LEWD, an online erotic text adventure (Big update)

[Sadako]

It's just two weeks of development so far, so just an early alpha.

A demo is here: playlewd.com/demo.html

It's meant to be similar to be like a big book, or an anthology really. Except, you don't read it from beginning to end, and you explore around for new chapters that are tailored to your character, and the chapters change because of what players decide to do. The focus is on erotica.
It's also online, so you'll be able to role play with others, like a lot of people do in MMORPGs.(You can disable the online interaction stuff if that makes you uncomfortable, though~) The whole world will be a single server, or maybe a basic server and a role play server separated if that's what people want.
The client is meant to be efficient, made in Javascript instead of flash, that will even run on a relatively modern smart phone.
And because the client is Javascript, you'll be able to do a bit of modding to the client if you wish.

What do you guys think?

 

[Sinisterpastry]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

Looks cool. Backed it for you. Interested to see where this goes.

 

[dienow]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

I refuse to play any game that "Touch fluffy tail" isn't a viable option for continued existence.

On a serious note, interesting framework. Will you be incorporating tiles for your overworld?

 

[Sadako]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

Looks cool. Backed it for you. Interested to see where this goes.

Thanks!

I refuse to play any game that "Touch fluffy tail" isn't a viable option for continued existence.

On a serious note, interesting framework. Will you be incorporating tiles for your overworld?

The engine I mad[/am making] supports them(Really any engine that uses a grid would), so if people want to use it for their own game it is very easy to add tiles with just CSS styling.

I however, do not want them for LEWD itself.
Like the Kickstarter says, if it reaches a really high goal I'll pay artists to paint backgrounds for each areas that the grid goes on top of. That will look a lot nicer than repeated tiles. It'd look like a satellite or birds eye view of some actual town, or station, with the grit just laid over top then.

I don't really like the sprite tiles look much. I'd rather just keep it purely to imagination if I can't get really nice painted backgrounds. If I can't have something that looks as good or better than Shadowrun Returns, I don't want anything there~

I will definitely do something to make the map look less like crossword puzzle or sudoku, though. The UI is just as plain as can be since all the focus was getting the game working nice. :> Interface is something that comes for beta, not alpha.

 

[Sithri]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

this project is awesome but I noticed there is a major disconnect with world and npc and players

they all seem super loosely tied together (i realise this is an alpha but i thought it would be a good idea to say anyways)

by this i mean when you go into an npc conversation, you get your own screen and everything (this isn't as bad with the single player option in mind) and you seemingly just go from tile to tile looking for the right npc. Players are completely ignored except to revive them.

To make the world feel more like a world i'd suggest a consistent interactivity with the environment like picking up objects/scavenging/ect have interactive objects, lesser npcs that don't speak in a big dialogue box (maybe keep the big ones for the major important npcs) or even just make it so you can see what other players are doing. Wandering monsters/enemies would be a neat idea as well. Maybe have an option to be able to interact or be interacted with by other players.

unless of course you were planning all this the entire time

this is just my two cents from trying out the demo

 

[Sadako]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

Thanks.

Well the reason for that being separated is that when you look at other online MUDs, it can be incredibly annoying that you'll be trying to read the text from an NPC, but other players chatting or role playing keeps pushing that text up making it difficult to keep track of, and eventually it ends up scrolled out of view. So I took the approach more like how MMORPGs have, where NPC text comes up in a box separate from the chat.

I don't intend for there to be PvP type of stuff. You can see where players are, so you can follow your friends around. That's really the only intention I had. That, and role playing, of course.
If someone ends up having some good ideas when it's really being made and testing, I'd probably incorporate them.
The thing is, like, one player can defeat an NPC to knock them out, and then others can just walk right past them. So maybe you and a friend can build two different characters that are different in different situations, so such bosses are easier for one of you to defeat than the other. But it's of course going to be playable solo.
There will be private messages as well, like the kickstarter says. Probably the same ones from RPH.

There will be things to fight, and there will be things like datapads to read instead of just NPCs. There is just a lack of content, and I'm not sure how I want to do content this early in development.

Like the popup at the start says, this is basically just 1% of the game. :x

It's just showing what I could make in under 2 weeks from scratch, so you can imagine what can be done in a few months.

 

[Sithri]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

yeah I getcha

I agree, that is a problem when there is too much text

I just hope that when development comes in, there is more of a connection between players and the world, especially BECAUSE there is a multiplayer social function to it

 

[Sinisterpastry]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

On the other hand, there's nothing more annoying in an MMO than having to compete with other players for mobs, chests, drops or the like for quests.

 

[Sadako]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

I updated it a little bit. (Though don't expect a lot of updates to just the demo, since I'm going to need to rewrite a bunch when I make the real game so I don't want to add a lot that ends up being rewritten)

• Tab key is fixed. (swaps between chat and map/dialog properly now. Oops.)
• When large blocks of text come in, the behavior is different. It now scrolls you down to the start of it, instead of the bottom.
• The arrow keys and page up/down key always scroll the writing box as long as the chat isn't focused. (So it's always easy to navigate the writing with just your keyboard) Mimics normal browser behavior on a scrollable box.

I just hope that when development comes in, there is more of a connection between players and the world, especially BECAUSE there is a multiplayer social function to it

Well I definitely want there to be an economy, like the kickstarter says. IE: Supply/demand pricing, so you can buy all the panties and no one can afford to get new ones after their panties "break".
But there's a lot of things I'm not sure up, and it'll be up to the backers testing to steer me around.

I don't even like combat that much. In MMOs it's usually really unfun to me. But I guess it's required to give people something to do when they're not exploring new content?
I dunno, maybe it could be filled with so much content that just the reading is enough, and seeing how the story changes when you make different choices, or how it changes to you having a different character.

On the other hand, there's nothing more annoying in an MMO than having to compete with other players for mobs, chests, drops or the like for quests.

I agree. That's why even in this little demo, I made the bosses get knocked out instead of disappearing, and you can revive them yourself to get what you needed from them.

Disappearing named enemies are really silly.
I remember playing some MMO a while ago, and I just immediately uninstalled it after sitting there, waiting 30 minutes for a boss to respawn, and a friend telling me that it only spawns once every 8 hours.
Rogue AI kind of man-against-beast type of stories might end up being instanced or something. I'm not sure at the moment.

 

[Plopinou]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

I don't even like combat that much. In MMOs it's usually really unfun to me. But I guess it's required to give people something to do when they're not exploring new content?
I dunno, maybe it could be filled with so much content that just the reading is enough, and seeing how the story changes when you make different choices, or how it changes to you having a different character.

I don't think this game needs filler content. Sure, it aims to be a MMO, but it doesn't have to be as time consuming as your average AAA mmo.

 

[Monceber]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

You should add another stretched goal - $400000 IE6 Support

On a serious matter, that's quite awesome game you've started. Though, I'd say that it reminds me more of Flexible Survival than CoC.

The thing I'm interested seeing in this game is some kind of jobs. Quests and fights are nice, but imo, jobs will be great addition, especially if you implement ranking and similar possibilities.

[Part where not so technically savvy me tells his ideas]
So, adding jobs will also add a big possibilities of communications between players even without the need to actually interact. Let's assume job "Bounty hunter" - it goes nicely with law system you mentioned on Kickstarter. If someone broke a law and escaped, bounty hunter takes a job and tries to find criminal. And what he does when he finds him, given that there is no direct interaction? Simple - just type /tag (target) and let the server process this command. So on role-playing side it would look not like you're catching dangerous criminal yourself, but just using tracking device on him, allowing military forces to find him.
But I didn't mean all jobs to be complex like this. Just add some simple ones like courier or (we're talking about H-game, right?) prostitute, with possibilities of ranking up.
Adding such thing will influence role-playing part a big deal - in this case, players would actually be someone, not just adventurers.
[/Part where not so technically savvy me tells his ideas]

But yeah, that was just my grandiose dreams, and I'm not sure how hard would be to implement such system into the game. But well, even without this game sure looks awesome.

 

[Plopinou]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

The thing I'm interested seeing in this game is some kind of jobs. Quests and fights are nice, but imo, jobs will be great addition, especially if you implement ranking and similar possibilities.

The job system sounds like a good idea. Anything that helps shape the interaction between players is a good idea.

Anyway, I have mixed feelings about this project.

Sadako is a coder, so, the engine itself should be attractive enough to motivate us to donate. But right now, it's presented as a CoC-like with better code, a better interface, and a chat plugin to talk with other players. Hardly anything to be excited about, nothing that can't be found elsewhere.
Most of the other promises rely on the work of people who haven't even being hired yet (I mean, 'NPC' and 'writing' are brought up everywhere on the KS page!). We can't judge the quality of the content at all since we have no idea who will handle it yet! Money doesn't buy talent, what guarantees do we have that the writers you will hire will have the talent to deliver when you can't even tell us who it's gonna be? It's like "take my engine, it's better, and pour all the content of the upcoming TiTS inside with the kickstarter money", especially with that possibility to turn off the online interactions entirely.

I say scrap that. Do away with the whole "I will hire writers to create content" crap or at least make it secondary and try to work on and advertise more the MMO aspect of the game so that we, the players, can create our own content through our own interactions. That part is way too fuzzy as it is now, and that's your best bet since you REALLY want to avoid confrontation with TiTS.

Anyway, I hope I didn't come off as rude, I believe this game has great potential, but not as it is currently advertised.

 

[Sadako]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

I don't think anything else like it can be found anywhere else, is the thing.
There are a few multiplayer MUDs, like Flexible survival, but they don't work nearly as smoothly.
What else is there?

I am actually a writer too. I wrote about a third what's in the demo. It's just hard to write and code~

The chat seems simple now, because it's just a week of coding work on all that, to make the multiplayer server, make NPCs persistent, create a really good writing parser, and so on. This is just supposed to show you what I've coded in such little time, so you can get an idea of what I could make in months.
After all, most games are months or years of work.

Flexible survival and CoC were both made with different people contributing writing. I don't think CoC became bad when someone you didn't know of had their content added. There are lots of good writers out there.
Not only that, but TiTS is going to have other writers, and I don't believe their names are listed. People just trusted in that they would be good.

I'm also not afraid to make something similar to TiTS, though I don't think it's that similar. The story is going to be completely different. Just because two things are scifi doesn't make them the same.
There is room for more than one text based game.

I did think/hope that more people would see the potential, in seeing so much made in such a short time, but a lot of people are expecting more content and all these things. I am working a bit on trying to add some of that, but 15k is a really low goal for all this stuff. If I had a finished game, I wouldn't need backing. There are lots of projects that get backing that have absolutely nothing to show, and only an idea.
I wanted to get a budget and backers for it really early on so I could have a community of people to pull ideas from to shape the game.
I also.. Don't really know. Fleshcult got 12k when it was worked on for months and had less content and less of a game than LEWD has. So the 15k goal seems fine.
With TiTS, people are mostly just backing one writer who can't program that well. I hoped people could back a programmer who writes well enough to judge/critique others, at least. I wrote Kaeleigh, Deci Bell, and the "bunny" girl in the demo, if you're curious.

It's a lot easier to program things when you know what your end goal for everything is. Otherwise you run into problems of wanting to add a feature, but the engine doesn't support it without rewriting a lot of code.
That's why often when you join a game in beta testing, and suggest something, the developer says they can't due to engine limitations. That doesn't happen in alpha.

There is also the part where even if you don't like the content I want to have in the game, you can make your own game with your own content. But lots of people don't read the Kickstarter page, or watch the video. :< So yeah, I am missing something to make this clear to people and get their attention.

I don't think this game needs filler content. Sure, it aims to be a MMO, but it doesn't have to be as time consuming as your average AAA mmo.

That's what I think too. Will have to see how it goes. Maybe there should be some kind of other time sink though, just for people to do in the area while they're waiting to see other players come by.
I mean like, I did kind of like sitting in Dungeons and such in Ragnarok Online, seeing who comes by, and finding someone to play with. Or sitting outside of towns in a camp set up in Star Wars Galaxies. I always met people out there, not in town, even though combat itself wasn't fun. So, I don't know yet.

You should add another stretched goal - $400000 IE6 Support

Not worth it. D: EMCA5, IE10+ is the minimum I'm aiming for. If a browser on a desktop is worse than a normal Smartphone browser, it's not worth developing for.

On a serious matter, that's quite awesome game you've started. Though, I'd say that it reminds me more of Flexible Survival than CoC.

I've seen Flexible survival too.
I'm trying trying to make it just like any other game though. I just used CoC as an example as that's a very well known one. I'm trying to make something new. Bringing modern tech and programming to the text adventure game.
Like I made RPHaven because the role play sites were all some basic chat room script copied off some site that people used for role play which didn't work too well for it. I like role play, and saw I could make something way better for that.

On a serious matter, that's quite awesome game you've started. Though, I'd say that it reminds me more of Flexible Survival than CoC.

The thing I'm interested seeing in this game is some kind of jobs. Quests and fights are nice, but imo, jobs will be great addition, especially if you implement ranking and similar possibilities.

[Part where not so technically savvy me tells his ideas]
So, adding jobs will also add a big possibilities of communications between players even without the need to actually interact. Let's assume job "Bounty hunter" - it goes nicely with law system you mentioned on Kickstarter. If someone broke a law and escaped, bounty hunter takes a job and tries to find criminal. And what he does when he finds him, given that there is no direct interaction? Simple - just type /tag (target) and let the server process this command. So on role-playing side it would look not like you're catching dangerous criminal yourself, but just using tracking device on him, allowing military forces to find him.
But I didn't mean all jobs to be complex like this. Just add some simple ones like courier or (we're talking about H-game, right?) prostitute, with possibilities of ranking up.
Adding such thing will influence role-playing part a big deal - in this case, players would actually be someone, not just adventurers.
[/Part where not so technically savvy me tells his ideas]

But yeah, that was just my grandiose dreams, and I'm not sure how hard would be to implement such system into the game. But well, even without this game sure looks awesome.

Yeah, I thought of jobs already.
I want it to feel like you're just some person in the world. There won't be a main quest, I don't think.

But a job is essentially just a quest spigot, right? Like you enlist for it, and you just regularly keep getting quests.
Titles were mentioned on the kickstarter page in a way that eluded to jobs.

As far as turning in criminals.. I was probably just going to put something in their profile to notify law enforcement. And as long as that person is in the same area since you clicked it after a timer, they'd get arrested by law enforcement, not yourself, yes. And that's just on places where there is law enforcement.

 

[Plopinou]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

But a job is essentially just a quest spigot, right? Like you enlist for it, and you just regularly keep getting quests.
Titles were mentioned on the kickstarter page in a way that eluded to jobs.

Hu... Jobs can be much more important than that. It can help define how you will interact with certain players and give you reasons to do so. If it's just a title, that will only work for the most faithful role-player, but if you set-up rules behind that, it can become a real motivation.

We can take an example directly based on one of the quests of the demo (the android) : you could have a job "harvester" which allows you to harvest fluids when you manage to make your partner cum. Different profiles, different types of fluids harvested with different properties. What to do of the fluids? Could be used for crafting, as a currency, lot of possibilities.

Now, that's just something I came up with as illustration on the go, but my point is that you could have a whole set of features like that, jobs being one among others, aimed at giving players reasons to interact with each others rather than with NPCs only.

That's what I meant when talking about working on the MMO aspect of the game rather than counting too much on content from people you have yet to hire.

 

[Sadako]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

Ah. Yeah, that is a good idea.


I can tell that one issue is that people want more taste of the sort of content. It's mostly tame, since fetishes would be spread thin to so little content.
The Kickstarter lists limits and gives some little examples, but that's not really enough. People want to know that they can fap to it, and all~

Part of why I didn't do that is because the content there is hard coded in, not from a database. I have to make some tools for adding content first, so right now it's hard to add content.
I'm going to make those tools and get some more in, even though it might not reach the funding goal before I finish.

 

[Sadako]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

I rewrote the server to make it easier to add content, and enable extremely dynamic content(so long as there is the writing for it, that is).

It's detailed here. kickstarter.com/projects/sadtaco/lewd-an-erotic-text-adventure/posts/483563 Yeah I know it's way too long. I seriously tried to keep it short and there is way more I could have gone on about. =<

I want to add a bunch of new content to the two new areas I added. Maybe 50k-100k words if I can get the muse and write fast enough.
The starting area was intentionally tame, since it was a demo for everyone without much content.
Now I want to add a lot of kinkier things.

I am also very curious as to what people think is important to keep track of, to use for writing parser.
I know I want to expand on clothing, and add a system where clothing can be checked to see if it's in the way or not. If it is, it gets removed. If your character is wearing something crotchless, or they are torn from a previous encounter and having been replaced with something in tact, then they wouldn't need to be removed.

An example of something else that'd be possible would be to keep track of whether the choices you make are assertive, or shy, and then modify writing based on that. Moral and immoral could be another. Slutty and chaste, another. I probably only want to add 2 or 3 things when it comes to personality tracking, so are two of those good or are there other things that'd be better?
There are only so many things like that which can be kept track of. Or well, it's easy to keep track of them, but it's difficult to add all sorts of different cases in the writing for each of them. Like, how Mass Effect just does the Renegade and Paragon thing. Sure they could have added many more different options, but then that's extra content for every one.
So I'm asking: what sort of things you guys think is most important to keep track of?

Anyway, I said I wanted to add kinkier things too.
The demo, the starting area, was a bit tame as I knew I wasn't going to have much content. I was busy coding, and didn't have much writing help from others.
What sort of kinky things would you like added? Any story ideas? Character ideas?
Keep in mind that the hybrid alien species aren't earth related. When I say "spidergirl", I'm just giving something that's the closest relation.
They need to be things that would fit on a space station, which I'm thinking will be something of a bar; or things that fit in a wilderness research station.
For that later I know some things I want to write are:
-A human female researcher in the building there which mistakes your character for a subject as she's busy, and not looking to them, if they have a cock, and she just gives a non-chalant jerking off; could lead to something to become a proper subject to be milked, but means collecting some eggs with your character's ass or something first~ For ones with a womb, perhaps they're noticed and offered for some research purposes.
-Plantgirl controlling tentacle vines. Somewhat naive. Tight sticky flower~
-Spidergirls. Black non-porus skin, maybe latex-like. Mostly human form, with one extra set of spindley arms coming to sharp points below her humanoid pair, and another shorter pair arching out from above. Instead of a insectoid abdomin, I'm thinking the alien creature she's hybrid from had spinnerettes on their back legs, so she'd have them betwixt her toes. Perhaps they could have a pair of mandibles beside their mouth to grip your head in a kiss~
I want to have their species just mate once, then they die. So, some sort of building romance, intercrural and other non-penetrative things. They are trying to both convince you to essentially fuck them to death, which you might not be alright with but it's simply a matter of how their species works. They also want to make sure you're the right mate.
There should be guy ones as well~ I'm just not sure how that'd work, unless a male isn't going to care about not getting a whole brood off a human, or the species just doesn't brood to begin with. They could just care about love instead of propagation in some cases, I suppose.
-Some huge, imposing looking beast that--hypnotizes your character into dominating him.
-Some alien hermaprodites that are a bit like lamia, but slug like. Slimy skin, prehensile phallus, rubbery body, and loves moisture. When I say hermaphrodite, I mean like a slug is, not having both human genitalia. She could wrap her "cock" along the PCs and such~

That's just a few. I need to expand those things a lot more, so I can have that content always changing around.
Not sure what I want in the space station really. Having the staff all dressed slutty. The males, females, and herms all in skirts that are pretty much just a belt down lower.
Maybe tables to sit at, where you order things?
Having one of those "sluggirls" at the bar would be nice, but maybe the tail thing is a generate thing that goes either way and she instead has legs. Perhaps the more human like hybrids integrate better in most places full of humans. The slimy slick coating over her skin would make surprise buttsex easy.

There's room for plenty more. I'd love if anyone had any suggestions, or comments on it. It'd probably help keep me from getting writers block, and I also want to know what people personally want added.
I also need some ways for the PC to make money. Hm~

 

[Sadako]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

Bummp~

 

[Minerve]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

Lol... You "bump" your thread ?

Else: how can we access your game? The way you write on ULMF isn't very interesting and I didn't read everything... I just looked a bit and found some words like "spidergirls" or "plantgirls" and thought: "well why not".

 

[tontje]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

That "your username is too short" is a pain is the ass -_-

 

[Sadako]

Re: LEWD, an online erotic text adventure

Lol. I used to require names to be at least two words, like an actual name. But I changed it. :3

Lol... You "bump" your thread ?

Else: how can we access your game? The way you write on ULMF isn't very interesting and I didn't read everything... I just looked a bit and found some words like "spidergirls" or "plantgirls" and thought: "well why not".

playlewd.com/demo.html it was in the first post.

I can't post links.

I don't know what you mean about the way I write on here.