Calamity John update

I have been working on Calamity John in my spare time. If you're curious about the premise, look here. This is what I have completed so far:

• A large amount of behind-the-scenes design and planning has been done. I now know what specific NPCs and plot points the game will contain and how they balance.
• Starting (female) clothing has been created.
• A few introductory NPCs are built: Clay Hancock, the telegraph operator; Gideon P Lemley, the snake oil salesman who gives you the transforming potion; and a scrawny cowpoke that dispenses some essential exposition before he skedaddles off.
• The FTM transformation potion has been created, and the transformation routine has been tested.
• A few other basic objects have been made and introduced, but they mostly serve to act as placeholders for if-then statements. For instance, if you have a gun, you can demand Doc Lemley give you his pocketwatch. The gun and the watch exist; but at the moment, they do nothing much.

Birthday Boy

This is the beginning of a longer FTM transformation game whose working title is Birthday Boy.

As always, if you wish to sample it, you will need an Inform interpreter such as Glulxe or Gargoyle.

This game interacts with Preferences in a number of ways to allow you to adjust the game's settings. Among the changes that Birthday Boy recognizes:

• sexual orientations (likes girls only; always bisexual; likes boys at first, but switches to liking girls). 
• whether MTF transformations are allowed (required in order to invite your boyfriend along)
• whether FTM transformations are allowed (required, along with MTF transformations, to wish for other couples to change sex)
• profanity filter
• the name of the main character

During the game itself, you will be able to choose the following things:

• whether you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend (requires appropriate sexual orientation)
• your boyfriend's or girlfriend's profession/body type
• girlfriend may be bisexual or lesbian
• boyfriend may be straight or TF-curious
• which of your friends, including BF/GF, goes with you on your birthday vacation

This game is in its initial stages of construction. The only thing you can do at this time is choose the above settings. I have a more advanced build that I am working on containing the scene of FTM transformation, but it is not ready for release at this time.

Birthday Boy (incomplete) va1

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

Games For Autoandrophiles (Women Who Want to Be Men)

Is this a controversial word? Yes. Yes, it is.

Most of you are going to skip this blog post, and that's okay. My polling shows that the population on TFGS (that's the Transformation Games Site) is about 90-95% MTF and 5-10% FTM. This is probably meaningless for describing the population at large, since the TFGS population is self-selected from among people who a) searched for and/or found the website, b) liked the games enough to register a username, and c) answered the poll. There may well be more than 5-10% of the population interested in women who transform into men, or women who fantasize about having a dick.

Some people call it autoandrophilia, some call it crossdreaming, or crossdressing, and others call it some form of suppressed transgenderism. And it may be all of those or none of those, for all I know. Some will object to the word "women" on the grounds that transmen are men who were born differently. Believe me, if I had said "men," some women would object on the grounds that they don't identify as transmen; they consider themselves women who merely have a sexual attraction to the fantasy of being men. I'm not here to settle the question of why it is, or what it ought to be called. I err on the side of letting people decide for themselves what their sexuality ought to be called. How would I know better than them?

That's not my point, anyway. What I'm really asking is how I go about writing a game for FTM players. Since I see so few of them, it's hard to get reliable information and feedback.

There is presently a contest to create a FTM game, with a few basic restrictions: one, the transformation is slow; two, no MTF is permitted; and three, it must be a transformation (no body-swapping). I am debating how to approach this.

Naturally, I have polled on this too. As of this post there were responses from about 22 different people, or at least that was the maximum number of responses to any one question. I hope they were FTM fans, not MTF fans tweaking the polls, but I can't be sure.

Most of the responses were pretty even across the board, as you can see, with respect to what gamers want to see. There were no strongly prominent choices other than having sex with the player's new cock. In other words. I'm going to have to rely on my instincts in making FTM content.

Nevertheless, I still intend to do so.

Body Thief

This is a short proof-of-concept game that I built to test a couple of simple things:

• After you body-swap with a really stupid character, the text descriptions and your dialogue options get gradually simpler as you get dumber. Eventually, you forget your original identity.
• The Dynamic Clothing extension needed a test drive.

You can choose MTF (start as a male and become a braindead sexy bimbo) or FTM (start female and become a meathead jock). Either way, you gradually lose intelligence. If you hang around with the person you body-swapped with, they'll deliver some quips as they gain in intelligence. Try to get to your friend in time to swap out of your new stupid body before your brain drains completely away!

Planned for future release: quips for being in Jake/DeeDee body while not in motion; changing the run-away text for DeeDee/Jake; create obstacles along the path from the Curio Shop to the Triple Cross (on foot); fill in descriptions for those rooms; create variable descriptions for all items that can be examined; add wear/remove clickable links to items in inventory screen; random text encounters for men in the club; routine for making out with DeeDee/Jake (only when you lose the bus pass); drunk variation on nightclub conversation as well as the conversation in the shop.

Release 10, under construction:

• Fixed the bus dialogue so it only triggers when your companion is there. It was firing incorrectly.
• Combined the walking-around text with the drunken-walk text into a single routine so they do not fire simultaneously. This had the consequence of removing the DeeDee/Jake drunk text. I will probably move the routine back to its previous place (the "report going" rules) so both sets of the text show up as an alternative, not in addition, to the normal going rules.
• Added a hyperlink to exiting the area after DeeDee/Jake gloats and runs away.
• Fixed the talk-to hyperlink for DeeDee/Jake in the Banquet Room. It was incorrectly using the hyperlink to examine.

Known issues: the additional rooms accessible by bus (Atlas Street, Front Street Bus Stop, etc) have no content and no descriptions in them. It is possible to leave the Banquet Hall while naked and be unable to return to finish the game. The proprietor has no description and no clothing.

Release 9, version 0.45

• Conversation with DeeDee after entering the bus post-swap is mostly complete. You should be able to kiss DeeDee or flash your tits.
• DeeDee and Jake will now have a comment about buying a drink if you make it back to the bar with them. At present it only appears the first time you return, but I want this to be expanded.
• If you talk to Jake or Amanda after reaching INT<70, there should be a game-ending conversation node. I must test to see if this is working as intended.
• Multiple-window interface and working hyperlinks throughout are implemented.
• Going OUT while sitting on the bench on the Number 43 bus does not always make you attempt to exit the bus. I attempted a fix for this, which was not robust enough.
• A hyperlink has been added to the conversation with DeeDee/Jake that leads you out of the Curio Shop.
• A hyperlink for undressing has been added.
• After asking your swap partner about getting a drink, the conversation ends (no more conversation suggestions appear).
• Additional quips appear when you wander around the city in swapped condition. The purpose is to provide hyperlinks to help the player get (some of the way) back to the club. The player will not be given links all the way back to the club, as getting lost is an intended potential hazard; being told exactly what to do in each turn and being spoon-fed hyperlinks all the way to victory makes it too easy.
• Walking around the city after being swapped leads to random, location-contextual text that appears. These only appear when the player is in motion.
• When conversation is started with Ryan and Amanda, conversation suggestion now correctly appears.

Known issues: the additional rooms accessible by bus (Atlas Street, Front Street Bus Stop, etc) have no content and no descriptions in them. It is possible to leave the Banquet Hall while naked and be unable to return to finish the game.

Download:
Body Thief v9

Release 8, version 0.4

• It is now possible to order drinks while swapped. This command does not yet have a hyperlink but it is ORDER A DRINK (if you are alone) or BUY A DRINK FOR [person] (if you are with somebody).
• It is also now possible to drink too much. This is only possible after you have been swapped.
• A bug with Jake's clothing not fitting has been fixed.
• Also, a bug with Jake not being able to get out of the men's bathroom has also (I hope) been fixed.
• Some buggy text removed from examining DeeDee's ass.
• It is now possible to lose your bus fare (as Jake/DeeDee) if you have drunk too much.
• Some additional color text has been added, only in DeeDee's body, only when in motion. More is planned.

Known issues: the additional rooms accessible by bus (Atlas Street, Front Street Bus Stop, etc) have no content and no descriptions in them. It is possible to leave the Banquet Hall while naked and be unable to return to finish the game. Going "out" while sitting on the battered green bench in Number 43 will not exit the bus, only the seat (this is corrected for future release).

Download:
Body Thief v8

Release 7, version 0.35

• The range of player intelligence has been rescaled. Behind-the-scenes numbers: where before your INT began at 140, it now starts at 125. DeeDee/Jake has an INT of 60, and it was always possible to drain fully to that level if you simply wandered around doing nothing; but there was a threshold at which it was no longer possible to "win" (escape the body) because you forgot your old identity. Previously that threshold was 95; now it is 70. This means 1) the quips about decreasing intelligence appear sooner (at INT=121); and 2) the dialogue that kicked in at INT=80 and INT=70, which didn't kick in previously, will now do so.
• The player has 5 [correction: 10] additional moves before losing identity.
• Looking, examining, and taking inventory do not cost moves.

Known issues: the additional rooms accessible by bus (Atlas Street, Front Street Bus Stop, etc) have no content and no descriptions in them. It is possible to leave the Banquet Hall while naked and be unable to return to finish the game. Attempting to buy drinks while switched does nothing.

You will need an Inform 7 interpreter, such as Gargoyle for Windows or Spatterlight for MacOS.