Thrallworks Progress Update - Backgrounds, Trance Game Design and Hospital Public Release Roadmap (Patreon)

Hello all! The writing goes apace, but I'd prefer to wait until at least 1 path or so is written out before posting, so this is more of a written gamedev update.

For those of you who don't much care about sausage-making, the basic summary goes as follows:

______________________________________________________

• Working on BG Art for the Wheels

  • $10 peeps will get to suggest characters in the scene

    • $5 Peeps (You! :D) will get to vote on the suggested characters

• Some characters you get to do some good old-fashioned trancework with!

  • Previously worked on this to an ok degree, but reworking it for a better experience

    • I need to check my writing on it, but if the writing's solid enough I'm going to try and include it come the next update

• I'll be wanting to release the opening Hospital Scene public this month

  • This will involve polishing a few things, such as the Dr Amber model, and including mini-scenes for Princess Remedy and Angela, as well as some BJ Animation if feasible.

    • Treating this as a 'reset/reboot' publicly rather than a direct demo continuation of Orientation, and for each new scene we do we'll add another scene to the public release.

______________________________________________________

For those who want a bit more detail, strap in!

The Wheels BG

The title image is the area known as The Wheels, which is where you meet Aubertin- the orbs there are Thrallpods that cycle down on giant wheels to give Instructors and their staff access to variously contained thralls.

Like how I did with the other backgrounds, I'll be opening up spaces in the background for other characters to appear, thralls and such, that $10 patrons can make suggestions for, and $5 people can vote on.

I've also been working on the layout for Keller's apartment and am still deciding how best to do it- chances are for the opening I'll just have a single-spot background within a clickable mini-map, but in the future I'd like a background for each room, so I'll probably draw a stand-in or temp BG first and then go from there. Mayhaps I shall see what kind of BG I did for the OG Orientation and riff on that.

Trance Game Design

Also, something that can happen within the Apartment- but can also happen in the Plaza scene- is to put a hapless certain someone into trance.

Previously, I'd designed a mini-game to actively steer the progress through things, squashing errant thoughts with timed puleses and steering through mental gateways in order to deepen/smooth the trance and if successful enough then the session can continue.

However, after noodling and testing the design, I don't think it actually succeeded in delivering the fantasy of that kind of manipulation, or even a decent conveyance of how such things go in a way that can roughly map over actual hypno-sessions. For one, you had to concentrate so much on the activity that you missed out on the actual text-substance and the reactions of the subject. For another, there was a certain level of complex abstraction that just doesn't fit with ideas of what 'trance' is.

And also, I think what a lot of people tend to want out of a trance/hypnosis scene game-mechanic-wise isn't actually what people think they might want. For instance, some kind of 'depth' indicator seemed obvious, but what does 93/100 depth really give you? Do suggestions really work that way? Can you only stick someone's hands together when they are at 11/100 depth? It doesn't seem like something that hard numbers in that case can work with, but some kind of hard number does seem necessary, otherwise how do you know where the end-point is in any given session?

So stepping back a little I've tried to conceptualize what people actually find interesting in engaging in hypnoplay and what the real limitations are. In this case, the limitation is 'time'. Or at least that's the currency the sessions are going to be boiled in.

You get the scene's blah blah ("Your eyes are getting heavy, sooo heavy..."), then when you reach the end of whatever the particular bit is, you get an array of choices based on things based on the condition they're in (in the example above, 'that's what the 'Light Trance Under Suggestion' and metronome will indicate) and whatever suggestions they might have previously been given and how strong those suggestions are.

Each choice or option has a certain amount of 'session time' cost associated with it, and you can basically bandy about all these options until the session time runs out, so you can try and lightly cover a lot of different suggestions, or heavily reinforce one, or some mix of things.

Suggestions you revisit from previous sessions (or reinforce in a current session) you 'strengthen' so they take less session time and can be used in broader condition ranges (So for instance, a strong 'Sleep' Trigger can be used in progressively more alert mental states). Your 'tone' can also work to shift session timings (authorative tone vs. guided tone) that they can be conditioned to respond to.

Each subject also has their own personal stats on suggestibility and preferences that also adjust session times, and presumably what kinds of suggestions will be made available to them; though right now I only have in mind Yuzu and L-D19 for these mechanics, but we could consider others in due course.

I'm also imagining that the 2 characters would probably operate a little differently in that I'd want the L-D19 trances to be able to be used in a proactive Instructional manner in blocking off or enhancing self-image/identity concepts while Yuzu's might be a little more limited in variety but deeper in scope/have more writing in them.

We'll see how it goes. For Yuzu at least, I believe I've already written out the script for the Plaza trance scene, so I'll see about getting that in for the next update, though some parts will require a rewrite so repetition of the same kind of suggestion makes sense and doesn't sound like a straight loop-- otherwise why not just write 'and you loop through it again'? Though to be fair that might be the outcome of some suggestions if no more tantalizing ideas present themselves.

Hospital Scene Roadmap

This month I'd like to put the Hospital Scene out en publico. This is for multiple reasons, but mainly because I'd just like to generate a bit more interest and momentum behind Thrallworks in the hypnosmut public consciousness again. We've labbed for long enough and we're at a point in my skillset where it feels I can do pretty much everything I want to do in the game, so we can start swinging.

A public release also helps prioritize my work on the topic, and thinking about releasing it has given me a list of things I want to do/achieve that I will be working on this month.

Here's a list in no particular order, but that I'd want to aim to get all/nearly all done before a release.

• Dr Amber Intro CG

• Dr Amber Live2D (minor)

• Angela and Princess Remedy Mini-scenes & Art

• BJ Scene Polish

• Opening Polish

• Add Medi-Bay UI Utility

  • Camera Float

  • Energy Field Distort

Though I said 'In no particular order' I think we can roughly read that the stuff at the top feels more vital to me so we'll roll through that first. At any rate, this is the priority of Thrallworks work first, then below this would sit the Trance Session work.

And that as they say is that for this update. Questions are welcome below as ever, and I'll be putting up the BG Request post tomorrow for $10ydoos.

__________________________

Link to Download Page: https://tdl.itch.io/twreorientation

Password: ApplyCMSDirectlyToForehead

Enjoy!