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Weekly dev blog: Honey, I am pregnant! (Patreon)

Published:
2018-08-27 20:49:35
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Or at least, that's what I'd like you to be able to say to a wide number of NPCs. I am considering working on the pregnancy system, basically, which has been in my plans for a while. I think it opens up for a lot of potentially sexy situations.

In the short-term, I worked on a handful of bugs, I wrote a new scene for Carla (which also has its own illustration, look forward to it in the preview!), I improved some parts of the slave competition (added some text to the "worst" choices, improved the presentation, etc), I worked on part of the main quest (I wrote all the "info-dump-y" stuff related to searching your uncle, and set things up for the basic interactions required for the quest to work in the magic academy), and also started mapping some areas for a guild quest.

This last one allows me to kill 3 birds in one stone: add some content to the guilds, which will help with the requirements for the professor you have to meet at the academy, while also providing a way to meet with the "girl who has a crush on you", which won the last poll. Am I not super-efficient? :^

By the way, I forgot to mention this when I released this update, but one of the training scenes in the slave path wasn't written by me, but by 1gecko, a fan who offered to help with the writing. I think he did a good job (although I sadly had to butcher some of it, to make it fit with what I already had prepared for the scenes), can you guess which part was his?

Anyway, this also reminds me I have some unfinished content for the training, maybe I'll eventually add another random scene in the mansion.

This is everything for now, Do let me know if there is something I am missing, otherwise, see you next week! ^_^

Comments

Djunk101

Yay pregnancy system! Now the question is, do we get to keep the babies like Violated Heroine or do they magically disappear like a Shoku game? :P

mdqp

The idea is to have the system separated in two halves: sex with monsters like orc, goblins, minotaurs should be "turbo pregnancies" and they take the babies with them. This is kind of believable, because they are magical creatures and see you mostly as an incubator. For human pregnancies, I want to make them flat out endings. I don't think having babies in the game can be made fun, and having them be completely irrelevant seems to make them pointless. Having the pregnancy resolve in a matter of days or ignore the time skips seem also bad options. So, I'll give great control to the players over pregnancies, but if they get knocked up, then it's over (although I'll probably add some way to rollback to before having risky sex, so that I don't screw people over). For this last one, I just think it's the best option, but I am willing to listen to suggestions. Still, I think Erica being forced into shotgun marriages left and right is amusing. XD

Djunk101

I don't like that at all, tbh. I'd rather have no pregnancy system than be forced into an ending for it (the fun of pregnancy systems is being able to do things while the character is pregnant, after all). You could always just have it so it's up to the character when they want to give birth by either having a character like a doctor or an item to induce it (the latter allowing for dialogue variations based on location ;P). It would also allow for some dialogue variants based on the type of baby or the baby's father.

mdqp

Mmh, I kind of see what you mean. The problems I need to solve are the following: 1) How to handle kids. If we have a limited amount of potential fathers, then we just have to worry about what to do with them after birth. I can't just plop them in the house and forget about them, however, it feels wrong. 2) We likely need to stop adventuring during pregnancies. I'd rather not consider the implications and complications of going around being Indiana Jones while pregnant. 3) We need to find a way to limit sex scenes. There are dozens of them in the game, I can't possibly edit them all to accomodate or acknowledge the situation. Heck, even normal dialogues with certain NPCs will probably need a lot of special work. 4) Any scene with normal, non-pregnant images of Erica might also need to be disabled. I can't possibly get enough art to supply for all of them. I think pregnacies are sexy because of the contrast between the ramifications (creating a baby and taking care of it) and the immediate gratification of raw sex or wanting nothing more than to breed. Removing the fallout seems to deflate the whole thing, while keeping a hassle in a game for the sake of it just isn't fun, so it's hard for me to find the right way to approach this. P.S. Note that endings don't necessarily mean instant-ending, and we could have some gameplay in a much more limited environment, for example, like in the cowgirl path.

Djunk101

You could ignore a lot of that for the sake of porn/gameplay, tbh. Most of the games I play with pregnancy systems don't really bother explaining what happens to the babies afterwards. I'd still hate that kind of ending if it's forced. Like, at least give the option to not do the limited environment and have Erica just deal with it on her own. It'd be one thing if it's like in Noxian Nights where the game is ending anyway so they act as extra sections, but to have the pregnancy system exist and them only put the consequences with named NPCs, all that would do is make me want to avoid named NPCs or save scum to avoid the endings. Side note, you plan on expanding what's her name from the cafe at any point? ;P

lightningshifter

Honestly the violated Heroine system was the pretty ingenious in its own way. Its definitely distinct all in itself. I wouldn't mind seeing something similar in another game. I mean, what's the point of doing pregnancy if you're just going to railroad the player for it? Leaving the gameplay open-ended is more encouraging from a player's standpoint. Far too many games try to restrict the player's choices more than they really need to and it winds up being more of a turn-off than anything. Its like the badends games that seem to be hyper popular on TFGamesite. I'm not saying they can't have bad ends. But honestly its not a huge appeal to explore options when it ends your gameplay. I just wish more people would catch on that maybe you can present a better immersion if you just save the game enders for things that are legitimately game enders. regnancy actually wouldn't be one of those things. Unless you were captured and endlessly bred or something extreme like that. A pregnant adventurer may not function quite as well as a normal one but it doesn't mean she can't do things until the late stages. Also I wouldn't shy away from the fast gestation periods in games because its more convenient mechanically. f you're in doubt then give the players a choice of options for that. If they want a long term slow pregnancy they could choose that. Or they could select a fast one that takes only a week or two. Much the same as DJ I would have to agree. If you're going to put pregnancy in and you restrict us too much when the character gets pregnant then why would we pursue it with those npcs? Its just food for thought.

Pervy Fantasy Productions

Want some random bugs? Yay! Newest version, clean save, minor things: Looking out of your mansion window has the weather effect stuck on screen transition. The health piece hiding behind the mill has a random move route on. Beyond that.. I really need to steal the changing titlescreen thing for ma next game. :P

mdqp

A lot of the stuff I listed cannot reasonably be ignored: I mean, I am not trying to make a "realistic" sim, but there is also a point where it isn't even a pregnancy anymore. I might as well write scenes that happen in her fantasies at that point, since they'd have the same impact on the actual game, you know what I mean? Even if, for the sake of semplicity, we could streamline 1 and 2 a lot, 3 and 4 are the kind of stuff I cannot ignore nor I can provide in the usual "open world" environment. Even if I'd want to leave players to their "pregnant adventures", the best I could think of is remove the ability to walk around freely, and substituting it with a menu of possible destinations when you try to leave the house. That way, you can still have your hijinks, and I still have control over what could happen.

mdqp

The problem here is borking how the game works and presents itself just to have incomplete mechanics. If you tell me you'd prefer a quarter of the scenes/NPCs to acknowledge your pregnancy, while the rest carry on with business as usual, over a controlled environment where everything works as intended, I can understand, but I also can't go along with it. Freedom has no meaning, if the game doesn't react to your choices/actions. I mean, I could add a clothing system where nobody reacts if you are naked and certain scenes just reset your outfit for apparently no good reason, but who'd be happy with that? And having it work only sometimes would make things worse, at least for me. Could the idea I mentioned in the comment above be more agreeable? As in, have a more limited environment, but having freedom in that environment? I honestly can't imagine the normal gameplay and the pregnancy stuff overlapping, I get a headache just trying to figure out how it would work and how much time it would take. If this was a smaller game, it wouldn't be such an issue, but as it is...

mdqp

You mean the weather sound effect? If so, it's an easy fix, and will be there in the next update. You are completely right about the health piece, how did I miss that? Fixed it as well. Well, the script isn't mine, so half of the job for the titlescreen is already done, I guess. XD

mdqp

Sorry, forgot to mention it in the other comment, but yes, I do plan to expand on the NPCs you met at the various jobs, which includes Edith as well.

Djunk101

There's absolutely no reason you can't have "pregnant adventures" and just handwave the difficulties imposed by pregnancy for the sake of fetish and fun. Also, characters reacting to your state is good and would make it more fun, it's the cutting off of large sections of gameplay for an omnipresent mechanic that's bad. It puts it actively at odds with the rest of the game and if you can't make it mesh with the rest of the gameplay, whether it's because it's too much work or you're uncomfortable with the idea, the game is probably better off without it. As I mentioned before, the smaller environment works in Noxian Nights because it's at the end of the game and it acts as *more* options for the player than they get from a normal ending as opposed to cutting off large sections of gameplay. Even if the smaller environments weren't endings and you can leave once the pregnancy's over, if you don't *really* enjoy it, it just becomes a chore to go through or to save scum to avoid it any time you accidentally become pregnant. I love pregnancy systems and I love when games incorporate them, but not if it's going to actively punish me for indulging it.

mdqp

If we do go for fast pregnancies, would it be so bad to have the game limited for these few days to visiting only certain areas/NPCs? Say, you start at home, and during the day you can visit all the shops/places where you work and during the night you have the Queen of Hearts and the pub (and maybe we have some random events available on your wayt there)? We could even add more to the list, these are just examples, but does it really have to be 100% or nothing? Well, at the end of the day, I can only say give it a go with an open mind once I add it in, I'll give it my best effort, but if you don't like it it's not the end of the world. :)

Djunk101

Yes it will be that bad because it eventually just becomes repetitive. It turns the pregnancy system into a hindrance to anything else I'd want to do if I'm not in the mood for the pregnancy content. If I have to cycle through several days of content just to get back to what I want to do, I'm just going to save scum to avoid it (which having to do is also annoying). The system you're suggesting works more like a punishment for enjoying the game's H content rather than a reward. What you get is not worth what you lose, even temporarily, and the more it happens the more annoying it's going to get. This game already has enough annoying mechanics as it is.

Djunk101

Sorry for getting so worked up over this. I've been stressed lately and I may have gone too far.

mdqp

As long as you don't try stabbing me when I am sleeping, we are good. I hate when that happens. :^

mdqp

It's a window to a maaagicaaal wooorld... Actually, I changed part of a tileset, without realizing it was also used by this map. I can't even remember what was there originally, so for now I'll add a crate and move along. XD

mdqp

I'd say the main problem is that I can't think of a way to make the consequences of the pregnancy (babies, relationships affected, interactions) fun or even just sensible. Even ignoring that, a completely open system that integrates pregnancies with the normal gameplay is simply too much work, unless I really just throw it out there without care (we are talking months + a month or two afterward to fix bugs and scenes I forgot to include in the changes, if I want to do it justice). But if I also throw away believable interactions and ignore all inconsistencies for the sake of adding this system, we aren't really having pregnancies in the game any longer, we are adding a tag to have alternative "kinky" sex scenes, and then we remove the tag whenever we want and forget it ever happened. I understand some might not like it, but, I really can't imagine how to make this fully integrated. I can smooth the edges to avoid the baby stuff with nannies and whatnot, but that's the least of my problems.

Zarcinia

for me i love pregnancy things in games probably the best things about games like this is the pregnancy but for it to be a gameover i would probably avoid it all together

mdqp

Well, we'll see what I can cook up to keep things more open, but manageable.

legraf

A bit late to the discussion, but I have to provide a different perspective. It all comes down to this quote from DJ Quinn: "the fun of pregnancy systems is being able to do things while the character is pregnant, after all. " Here is where we diverge fundamentally. For some, that is the fun, and without that, the pregnancy system probably is just a nuisance, as DJ Quinn says (and perhaps can be turned off in options?). For others, however, pregnancy is fun because of the added consequence, the risk of an end (or perhaps just the risk of needing to seek out a doctor that brings some other negative consequences with it). Of course, pregnancy doesn't realistically mean "no adventuring is possible anymore", but practically speaking, of course it's an absurd amount of extra work to incorporate additional dialogue and especially images in every single interaction. That's really unreasonable in any game that doesn't have a pregnancy fetish as a major focus. So... I just wanted to say, for some of us, what you propose sounds not just OK, but fantastic, oh great designer! For the rest, I recommend a toggle to prevent pregnancy, or an in-game mechanism of opting out (ideally, with risk of some sort).

mdqp

I appreciate the vote of confidence. :) I'll see what I can come up with (maybe there are ways to make this work for most people interested in the game). I am considering stuff like the doctor offering you an expensive treatment to increase the pregnancy speed, as a method to both have the game over stuff and the more "traditional" (for this type of game) gameplay while pregnant, with some limitations. I think I could write plenty of material for it this way, without risking breaking the game. Of course, I can't please everyone. There are bound to be people disappointed by this or that, but I can't do more than my best, in the end. XD

Rezin

I honestly love the idea of a pregnancy system and yeah I can see how you could be conflicted with how to actually execute the system without ending the game or 'copping out' as you feel with some suggestions, however I am pretty keen to see what you come up with. great work on the game so far.

mdqp

I have been considering something like a "bimbo" trait for a while. Of course, the usual problems can apply, so I'd probably have to find some way to limit it (say, for example, really masculine men trigger the "bimbo" response in you). I'd probably also cap the intelligence at 50 for flavour, and so that it affects more general mechanics without requiring an entirely new set of scenes to track.

mdqp

Yeah! There is already something I am using it for in the new content I am writing, and I'd like to have some more positive and negative effects in some scenarios. :D