manyeyedhydra
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House of Hellish Harlots - A Roadmap
🕑 Added 2020-03-02 22:04:04 +0000 UTCThis is my rough plan for the next few releases for House of Hellish Harlots. As we've already seen in February, don't treat this as set in stone. If something comes up and needs to be fixed first, it will be fixed first (In this case, me realising the scoring and repeat visit code needed to be straightened out as it was taking too much time to implement per harlot).
ver0.010 - Those aforementioned repeat visit and scoring fixes.
This will also include expanding Suffocatrix Mamilla's scenario and serve as a test case for the player ailment system. I don't want it to be a purely mechanics release, so I'll try to add Boobella's scenario to this release.
ver0.011 - NPC_Nurse + 3 new harlots.
NPC_Nurse can diagnose and treat ailments. Her main role will be to restore the player's semen count at the cost of coins (and maybe something else...)
ver0.012 - Gifts overhaul + 3 new harlots.
A slight change to some internal tags of gifts so I can make better use of a type of gift rather than always being a specific gift. Should be pretty minor.
ver0.013 - NPC_Charm_Seller + 3 new harlots.
Some harlots have more potent forms of seduction at their disposal and can only be countered through charms sold by a seller. There will also be some more general purpose charms that do interesting things. An example of which is one that shows the harlots up in their true forms when presented to the player (this will require me modifying the intros of all the existing harlots, so I want to get it in place preferably before I even get to implementing the charm seller).
ver0.014 - NPC_Mad_Scientist + 3 new harlots.
The mad scientist's main role is to temporarily alter stats (which also might have side effects). They will also have a minor role in semen -> coins by paying the player for 'samples'.
ver0.015 - NPC_Barman + 3 new harlots.
This might be switched around with the following release depending on what I have. The barman is a sort of adviser to the player. This will be where you receive proper help on what the house is (rather than the Madam's evasive answers). As the later advice will be how to get to the late game, which I haven't finalised yet, his implementation will likely be more of a placeholder that has more lore added to it later.
ver0.016 - Intro + 3 new harlots.
This is where I flesh out the skeleton and start to properly describe the interior of the House. It will also explain how the player got to the House and allow them to slightly tweak their starting stats. It will be an adapted version of the rough intro I put out last year.
At this point all the base elements should be in place to play the game. I will likely put a version of it online somewhere and use that to try and attract more attention and funding. Depending on what interest it picks up, I'll start thinking about whether to continue in Twine, or bounce over to something like Unity and start thinking about adding proper graphics, etc. To be honest, I'll probably build the whole thing in Twine as a predominantly text game and then maybe make a sequel with sexy graphics, etc. That is the most likely scenario, but I will keep my options open.
From here things get a little flexible. I'll keep adding harlots in regular chunks. I might also open up higher tiers on Patreon and give patrons the option to have custom scenarios added (dependent on whether I can think I can write them).
I'll also start thinking about the 'Queens' - endgame harlots with rigorous survival requirements - and how to unlock a path to them. This will give players a way to win and escape the house.
There are also some ideas I have that might be worth implementing. One is random events that occur between each round and affect how a run pans out. The other is sub-quests that will have stories that carry out over multiple rounds.
As I mentioned earlier, none of this is set in stone. If I need to switch the order around, I'll do so. I might also take the odd week off here and there to work on an unrelated short story if there's a competition I want to enter or feel I need a change of pace to refocus (as I did at the start of the month with "The Succubus Heart Squad")
Potential Obstacles.
The biggest is whether the whole project becomes too big or unwieldy for Twine. I've been careful to compartmentalise the code and keep things sanely organised (even going back and redoing things if they look too messy), but I might hit a point where it isn't feasible to continue development with these tools. I'm not sure I'll hit that point - I did some research and it sounds like you can put a helluva lot of text into Twine. It is a fear as that would stop development as I look around for different tools and learn how to use them. On the plus side, the reason I launched into this project is because everything dropped into place with the idea. Most of the code-y bits are fairly generic functions I can easily port into other languages.
The main thing to remember in all this is I am a single developer. It's going to take a while to write and implement all this. I'm fairly happy with progress so far, and I hope you've enjoyed the demos you've seen so far. Ambition-wise, it should be doable within a reasonable timeframe, but it does require writing a lot of harlot scenarios, each of which are about a short story in length. Please be patient!
Thanks for your continued support and understanding!
- manyeyedhydra
