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Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Release 16: Training

This update introduces an entirely new mechanic: training the bodies and minds of defeated Chosen in order to sculpt them into Forsaken warriors that fit your particular needs.  The game's main combat loop went through several iterations before its first public release, and because the training mechanics are completely untested, they might also end up needing significant changes.  I'm especially interested in feedback during this early phase, before anything is finalized.

Each training session involves choosing multiple training actions in turn.  What happens during each training action varies according to the Forsaken's personality, the Forsaken's corruption, and whichever other training actions are already in progress.  If the training gets intense enough, the Forsaken's Hostility, Deviancy, Obedience, and Disgrace scores can be increased.  High Obedience makes the Forsaken more likely to cooperate with the training.  High Deviancy, which represents dissocation from reality, allows the Forsaken to endure more intense training without changing their behavior or worldview.

Corruption from training always goes up, never down.  However, there will be benefits to having some of your Forsaken at low corruption levels.  This (along with the Stamina, Motivation, and Skill mechanics) will eventually add some gameplay depth to the training system.  In the meantime, I'm mainly concerned with ensuring that the training system itself works alright.  It isn't as granular as the one commonly used by eragames, but I hope that it's still satisfying to use.

Only the first tier of training actions is implemented in this update, which consists of the easiest, most mild training types.  Most Forsaken who have been beaten the regular way during the final battle will be completely unfazed by all of them.  In order to make the consent and corruption increase mechanics relevant, I've added the option to generate a new uncorrupted Chosen and then immediately "defeat" her so that she can be trained as one of the Forsaken.  Players with early cheats turned on can access this option from the main menu even if they don't have any Forsaken on their save files.

Click here to download.  Mirror.

  • Content: Added a system for subjecting defeated Chosen to various types of training.
  • Content: Added the ability to generate a random uncorrupted defeated Chosen who can then be trained.
  • Bugfix: Added pages to the Forsaken menu in order to prevent the list from overflowing the screen.
  • Bugfix: Chosen attempting to inflict self damage greater than Long.MAX_VALUE will no longer crash the game.

33 comments:

  1. Congrats on releasing in March. Looking forward to trying out the new mechanics.

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  2. Fun little update, do futa and such have different variations for training?

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    1. Also, if this is just that start, I'm interested to see what the more depraved and advanced tiers are... hmm

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    2. There are minor variations depending on which naughty bits the Forsaken in question has, but the sex acts remain largely the same. This will probably change somewhat once multiple-Forsaken training is in (e.g. a dominant female Forsaken might ride a submissive male/futa Forsaken cowgirl style).

      As a small preview, the next tier of training will be focused around making the subject actively serve you (as opposed to the first tier, which is mostly about passively enduring various tortures). It might be a little while until then, though, since I want to complete the training gameplay loop first, and that involves introducing the mechanics for developing the Forsaken's skills and deploying them against the Chosen.

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    3. oooh that multi forsaken training sounds super interesting.
      Looking forward to seeing how the chosen react to seeing a forsaken for the first time!

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  3. Can anyone explain how this new training system is supposed to work and how much content is written in for it yet? As of right now the random generated Forsaken that I've tested tend to get "stuck" at some values after a few training sessions and I don't have the slightest clue how to progress on them.

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    1. You aren't doing anything wrong. Progressing the corruption levels requires reaching a training intensity that's significantly higher than the subject's current corruption level. Because only the first few training types are implemented, it isn't yet possible to reach the higher intensities.

      There are a fair number of different variations written, but because they're all for low-intensity training types, most of those variations come up when training low-corruption Forsaken. After you've trained one of the Forsaken up to the highest corruption level currently possible, you probably won't end up seeing anything new just yet.

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  4. Can't wait to see how it ties into gameplay and the eventual campaign. Really wanna see collecting forsaken officers and siccing them on others in a long world domination campaign.

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    1. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to make it feel suitably epic.

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    2. You've been doing that well so far, each fight feels surprisingly unique given the fact its the same enemies with similar attacks and the only difference being the commander. Love the descriptions that each attack has and how the chosen react differently to each commander. Can't wait for the next phase!

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  5. I really need to remember to copy my save file over before deleting the old version. Seriously every month I end up playing through the whole game again. Granted it's still great but the new stuff is at the end. Though I feel like this is the first time I've seen claws as a chosen weapon I'm not sure if that's a "randomness is weird" thing or a "new weapon" thing

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    1. Claws were there from the start, though I think they're one of the more rare weapon types. I've been wanting to go back and add more variety to those cosmetic traits just to make things less monotonous, but there are too many higher-priority things to add.

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  6. Got a question for future gameplay, considering how we'll have forsaken in the place of commanders, will we be able to upgrade our forsaken like how we could mutate the commanders? ie, give our forsaken toys to use against the chosen or give one more of a bondage focus ect?

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    1. My plan for the upgrades/customization of Forsaken is that each one will have a "specialization" which is influenced by how you train them. Instead of picking which modifiers you want to give them immediately before the battle, you'll just pick the one which has the specialization you want to use. This should help give them each their own unique role and purpose in your team.

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  7. I'm not sure how in-depth training will become, but if training multiple forsaken at a time in the future is a possibility, will their personalities be affected by their prior relationships? For example, forsaken who killed one of their comrades in the final battle will remain scarred from the experience, wracked with guilt (if they were loved) or eager to kill (if they were hated). While forsaken with unbreakable bonds that were captured would seek to pleasure and encourage their friend's training, forsaken captured as bitter enemies can be more willing to punish and demean their former foes. Perhaps forsaken can even compete for the demon lord's praise or affection. Excellent addition! I can easily see this becoming a main attraction; it builds anticipation for the payoff when you can finally defeat the chosen.

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    1. It'll take awhile to implement all the possible interactions, but all of this is absolutely planned. In particular, when you're training two Forsaken together, their relationship will have a large impact on how it goes. If they're both obedient and they like each other, then they'll work hard together to make the training more effective. If they hate each other, the "trainer" will regain a lot of motivation at the expense of the stamina of the "trainee." Less obedient Forsaken might be willing to do things they otherwise wouldn't for their friends' sake.

      One of the subjects you'll eventually be able to talk to the Forsaken about is what they think about each of the other Forsaken. For those who were teammates as Chosen, this will be heavily weighted by their relationship prior to the final battle. It'll also factor in innate personality traits, corruption level, their experience being trained together (so you can try to turn them against each other by having them abuse each other), and any pre-existing relationships (family members, mentor/student, that kind of thing).

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  8. Hi, is there a way to keep a chosen's personality through the game without becoming hateful and is there special dialogue for it?

    My favorite personality is the pragmatic one who just pleasures chosen right away but once you morality break them they no longer cooperate and they start biting, kicking etc.
    But trying to corrupt them without hate is really tough.

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    1. There's currently not very much extra dialogue for Chosen who stay nonviolent, but there'll be more rewards for managing to keep them that way in the future. Nonviolent Forsaken will be generally kind and cooperative with the other Forsaken, making it so that you don't need to worry about their motivation very much.

      It is tough to manage, though. You pretty much have to avoid using Grind or Pummel on them. This means that the only way to deal HATE and INJU is with Commanders and with the Defiler actions. You'll probably have better chances of success if you pick one Chosen to leave "untouched" so that you can go all-out on the other two.

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  9. Admittedly, there's one concern I have with the system that this update kind of touches on - the idea that Chosen are already too corrupt by the time you can capture them (and to a lesser extent, that the game is a bit long when it comes to building up that corruption for a single cycle). Will there be a modified gameplay loop for early playthroughs so we can capture Chosen when they're not as corrupted?

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    1. Low-corruption Forsaken will have some special uses, so there'll be incentive to try to finish a cycle with one of the Chosen at a low corruption level. There are also some plans for the campaign mode to sometimes give you "freebie" low-corruption Forsaken without having to win a loop against them first. For example, maybe after you defeat one of the Chosen, her sister (who is also one of the Chosen) voluntarily joins you in hopes of helping her escape.

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    2. Oooh, I hope we get to use them to so discord within the Chosen!

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  10. Getting a warning for a Script/Wacatac.B!ml Trojan when attempting to download from Windows Defender.

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    1. It's my understanding that isolated false positive results from antivirus programs are pretty common. A result generally isn't considered meaningful unless several different antivirus programs agree on it. When I ran the program through virustotal (https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/93a00ddaa3d727db10424b66d7740f9a042e2c653d56ef57a2e468cc1ed79b3a/detection), it came up clean.

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  11. While I doubt you'll tell us this, any hints on what the specialisations for the forsaken will be?

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    1. There will be three different ways in which Forsaken are specialized. The first is their corruption: depending on their Hostility, Obedience, and Disgrace, there will be various tradeoffs between the cost to use them (in motivation, stamina, and EE) and their effectiveness in battle. The second is their training experience (which will make them better or worse at dealing each type of circumstance damage). The third is their species (which won't be too interesting at first since they're all basic humans right now).

      The Forsaken will also get damage bonuses against Chosen they're related to somehow (old teammates, family members, etc.) and against those with corresponding personality types.
      Even when you're trying to deal the same type of damage at the same stage in the game, one Forsaken might be better against one Chosen, while a different Forsaken is better against a different Chosen.

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    2. Ooooh. We might get to fight against already fought chosen... fun! Species is interesting too... wonder if we'll get stuff like arachnes and Dryads... or maybe cyborgs... That opens a lot of possibility. Can't wait for the future!

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    3. I'm not sure how many different species there are going to be. Ideally, I'd like to have some sort of unique mechanic for each one. But as long as I can manage that, I could definitely see all of those being possibilities.

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Oh, it got triggered now when i used the punisher on her for the first time, impregantation one to be specific. I guess just regular commanders capture isn't suffice ^_^'

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    2. I think this is a case where the game doesn't communicate well, although I'm not quite sure how to fix it here. The detonation move can only be used while being held by a commander, and the "basic" commander never actually holds the Chosen - it just transfers them to being surrounded.

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  13. Is there a way to re-enable chat mode after day 50? it vanished after a save I did after since I had not managed to do enough to damage resolve, now the chosen spend their spare time trying to kill eachother out of mercy and I am no where near the EE needed to start the (second) final fight

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    1. I think I found what was causing this and fixed it in Release 17, but let me know if the bug is still persisting.

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