Three things!

First thing! I've started a new blog! Its purpose is manifold, but through the link is an in-depth explanation of how and why it's come to be. The short version is, more or less, that it is my personal space to post up all sorts of things, be they related to writing, gaming, or anything else. Expect long rants and snippets of my writing often, as well as a more comprehensive series of updates on just what I'm doing or releasing at any given time. I plan to update it regularly three times a week, so it'll be more active than this blog, and if you enjoy reading the various things I write, this may well be a treat for you. I hope that everyone remotely interested will at least have a look, as today's post is also a sneak peek at my upcoming TagIt story :3

Second thing! I've released my second eBook! The To Own a Wolf series is one of my old standbys, and it was so popular that when I held a reader vote on which series to add a second chapter to, it won by a landslide. I've removed the original series from the public area, edited it up to better meet my current standards of writing, polished up all the little bits, and I'm publishing it in Parts on Amazon in the hopes that folks will enjoy the reborn, fully finished series even more! I did save everyone's feedback as well before deleting the originally published works, as I got a lot of great feedback both in praise and criticism, and I went ahead and took a few folks' comments anonymously to add to the ebooks' pages as they come out :3 My thanks to everyone that left kind words on my stories! Also, I commissioned a piece of art from Clockwork Caribou to illustrate the cover, as seen below!

Third, final thing! I've started a Twitter account! While my new blog should be a pretty comprehensive place to find out what I'm up to, I guess Twitter will be where I make sure to link to every single thing I do comprehensively, as well as give little bits and pieces of my process and day to day. Or something like that! I'm not sure yet. But that's what you do with a Twitter, right? Dang kids and their birdchirpin' social networks...

So that's three big new things for you to check out! And it's not even that horribly long a post! @3@ Well, THIS one isn't... Hope you enjoy! :3

Games That Could Be: Virus - Final Look

Hello, folks! It's been a while since I touched on this, but I've still got it in the back of my head: the concept for a new potential game to design "someday," which we've nicknamed "Virus"! Right now my main focus is MVOL, of course, but I've supposed that when I'm finally done with Lith, or maybe, just maybe as a side project if I found a few people willing to help make the game a reality, it could be pretty cool to design something along these lines.

The main concept of the game is that, in an isolated mining outpost buried in the depth of winter, a strange being is woken from ancient times: you. You consider yourself a primal god of sexuality, though others might see you as a demon, or even just some kind of psychic virus. You possess one of the miners that stumbles upon you, riding in them back to the outpost. There, you will manipulate your miner, your first worshiper or host, to have sex with someone else, so that you can claim them as well. You must spread to as many people as you can, but you must do it subtly, quietly-- for there is another being coming that is hunting for you, your Nemesis. If he can find all your hosts, he can eradicate you from this plane of existence once and for all. But if you can survive the winter, you can spread to the world at large-- the game will end with telling you how much of the world you manage to claim as your own!

If you want to get a little more detail on all this, I invite you to check out the previous posts on this concept:
Main Concept
Gameplay
The Opponent

With all that said, today I'm going to break down the game's details into broad categories of positive and negative features-- both for you, the players, and for myself, and any other designers that would be working on the project. I think this should give us a strong basis for comparing this concept to other game concepts I'm planning to talk about in the future.

Pro's and Con's: The Designers

Pro's:

+Gameplay and erotica can be written separately. While the game is all about sex, the sex scenes are largely rewards more than integral parts of the gameplay. This means several things. For one, the game could effectively be designed "in full" before a single erotic word has been written, with simple placeholders for sex scenes that haven't been written up, so that even at very early stages of development, the game could theoretically be played all the way through. This also means that either side of the writing can be developed independently, so if we have separate smut writers and coders, they should never be stuck waiting on each other before they can do their parts. Further, if large changes are made to the design down the line, this should force no more than minimal rewrites in the smutty stuff. These are all vast improvements over MVOL's constraints.

+A variety of characters and situations should allow multiple writers to work together more easily. This kind of segmented system should let you go from scene to scene without shifts in style and tone being as jarring. This lets more people contribute to the project without a big drop in quality.

+Art would do well in this game. This kind of setup lends itself pretty strongly to having art, either directly in the game, or surrounding the game. There's a strong setting with its own atmosphere, there are established and hopefully interesting characters, and there could be several "common" and/or "popular" pairings.

+A strong cast of characters can make a game more engaging and "viral." This can make the game more likely to spread and become more successful if the characters are strong enough to, say, provoke fanart, or garner references/cameos in other work. This game concept lends itself to a large number of characters that, depending on execution, could come out quite personable. MVOL had a little bit of that with Lith, maybe more so than this concept would, but with only one real feature character.

Con's:

-The interface could be very difficult to present elegantly. This sort of gameplay doesn't have many strong precedents, and it would encourage kind of "looking at everything at once" a lot. So designing the game, especially the GUI, to present important information in a way that feels natural and not overwhelming would be both essential and highly challenging.

-The size of the cast could create an exponentially growing web of scenes, effectively making it almost impossible to cover "everything." In basic gameplay, there are only so many people each person is likely to have sex with, but as the game develops and powers are added to force certain unions to happen, the possibilities can spread to basically "any other person in the base." Add on top of this potential multiple ways two people could get together, the possibility of using powers to augment sex scenes, and the possibility of even having more than two people in a single sexual act, and the possible "pairings" become almost infinite. We would probably only write out full scenes for the most likely/most popular situations, but it would still make for an almost endless task for the erotic writers.

-The commitment as a contributing writer could become rather large. If you wanted to join the game as a writer, a likely approach would be for you to choose one or a few characters and write all the applicable scenes for those characters. This is something of an extension of the point above: the more matchings that are possible, the more scenes your character(s) would be involved in, and you'd need to either accept someone else writing for "your" character, or if you're particularly attached to it, you may be committing to a great deal of writing.

Pro's and Con's: The Players

Pro's:

+The variety in characters should allow for a wide array of themes, scenes, and situations. A large cast lets us cover a variety of species, body types, sexualities and kinks easily, so if a given player really wants to see some particular species get some love, they should have decent luck finding it somewhere in there. I've always had a lot of feedback on MVOL asking for more options and configurations to meet people's particular interests, and this way, it could be built a little more into the game.

+The game would hopefully offer a strong gameplay experience and high replayability. It's my hope to make a game that's worth playing on its own merits and not just its sex scenes. I think that, if designed right, Virus could be the kind of game where people skip the sex scenes simply because they want to play more of the game. In the good way, I mean. This is something that I think MVOL largely fails at.

+Since this concept lends itself fairly well to being worked on by a group, content would probably develop at a more constant rate, meaning more updates, more often. One of the big frustrations with MVOL is that the nature of the game and its goals necessitates it being largely a one-man project, so it's been severely slowed down.

Con's:

-While there will be a great variety of characters, the pool of scenes available for any one character may be disappointingly shallow. If only one character really "strikes the player's fancy," they may not offer enough scenes to be very satisfying.

-The sex scenes may lean toward pretty vanilla kinks. The setting necessitates a degree of realism and "low-profile" activities that may not be as exciting to some players. Incest, cheating, non-consensual and light bondage may be common enough, but many common furry kinks would be difficult to fit into this setting. This may, however, be mediated with some "late game" powers that use magic to fill that gap, if the demand is high enough.

-This would probably be a pretty difficult game! We'd make an effort to include difficulty settings, of course, for those that don't want to be challenged by their porn, but even so, the game may be rather complex to navigate. The developers would have to work very hard on making the game welcoming and understandable.

-There isn't a strong "you" in the sex scenes. The player is a god/demon/virus that doesn't really have any sex directly. While they're setting up all these pairings, they're still something of a voyeur in all this, and that may not be as directly engaging as actually "playing" someone that goes around humping or getting humped.


That wraps up just about all the angles I can think of to look at this game concept! I've got another one, a bit simpler of a concept, on the way for the next time I need something to keep my blog afloat between more significant bits of news. Until then, I hope this is an interesting concept I've given you a peek in on :3 When I'm done describing all my game concepts maybe we'll be able to figure out where it would be best to go next! Thanks for reading!

A Final Story

If you haven't seen it, MVOL v0.15 is live! Go play it!

After a horribly long wait, I've finally completed the last of my commissions. I guess this is a big month for me, I've completed a lot of things that have been hanging over my head! You can read the conclusion to Sinister's commissioned series, which acts as something of a cap for both The Girls' and A Learning Experience, either on my SoFurry or FurAffinity. Both series are pretty smutty celebrations of ladies with dicks and the things they can do to a young man, so it's been a fun romp.

With that out of the way, I can finally move on to new things guilt-free! I've been working on the content for v0.16 slowly but steadily, adding a little bit every day. It's starting to look like it may actually be a more complicated and deep writing process than I'd originally anticipated-- it should be really rewarding to play, but dang, it's a bit daunting at the moment xP I'm considering how I can split it up into smaller chunks so I can just release part of it for v0.16 and give you all something decent to play sooner, and there aren't many easy answers, but I'll keep working on it!

Besides that, I've been stewing on the first big TagIt experiment. If you haven't seen, I closed the poll and the final results are up. I thought it over a while, and I actually realized it matched up fairly well with a concept I'd been playing around with in the back of my head for a looong time, so I think I can merge these tags with a fun and interesting concept to make a nice, worthwhile story! :3 It's awesome having so much to write about that I can really put my passion into, it's just tough deciding which to write about sometimes! xP

That's the news for now :3 I think next week, barring something else coming up, I'll try and finally put up the pro's and con's for the "Viral" game concept! Thanks for reading!

v0.15 is Live!

Finally! I honestly can't believe it's been so long since the last update. But I feel like this version has enough new stuff packed into it that it's almost worth the wait! Head on over to Play the Game to try it out, or if you want to play the cheat-enabled version, including access to the incomplete full-female Lith content, a donation of any amount via the link to the right will get you a copy of MVOL+ right in your inbox. And if you donate $25 or more, you'll go on the list to get v0.16+ ahead of everyone else!

Now, with that out of the way, let's talk about what's new in MVOL v0.15!
-New face for Lith! In the very first version I released to the public, all I had in that box was a few numbers. It was certainly informative, but I considered the switch to a derpy little cartoon face a serious upgrade, both for the quality of gameplay and for making it feel like you were actively interacting with a person. Now, I've finally switched out that derpy little face for... a less derpy little cartoon face! I spent a lot of time studying art that I liked and had similarities to what I was going for, and I actually started by tracing a few of these sources, but I've modified it so heavily trying to make it just right for Lith that I doubt anyone could spot my sources. I experimented with more expressive eyes and a pretty anime-style scale of blushes, though I'm still not sure I made the right choices with those. I'm certainly hoping they're clear enough to be useful in gameplay, and I'm looking forward to getting some feedback from you all on them.

-Loading screen. It may not have come up for most of you, but some players, especially on mobile devices, didn't always load the game instantly. This lead to a rather disturbing glimpse of the game's developer screen in which Lith is a monstrosity and the text is, I'm told, a satanic ritual invoked to hold all my wonky coding together. So now there's a pretty little screen to shield your eyes from the horrors of the abyss! Also, rather more significantly, the game now requires a few moments to establish a connection with my server at startup, as I expound upon below!

-Wooden Door added. The big new chunk of the story is to finally see just what's going on behind the wooden door! This is something of a jump in a new direction for me (again) so I'm a little nervous about how you all will receive it, but I think it will serve as something of an enriching "side plot" for the game. In the future, the wooden door will become a second place you can go to to play and enjoy yourself in a less linear fashion, but this update largely sets up the wooden door, introducing you to what's going on and giving you a little taste of what's to come. There is one major sex scene, with two rather distinctive versions available-- and a third for those with certain settings going on MVOL+! Sadly, the actual "full" content of the wooden door isn't yet ready, but I hope that what I've added so far will both intrigue and satisfy you!

-Adjusted difficulty. I've gotten a lot of feedback on the game's difficulty and the "grindiness" of some portions, and after going through the game some myself, I have to agree that some portions have been unnecessarily time consuming. I try to encourage players to try each scene multiple times, but it shouldn't be necessary to mash a single scene a dozen times to unlock the next portion of the game. With that in mind, I've made actions across the board more potent, and Lith's dominance especially is now easier to maintain. Specifically, it no longer acts exactly the same as other stats, but will fall more slowly when it nears the point of regressing to a lower stage, and the highest stage of dominance especially is now slightly easier to reach and maintain.

-Play data collection. This feedback pressed an issue that has been bothering me for some time. I want My Very Own Lith to be a good game by every measure, including by conventional gameplay, such as it is. But the truth is, it's difficult for me to judge the gameplay myself since I know it from the other side. Many game developers solve this problem by bringing people in and simply watching them play the game, so they can understand where the players might get stuck, or bored, or what have you. Now, with MVOL being the kind of game it is, that's probably not a good idea to do directly. Creepy. But with a little (well, a lot of) help from my code-savvy friend Kylor, we've been able to institute a system that's almost as good. Now, any copy of the game played on a device with an internet connection will patch in to my server and send me basic, anonymous data on how the game is played. This means I can follow how the game is played on an individual level or sift through massive amounts of data to learn what scenes are accessed most and least, and in general just get all sorts of interesting information about how the game is played. It's my hope that, armed with this data, I'll be able to refine the game to play better and more closely to my original intentions, and without too many hiccups or problems at any point in the story. I'm really excited to see how this turns out and what it will mean for future versions of the game, and I hope you are too! Of course, if you don't want to send this data in for whatever reason, there is an option in the Options menu to turn off this connection.

I believe that just about covers it! As I've mentioned, I already have some content for v0.16 written up, and I've started going through it again to see about getting back to work, but I may tackle my first TagIt Story first, I'm not sure. Either way, I sincerely hope that I'll have a good chunk of story and some gameplay adjustments based on the data I've gotten ready in the near future, and that should be enough to get v0.16 up and out the door much sooner than v0.15 was! I've just recently finished my very last commission, and while it was a great experience, it's great to finally have all that unfinished work off my shoulders, and I've got big hopes for getting more into the game and my own writing in the future! To everyone that's stuck around all this time, and to those that have come to check out the game more recently, as ever: thank you all for your patience, and thank you for playing! I hope you find it was worth the wait!

Somebody's Playing...

Yesterday evening, in a small frenzy of activity, v0.15 was rendered complete and ready to play. For my most generous donators, those who contributed $25 or more to v0.14, I sent out the new version to be played immediately (along with an update briefly afterward when we finally got the Android version working xP).

If you didn't get a copy but believe you should have been on that list, shoot me an email at lithiers@gmail.com and we'll get it straightened out.

If you didn't get a copy but you really want to, you can either wait until next Friday, the day after Christmas, when the new version goes fully public, or you can donate any amount any time this week to get v0.15+ for yourself. Donations over $25 will, as always, get you put on the list to get a copy of v0.16+ as soon as it's ready as well :3

It feels great to finally have a new version ready to go, and I'm looking forward to seeing how you all like it, and how the new play feedback system works ^.^ My thanks to everyone that's stuck around, and I hope you'll find it was worth the wait!

Getting Close...

We hit a rough patch in the home stretch, but things are picking up again, and I'm getting excited! The server is alllmost all set up, and I've finished making alternates for Lith's face. That means I just need to import all of them to the game and get them integrated into the code. Further, the loading screen is working well, I just need a placeholder logo to slap on it and it should be good to go. I've refined Lith's face some, thanks everyone for your feedback! Here's a new preview of more of a mid to late game Lith.

It's been a strong reminder working on this that no, I'm still not a graphic artist :P But I consider it a much better placeholder than the derpy thing we started with! Plus this is still three times the size it'll actually be in the game, so hopefully it'll be fairly acceptable for gameplay xP Anyway, with everything entering the final stages, I'm hoping to start sending out advance copies to the $25+ donators sometime next week! The game's progress is in the final stage:

(+++++++++=)

Woo! I can't believe it's taken this long @_@; but on the bright side, I've already got some of the content written up for the version after, so hopefully once I've finished my last commission I can jump on that, and combined with the feedback I get from people playing this upcoming version, I should have no problem making a meaty (and hopefully speedy) v0.16!

Speaking of my stories, if you haven't seen it, I've released a new story that's a little more in my old style, a "for me" kinda story about what happens when you hold a goddess of fertility captive. It was great stretching my legs and pushing some boundaries again, and I hope it's the first of many to come in my return to more sincere, risky but fun stories! Take a look and leave a comment on SoFurry and FurAffinity!

Thanks for your patience, everyone, and I hope I'll have more for you real soon!