Jubb
patreon
The state and future of Volatile Gases
🕑 Added 2022-09-10 15:39:45 +0000 UTCSo what's going on with Volatile Gases? Well it all stems back to that twitter post I made in august. Having been tying up the game and trying to get a playable version available, I came to realize that what I had wasn't good. A combination of poor planning and sunk-cost fallacy, not to mention lack of a prototype, led to something which I cannot in good faith publish. So I decided to begin reworking Volatile Gases down to its core, all to try and figure out what I could do to make it good.
This has led me to rethink nearly all aspects of it, like ditching the side-scrolling view for something top down, and toning down the survival aspects for something more exploratory. The big thing I've been mulling over is whether to forgo the action-y gameplay you've all seen so far, for something more turn-based. Now, I want it to be clear that I'm *not* talking about the usual rpg-maker jrpg style, think more the roguelike style of Elona, Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode, and CDDA. I feel like such a style would allow me to go way more in depth with the kind of interactions you can do, which I feel are important so I can push the fetish-porn side of Volatile Gases more, and just in general make a more in-depth game. There are a lot of limitations, and hurdles that come with making a fluid real-time game, and implementing the kind of complex actions that would allow you to, as an example, grope and sniff a character, are anything but trivial. I presume this is why so many porn games are turn based to begin with.
This is a pretty major departure from what I've shown, and I'm posting this here first because I suspect most of you feel invested in the development of this game, so if you've got any thoughts or opinions regarding the passage above, then please share them. I'm also working on a teeny-tiny playable prototype to better showcase what I have in mind, video showcases simply don't cut it.
Thank you for your support and patience.
Comments
Jubb
Yeah exactly! Real time looks good, but the depth and breadth of interactivity that turn-based gameplay provides can't be understated. And while you're correct in that I'm focusing a lot on making Volatile Gases a good and interesting game first, I do think this should help plenty with the porn side of things as well, as it has also allowed me to experiment with a one-handed mode using only mouse-controls, something which would've been unwieldy in real-time, among other things.
snegf
i hear "dwarf fortress adventure mode" and i immediately perk up. having a broader range of interactions is, imo, an improvement to making the gameplay "real-time" for the sake of being real-time. turn based approaches are probably also taken more often in porn games due to it letting the player take their time, so to speak -- not sure if that is what youre aiming for the most out of this game tho. youve seemed very "make cool game first, coom material second" thus far. step in the right direction, even if it means scrapping so much :(
Alex09
it's an interesting idea, i would like to see how the game would be in this style
TheBuzzard
I already like the sound of the direction this is heading in.
