A Bit About the PAL Expansion

A new blog post? Crazy!

It's time to talk about the new Pervert Action Legacy expansion that I'm developing alongside BBBen. As some of you know, I did some work on PAL as a text contributor, but in a pretty haphazard, irregular way. This expansion is a little different in that I have specific responsibilities, so it's more like working as part of an actual team. This is the first time I've worked in this way, and going forward, it's probably how I'm going to work on AIF in the future.

So, what's very different and special about this expansion is the scary degree of creative control I'm being given to futz around to my vision. When PAL was just a bunch of ideas in a google doc I had lobbied for a game closer to Nocturnal Illusion in terms of atmosphere. Ultimately, that's not really what PAL became, but I always thought it would be cool to borrow a little more heavily from that source material. So, there's going to be a lot more getting into yourself trouble by poking your head into the wrong places. Maybe into a weird, new subplot?

So the subplot introduces a new set of antagonists bound to make life difficult. If you've already played PAL a bunch of times, they'll provide some welcome complications and change things up a little. If you haven't, don't worry! You'll have plenty of opportunity to tuuuurn baaaack before you make things hard on yourself.

There's a bit more planned other than that. Hiroshi is getting an expanded role, as is Ai. There's going to be Iku/Kimiko threesome scene. And you can molest the maids in new and varied ways. There's other stuff, but some of it's a secret, and some of it we're not 100% sure of yet.

Anyways, it's good to be back.

New Years Resolutions

It's that time of year: time to make some resolutions. First, let's look at what I promised myself last year. Unfortunately for me, I saved the evidence.

My primary objective this year is to finish up Version 1 of the AIF Toolkit and to release at least one major game.

Oh dear. 50% ain't bad... isn't it?

 Well, to be fair, I had no idea I would be publishing a book this year. It was also a pretty difficult year personally, so there's that. Still, I really would have liked to release at least one game.

In addition to all of my personal resolutions, I have a few that are a little AIF related.

#1 Write and read more, play video games less.

I have to admit that I have a video game addiction. That became pretty clear when I saw how many hours I'd logged on Steam this week. It's that draw-dropping moment when you're like, "oh shit, I don't play that many video games, do I?" and it's like, "yeah, yeah you really do."

And the funny thing is that I find writing far more emotionally satisfying. I'm not sure why I spend so much time playing when writing is what gives me that sense of accomplishment where I say to myself this was a full day's work. For the amount I play, I could have produced at least two AIF games and that would have felt a lot better.

Or better yet, maybe I could have had a social life.

#2 AIF Toolkit Recipe Book

I've talked a little about writing an manual for the AIF Toolkit. I've decided that a printed manual would be less useful than a recipe book, an addendum to the AIF Toolkit that contains advice, templates, ways to perform specific tasks, etc, just like the Inform 7 Recipe Book. I've already started work on it. Last week I wrote one project template and three sex scene templates that can be simply dropped into the source code to make a fully-interactive scene. I'll need to debug them but I think this will be very useful to people who are not programming inclined.

I'll write a little more about the book later, as I'll be soliciting for specific topics that people are interested in.

#3 Stick to a project

 My non-productivity this year was not because I didn't find the time to work on AIF, it's that I kept schizophrenically switching from one project to another. To illustrate, here's a list of AIF games I made significant headway into this year but never managed to follow through on finishing.

Bad Neighbor -- A spiritual sequel to Bad Sister. Started and restarted several times this year.
Dextro: Professional Male Stripper -- A comedy game where you're a male stripper training to be a superspy.
Five Finger Discount -- A game where you play a female thief doing various robberies and fucking a lot of people.
Monster City -- A noir detective story with monster girls.
Odd Ones Out -- An erotic horror AIF. I got pretty far into this one.
Soccer Story -- A sports management game where you manage a girl's soccer story (restarted from last year)

I am interested to know which of those ideas people would most like to see. Ideally, I'd have people vote, that's setting up an expectation that I'll definitely do that particular idea and I don't exactly want to do that.

Whichever of these I end up with, it will probably start after I finish work on Pervert Action: Legacy.

#4 Expand my writing career

I'll be honest. All I really want to do is write. If I can, I'd just do it full time. I'll always be writing and working on projects for fun, but I'd also like to start making money on some of my projects, especially because I'm between jobs right now and hemorrhaging money. My novels are a start, but I'd like to start doing more... ghostwriting, short stories by commission, professional editing, that sort of thing.

I'm very uncomfortable advertising, so the most it will probably be is a little thing on the sidebar for those who are interested. I have no plans on turning this blog into a gigantic commercial enterprise... like everyone else I like free stuff and I want to write free stuff for people.

Anyways, those are the four main things this year. Of course, I have my own resolutions (i.e. get in better shape so I don't die by 40) but these are the ones that will most effect the blog.

That's enough from me. What are your resolutions? Let us me know in the comments.

The Rest of PAL's Cast

Well, I hit a milestone with my book, so I've been pretty busy writing and not posting PAL characters as I should have. To make up for it, here is the rest of the cast, ripped straight from bbben's blog. I have little else to add except I'm pretty excited about how the game is turning out so far, but there's a lot of work in front of us.

PAL Character profile: Rio

Rio is Kenji’s new secretary. She is a (very) tall, confident woman that makes Kenji feel like a little boy by comparison. She has an overt sexuality about her, and it’s her job to see that Kenji trains the maids well.

PAL Character profile: Hiroshi

Hiroshi is a travelling salesman and pervert. He can help Kenji by selling various items, such as gifts and potions.

PAL Character profile: Masami

Masami is the widow of the last master of the manor. Under the conditions of the will, she has the right to stay in the mansion, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy about Kenji being there and taking over her house.

PAL Character profile: Ai

Ai is a mystery. No spoilers, you’ll have to work her out for yourself.

Kimiko Character Preview

The next character reveal for Pervert Action: Future is here! The third of the three maids is Kimiko:
Kimiko is not happy about being a maid. She was the daughter of the former master, and grew up being served by maids. This privileged girl now has to deal with a complete change in her circumstances, as she is forced to become the servant of the new master. She has a fiery personality, and she’s going to be difficult to train.

Iku Character Preview

From BBBen's website:

Iku is a good girl. She is naive, earnest and extremely loyal to her master. She follows the “code of the maid”, an Art of War style series of teachings on how to be the perfect maid. A very proper young lady, Iku has a rather old-fashioned and prudish view of sexuality, which makes her a little naive about the role of a maid as outlined in the code.

Pervert Action: Legacy Announcement

In case you guys didn't know, BBBen announced his new Pervert Action: Legacy game a few days ago. I've actually actively been contributing to the project, so that's pretty cool. So far, it's really shaping up awesome, and I'm pretty happy to be a part of it. Phinn is also contributing art, and I'm routinely astounded by the quality of his renders.

Here's the "press release" for lack of a better term that BBBen put on his site.

too long; didn't read: New Pervert Action game in development featuring hot maids.

Synopsis: The third game in the Pervert Action series. As master of a mansion in a remote valley, it is Kenji's job to train up his "battle maids" in housework, combat and the arts of love...

I don't want to release too much information on projects that are currently far from getting a release, but it also seems worthwhile to mention this one since it's now occupying my AIF time. I have started writing it, done a lot of design work and a fair bit of multimedia work, but it's still a long way from being ready. Nonetheless, there's a good chance that if I'm not posting anything it may be because I'm working on this.

I will say that I'm trying to mix up the formula a little bit so that the gameplay feels fresh while still keeping what worked about the previous titles. The combat system in PAF will be developed and expanded, while relationship gameplay will be a little bit more diverse. The sex scenes will likely be a little shorter, but also more fluid and more numerous. I'm consistently trying to improve the standard of the graphics in the series, and additionally this one will have larger images than in past.

Release date: Not close. Stay tuned and I may release the occasional character poster to whet your appetite.

Collaboration: Super Pervert Action: Crisis is the most collaborative project ever in the history of AIF, and Pervert Action: Future is pretty high on the list too. Therefore it's only natural that there would be other people contributing to this new project. I've spoken to a couple of voice actors who will hopefully be returning to lend their talents to this game; Phinn, who worked on the images of Super PAC, has got involved to work on images for PAL; and Another Wannabe, writer of Bad Sister, has volunteered to contribute text.

Voice acting: That's absolutely the plan! I intend to get in voice actors I've worked with before, although because some won't be available there will likely be some new people too.

Graphics: Phinn and I have already started work on them. More info on that topic will be coming eventually, but one small detail is that we'll be using larger images this time, for a bigger on-screen impact. Where the old images only take up a corner of most screens, these will take up more like half the screen (that's the plan, anyway).

...OK, so, while BBBen isn't listening, here are some major spoilers... Dumbledore's gay. Jaime and Cersei? Banging. Soylent Green is made of people. Turns out, I was the cat, all along.