbing/frotting, better support for sex toys and better handling of clothing. It will break compatibility slightly but I'll try and add instructions on upgrading to 0.5.
I also plan on adding a module that will allow for Bad Sister style games. It also allows you to have CYOA segments and interactive segments. It's actually all ready to go except I need to write the documentation and finish the code that lets you use sex commands during CYOA. I'm hoping this will make it very easy for people to write games.
I hope this is a good year for AIF.
Showing posts with label Bad Sister. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bad Sister. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Play Online!
Matrix Mole has kindly allowed Bad Sister to be hosted on AIFCommunity.org for web play. You'll notice on the right hand side a new "play online" feature. Clicking that will lead to a splash page where you can download the story file or play right from your browser. Unfortunately, because of the limitations of the javascript interpreter there are no images, therefore, several image-heavy descriptions have been revised.
Making AIF more accessible is, I feel, an important part of growing the community, so I encourage other authors to do the same. I know at least TADS and Inform 7 can compile to a web page, so it should be pretty easy. Myself, I found the entire process surprisingly easy to do.
Making AIF more accessible is, I feel, an important part of growing the community, so I encourage other authors to do the same. I know at least TADS and Inform 7 can compile to a web page, so it should be pretty easy. Myself, I found the entire process surprisingly easy to do.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Upcoming extension: Advanced Layered Clothing
For the past few weeks, I've been working on a new layered clothing for use with Simpler AIF, with very little spare time to actually work on any games. While Advanced Layered Clothing has been feature complete for a while, I keep thinking of things to add and change and, since then, it has become a major update to Simpler AIF as well. Overall, I'm pretty happy with Advanced Layered Clothing (or "ALC" as I affectionately call it), and, despite the name, ALC has proven very easy to use so far, as well as pretty easy to modify and customize so I'm pretty sure the community will like it too.
Over the past few days, I've been bug testing both ALC and Simpler AIF pretty extensively, catching quite a few bugs in the process. I'm pretty sure I've caught all the serious/embarrassing ones, still, ALC is quite large and complex and I'd bet there are a few I haven't caught even after release.
New Features of Simpler AIF
Simpler AIF (or SAIF) version 4 had a undocumented feature where you could customize the default library messages by using phrases. I never particularly liked this method and I've replaced it with an entirely new system. Now, all library messages are controlled by the "AIF message rules". Using rules rather than phrases gives the author a lot more flexibility. Such a rule might look a little like this:
AIF message for the can't lick your own pussy rule when the failer is Cersei: say "'Jaime, do I look like a contortionist to you?'"
SAIF now includes an index of customizable library messages that you can basically drop in the game and fill out as you desire, making it very easy to customize most of the extension's default messages.
Common body parts that were included as part of the "common body parts" plugin are incorporated in the core extension itself. By default, however, they aren't actually added to anyone in the game unless you paste in the relevant pieces of code, so they are still optional. What you get, however, is much better support for secondary body parts. For example, it was possible to lick your own tummy and legs in version 4, which has been fixed in version 5.
There are some more internal changes to Simpler AIF that might not be noticeable to most authors, notably a new action phase (the "redirect" phase) whose sole purpose is to redirect actions into different ones.
There are still some things I want to do with Simpler AIF before it is "complete". I would like to support tribadism and frotting, and I would like to generalize how body parts work (i.e. instead of a rule requiring "cock" it would require a "penile thing") to better support non-humans, but these features will be saved for a version 6.
Features in Advanced Layered Clothing
ALC has a clothing system that would be familiar to anyone who has played an AIF game. On the author's end, ALC is fairly simple to use but still has some advanced features.
ALC uses a body slot system (or "body areas") and works by comparing lists of covered areas with the associated areas of body parts. Neatly, ALC doesn't require the body parts to actually exist for you to test coverage (so you don't actually have to have a "feet" object to wear shoes, but you still test to see if the feet would be covered). It's pretty easy to add new garments and body parts. It is not so easy to add new body slots, but it is at least a labor-intensive rather than complex process.
ALC uses a variety of shorthand to make it easy to write prose about garments. For example, you can use the phrase "chest garment of A PERSON" to find the garment covering a person's chest. ALC also automatically sets an "obstructing garment" variable when it tests for accessibility, allowing you to write things like this:
...if Anna's breasts are not exposed, say "You rub Anna's breasts through [the obstructing garment]."
ALC includes three methods of opening a garment: unzipping, unbuttoning and shifting. There are two more I might add in future updates (tearing and unbuckling) but for right now these three are more than enough.
An updated version of SAIF's clothing set system as been adapted for ALC. This makes it easy to manage clothing, making it so characters don't make off with each other's clothes and making it easy to dress characters back up in their clothes.
Finally, and what I think is the coolest feature of ALC, are Automated Descriptions which handle character descriptions similar to how location descriptions are printed up.
Possible Future Extensions
Manageable AIF: Really more of a "lazy person's AIF" extension. Manageable AIF consolidates descriptions and the number of interactions down to as few as possible while still keeping scenes fully interactive, making writing a AIF scene much less work.
AIF Templates: Not really an extension but a collection of fully coded AIF scenes that could be dropped into a game and filled out pretty easily to make a fully fleshed-out interactive scene.
Sex Toys: Simpler AIF's handling of sex toys is poor and non-existent in ALC and it would make sense to move this to a new extension.
Arousal: I have a few ideas for an arousal system although they aren't fully fleshed out yet.
Positions: Again, I have a few ideas how to handle this although they aren't fully fleshed out yet.
So, do any of you have any ideas of what you'd like to see in an AIF extension?
EDIT: Update about Bad Sister
I wrote an imageless version of Bad Sister for play on browsers. It is ready to go except that it needs a host. If you have a server and wouldn't mind hosting it, please send me a line.
Over the past few days, I've been bug testing both ALC and Simpler AIF pretty extensively, catching quite a few bugs in the process. I'm pretty sure I've caught all the serious/embarrassing ones, still, ALC is quite large and complex and I'd bet there are a few I haven't caught even after release.
New Features of Simpler AIF
Simpler AIF (or SAIF) version 4 had a undocumented feature where you could customize the default library messages by using phrases. I never particularly liked this method and I've replaced it with an entirely new system. Now, all library messages are controlled by the "AIF message rules". Using rules rather than phrases gives the author a lot more flexibility. Such a rule might look a little like this:
AIF message for the can't lick your own pussy rule when the failer is Cersei: say "'Jaime, do I look like a contortionist to you?'"
SAIF now includes an index of customizable library messages that you can basically drop in the game and fill out as you desire, making it very easy to customize most of the extension's default messages.
Common body parts that were included as part of the "common body parts" plugin are incorporated in the core extension itself. By default, however, they aren't actually added to anyone in the game unless you paste in the relevant pieces of code, so they are still optional. What you get, however, is much better support for secondary body parts. For example, it was possible to lick your own tummy and legs in version 4, which has been fixed in version 5.
There are some more internal changes to Simpler AIF that might not be noticeable to most authors, notably a new action phase (the "redirect" phase) whose sole purpose is to redirect actions into different ones.
There are still some things I want to do with Simpler AIF before it is "complete". I would like to support tribadism and frotting, and I would like to generalize how body parts work (i.e. instead of a rule requiring "cock" it would require a "penile thing") to better support non-humans, but these features will be saved for a version 6.
Features in Advanced Layered Clothing
ALC has a clothing system that would be familiar to anyone who has played an AIF game. On the author's end, ALC is fairly simple to use but still has some advanced features.
ALC uses a body slot system (or "body areas") and works by comparing lists of covered areas with the associated areas of body parts. Neatly, ALC doesn't require the body parts to actually exist for you to test coverage (so you don't actually have to have a "feet" object to wear shoes, but you still test to see if the feet would be covered). It's pretty easy to add new garments and body parts. It is not so easy to add new body slots, but it is at least a labor-intensive rather than complex process.
ALC uses a variety of shorthand to make it easy to write prose about garments. For example, you can use the phrase "chest garment of A PERSON" to find the garment covering a person's chest. ALC also automatically sets an "obstructing garment" variable when it tests for accessibility, allowing you to write things like this:
...if Anna's breasts are not exposed, say "You rub Anna's breasts through [the obstructing garment]."
ALC includes three methods of opening a garment: unzipping, unbuttoning and shifting. There are two more I might add in future updates (tearing and unbuckling) but for right now these three are more than enough.
An updated version of SAIF's clothing set system as been adapted for ALC. This makes it easy to manage clothing, making it so characters don't make off with each other's clothes and making it easy to dress characters back up in their clothes.
Finally, and what I think is the coolest feature of ALC, are Automated Descriptions which handle character descriptions similar to how location descriptions are printed up.
Possible Future Extensions
Manageable AIF: Really more of a "lazy person's AIF" extension. Manageable AIF consolidates descriptions and the number of interactions down to as few as possible while still keeping scenes fully interactive, making writing a AIF scene much less work.
AIF Templates: Not really an extension but a collection of fully coded AIF scenes that could be dropped into a game and filled out pretty easily to make a fully fleshed-out interactive scene.
Sex Toys: Simpler AIF's handling of sex toys is poor and non-existent in ALC and it would make sense to move this to a new extension.
Arousal: I have a few ideas for an arousal system although they aren't fully fleshed out yet.
Positions: Again, I have a few ideas how to handle this although they aren't fully fleshed out yet.
So, do any of you have any ideas of what you'd like to see in an AIF extension?
EDIT: Update about Bad Sister
I wrote an imageless version of Bad Sister for play on browsers. It is ready to go except that it needs a host. If you have a server and wouldn't mind hosting it, please send me a line.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Bad Sister: A Retrospective
So, this is the thing I've been meaning to write for a while, since I finished and published Bad Sister, in fact. I'm equal parts extremely happy about it and a little embarrassed. Writing Bad Sister and publishing it to (relative) popularity is very gratifying and certainly an achievement not worth sneezing at. At the same time, it's a dirty, dirty sex game. It's not exactly something I can hold aloft as a real achievement in real life and put on the resume. Not unless I want a career in writing porn games, and that's unfortunately a niche market right now.
Bad Sister was an experiment. A personal experiment, it's not an experimental game. God no. I just wanted to see if I could write a sex game. I actually had no experience writing erotica, my genre being closer to fantasy and science fiction. I started playing and writing normal IF but then began AIF as a guilty pleasure. I played Moist out of curiosity. Then I made my way through the Goblinboy library and the BBBen library and before long, I had actually run out of AIF games worth playing. Anyone who knows me in real life knows that at that point I'd just start making my own shit.
So, I must have started like four games before I actually started working on Bad Sister. First was a game called 3 A.M at the Gas Station, where you play as a musician who invites a strange girl to have a foursome with you, your girlfriend and your (female) manager in the back of a van. This was supposed to be a small game but I quickly realized that programming an AIF extension was going to be hard as shit and foursomes are very labor intensive.
The next game was going to be entitled The Alt Girls, which was a sex-romp through a town where you slept with a lot of girls who were into various alternative cultures. There was an punk cashier girl, a hippie girl with a broken down ride and a fiery communist girl (modeled after Damsel from Vampire: Bloodlines) planned for, but I got really bored because there was no storyline to speak of.
There was Queen of Metal, which was based on my love of the thrashing, smashing, headbanging music. It was going to be a silly RPG where you played a metal head who fought with (and, of course, fucked) the four Muses of Heavy Metal against the... well, I won't say it because I'd still like to write the Queen of Metal. But the four muses would be based on four tendencies in metal that I liked. They are/were going to be: Druya, the tiny Russian girl who represents folk metal; Clare, a Christian with a Joan of Arc themed band who represents fantasy and power metal; Nalia, the Celtic sensation who would represent progressive and operatic metal; finally, a witch (whose name I forget) who would represent black and death metal. Of course, writing an RPG is actually a lot of work and I hadn't exactly anticipated that.
That leads up to Bad Sister. When I started, I promised myself this is going to be a game I'll actually finish. I sort of half-expected I wouldn't be able to do it. So I just started with a basic premise of a person going on a date with a girlfriend. From there, it expanded. I added a "Bad Sister". I thought that Taylor was unrealistically antagonistic, so I added the back story. I threw in some lesbian scenes because yes.
The point is I didn't exactly come into it with a plan. I didn't realize, for example, that I'd switch to CYOA. At that point, it wasn't because I was incapable of making a text adventure, but that I'd never finish it if it wasn't CYOA. But I really wanted to have AIF-style sex scenes so I wrote a very convoluted method to use sex commands.
It was a lot of fun and a lot of work. Even though people still call it a small project, it didn't feel that way. It felt huge. The total amount of text contained in Bad Sister (including the programming) was about half a novel. Unlike a novelist, a game not only needs to be proofread but also debugged and playtested. As a result, it takes a long, long time to produce one simple game.
I was extremely fortunate to receive the services of Goblinboy for making the game images. He is a very swell guy and even helped to test the game. I sort of doubt that many people would have played if it weren't for him. A. Bromire made really extensive notes and playtesting. It's because of him the game was mostly bug-free, because believe me there was some really honking bad bugs to begin with.
While I guess I could have refined the thing forever, but eventually you need to kick it out the door. Towards the end the game was totally draining me and working on it was taking all of my patience. I finally pushed it out into the world in February. I was elated to see it made something of a splash and it made me really want to continue writing. In addition, I feel a bit like now I have membership in the elite group of "game makers", a feeling which is probably not warranted but nevertheless.
Still, there are things I would have wanted to change. There are corners I cut. Ending #6 really was pretty convoluted and was basically an exercise in me trying to jam through an ending that really didn't make any sense. I was actually pretty happy I got to use Jenny (it was my suggestion) but I guess it probably did invite a comparison with Meteor (which was a far, far better game, to be honest).
Another thing is that, while erotica is everywhere, it is actually really difficult to write. This may be why most erotica is pretty bad. I feel like I've got to lot to learn. Luckily, in this regard, I stand on the shoulders of giants. Even new authors give me something to learn. Brad's Erotic Week helped me realize that good porn is actually very similar to good horror, lots of buildup and tension and hinting only to be released in crazy and unexpected ways. Palmer is just an enviably good writer. Leagues better than so-called "professionals".
Many months later, it's strange. What I find the most gratifying is not the nicer things people have said about it but some of the more critical things. It's nice to hear people say good stuff of course, but to hear people say something fair but critical is, I think, an indication that they took your work seriously.
Sorry for the wall of text. It'll probably happen again. :)
Bad Sister was an experiment. A personal experiment, it's not an experimental game. God no. I just wanted to see if I could write a sex game. I actually had no experience writing erotica, my genre being closer to fantasy and science fiction. I started playing and writing normal IF but then began AIF as a guilty pleasure. I played Moist out of curiosity. Then I made my way through the Goblinboy library and the BBBen library and before long, I had actually run out of AIF games worth playing. Anyone who knows me in real life knows that at that point I'd just start making my own shit.
So, I must have started like four games before I actually started working on Bad Sister. First was a game called 3 A.M at the Gas Station, where you play as a musician who invites a strange girl to have a foursome with you, your girlfriend and your (female) manager in the back of a van. This was supposed to be a small game but I quickly realized that programming an AIF extension was going to be hard as shit and foursomes are very labor intensive.
The next game was going to be entitled The Alt Girls, which was a sex-romp through a town where you slept with a lot of girls who were into various alternative cultures. There was an punk cashier girl, a hippie girl with a broken down ride and a fiery communist girl (modeled after Damsel from Vampire: Bloodlines) planned for, but I got really bored because there was no storyline to speak of.
There was Queen of Metal, which was based on my love of the thrashing, smashing, headbanging music. It was going to be a silly RPG where you played a metal head who fought with (and, of course, fucked) the four Muses of Heavy Metal against the... well, I won't say it because I'd still like to write the Queen of Metal. But the four muses would be based on four tendencies in metal that I liked. They are/were going to be: Druya, the tiny Russian girl who represents folk metal; Clare, a Christian with a Joan of Arc themed band who represents fantasy and power metal; Nalia, the Celtic sensation who would represent progressive and operatic metal; finally, a witch (whose name I forget) who would represent black and death metal. Of course, writing an RPG is actually a lot of work and I hadn't exactly anticipated that.
That leads up to Bad Sister. When I started, I promised myself this is going to be a game I'll actually finish. I sort of half-expected I wouldn't be able to do it. So I just started with a basic premise of a person going on a date with a girlfriend. From there, it expanded. I added a "Bad Sister". I thought that Taylor was unrealistically antagonistic, so I added the back story. I threw in some lesbian scenes because yes.
The point is I didn't exactly come into it with a plan. I didn't realize, for example, that I'd switch to CYOA. At that point, it wasn't because I was incapable of making a text adventure, but that I'd never finish it if it wasn't CYOA. But I really wanted to have AIF-style sex scenes so I wrote a very convoluted method to use sex commands.
It was a lot of fun and a lot of work. Even though people still call it a small project, it didn't feel that way. It felt huge. The total amount of text contained in Bad Sister (including the programming) was about half a novel. Unlike a novelist, a game not only needs to be proofread but also debugged and playtested. As a result, it takes a long, long time to produce one simple game.
I was extremely fortunate to receive the services of Goblinboy for making the game images. He is a very swell guy and even helped to test the game. I sort of doubt that many people would have played if it weren't for him. A. Bromire made really extensive notes and playtesting. It's because of him the game was mostly bug-free, because believe me there was some really honking bad bugs to begin with.
While I guess I could have refined the thing forever, but eventually you need to kick it out the door. Towards the end the game was totally draining me and working on it was taking all of my patience. I finally pushed it out into the world in February. I was elated to see it made something of a splash and it made me really want to continue writing. In addition, I feel a bit like now I have membership in the elite group of "game makers", a feeling which is probably not warranted but nevertheless.
Still, there are things I would have wanted to change. There are corners I cut. Ending #6 really was pretty convoluted and was basically an exercise in me trying to jam through an ending that really didn't make any sense. I was actually pretty happy I got to use Jenny (it was my suggestion) but I guess it probably did invite a comparison with Meteor (which was a far, far better game, to be honest).
Another thing is that, while erotica is everywhere, it is actually really difficult to write. This may be why most erotica is pretty bad. I feel like I've got to lot to learn. Luckily, in this regard, I stand on the shoulders of giants. Even new authors give me something to learn. Brad's Erotic Week helped me realize that good porn is actually very similar to good horror, lots of buildup and tension and hinting only to be released in crazy and unexpected ways. Palmer is just an enviably good writer. Leagues better than so-called "professionals".
Many months later, it's strange. What I find the most gratifying is not the nicer things people have said about it but some of the more critical things. It's nice to hear people say good stuff of course, but to hear people say something fair but critical is, I think, an indication that they took your work seriously.
Sorry for the wall of text. It'll probably happen again. :)
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