In progress: Preferences

I have come quite close to a first release of Preferences, my app for determining the player's likes and dislikes in the Inform environment. This first release of Preferences will allow the player to specify a number of things he would rather not see in an adult interactive fiction game, including:

• Starting sex and sexual orientation
• Profanity filter on/off
• Which, if any, sexual pairings are acceptable (male-solo, male-male, three men, male player with a man and a woman, male player with two women, male player with woman, female player with man, female player with two men, female player with a man and a woman, three women, female-female, and female-solo)
• Which, if any, sexual fetish material is acceptable (such as crossdressing, urine, scat, lactation, menstruation, graphic use of semen, pregnancy, mind control, unwilling or forced sex)
• Whether the main character is transgender or has a history of previous sex change
• Which character transformations are allowed (sex change, age regression or youthening to less than 18 years old, intelligence loss, inanimate transformation, animal transformation, breast expansion, gynoid, corruption, identity erasure)
• How the character reacts to sex change (reluctant to change, eager to change, secretly wants to change but doesn't tell anyone, changes for medical reasons)
• How (and if) sexual orientation changes over the course of the game (starts liking only girls but begins liking boys, for instance)

Future Inform games will be written to accommodate the user's preferences, or at least to warn the user when the preferences cannot be accommodated.

Download release 2 of the Preferences app here. It shouldn't be long before the app is working well enough to release the extension for other authors to use.

Calamity John

I previously mentioned that I wanted to create a game with FTM as the central purpose — one where the main character begins as female and transforms into a male. My first foray into that area will be a game set in the Old West called "Calamity John."

Since I have been told that the FTM gamers might appreciate a world in which they can exercise their  new manly strength, sex, status, and sexual prowess, I thought immediately of the Western genre. It offers a high contrast between male and female: the clothing, the opportunities, the amount of power and prestige, and the level of strength and independence offered to each.

My plan is to begin the character in a mining town in the mountains. The railroad has not yet come through but a tunnel is being built nearby: a long route is being cut directly through the mountains, blasted out with dynamite. It will revitalize the town's fortunes when it is finished. But the citizens in town aren't the only ones who know this. The Naughton gang knows it, too, and want to take over the silver mine. When the train line is complete, they'll cash in.

You play Jane Simon, a young woman in town. When the Naughton gang starts throwing its weight around, someone must do something. With the aid of a slick traveling salesman and his Manly Recombobulator concoction, you transform into a male and can now try to strap on your guns, take back your town, save the pretty girls, and be the new marshal. Or — and I'm still contemplating this part — join the gang and help make the town your own.

This is the skeleton of the game environment, with room descriptions written in old-time Western lingo. Warning: this is an empty environment with no interactivity. Don't complain to me if you didn't read this and were expecting a full, playable game with sexy content, because it's not there yet.

Calamity John (incomplete, room environments only) va1