Catherine (Tiffanian)

[Hafnium]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

"Not sure," the pixie signed in reply. "Humans tend to scatter about as members of different castes grab their favorites. Best way to find them is to search and to avoid others," she added. "I would help you search, but I should probably-"

She froze, mid sign. That wasn't the only oddity that suddenly struck, however, as the male pixie began to swim... directly into a wall opposite the entrance into their little hideaway. After swimming into the cavern wall face-first for about a minute, he suddenly warped back to where he had been when Catherine first came in, and then began to swim toward the wall again in a process that repeated several times over. The archer seemed to be the only one capable of moving normally, and any efforts to leave the hideout were halted by the fact that nothing but empty black space appeared to exist outside of it. If the archer was to inspect Roger, she would discover that some of his limbs had become invisible, and if she were to inspect his mouth or under his clothing she would find herself looking directly at the floor underneath him.

This continued for something that felt close to several months, with the EGG obviously glitching out. The archer had no way to exit the game or reboot the program as she couldn't even access the menu, and could only wait and wander the small area, finding that none of the physics were working and all the items were about as useful and as responsive as if they had been drawn onto a background. She wouldn't be trapped inside forever, though, as eventually a string of messages began popping up.

Spoiler

Error Code M1004: System Overheating.

Manual outside override engaged, beginning extraction...
Logging problem.... OK.
Attempting to save progress... OK.
Recovering video logs... OK.
Posting video logs publicly on the internet. OK. This particular message went by very, very quickly.
Shutting down game..... OK.
Safely disengaging player...

And then Catherine was back in the EGG's chamber, and two men in jumpsuits had opened the pod she had been inside and were currently in the process of helping-slash-forcing her out of the machine. "Sorry ma'am, the cooling system seems to have busted, and according to company rules, you can't be in this room while we repair it." They were apparently not much for manners, as she ended up being practically shoved out of the door and having it quickly closed behind her.

But she found that there was a woman waiting in the hallway for her. She had short black hair and blue eyes, and like Catherine she wore glasses. The other woman was slightly shorter than the EGG beta tester, but that certainly didn't stop her from giving off a professional and serious air, possibly due to the suit she wore and the clipboard that rested under her left arm. "Ah, you must be Catherine?" The woman greeted her. "I'm Lisa," she offered her hand for the human to shake. "I'm here to talk with you about your experience in the EGG, since you were in there for a little over two hours and it'll be a little while until they have it up and running again. Would you like to get something to eat while we talk? It'll be on me."

 

[Tiffanian]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

Apparently there weren’t set gatherings of humans down here on the ocean floor thanks to their underclass status, the various castes of underwater creatures snapping up whoever they liked. That would complicate things a bit. At least, Catherine probably wouldn’t find too many of the creatures who would be both able and willing to teach her or Roger the ropes of communication and life here under the sea. Something really weird happened as she pondered this, though… the little woman who was signing to her just froze in place. Not like she had forgotten a sign and needed to think about it for a moment, she wasn’t even blinking or twitching, her chest not rising and falling with breath. What was going on? The man began to swim at about the same time, but in a perfectly straight line, and he hit the wall in the back of the room face-first, bouncing off it and then going straight back to hit it again. Okay… obviously the game was glitching out somehow. The archer sighed, but this was the first incident she had had, and the game was experimental after all. It was probably impressive that she had experienced so much gameplay without running into problems.

This turned out to be a fairly serious glitch, though, as Catherine would soon find out. The pixie warped back to where he had started out and then resumed swimming into the wall again, and the human began to swim around and examine her immediate surroundings more closely. She tried to pick things up, rocks and floating detritus, but it didn’t work, her hands just phased through most anything. Roger’s arms seemed to have disappeared completely, and a quick look showed that anything that wasn’t visible from a distance had simply not been rendered. She sighed again; there wasn’t anything in this room worth checking out, so maybe if she swam out there’d be something to entertain herself with in the caves until the game got fixed. Outside, of course, was just black emptiness as far as the eye could see. The little room was a prison now, with nothing to do or really even see. She had no way of escaping on her own, no emergency exit or anything like that. Time dragged on seemingly endlessly… days went by with her just floating around in the cave, until the days turned into a month, at least in her mind. After a while she was starting to go a little bit crazy, at least stir crazy, and she worried briefly that she might be stuck there for what felt like an eternity thanks to the time distortion.

Finally, though, she saw what looked like a crashdump on a computer, giving her an error code. Apparently something had overheated, and now it was sending off notice of what had gone wrong, saving her progress, etc. Wait, had that said video logs? Catherine peered at the screen again, but it was gone by then. Video logs? This was being taped? She had been under the impression that no such logs were being kept, though maybe that was only for the normal EGG pods, and for some reason they needed video to see what the experience was like on this more experimental version. She hoped they were edited at least a bit before they were viewed. She didn’t mind the developers seeing her naked so much, that was inevitable given how often she had been, but she really didn’t want people watching her getting gangbanged by nightcrawlers and pixies… She wasn’t exactly a prude, but she wasn’t really the type to be a porn star either.

Soon after the crashdump had scrolled by Catherine was sitting in her EGG pod, looking up at two men who had pried it open and were prepared to help her out of it. "That’s fine, fine" she said, though they didn’t help her get out so much as pull her out, and then shove her out of the door. How rude. There was a woman out in the hallway waiting for her, looking very official and serious in her suit. "Mhm, I’m Catherine" she replied when asked, reaching out to take the hand offered to her, though she didn’t have a great handshake. "Nice to meet you. I’m always up for some free food if that’s okay with you, haha" she said, chuckling a little bit awkwardly. "I have some questions of my own for you, I think, so we’ve surely got a bit to talk about." She looked down after a moment and realized that it felt really kind of odd to be wearing the clothes she came in with, after so long in game time being nude. It would take some getting used to again…

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

"A pleasure to meet you," the woman offered professionally in return to Catherine's assertion that she was, in fact, Catherine. There was no change in her expression at the woman's weak handshake. "We have a few different options. This building has a cafeteria due to the nature of our work, but the powers that be are on a big health food kick to increase productivity and the fare is a bit hit or miss. There's plenty of fast food places around here if those are more your thing," she offered without any of the awkwardness that the beta tester seemed to feel. Indeed, the woman seemed a consummate professional. If there was any hint of judgment in her directed at Catherine for what went on at the EGG or if she was even aware of what the woman had been doing inside the cutting edge game, it wasn't visible in her expression or audible in her voice.

Although it would become apparent that the woman must have had some idea of what typically occurred inside the EGG, as once Catherine made a decision, one way or another, she would continue. "And by all means, ask me any questions you'd like. You can even start as we travel. The EGG can be an... intense... experience, and so your questions are just as important as mine."

 

[Tiffanian]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

Catherine’s nose crinkled a bit at the mention of a health food focused cafeteria. That probably meant salad, and she was not particularly interested. "I think I saw a Burger King in walking distance, if that’s okay with you" she offered, though she wouldn’t insist if Lisa seemed to object. Something about her felt… calming somehow. Maybe it was the air of professionalism about her, the degree to which she seemed to take her job seriously. It made it less awkward that soon the two of them would be talking about Catherine’s experiences in a very sexually geared game. "Yeah, intense is one way of putting it… had some pretty crazy things happen to me over the course of the game so far already, only a few real hours in" she replied, chuckling a little, though a bit less awkwardly than before.

Catherine didn’t think it would be appropriate to make any comments that would seem to require Lisa to take notes as they made the short walk to the Burger King, so she pushed forward with the first thing that came to mind. "Well, first… when the game was shutting down it said something about video logs. I was sort of under the impression that my game wasn’t being recorded… I understand if the developers need to see how things are working and the AI and stuff, but there are some things that happened that I don’t necessarily want a lot of people seeing, you know? That’s my main concern, what happens with those" she said, looking more than a little bit nervous as she spoke of this particular issue. Whatever the reaction she would wait until after they had sat down with their food (cheeseburger with extra onions, mmmmm~) to come forward with her next concern. "I think you need some sort of emergency eject sequence for situations like the one that just happened. The way the machine screws with your perception of time, it’s a little dangerous when things go wrong. I kind of felt like I was being tortured there towards the end, spent a month or more in an enclosed space where nothing at all worked. I can see not allowing people to just quit willy nilly, but there needs to be some sort of safety net."

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

"It really is impressive technology, isn't it? Ours is a bit of an... unorthodox use, but I don't think there's any shame in making sure that it can emulate all aspects of life and fantasy accurately enough," Lisa replied before they began their walk, not protesting Catherine's selection in the least. Leaving the building proved simple enough with the professional woman accompanying her, as although some guards moved to stop and question Catherine it took only Lisa announcing that the tester was with her to get them to back away and leave the duo alone. "Hm? We don't do video logs in such a personal setting unless we're given written consent, and even if we did then we certainly wouldn't post them on the internet. Too much of a security risk. I'll ask around about that when we get back."

True to her word, once they arrived at the fast food place she paid for their meal in full, although she only ordered a large drink and some fries. When they had found a suitable table and sat down to begin to eat it became apparent that Lisa hadn't had much of a hunger to speak of as she slowly nibbled away at a singular fry. She must've been thirsty, however, as most of her time not spent speaking or writing notes was spent sucking soda through a straw. "I'll bring that up. According to this, your EGG had probably started erroring out five or so minutes before you were removed, so I think we also need to take a look at failsafes for the time skip feature. Maybe manual options for game speed accessible to the player..." She took another long drink.

"Speaking of that sort of feature, how do you feel about how the EGG handles pain? Was it blunted enough for you?"

 

[Tiffanian]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

"Oh yes, it’s very impressive tech" Catherine agreed, nodding, "and even within the EGG it seems you can use it for purposes that aren’t… quite what I used it for if you wanted an adventure like that. The fact that it’s so customizable, the sort of experience you want, is really pretty awesome. It’s almost like a holodeck or something like that." When the two of them got to the door it seemed like the guards were going to stop the tester, before Lisa intervened and got them to back off. That was a little weird. More weird was the assertion that no video logs were kept. Her ears perked up a bit when the woman mentioned the internet… "Well it definitely said it was doing something with video logs… saving? Recovering? Something like that. And I don’t think I got a form like that. What do you mean by internet, though?" Surely they wouldn’t post anything like in public… the thought made her skin crawl more than a little bit.

Sure enough, Lisa paid for Catherine’s meal. She didn’t get much for herself though, just a drink and some fries to nibble on as they talked. "Yeah, just some way to keep it from glitching out like that and holding you alone for days and days at a time" the tester replied, thinking it was a good suggestion to give the player a slider or something. "Although I couldn’t bring up the menu or anything during the glitch, so there is that." It was somewhat worrying that she had only really been in the glitch for five minutes… If those months were five minutes of real time, what would happen if they weren’t prompt? She was taking another bite of her burger when she was asked if the EGG handled pain appropriately, so she chewed carefully for a bit while thinking. "Yeah, it handled pain fairly well. There was never a moment where I felt like I was really in serious pain, and the game also took care of some things that I find unpleasant in real life. Like, um…" she blushed a little as she replied, "not having a gag reflex in-game helped a bit. I will say that sometimes it kind of went a little overboard I think. For things that wouldn’t have been a big deal I think it was maybe a little bit strange to feel it not hurt like I expected… If that makes sense. Like, someone in the game cut into my hand, and it’s fine to dampen that a lot, but I think I can take a slap from time to time."

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

"I... don't know. I guess I just jumped to the conclusion or something," Lisa replied with a shrug regarding her comment about the internet.

"Hm," the woman replied after Catherine had finished her comments about pain. She then scrawled a few more words on her clipboard and took another long slurp of her drink, from the sounds of it emptying the cup out in the process. "What about the other feelings? Realistic? Or maybe too real? Not real enough? I've actually heard all three, believe it or not," she added, as if to lighten the mood. "Some want it to be incredibly immersive, and some want the opposite. Others want things to be a bit more like things they've seen on the internet, you know?"

This time, Lisa would listen until Catherine was finished with her answer and scribble down something else on her clipboard. Afterward she began to fidget though. "Can we pause for just a moment? I have some, ah, other business to take care of. Plus I want a refill," she spoke before getting up and then scurrying off toward the restrooms. The woman left her clipboard on the table when she left, however, which meant that Catherine could take a peek at what she'd been writing of she liked.

 

[Tiffanian]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

Catherine nodded, satisfied to some extent with the woman’s answer about her internet comment. "It’s really not a huge deal if logs exist, I just don’t want people watching certain portions of it, and I definitely don’t want it to go to any more people than absolutely necessary" she said, finishing up that portion of the conversation. She wondered vaguely what Lisa’s notes looked like as she talked about the way the game handled pain, stopping to think about the next question. It was a bit of a toughie, actually. "Well, I’d say the other feelings were handled pretty well. I think to some extent they were almost… enhanced a little too much, maybe? I don’t know, I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand not every encounter needs to feel really, really good, but on the other hand I’m obviously playing to have a bit of fun, so… It’s a balance. Same with realism. My game so far has been split up into a section that was pretty realistic, where I was on a boat with a bunch of sailors, and then a section where I was stuck under the ocean with a bunch of humanoid sea monsters. I like both, and I think a healthy split between both would be good."

After the answer was done and Lisa had finished with her notes she seemed to get pretty fidgety, and judging from the fact that she had downed an entire coke already it was pretty obvious what was going on. "That’s fine, go on ahead" Catherine replied, smiling at the woman as she got up and headed quickly for the restroom. She took the opportunity to finish munching happily on her burger, though she eyed the clipboard the woman had left behind… She was kind of interested what the notes said, and a little peek couldn’t hurt. It probably wouldn’t be anything particularly groundbreaking, but she wanted to see Lisa’s opinions on her game experience.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

A quick glance at Lisa's clipboard after she left revealed handwriting that would give a doctor pause. Still, after a bit of effort she was able to decipher several notes in the margins.

System crashed due to faulty hardware. Time functions were messed up and the game was sped up to a level that made her feel, and I directly quote, "like I was being tortured". Very dangerous. Need some sort of physical failsafe for the consumer version, even if the military and private interests don't want it. Also, add a setting for non-debug users to control the speed settings.

Mentioned video logs. This is the seventeenth time I've had to explain that we only log if the user signs the additional consent forms. This joke isn't funny. If you won't remove it out of courtesy then please remove it for our legal team before we get sued or something.

Suggested pain settings could be overbearing but appreciated removal of some bodily impulses and dampening for more serious wounds. Still think we need better variable options on this, if not quick access adjustment by non-debug users.

Unsure regarding other sensations. Comments about realism lead me to recommend options similar to my recommendations for pain.

Recommend for debug, or maybe second level, access to see if it particularly improves her experience.

The clipboard also had a bunch of questions, most of which starting with "how did the user feel about", along with a series of numbered bubbles to fill in, most of which Lisa had already done, but Catherine didn't have the time to read it in full before the woman returned to the table. The bespectacled tester had only just enough time to return herself and the clipboard to their proper places between Lisa exiting the restroom, getting her drink, and taking her seat. After another drink, she announced; "We're almost done here. So, did you have any other questions before we finish up and go back?"

 

[Tiffanian]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

Catherine squinted as she looked over the clipboard, trying to make out just what Lisa had written. Her handwriting was absolute garbage… was it because she was in some sort of science? Those types always seemed to be really bad with pens in their hands. In any case, it was pretty standard stuff. She wondered what the “private interests” were, and the revelation that the military was somehow involved in the EGG was surprising at first, but when she thought about it it made sense. What better way to train soldiers than by simulating combat in such an immersive system? She breathed a little sigh of relief when she read that apparently one of the devs was playing a joke with the video logs thing. She could believe that some dumb jerk would think that was funny. The rest wasn’t terribly interesting, besides the fact that she was apparently going to be recommended for greater access to the system and control over what the EGG did. That might be pretty neat.

That was when she saw Lisa make her way out of the bathroom, and she quickly put the clipboard back where it went and slid into her own chair again whilst the woman got a refill on her drink. A last bite of burger, a sip of her coke, and Catherine was ready to get on with the questioning. "Umm… I can’t really think of any questions I’ve got off the top of my head. Well, maybe one. How did they manage to program the NPCs? There’s so so many of them even in just what little time I’ve been playing, and they seem so real. Like they’ve got real emotions and things. It seems almost impossible. Other than that, we can get right back to it if you want" she said, smiling and sitting back in her chair.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

"It's a bit of a company secret, I'm afraid, so I can't go into great detail, but the NPC's personalities are created using a system that's almost as impressive as the EGG," Lisa replied, becoming particularly animated as she talked (albeit not in too much depth) about the subject. "It was developed as we were working on the EGG itself, when we first ran into the problems of trying to design NPCs for such an immersive environment. I'm sure you can imagine how jarring it was to run into somebody who looked fully human but would spout something silly like 'welcome to Acrolein' every time you said something it didn't comprehend or have a response for. It was pretty much necessary that we pioneer a new means of NPC programming for this system."

"Anyway," she continued, back to her original level of professionalism the moment she had wheeled the conversation to another subject. "I've got everything I need, but I was wondering if you'd be interested in having access to additional testing tools? There's a few fun things you can do with them, including change the sensation intensity settings and mess with the timescale features. There would be a few more liability forms to sign, but if you're willing to do that then I can give you all the codes you need for it," she offered, not that it would likely surprise Catherine given that the tester had taken a peek at the clipboard.

 

[Tiffanian]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

Catherine sat and listened patiently as the woman explained a little bit about NPC generation, taking in the passion with which she spoke. If she had to guess she would say that this was Lisa’s “thing” in the game. "Yeah, I’d heard that I should expect good interaction with people and the environment in-game just from the rumors and things, but I hadn’t quite expected this. Talking to one of the NPCs is basically the same as talking to you here" she said after a while, nodding. That seemed to jar the other woman back into the mode she had been in previously, and she explained what Catherine had already read in her notes, that she wanted her to have extra access to game mechanics and features. "More tools, huh? Sounds like it might be fun. And might make it a little safer to deal with in the event that I have another hardware malfunction in any case. So yeah, I’ll do it" she replied after a brief pause, to make it seem as if she was considering the matter.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

"Fantastic!" Lisa replied with no lack of actual enthusiasm. "Then let's get back and we can get everything in order." With that, she stood up and would prepare to leave the Burger King with Catherine, assuming the tester didn't have anything else that was pressing enough to bring up in the fast food place proper.

The walk back would prove every bit as uneventful as the walk there, and on the way into the building the guards barely paid attention to the return of the two women. They took a different route once they were inside, which led them to an elevator that would take them to a different section of the building. There they would go down a carpeted hall before Lisa would motion for Catherine to wait a moment as she entered into one of the rooms, which a quick peek would reveal to be an office, and then returned moments later with several papers. "I need you to sign these. Here, here, here, here, and here," she flipped through several pages as she pointed out areas that were already marked with an X for Catherine to signature beside.

There was so much fine print on the papers that there was no way that Catherine could fully read and check the wording of each and every one without several hours and a lawyer present, although Lisa wouldn't stop her from reading the forms more in depth if the tester desired. A quick glance would summarize them as a liability waiver, a privacy form, an NDA, another form that seemed to cover a bunch of different things not discussed in the ones before it, and something that gave the EGG permission to send her to a local hospital if she were injured during its use. She could still back out and return to her old machine, if the pages upon pages of legalese spooked her.

 

[Tiffanian]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

There was nothing more for Catherine to say, at least not there in the Burger King, so she got up, got a quick refill on her drink, and followed Lisa back to the testing center while sipping on a coke. Nothing much happened on the way, and this time the guards didn’t say anything to try and stop them. They went down a different hallway this time, to an elevator that took them up to a hallway with somewhat nice carpeting, which was definitely different. It seemed like the building’s offices, and a quick peek into the room Lisa ducked into confirmed that suspicion. She came out with a number of papers, asking for the tester’s signature. Catherine looked them over, skimming them for a moment before she signed. She didn’t like to just sign things willy nilly, though there was no way she would be able to read all of this, or understand it all. The legalese was pretty heavy, and she was many things, but a lawyer was not one of them. Nothing seemed too out of place, though. There was a waiver form that reduced her ability to sue, a form assuring her that her privacy would be respected, a non-disclosure agreement to ensure she didn’t spill any trade secrets, a form with a bunch of random nonsense she couldn’t understand, and a form that granted them permission to get her to a hospital if she were injured. That was somewhat worrying, but legal forms were always pretty overcautious. "Has anyone ever been injured testing the EGG?" she asked as she began to sign her name where the Xs indicated, not quite scared off yet.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

"No, we're pretty careful about that," Lisa replied as she confirmed that each signature was in order. "But it's important to take these sorts of precautions. It'd be terrible if somebody was hurt because of improper planning on our part. Anyway, everything appears to be in order here!" After her look over the papers, she ducked back into the office for just long enough to toss the clipboard onto her desk and then returned to the hallway in order to accompany Catherine back to the EGG testing area. The journey back, assuming the tester wasn't made too wary by Lisa's response to continue, was much the same as her original trip, except this time she was led into a different room which Lisa had to unlock with a keycard.

The room was, as best she could tell, about the same as the last one she had been ushered into for testing, beyond obviously being located in a different place. The EGG looked completely identical to the last one she had crawled in, as well, although Lisa would quickly explain that there were significant differences. "You'll find that this EGG has a few more options and features. We tend to use them for debugging, but it would be nice to see how players feel about having increased control over their settings. Just keep in mind that with this system you can change the options at any time or fast forward if something ends up too intense for you." And if the tester still hadn't been spooked out of it for some reason, Lisa would nudge her on with a "have fun in there!"

If Catherine decided to get in the EGG, she would find that it started up much as the previous EGG had. Unlike the other EGG though, instead of a grand opening consisting of settings and planets and everything else that had heralded her initial entry into the game, this time she was treated to a blank, white space with a menu pop up and a choice to make.

Spoiler

Welcome back, Catherine!

New Game
Load Game
Test Battle
Settings
Debug

Spoiler

(Sorry, not trying to push you into accepting the offer or anything. Just thought it'd probably be more fun overall if I got moving onto a point where you could actually choose stuff rather than just kinda being stuck in a conversation.)

 

[Tiffanian]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

Catherine was satisfied by the explanation as she signed the papers, nodding quietly. She remembered going on field trips when she was a kid to one of those places that had rock-climbing walls, and they had made her mom sign all kinds of ridiculous release papers on the off chance that something horrible had gone wrong. It seemed like a pretty standard thing in any sort of situation. Lisa put away the clipboard once she was done signing, and then the two of them headed back to the testing area. It was apparently a different machine entirely, not just an access level, that she was being given, so they entered into a different room that was protected by one of those swipecard readers, to which Lisa had the key. Everything looked basically identical, but it was the debug machine.

"Is there anything I need to know to keep from breaking stuff? I’ll probably try not to fiddle around too much with debug type stuff, but that sounds like something you could mess things up with if you used it too much" Catherine asked after listening to the woman’s spiel. It was good that she would be able to fiddle with the settings in-game, but she didn’t want to do that too awful much on the fly either. When she finally crawled into the pod it began to startup process, this time coming to a blank screen with a welcome message and a short menu. That was a little weird… how did it know her name? She hadn’t entered it into the machine at any point she didn’t think. Did it know because some of the NPCs knew? Either way it was sort of neat. She looked over her options for a moment, deciding to poke around in the Settings menu, and if that didn’t house the new options that had been spoken of she would open up the Debug menu.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

"The options are all labeled far more precisely than I could be if I tried to explain them, to be honest! The ones with any functions that are even remotely dangerous will ask you to confirm your choice. In a worst case scenario you might crash the game, which shouldn't be as catastrophic as the last one. It should be fine." Lisa would then allow Catherine to enter the EGG, unless she had a few more pressing questions in which case the woman would do her best to answer before seeing the tester back to the game.

When called upon, the settings menu read as such:

Spoiler

General

Male/Female: 3
Female/Female:2
Pregnancy: 1
Birthing: 1
BDSM: 2
Slavery: 1
Humans: 3
Monsters (Tentacles & Slimes & Likewise): 4
Roughness: (How gentle are the monsters when you lose?): Varied
Bestiality: 1
Other (please enter any additional fetishes you would like a chance to encounter):

Difficulty:

Easy
Casual
-> Normal
Hard
Insane

Extra

Pain Dampener: 5 (5-1)
Mental Dampener: 5 (5-1)
NPC Amorousness: 3 (5-1)
Enslavement: Player Chooses (Forced-Player Chooses-Off)
Bad End Severity: 1 (1-3)
Military Setting: Off (Off-On)
Trainer Setting: Off (Off-On)

She quickly discovered that she could modify all of them as she liked, and was free to tinker with each until she was satisfied with them.

 

[Tiffanian]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

"Alright, I should be able to figure it all out then. Thanks, Lisa" Catherine replied with a smile, making her way into the EGG pod and waiting while it closed around her to pull up the menu. There were some differences now, under the heading “Extra.” Pain Dampener, Mental Dampener, NPC Amorousness, Enslavement, Bad End Severity, Military Setting, and Trainer Setting. There were a few she wasn’t sure about, so she tried to poke around and get a sort of help file open on Mental Dampener and Military and Trainer settings. She would nudge the Pain Dampener to 4 for a start, but nothing else struck her as being something she would want to mess with right this second, unless some of the options she had marked for explaining seemed intriguing to her. Next up was the debug menu, to see what lay there. Probably at least the time distortion settings, though she was certain there was other stuff there too that was worth a look.

 

[Hafnium]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

The pain dampener setting ticked down to 4 without any extra warnings or popups and Catherine's efforts to find more detailed descriptions of each item were quickly fruitful.

Spoiler

Pain Dampener - Controls the level of pain the player feels when undertaking an action in the EGG that would normally cause pain in the real world. Warning! At 1, pain is not reduced at all.
Mental Dampener - Carefully monitors the level of mental stress and anguish being placed on the player during gameplay and adjusts the situation accordingly to pursue more enjoyable scenarios. Warning! At 1, this system is turned off completely.
NPC Amorousness - Controls how forceful NPCs are about advances toward the PC according to their responsibility. Warning! At 5, ALL NPCs will be forceful in their advances.
Enslavement - Controls whether enslavement sections are skipped automatically, forced automatically, or whether the player may choose to skip them.
Bad End Severity - Controls severity and the level of detail the player experiences during a bad end.
Military Setting - For the military. All EGG aids are disabled and the player will feel complete immersion in simulation, as well as using their own body strength and agility to traverse the simulation. Warning! Do not use with an unfit player.
Trainer Setting - Special. Do not activate for public testers.

The debug menu was short in comparison, and appeared to be full of choices that would only affect her after she was in the game.

Spoiler

Time Interpretation: 1.0 (0.1 -> 100.0 Multiplies the flow of time in the EGG by the number set.)
DEBUG - Restore FP (Restores FP completely. Due to hardware issues, can only be used once per game session.)
DEBUG - Restore AP (Restores AP to 0. Due to hardware issues, can only be used once per game session.)
DEBUG - Lust Up (Immediately makes the player's arousal points reach maximum and quickly affects the player.)
DEBUG - Bad End Me (Immediately causes the character to enter a bad end scenario with any actors present, if possible. Unlike normal bad ends, the player may reset back to before using this option afterward, allowing them to play out hypothetical scenarios.)

When she was done reconfiguring any options that she might like to toy with, she would be free to re-enter the game where she had left off, start a new scenario, or try a practice battle.

 

[Tiffanian]

Re: Catherine (Tiffanian)

Catherine read through the descriptions for all the options and pondered whether to change anything. The military setting actually sounded pretty neat, in that it really did seem like the perfect training tool. She knew better than to even attempt it, though. She was nowhere near fit enough, nor was she skilled enough at anything involved with fighting to do more than flail about like an idiot. She was, of course, intrigued by the Trainer setting simply because it didn't say anything about what it was, only not to do it. She considered briefly flipping the setting just to see what the warning popup was like. She also briefly considered maybe nudging Mental Dampener down a bit, but decided against it. There was good stress and there was bad stress, and she assumed that the game could probably tell the difference between the two to some extent.

The debug menu was nothing in particular that she could use from here. Some options for messing around with her health and arousal, the ability to decide how she experienced time, and then an intriguing option to force a bad end from which she could simply reset. She considered messing around with that and Bad End Severity at some point, just to test settings out more fully and give more and better feedback. Still, not for right now. Her settings confirmed, she would go back to the menu and hit "Load Game," ready to get back into the swing of things.