v0.10 is finally out, and I'm trying to put a little bit of everything in the code! If you want to see what's coming up, or get an idea of what this conversion stuff is I'm talking about, or just wanna come chat with folks interested in the game, come watch me code this coming Friday at 6 PM EST! If you aren't sure when EST is, check the handy clock widget on the right, under the survey.
As always, I'll be having an interview session for the intermission-- if you have any questions for Lithier or Lith, now's your chance to ask and get a big, proper answer for the records! Hope I'll see you all there! ^.^
Monday, December 31, 2012
Monday, December 24, 2012
On the Survey
If you haven't seen it already, MVOL v0.10 is up on the "play the game" page! Go fondle that poor kitty, he must be lonely!
Now. The survey on where to go from here has a week left, but it's already seen a much larger turnout of votes than I expected-- and more surprisingly, there seems to be very little consensus on an answer! There's easily the potential for one or two options to climb past 50% if they're widely favored as the survey stands, but I've watched it linger in the 40's at the highest for some time. Thinking about it, I realized that I might not be terribly clear in what each option means-- there's only so much space for questions without clogging up the survey, after all!
So, with that in mind, I thought I'd take a little time to clarify what my thoughts are behind each option. If you find you've changed your opinion on what you'd like to see next after reading this, you should be able to easily change your response to the survey by clicking the "change your vote" link near the bottom of the survey.
Now. The survey on where to go from here has a week left, but it's already seen a much larger turnout of votes than I expected-- and more surprisingly, there seems to be very little consensus on an answer! There's easily the potential for one or two options to climb past 50% if they're widely favored as the survey stands, but I've watched it linger in the 40's at the highest for some time. Thinking about it, I realized that I might not be terribly clear in what each option means-- there's only so much space for questions without clogging up the survey, after all!
So, with that in mind, I thought I'd take a little time to clarify what my thoughts are behind each option. If you find you've changed your opinion on what you'd like to see next after reading this, you should be able to easily change your response to the survey by clicking the "change your vote" link near the bottom of the survey.
Vagina/NoDick for your Avatar
Your avatar being the crude, humanoid representation of your will that interacts with Lith on your behalf, the one referred to as "you" when you play the game-- this would unlock the option of having a vagina either instead of or in addition to a dick. This would not be considered the "main mode" of play, however, and the player would have less options available to them if they didn't have a dick-- due to the nature of Lith himself. Some achievements would be impossible, and there would likely be fewer sex scenes available, but the game would have a good deal of content adapted to handle avatars sans dick.
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Vagina/NoDick for Lith (cuntboy? maleherm?) |
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Technically, the idea of Lith being female is split into two things here. This one would unlock the option for Lith to have a vagina instead of or in addition to his dick. He would still be referred to as "he," but could be configured to be a woman anatomically by some means or other. I haven't spent a lot of time just yet figuring out exactly how that would work-- whether it would be a transformation you could induce in game, or something you set at the beginning. The former would make more sense, probably, but the latter would be more "convenient." Anyway, people that like vaginas would probably be interested in this. Breasts may get thrown in with this, as they shouldn't be as hard to add, relatively.
Girl Lith ("she" and "her") |
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The other big problem with trying to make Lith a girl is that, whereas the game always says "you," which is gender neutral, it says "he" all the time in reference to Lith. Going through the entire game and setting it up such that Lith would be referred to as female is a massive undertaking on its own. With the combination of this and the above option, Lith would effectively be a woman-- but each have their possibilities if used alone. Breasts could also be included with this option, effectively making Lith a shemale by most definitions, or simply a transgender of some kind without-- a cat with a penis that identifies as female. With just the V/ND option above, he would still be referred to as "he," hence the suggestion of such things as cuntboy and maleherm, the terms I've heard used for a "he" that has a vagina-- with and without a dick, respectively.
Bonus Mode, play as Lith interacting with Avatar |
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I've had this option in the back of my mind for a long time-- ever since I realized that I had, in a way, made a serious mistake in designing MVOL. The largest audience, as far as I know, for Lith's exploits in the stories you all met him in was people that enjoy being on the bottom-- people that like to fantasize about being Lith. But when I made this game, I put the player quite explicitly in the viewpoint of an outsider-- the often-dominant partner that interacts with Lith. So in an effort to mend this oversight, I've formulated the rough idea of an alternate reality: dreams. The idea would be that, when you sleep, you have the option to "dream" of being Lith, interacting with your avatar. And whatever your avatar has become under your guidance is the creature Lith must interact with, for good or ill, naughty or nice. It would be a much shallower experience, with few options and scenes, but at least one or two for each possible configuration of your avatar, as the options come up. If it saw a lot of interest, I'd likely expand it, but it would never become the "point" of the game, or sizeable to match what already exists, I'm afraid. But it may well be what some folks were looking for when they first came to find out that the character they knew and read of was being imported into this game.
Dominant Lith |
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Hard as it may be to believe, Lith is a switch! He can greatly enjoy getting pounded every day of the week and every hour thereof, though he might never admit it, but he also is quite fond of doing some rutting of his own when the situation is right. This option would essentially add another variable to the game-- how dominant Lith sees himself in your relationship. If you submit to and pleasure him often, he'll grow more confident, and start taking a more active hand, eventually mounting you more than you mount him. Of course, he'll never lose his love for cock, but you'll see a side of him that has been exposed very little in my past work, and that some people have professed a deal of interest in.
More Detail for my Avatar in regular scenes (species, endowment size, demeanor, knot) |
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As I mentioned recently, my code as it stands is somewhat cumbersome. I've recently expanded my programming vocabulary into the wonderful realm of parsing, however, and adding extra code to stories should be a deal less cumbersome and distracting than it was originally. So where many scenes in the game might only make reference to the size of your phallus a couple times and your species only so far as whether you have paws and/or a knot, I would much more easily be able to go through and customize scenes to reflect your individual avatar's variables-- cock size, breasts, species, naughty vs. nice, how well you know him, perhaps these other variables we've been talking about adding. Classic scenes, already in the game, would essentially be revamped with new content to nod to who and what you have made of your avatar, and I would also know that this is a priority for writing in the future, if it has a large showing in the votes.
More Endowment Options for Avatar (larger breasts/dick, other?)
There was a bit of fuss early on in the game's development when, for basically the reasons above, I trimmed out some of the extra options for the avatar. Some of them, like ball size and dick thickness, were folded into dick length to make an overall size stat, and I've been pretty happy with that. But things like larger sizes for breasts and dick would be more doable now, and I could certainly see there being a significant demand for them. I've already gone ahead and included more species-- that wasn't that hard to implement, though it may come back to bite me if I'm retrofitting old scenes more thoroughly according to the option before this one. For other options, I'm open to suggestions-- I don't imagine there's a very large demand for smaller breasts and dicks for the avatar, but configurations such as alternate heights or builds? Tall and muscular, short and effeminate, towering and curvy? I don't know if these would be huge appeals to a lot of people-- it is, as ever, a matter of what's more appealing, and a better use of time and energy.
The point of this survey as a whole is to get a better idea of what would be most appealing to everyone, what they most direly desire to see added to the game, and immediately. These are all options I'm considering, but they might not all make it, and many of them will probably have to wait quite a while. So, what is most important to you? That's what you should vote for.
Thanks for taking the time to read all this, and for playing my game! Happy voting!
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Friday, December 21, 2012
MVOL v0.10 is Live!
The update is here: MVOL v0.10! I felt it was time to bump up the number a bit, even though v0.05 was probably a larger jump forward than this one-- this version represents the closest we're going to see to 100% of the content I was planning to include in this game. From here, I'm expanding beyond my original vision to include a longer plot and more options for the players for how to interact with our favorite slutty kitty.
That said, I should warn that v0.10 is actually going to be the hardest version yet-- and may be the hardest version that ever comes out. The path system I set up in v0.05 finally comes together with the first of its two main purposes here: a new set of Player Achievements that require you to be intimately familiar with the game! Your goal is to achieve a certain value without so much as thinking about doing anything inappropriate to your "true" self. That's your hint, good luck!
If you need any further help, Petre's guides actually still apply quite well-- I wrote them anticipating this content. You only need to figure out a little more at the very end to get these achievements...
Also new with this update: I've gotten a proper donate button, which you should find through a link on the sidebar to the right! Any and all donations are welcome, and as a small incentive, I've prepared an alternative version of My Very Own Lith with a handful of interesting cheats enabled, including the ability to change many of your avatar's stats and some of Lith's on the fly, as well as explore the content of the game a bit more directly rather than going through the standard decision tree and pushing up variables. Please note, however, that the cheat version has many potential glitches, and that you cannot earn achievements in this version! Other than that, you are free to use your saves in either version of the game. To learn more about MVOL+ and why you should (or shouldn't) donate, check out the "Why Donate?" link to the right!
I can't say that I ever expected this blog to have to sit around this long before finally getting another update. I'd been pretty hesitant at the time about making this blog at all, but I have to admit it's actually helped keep me on track more than once-- if only because people kept coming back, and making it clear to me they still wanted more. I won't go into too much detail, but I've been through a lot of motivational trouble trying to get back into making this game. Part of that was the feeling that I was sinking too much time into something that's not putting food on the table, so I hope that this new donation option might make this a more legitimate option for me to put man-hours into compared to writing commissions or actual work.
Beyond that, though, I've dealt with a lot of frustrations in this project. This update in particular felt a lot like I was trying to write "the same, but more so," and it was hard to get fired up about adding content that felt like it would be the exact same thing. I feel like it came out as pretty distinguished material in the end, though not as good as I would have liked. From here on, though, it sounds like I'm going to be starting to explore new kinds of content at long last, as some of my peculiar ideas and fantasies come closer to seeing fruition. This, combined with the new code I've implemented for more flexible output, makes me hopeful for a more robust update schedule! I'm also planning on releasing content in smaller chunks if I can help it-- meaning less content at a time, with few new achievements, but more rapid updates to the game. I hope that this will be a bit more to everyone's liking, and keep me working on things more steadily rather than lapsing into shameful silence as I have in the past. I have found that there is a deadly cycle in the shame of being unproductive, and it is easy to fall into the immediate gratification of other, less useful things...
So! This update isn't everything I'd like it to be, nor has it come as soon as I would have hoped, but I feel like I've finally done enough to warrant a proper update, and one that should stand on its own as a challenging experience. In the immediate future, I plan to add more content to make the process easier as a whole before going on to add more storyline content, so if you enjoy the challenge MVOL offers, this version is surely for you. If not, the guides are in the blog archives, and they should serve you well enough! (Befriend/Seduce/Use) Thank you all for your patience, and I hope you enjoy v0.10.
That said, I should warn that v0.10 is actually going to be the hardest version yet-- and may be the hardest version that ever comes out. The path system I set up in v0.05 finally comes together with the first of its two main purposes here: a new set of Player Achievements that require you to be intimately familiar with the game! Your goal is to achieve a certain value without so much as thinking about doing anything inappropriate to your "true" self. That's your hint, good luck!
If you need any further help, Petre's guides actually still apply quite well-- I wrote them anticipating this content. You only need to figure out a little more at the very end to get these achievements...
Also new with this update: I've gotten a proper donate button, which you should find through a link on the sidebar to the right! Any and all donations are welcome, and as a small incentive, I've prepared an alternative version of My Very Own Lith with a handful of interesting cheats enabled, including the ability to change many of your avatar's stats and some of Lith's on the fly, as well as explore the content of the game a bit more directly rather than going through the standard decision tree and pushing up variables. Please note, however, that the cheat version has many potential glitches, and that you cannot earn achievements in this version! Other than that, you are free to use your saves in either version of the game. To learn more about MVOL+ and why you should (or shouldn't) donate, check out the "Why Donate?" link to the right!
I can't say that I ever expected this blog to have to sit around this long before finally getting another update. I'd been pretty hesitant at the time about making this blog at all, but I have to admit it's actually helped keep me on track more than once-- if only because people kept coming back, and making it clear to me they still wanted more. I won't go into too much detail, but I've been through a lot of motivational trouble trying to get back into making this game. Part of that was the feeling that I was sinking too much time into something that's not putting food on the table, so I hope that this new donation option might make this a more legitimate option for me to put man-hours into compared to writing commissions or actual work.
Beyond that, though, I've dealt with a lot of frustrations in this project. This update in particular felt a lot like I was trying to write "the same, but more so," and it was hard to get fired up about adding content that felt like it would be the exact same thing. I feel like it came out as pretty distinguished material in the end, though not as good as I would have liked. From here on, though, it sounds like I'm going to be starting to explore new kinds of content at long last, as some of my peculiar ideas and fantasies come closer to seeing fruition. This, combined with the new code I've implemented for more flexible output, makes me hopeful for a more robust update schedule! I'm also planning on releasing content in smaller chunks if I can help it-- meaning less content at a time, with few new achievements, but more rapid updates to the game. I hope that this will be a bit more to everyone's liking, and keep me working on things more steadily rather than lapsing into shameful silence as I have in the past. I have found that there is a deadly cycle in the shame of being unproductive, and it is easy to fall into the immediate gratification of other, less useful things...
So! This update isn't everything I'd like it to be, nor has it come as soon as I would have hoped, but I feel like I've finally done enough to warrant a proper update, and one that should stand on its own as a challenging experience. In the immediate future, I plan to add more content to make the process easier as a whole before going on to add more storyline content, so if you enjoy the challenge MVOL offers, this version is surely for you. If not, the guides are in the blog archives, and they should serve you well enough! (Befriend/Seduce/Use) Thank you all for your patience, and I hope you enjoy v0.10.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Oh My Goodness!
Well, I seem to finally be on a bit of a proper productive kick! MVOL has now entered the playtesting and touching up phase, and I'm planning on releasing the next version this coming Friday!
If you have been so kind as to root around in the current game and send me typos and glitches and such to fix up, keep an eye on your inboxes, as I'm planning on sending out batches of new content to be proofread tonight, and possibly a playtest copy of the game to be double-checked for bugs. If you haven't, but you're just dying to see new material as soon as possible, try hunting down and sending me some typos and glitches! Break the game, furs and scalies!
Additionally, if you're looking to help out in other ways, there are two big new options coming up. The first is that I'm getting to work on an overhaul for the formatting of my code-- if and when this is completed, the game will be much more flexible and easily customized, such that scenes can reflect your character with more precision and with more possible options for you and even Lith! But the hard part is that alllll the text in the game needs to be reformatted. So if you have meticulous eyes and a lot of patience, email me (lithiers@gmail.com) to talk about helping with the conversion!
The second new option is donations! On Friday, I'll also be opening up a proper Donate button through Paypal to make it a little easier for folks that want to show their support in a more pecuniary manner. And to show my thanks for these kind supporters, I'll email every donator, whatever the size of their donation, a special, cheat-enabled version of the game! What exactly this all entails will be explained on Friday, but if you're interested, you'll be able to donate by either Paypal account or credit card readily, so you've got a couple days to make sure you've one or the other.
That all said, I hope this new version is worth the wait I've put you all through ^.^; I never expected it to take this long to put out another version on this blog, and I'll be discussing the process I've been through and what I see in the future of this game on Friday as well. Thank you all for your patience and attention, and I'll see you Friday!
If you have been so kind as to root around in the current game and send me typos and glitches and such to fix up, keep an eye on your inboxes, as I'm planning on sending out batches of new content to be proofread tonight, and possibly a playtest copy of the game to be double-checked for bugs. If you haven't, but you're just dying to see new material as soon as possible, try hunting down and sending me some typos and glitches! Break the game, furs and scalies!
Additionally, if you're looking to help out in other ways, there are two big new options coming up. The first is that I'm getting to work on an overhaul for the formatting of my code-- if and when this is completed, the game will be much more flexible and easily customized, such that scenes can reflect your character with more precision and with more possible options for you and even Lith! But the hard part is that alllll the text in the game needs to be reformatted. So if you have meticulous eyes and a lot of patience, email me (lithiers@gmail.com) to talk about helping with the conversion!
The second new option is donations! On Friday, I'll also be opening up a proper Donate button through Paypal to make it a little easier for folks that want to show their support in a more pecuniary manner. And to show my thanks for these kind supporters, I'll email every donator, whatever the size of their donation, a special, cheat-enabled version of the game! What exactly this all entails will be explained on Friday, but if you're interested, you'll be able to donate by either Paypal account or credit card readily, so you've got a couple days to make sure you've one or the other.
That all said, I hope this new version is worth the wait I've put you all through ^.^; I never expected it to take this long to put out another version on this blog, and I'll be discussing the process I've been through and what I see in the future of this game on Friday as well. Thank you all for your patience and attention, and I'll see you Friday!
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Progress!
Phew! I've just finished completing one of the tougher scenes I've been staring at for some time now ^.^; These things always surprise me a little with how they come out x3 But I'm hoping you all will enjoy when you get your hands on it! I now have... let's see... four new scenes ready for the next version! I've got one more big one to tackle, some extra bits here and there to add, and some playtesting/refining to do. So the progress bar is now:
(+++++++===)
We're getting there! ~.~ My current plan is to complete this update, where the game will finally be considered in a semi-complete state slightly beyond what you already have-- and I'll start putting out smaller updates more often past it. Thanks again to everyone for all your patience, and for checking back despite the inactivity! With a little luck, I may well have the game out before the end of the year :3 Fingers crossed!
(+++++++===)
We're getting there! ~.~ My current plan is to complete this update, where the game will finally be considered in a semi-complete state slightly beyond what you already have-- and I'll start putting out smaller updates more often past it. Thanks again to everyone for all your patience, and for checking back despite the inactivity! With a little luck, I may well have the game out before the end of the year :3 Fingers crossed!
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