I’ve taken down the link on the Edit Account page for automatically claiming OffBeatr rewards. Looking at the count of upgraded accounts, I’m pretty sure everybody has their OffBeatr rewards by now.
If there’s anybody left who’s eligible for OffBeatr rewards but hasn’t received them, please let me know at jack@fleshcult.com with both your OffBeatr and Fleshcult accounts and I’ll sort it out.
I’d like to welcome the very talented Porpentine to the project! Her first contributions are the 28 new body part and building descriptions, and we’ll be seeing lots more of her work down the line.
You might know her as the author of Cyberqueen (Trigger Warning: All of them), from her Rock Paper Shotgun column, Live Free, Play Hard, or as one of the contributors to freeindiegam.es.
Other stuff in this release:
I’ve been making big changes to the metagame. I’ve removed the production cap from concubine/beast pairs and replaced it with a more interesting system.
The late-game explosion in mana production is well and truly under control. I might’ve actually gone too far, but I like these systems as a first cut even if I have to tweak some numbers down the line.
Other miscellaneous stuff:
I’ve just switched on the new payment system, so even if you missed out of the OffBeatr deadline you can get sweet donation rewards. It takes credit cards and debit cards. If you don’t have either, e-mail me and we’ll sort something out with Paypal.
Rewards:
All money collected will go towards further development of the game. If you’re interested, log into Fleshcult and go to Edit Account. (If you don’t see anything new, you might already have all the rewards)
New stuff:
I’m continuing to work on the new donation system. I think it’s basically done, but it needs more testing before I can open it up to the public.
Want to talk about Fleshcult but your blog comments keep getting buried by new blog entries? Presenting:
(Man, phpBB is ugly. I’m going have to do some template hacking one of these days. Who’s Online, Statistics, Current Time… so much clutter)
Here’s a really rough schedule of the major milestones I have planned during the development period. Bug fixing will take place throughout. I’m also counting on final paintings getting delivered at some point, although it’s hard to know when that will be.
The OffBeatr total has dropped below $12,000 and is fluctuating due to failed transactions, but that’s OK, I’m still committed to achieving all the stretch goals that we reached.
I’ve decided to accept donations during development under the same terms as the crowdfunding campaign: $10 gets you unlimited turns during development (and after development, everybody gets unlimited turns), and $5 extra gets you unlimited characters. I want to be transparent about this, so I’ll do a weekly update showing the total donations collected, the money spent and what the remaining balance of project funds is. I’ll do the first balance update when I receive payment from OffBeatr.
Mid Feb
Early March
End of March
Late April
Mid May
Early June
You might’ve noticed that the stretch goals are in tidy $3,000 increments. Rather than being an incredible fluke of the budgeting process, this does mean that they are in fact arbitrary numbers. While the features for each goal will cost less that the $3k increment, I will be spending every dollar that I raise working on the game, frequently on things that I haven’t listed in the crowdfunding pitch.
By under-promising in my goals, I have room to improvise new features and fix unforeseen problems during development. Trying to completely fill the budget with promised features means that I have to plan absolutely everything up front, which will lead to a worse game because I won’t be able to respond to feedback and interesting new ideas. Lair structures are an example of a feature that I didn’t have planned, but emerged as a really good way to solve a couple of different problems. In my planning I’ve padded things by doubling the budget, so if everything goes to plan I’ll be working 50% on the stated goals and 50% on unforeseen things.
With that said, what’s my best guess of how long it’ll really take me to do the “6 player skills, 3 opponent skills” stretch goal? I’m thinking about just posting my budget spreadsheet, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation is way easier to follow: After tax and OffBeatr’s cut, $3000 gross represents about 6-7 weeks of living expenses for me. That’s 42 days. 21 days with 2x padding.
I’ve listed 9 skills in total to design, code, write text for, test and balance. What happens if some of them turn out to be shitty and no fun? Well, I’ll throw them out and write new ones. From prototyping I know I can try out about 2 skill ideas in a day, so let’s say I throw out half and I’m producing one good skill per day on average.
The prototype has extremely repetitive text in the encounters. I only have between 1 and 3 variations on the skill messages. For the real product, I’d like to have at least 10. Let’s say that contracting writing for this costs an equivalent of half a day’s living expenses. Probably less, but I haven’t contracted any writing yet, so it pays to be conservative.
How long will I spend fixing bugs that are due to the new skill, and how long will it take me to balance it against the other skills? This is really hard to know, but I’m going to say half a day per skill.
This all adds up to 2 days per skill, so we have a total of 18 of the 42 days, working on the stated goal rather than miscellaneous stuff. Add 1 rest day per week on average and that’s 21 days.
Just miscellaneous fixes this time:
Recently I played Mutant Minx Meltdown. It’s a pretty entertaining freeware erotic RPG (for Windows, Mac and Linux) aimed at straight men. You explore a locale infested with monstergirls and lust-crazed women, most of whom are illustrated. It hews closely to RPG conventions (random battles, attack/special move/wait combat and so on), and while the combat is fairly perfunctory, at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Too many porn games get bogged down in their own lore, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is a refreshing change. For instance, the Attack button is labelled ‘Shove’ and you can upgrade it to ‘Lightning Shove’. It’s good to know I’m not hurting all those over-friendly nymphos.