Re: Possible Remake of Jungle Girl
I hope you don't mind if I bump in here with a few suggestions of my own, since I did come across some of the issues Alias mentioned while doing my DG remake. I'm not crazy enough to be doing tentacle stacking in my project (lack of proper graphic skills doesn't help here), but I did have spawning related problems. I'll be mostly replying to Alias with examples how I would do it. Just my two cents, if you guys want to use them, feel free to do so.
Right, off we go:
For example, what happens if you have five mids in a row? They can't all titfuck her. This suggests that you might not actually be going to animate every single possible permutation of tentacles, and you'll have a max of two or perhaps three tentacles per zone (two mids, two tops, and one bot for example - or three bots one mid and a top). Okay, let's say the max is two. So we get two mids in a row, the first one grabs her, the second one starts raping her. What happens if a third mid comes along? Does it just fly by like the extra tentacles did on the original JG?
Although tentacle spawning (I presume) will mostly be random, you could force the game to check if there are too many tentacles on the same lane and forbid others from spawning on that lane until the other go through. If you'll be going with the original JG and the player won't be able to "move" JG (as in you can't stop her or move backwards, only avoid tentacles), then it would it even easier - once the tentacle goes off screen, it gets erased and the lane is open. Yeah, so potentially you would only have those 2-3 tentacles per lane, but as long as the player has no control over JG's movement speed, you could still plan it out so that it's still enough to get ganbanged within moments.
How exactly are you planning on making the game work with all these extra tentacles being able to latch on? I'll explain. Once you're grabbed by a tentacle, there are a couple of ways to handle escaping. One way is to follow the original LM game and just have a set animation play through, and once it's over, it's over. Another way is to button-mash until you escape. Another way is to combine the two, and have a set time, with button-mashing just making your escape quicker. Okay, what happens when another tentacle latches on?
If we're going the static timer route, I'd assume the timer would reset, allowing the new animation to play through. If we're going button mashing, I guess the mash gauge would reset?
DG has a mid-solution to this (and it appears to be the best IMHO) - once you get grabbed, you'll be going to the end, but you can still button-mash to reduce the time it takes to end (and, as a result, reduce the damage received). When more tentacles latch on, you could either reset the timer or make the button-mashing do less "timer-damage". OR you could take the mid-solution again and make the button-mashing less useful while upping the timer by just a bit.
This actually meshes in with my other concern. In the original JG, the spawn times between attackers would shorten until it was basically impossible to avoid one. Once you did get caught, two things happened: there would be X number of attackers that had already spawned, but weren't going to be doing anything, and the spawn timer would reset to the default value. The remaining attackers would pass harmlessly by, of course, and so LM just made it so the rape animations lasted long enough for the extra attackers to fly by without catching you the instant you broke free - remember kids, unbreakable chain-rape is not good. The life bar would decrease by a static amount (I think you can get raped five or six times before getting a game over, but it was always five or always six).
Again, as long as the player has no movement control, you can be pretty much spawning tentacles in his face (just outside our field of vision, though from JG's pont of view, they would be appearing out of thin air). With that in mind, you wouldn't have wandering tentacles that spawned waaay far and got to JG's just in time for a chain-rape. Also, you can make the animations last for quite some time (enough so any stranglers won't chain-rape, even if you'll be button-mashing like crazy), while making damage-per-frame relatively low to compensate for long animation time.
But we want attackers to stack. That causes a couple of issues. We could do it just like LM did, and run into the danger of the player not ever being able to see the special five-of animations that you intend to implement (which is a fantastic idea by the way if I've not already said so). We might want to avoid this. After all, it makes sense that the more JG gets raped, the more her resistance breaks down, and thus the more attackers can latch on to her. But this wouldn't work with LM's original design.
It depends. You could make an extra resistance-bar. As long as it's high, you get low hp/stamina/whatever-damage, button-mashing is effective and no more than 2 tentacles can latch onto you at a time. It does decrease during rape however, and once it's low, sit back and enjoy the show (wow, unintentional rhyming).
Still, implementing this takes time, and you could just say "screw it", since it's nothing you can't live without in a game like this.
Take this example. We've designed it just like LM - spawn timers decrease, set animation time. A player just wants to see the sex, so s/he doesn't do anything at all. The first tentacle comes, rape happens, the spawn timer isn't fast enough at this point so the second attacker hasn't spawned by the time rape happens. Thus, no latching on, just that initial rapegrab. Spawn timer resets. Animation finishes, JG starts walking again, gets grabbed by the next attacker. Repeat until game over. Despite the fact that JG put up no resistance, she never actually got more than one attacker latched onto her at once. You'd think that the less resistance you put up, the more tentacles would come to rape you, right?
And yet this is the most balanced approaches when considering mechanical game design. The better you do in the game, the further you go without getting raped, the more you're rewarded when you finally do get caught, as there will be more attackers spawned and thus more latching on. But this doesn't make any logical sense when you try to put the game into reality.
I see no problems here. If you just want to win the game (which you just now lost and so did I), the more you concentrate on winning, the harder it gets to actually win. On the other hand, if you're just a sick bastard like everyone on this forum, you actually have to concentrate if you want to see the "good stuff". Everyone needs to work for their prize. It's a win-win.
Also:
But this doesn't make any logical sense when you try to put the game into reality.
... logical sense when you try to put the game into reality.
... put the game into reality.
Oh yeah, because there are numerous naked chicks running away from getting raped by tentacle monters in the jungles in the real world, right?
...
...
...
(no hostility intented)
Another problem with this approach is this: let's say you've gotten to the point where if you get caught, there are two more attackers spawned that will pass you. (For the sake of argument, you get caught by a mid. Also the max is two.) The second one comes, well it's a mid. It starts raping while the first one keeps holding. The third (and last) one comes along, oh look, it's also a mid. But our max in this scenario is two, so it just passes harmlessly by, and the player is gypped out of seeing the triple-tentacle rape animation (whatever it might be). Is it worth putting in a countermeasure in place to avoid this?
As I've said earlier, you can force-check if there are enough tentacles on the same lane, so as to avoid too many. During rape, you just switch off any spawning until they're done (this way you'll avoid your chain-rapes).
How would game overs work? Do you have a lifebar? Would five tentacles take off more than one would? Would five at once take off more than five individually? How many rapes is our sweet little jungle girl going to be able to endure? How exactly would getting hit by a top or a bot work if you're not being held by a mid?
Game overs would work as they always did - hp=0, game over screen of JG getting the hell raped out of her.
I would suggest a life bar that can withstand a lot more, since group rapes would do more damage (or at least they should). And yes, you can do more in an organised group, so they should do more damage as a group than individually. This actually makes a decent tactic - get raped on purpose by a few tentacles to reset the spawn time AND take less damage.
How many should she be able to endure? It depends how hard you want the game to be and how it works out in beta-tests. You want a game with decent gameplay that's not hardcore to beat (and it would be best if you could control the game with only one hand, right?).
If she's not being held by a mid, the top and bot should still do their stuff like they do it with a mid one. The only difference you could implement is reduction of their damage/time. That way you need less graphics and you still see some rape. OR you could do completely different animations (or make them grab her instead of the mid one), but that's just a shitload of more work for Miss MadHettie over here.
It's the best I can come up with for the time being. But hey, it looks fine to me.
TL;DR version:
That's how my suggested game-engine would work:
- players have no movement control over JG, so I'm spawning tentacles just outside their field of vision (at the same time I'm checking if there aren't too many tentacles on the same lane and I'm constantly decreasing the tentacle spawn time)
- The moment any tentacle gets destroyed/passed beyond our field of vision behind JG I'm opening that lane for another tentacle during random-spawning.
- Oh hey, JG's got captured and she's getting poundered. Ok, so I'm closing any spawning to avoid chain-rape and at the same time I'm freezing the spawn time.
- I'm doing the rape animation. The rape timer is up and counting to zero and I'm waiting for any button-mashing info - if the player is pressing the button, I'm reducing the time. At the same time I'm reducing JG's hp and resistance at a set rate.
- Oh look, more are joining the fun. Ok, so I'm lowering the button-mashing effectiveness and I'm upping the timer by a bit (so the new guys have the time to actually do something to her)
- Oh my, look at the time. Time to start the ending animation.
- They've finished, so I'm reseting the rape timer, the button-mashing efectiveness, the spawn timer and I'm unfreezing the spawning.
I sure hope this godzilla post is even comprehensible to you guys.
