Anyways. Happy new year.
Download it here.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Merry Christmas... and a minor update to AIF Toolkit
I hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas. I have a teensy Christmas gift: AIF toolkit version 4.6. It includes some bug fixes and add a minor new feature. You can now force-strip characters so that their clothes go off-stage.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Where Have I Been?
So, it's been a bit of time since I posted here. It's what you might have expected it to be: life, work and sheer laziness. But there is another thing that's ultimately been slowing me down, something that I'll talk about here.
A year or so back I was a volunteer editor for Literotica. I had always been good at the minutiae of grammar and spelling, and I had previously worked professionally as an editor, so I thought: why not, I'll give it a go. I started editing stories and, to my shock, people were actually enthusiastic about my work.
So, after not having edited for a while, I've decided to try and edit professionally again, ideally for people who want to be self-published. To build my reputation, I've taken on a lot of authors, of all skill levels, and that's been eating my time like nothing else. I've stolen a moment here and there to work on my game, but progress has really slowed down.
One of the stipulations to my writers was that I could link to their work as samples of my editing, so I will be occasionally be posting them on this blog.
A few games have been released recently, and I will be posting some reviews soon.
A year or so back I was a volunteer editor for Literotica. I had always been good at the minutiae of grammar and spelling, and I had previously worked professionally as an editor, so I thought: why not, I'll give it a go. I started editing stories and, to my shock, people were actually enthusiastic about my work.
So, after not having edited for a while, I've decided to try and edit professionally again, ideally for people who want to be self-published. To build my reputation, I've taken on a lot of authors, of all skill levels, and that's been eating my time like nothing else. I've stolen a moment here and there to work on my game, but progress has really slowed down.
One of the stipulations to my writers was that I could link to their work as samples of my editing, so I will be occasionally be posting them on this blog.
A few games have been released recently, and I will be posting some reviews soon.
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
An Update
It's been a while since I gave an update. Well, here's one.
Soccer Story a little less than 100,000 words long now. For some perspective, that's about as long as your standard novel. It's a bit hard to estimate since much of the writing has been moved over to a word document, but the important thing is that it isn't even close to feeling polished, done, or even at a working state. I've slowed down development on it to gather my thoughts about the project. I'm dissatisfied with the simulation aspect in a couple of ways. While it is sophisticated as far as a text project goes, it's feels quite *random*, and I'm really not sure what to do about it right now.
More recently, I have been working on a demo game for Simpler AIF. I won't be releasing much info about it, except that it is in a genre I have little experience in, so it's an experiment. I am, however, planning on doing my own hand-drawn art for it, contingent on whether I'm still able to produce anything worthwhile. There was actually a time I was an okay artist, but it was by intuition and practice rather than training, and it has suffered unused for a while. My skill at art has always been correlated with my boredom at the time and, since graduating from university and entering jobs that would fire me for doodling, I've hardly laid a pen to paper. That must change.
If I do manage to draw something that doesn't look like a graphite turd, I will post a teaser here.
Soccer Story a little less than 100,000 words long now. For some perspective, that's about as long as your standard novel. It's a bit hard to estimate since much of the writing has been moved over to a word document, but the important thing is that it isn't even close to feeling polished, done, or even at a working state. I've slowed down development on it to gather my thoughts about the project. I'm dissatisfied with the simulation aspect in a couple of ways. While it is sophisticated as far as a text project goes, it's feels quite *random*, and I'm really not sure what to do about it right now.
More recently, I have been working on a demo game for Simpler AIF. I won't be releasing much info about it, except that it is in a genre I have little experience in, so it's an experiment. I am, however, planning on doing my own hand-drawn art for it, contingent on whether I'm still able to produce anything worthwhile. There was actually a time I was an okay artist, but it was by intuition and practice rather than training, and it has suffered unused for a while. My skill at art has always been correlated with my boredom at the time and, since graduating from university and entering jobs that would fire me for doodling, I've hardly laid a pen to paper. That must change.
If I do manage to draw something that doesn't look like a graphite turd, I will post a teaser here.
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.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Advanced Layered Clothing version 2
ALC version 2 fixes a minor bug related to stripping. It can be downloaded here.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Advanced Layered Clothing Released
Previously I had talked about Advanced Layered Clothing. I'm now unceremoniously kicking it out to the general public. All of my yammering self-promotion can be read in the post below.
You can download the zip file here.
Hanon Ondricek assisted with proof-reading and features and I want to thank him for his help and for putting up with me sending 3,000 versions of this.
You can download the zip file here.
Hanon Ondricek assisted with proof-reading and features and I want to thank him for his help and for putting up with me sending 3,000 versions of this.
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.
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