Saturday, January 8, 2011

Idea for an eroge

There are two kinds of eroge. Those that are plot with porn, and those that are porn with plot. This is the former, with the tropes of the latter.

A normal, average Japanese teenager wakes up to a normal day. At the breakfast table, his little sister seems a bit more reserved than usual. At school, he finds that his childhood friend is a bit shy about talking to him. The class president barks at him rather harshly- more so than usual. Everything seems a little bit off. It isn't for a few days that he realizes that he's in an eroge- a very smutty one at that. People he's known for his entire life have been reduced to stereotypes. Needless to say, he doesn't take this very well. After a slight internal breakdown, the game's first choice is presented.

This is where the game's save system comes into play. You see, this game doesn't have a normal save system. Instead, it tracks which choice points you've encountered, and which choices you've taken. As the game progresses this becomes a large map, filling itself with your choices. At any time you can exit to this map and go to any other point in the game you've already been to. This is essentially an automation of what eroge players already do- make a map of choices and save at every opportunity. The catch is that the PC remembers his choices, and new ones appear as he gathers more intel. Thus, the player might want to go down a bad end in order to learn something.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Obake -crazy bullets

Ponicalica showed me a tech demo he made recently for what i'm calling crazy bullets. Here's a short explanation from the man himself.

"Every frame, they set their horizontal velocity to one of -4 and 4 and their vertical velocity to one of -3.5 and 4.5.

Basically, it's one of these except tweaked a bit to get the bullets to drift down."

I'm not sure how to write these into the fluff just yet. I was thinking that what the player sees is an abstraction of what's actually out there, for the player's and the PC's convenience. This doesn't change the gameplay at all, but provides a good explanation for why the bullets are so visible. The crazy bullets appear a lot bigger than they actually are in gameplay, though. The circle that the player sees is just where the bullet is likely to be at that given moment. It's dangerous, but you can plow through a field of crazy bullets and not get hit.

This doesn't seem like something a lot of players would risk, though. Perhaps area denial is a better role for the crazy bullets? It'd tie in with the fluff, as well. UAVs can't be sure exactly where these bullets will be, so they steer clear entirely.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Transcendant State info

Note to self: fill out the section below, but don't forget to write about areas other than the poor cities. Talk about the capital as well.

Note to others: this isn't done yet. Feel free to read, but there's more coming.

Leprosy is common in certain areas. Those not inoculated are forced to adopt prosthetics, for obvious reasons. Official prosthetic surgeons are often weeks away and far too expensive for the common leper, so being a street doc is a profitable business. Street docs tend to be somewhat lax about safety, unless it directly concerns them. Street prosthetics tend to be rather haphazard and cheap, and aren't always accepted by the body. The process of installing the prosthetic is very painful and bloody, necessitating the application of painkillers. Unfortunately for would-be cyborgs, the only available painkiller is a homemade alcoholic drink that usually contains motor oil among other creative ingredients. This is also used as an antiseptic.

More notes.

Somehow, a Transcendant State spy has managed to infiltrate (MAGIC NATION). Your job is to take the place of his contact, and reroute any useful information to us.

(MAGIC NATION) technology is about advanced as Earth's, minus anything to do with computers. It's never stated outright, but (MAGIC NATION) are kind of like the Amish. It's not that they hate technology or advancement, but that certain things are outlawed- mostly computers and prosthetics.