Desperate Liasons - a game still in progress

[the_variant]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd throw up another post, since it's been months since I last updated anybody on this project.  The good news is that it's still in progess!!

I was actually going to post up a video about 6 months ago of actual gameplay, but then I decided to completely re-work a major part of the game, which then led to several weeks more development.

I was making really good progress because I was working for a company that was in the process of closing down, and I had nothing to do for 6 months but sit at my desk and code my own projects.  However 2 months ago the company finally closed, luckily I found a new job but it's long hours and very busy, so I haven't had as much time to work on the desperate liasons project.

Anyway, I still grab the odd evening here and there, and it's a bank holiday in the UK today, so I have been busily working on the UI.  There's still heaps of bugs to resolve and lots more functionality to add, but at least it kind of looks like a playable game now.

To start with, here's a copy of the opening round of a quick game I started to play.  Note that Tickle and Tummy Push are the only properly-working attacks at the moment - I have a huge list of attacks to add, each playing to a combination of character strengths and weaknesses.

Note: the editor here doesn't allow me to paste coloured text, but in the game the text is colour-coded so the game is a bit easier to follow.

------


Game started at 18:43 on 03/05/2010
Desperate Liasons welcomes you to Maria's Road Trip

7 people will battle their bladders to see who can hold the longest
The competitors are:
Tulip Laveaux, a 18 year old average girl with pink chin-length straight hair wearing blue rock chick tight denim skirt, red and white stripes rock chick girlie t-shirt, black goth chunky boots
Anya Sawicki, a 20 year old average girl with blue chin-length straight hair wearing red college long cotton skirt, grey college t-shirt, brown college flat-soled shoes
Ginger Clocksprings, a 18 year old skinny girl with ginger girlie pigtails wearing red skater cotton slacks, blue skater girlie t-shirt, white skater trainers
Megan Smith, a 22 year old athletic girl with black chin-length straight hair wearing black goth tight denim skirt, black goth thigh-high leather heeled boots
Myra Longbottom, a 20 year old curvy girl with black neck-length side-parted hair wearing red skater regular jeans, red skater t-shirt
Maria Johnstone, also known as Maid Maria, a 19 year old slim girl with black tied curls wearing nothing
Maria Everley, a 26 year old skinny girl with brown with blonde highlights neck-length side-parted hair wearing dark grey business cotton slacks, white business blouse

May the strongest bladder win!

----------------------------

Round 1

All competing players drink a glass of water.
Bladder level +300

Tulip is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Anya is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Ginger is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Megan is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Myra is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Maid Maria is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Maria is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs

Tulip's move:
Tulip tries to tickle Anya, but Anya pushes her away
Tulip tries to push on Maria's tummy, but Maria pushes her away
Tulip tries to tickle Maria, but Maria pushes her away
Tulip's move has finished.
----------------------------
Tulip is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Anya is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Ginger is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Megan is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Myra is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Maid Maria is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Maria is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs

Anya's move:
Anya tries to tickle Ginger, but Ginger pushes her away
Anya tickles Tulip
Anya tries to tickle Ginger, but Ginger pushes her away
Anya's move has finished.
----------------------------
Tulip is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Anya is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Ginger is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Megan is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Myra is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Maid Maria is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Maria is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored

Ginger's move:
Ginger pushes on Megan's tummy.  Megan tries to push her away but she isn't strong enough
Bladder capacity reduced by 189
Ginger tries to tickle Megan, but Megan pushes her away
Ginger tickles Anya
Ginger's move has finished.
----------------------------
Tulip is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Anya is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Ginger is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Megan is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Myra is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Maid Maria is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Maria is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored

Megan's move:
Megan tries to tickle Myra, but Myra pushes her away
Megan tickles Ginger
Ginger's bladder capacity reduced by 68
Megan tickles Ginger
Ginger's bladder capacity reduced by 26
Megan's move has finished.
----------------------------
Tulip is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Anya is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Ginger is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Megan is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Myra is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Maid Maria is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Maria is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored

Myra's move:
Myra tries to tickle Maid Maria, but Maid Maria pushes her away
Myra pushes on Megan's tummy
Bladder capacity reduced by 159
Myra stands up
Myra's move has finished.
----------------------------
Tulip is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Anya is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Ginger is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Megan is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Myra is standing in front of the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Maid Maria is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Maria is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs

Maid Maria's move:
Maid Maria pushes on Maria's tummy.  Maria tries to push her away but she isn't strong enough
Maid Maria tries to tickle Myra, but Myra pushes her away
Maid Maria tickles Myra
Maid Maria's move has finished.
----------------------------
Tulip is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Anya is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Ginger is sitting at the table.  She is looking bored
Megan is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Myra is standing in front of the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Maid Maria is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Maria is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs

Maria's move:
Maria tickles Maid Maria
Maria tickles Tulip
Maria pushes on Tulip's tummy
Maria's move has finished.
----------------------------
Round 2

All competing players drink a glass of water.
Bladder level +300

Tulip is sitting at the table.  She is looking around the room
Anya is sitting at the table.  She is idly picking at her chair
Ginger is sitting at the table.  She is idly picking at her chair
Megan is sitting at the table.  She is twiddling her thumbs
Myra is standing in front of the table.  She is looking around the room
Maid Maria is sitting at the table.  She is looking around the room
Maria is sitting at the table.  She is idly picking at her chair

Tulip's move:

[the_variant]

And here's a few screenshots:

This is what the player sees at the very start of the game.  The table layout at the right is still very buggy - it was supposed to allow attackers to move around to be closer to their intended target, but I'm not sure if I might remove it completely...

[the_variant]

Early in the game.  The characters bladders are starting to fill.

[the_variant]

As characters get more desperate, they run a greater risk of accidentally leaking at the start of each turn, when they hear a loud noise, or when they hear running water.  In this turn, Ginger has accidentally leaked a little bit - the discolouration shows on her dark red panties, but luckily, nobody else can see this under her skirt.

There is a move that allows players to look for wet spots on other characters' clothes - any girl with a wet spot gets an instant penalty!!

[the_variant]

Character strengths come into play.  In this screenshot, Maid Maria's high observancy has caused her to notice as Maria accidentally lets out a spurt.

[the_variant]

Ginger and Maria are the first characters to wet themselves in this game.  The table viewer is supposed to show that they've started to wet themselves, but it's not working :p

[the_variant]

The sound of wetting can cause a character to leak, or can cause her bladder to contract.  With both Maria and Ginger wetting at once, poor Anya's bladder is really suffering!

[the_variant]

Table Viewer is sort of working in this screenshot.  Ginger and Maria have wet themselves and left the table.

[the_variant]

You may notice that different characters have different bladder capacities - originally this was going to be a user-configurable skill, but it seems to make the game always biased in favour of those with bigger bladders, so I think I'm going to force all characters to start with the same size bladder - capacity will only increase as the character levels up.

Attached here is a quick splash screen that I made.  I used images taken from here and various other places.  If the game ever gets a full release I will need to make a new splash using copyright-free images.  If anyone spots their image and wants it removed, please contact me via PM and I will take your image out of the splash.

Anyone who is interested in doing some drawing for this or other parts of the game is asked to contact me via PM.

[anime lover]

this is awesome, when can we expect to be able to play this game?

[the_variant]

Hey y'all,

My plan - when the game is ready for beta testing - is to let anyone here have a copy to install.   I was going to make it a web-app, but my web development skills are fail - instead it will be a windows app that communicates directly with my web server.  I expect this to be several months in the future, as I'm also busy finishing two albums and a novel, and there's still lots of problems to iron out with the project and lots more features to add.

Each user will need to sign up for a login, and then can create their own characters, complete with bio and customisable skills.  Characters are developed during the game by earning experience points each time they use a skill or defend against one.  Users can also buy clothes for their characters - at the moment, clothing is primarily used to disguise leaks - some clothes dry out fast, some are very absorbent, and some don't change colour much when they are wet.  I was also planning to use the "attractiveness" value of clothes to increase the overall attractiveness of the character wearing them, so the character can seduce others during the game.

I'm not really sure how images could easily be used in the game.  I made the bladder indicator because it wasn't too hard to make and will be the same for each character, but character pictures would be much harder to accomplish.  I did consider making a kind of dress-up game, where you pick a body shape, face shape, skin colour, and choose from a whole selection of eyes, noses, mouths, hairstyles and clothes - but somebody would have to draw all those different images for me.  Then there would have to be alternative images for each set of eyes and mouths (to show the character getting more uncomfortable as they get more desperate), and each item of clothing would need alternative images for when they get wet.

In all, it would be much much easier to do this using 3D models instead of sprites - but this takes the game to a whole new league outside of what I have coded it for already.

A selection of user-selectable faces would be really nice, but there are ten levels of desperation in the game, as well as 3 levels of wetting, so there would need to be at least 13 versions of each face.

I also have a single-player wetting "simulation" app, where you basically torment a girl by giving her more water until she wets herself - this has much more scope for animation.  When I'm finished with the multi-player app I'll probably be asking for help collating images for this project.

[Faust]

Well, I don't have any pics that you'd probably need..
....
But I will add in this..
I FUCKING LOVE THIS GAME ALREADY!!!
XD
.
*will be eagerly waiting to play the game when it is finished/put up as a beta*

[Ranpalan]

I'm loving this, except the game being Windows-only. Does ``My plan - when the game is ready for beta testing - is to let anyone here have a copy to install.'' mean you're thinking of later selling this? And if not, would you care to also release the source code (unless you're concerned cheating would be an issue, of course)?

In any case, the stuff looks awesome, and I really hope I find one way or another to play it!

[hihia28]

How about a bar of sprites at the bottom of the screen that begin to look more desperate as the game progresses, thereby giving the player a visual representation of the girls' condition.

[the_variant]

How about a bar of sprites at the bottom of the screen that begin to look more desperate as the game progresses, thereby giving the player a visual representation of the girls' condition.

I have considered this, but I would need hundreds of sprites drawn up to make it work.  Each player has the option to design and customise their own character, and so each player will probably want a unique sprite.  Each unique sprite would have to be redrawn for all the different levels of desperation.

I thought about having faces over each character position, instead of little orange circles, but the same applies.

I sort of considered making the character designer as a sort of dress-up game, where all basic girls are the same but players can choose a skin colour and a range of clothes, eyes, noses, mouths, hairstyles and haircolours etc.  But that sort of goes beyond the scope of my experience and would require each set of eyes, noses, mouths etc... to be redrawn for different desperations, and many clothing items to be redrawn to show when they get wet.

I'm probably going to avoid all but basic graphics in this game and stick to text because it's not so hard to program.

I'm loving this, except the game being Windows-only. Does ``My plan - when the game is ready for beta testing - is to let anyone here have a copy to install.'' mean you're thinking of later selling this? And if not, would you care to also release the source code (unless you're concerned cheating would be an issue, of course)?

The game is written using .Net 3.0 - I don't know if .Net apps run on Macs or via windows editors.  I'd guess there would be a way to run it.

When it's finished I'll probably release it as a free-to-install game that is hardcoded to use my webserver.  If anyone wants to extend the project after I'm finished then I would talk in person about making the source code available, rather than just uploading for anyone to hack it, introduce bugs and destroy the game experience for everyone else.

It's such a minority-interest application that I could make any money selling it.