Post by methodia in a few suggestions (+a handful of preferences)

The Running of the Wolves Demo » Community

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Hoo boy, this is going to be a long response...

More equipment - Absolutely. There's a reason why there's so little of it at the moment: it wasn't really important. They were more or less aesthetic. There's a little bit of armour variation, but it's minimal. The plan was to have some clothing tougher than others, give speed or whatever bonuses. Mainly the reason it's not got much further is just concentrating on core mechanics, but I'm loving the camo and heavy ideas.
Clothing physics. That is something I plan to look into. I know it's doable in UE, it's just working out how. The flags in Pineridge use a clothsim, but they are static placed. I've added it to my list though.
Clothing customisation - That is something I've been wanting to add from early on. The problem I hit was getting colours to change at runtime. I actually solved that a few weeks back, and now every NPC has randomised clothing colours, which is honestly horrific because it all comes out shades of neon. I plan to use that to lock down colour ranges, and provide a degree of customisation at the start of the game, as well as some body parts, fur, etc for more character customisation. Now I know how to do it, I can start adding it in future phases.
Firecrackers - another good idea. The old version of the enemies had a very direct damage system. The new updated version takes in damage inputs, so grenade style weapons are possible now
Sticks - Thematic, but I'd have to think of how that would implement. The main concern there is eventually there should be various species out there chasing you, and the stick only works for canines. Then again, maybe there could be similar items that work only for specific species?
Struggle - This has seen a lot of changes since the currently available version went online. The old Hit E to struggle has gone, it now uses a mouse movement system, so wiggling the mouse increases your escape bar. The plan is to link this in to character animation for better feedback and more procedural movement. Once that is figured out, I'm looking at implementing a new sex system, so the animation varies based on the stats or mood of the enemy, and can be influenced by the player as well. Using a procedural system as well would mean the sex portions would play out as a sort of minigame, with mouse movements controlling your character, pleasure & orgasm bars and so on. It's still in the design stages! It wouldn't cut down on the animations happening, but should make it a lot more interactive and different every time.
Participants - That's sort of in the plans. The starting structure has space for 20 wolves and 20 participants. When it's working, the world maps will show where each wolf and each participant is. It's a bit of a multi-step process to get it to work though. First up I need to get the whole thing working for the wolves, so they generate at the start and pop up through the levels unless they get taken out.
The easter eggs would probably be random events. Those are pencilled in for Phase 4.

Honestly, I'm liking a lot of these ideas, and I've added quite a few of them to my build list. The main deciding factor is my ability to implement them!

KateHanami1 year ago (1 edit)

I'm rather glad to see this game going in the direction it is, either my personal preferences are good or we share them

asides from a few minor things that got misunderstood, the clothes customization for one, there could be some armor-type that makes grapple harder and slow down the movement speed, or a really durable armor that gives ample time to break free but makes loud noises when moving, is more like a win-some-lose-some so you need to choose what kind of benefit you want and what you want to sacrifice for that benefit, a light cloak that makes you nearly invisible is good, but if you get grapple, it can be ripped from you in seconds, that sort of thing

secondly, please don't use mouse wiggle, I remember the wii doing that in every game and don't think a single person liked it, plus there are touchpads on laptop that will make it nearly impossible to win that, and would you believe some people actually buy a USB touchpad to use on desktop? and also some people don't even use mouse because they have a touchscreen... not to mention the playstation touchpad

and about the stick and firecrackers,, not to be a stickler, but the game is called "running of the wolves" so it is a given that will be the main enemy, I guess is more like a few sound-based distractions, a firecracker makes a much louder sound that would distract the wolves, it could be anything like a water balloon or a piece of meat or even a used and worn underpants, mostly to enhance the stealth, causing enemies that didn't spot the player to either investigate or run away from the source of the sound or smell

and the stick, much like the armor I suggested, would be a risk vs reward item, can save the player from a imminent grapple, at the risk of the wolves coming back to grapple you if you don't throw the stick again, perhaps the stick can be a weak but unlimited resource like the rocks, but a rubber ball could be a single use item that's much more effective in distracting the wolves, but you will need to retrieve it before leaving the zone or need to buy another

and like I mentioned above, perhaps some food like meat, fish or cheese or even acorns, that could draw attention for some species and leave them vulnerable for a grapple while the player sneak by, it would be a lot more interesting if the player could help or take advantage of other contestants to escape the wolves, I don't think a karma system is viable, but it would be nice if a badger I saved in a prior stage throw themselves in the way of a wolf so the player can run away, or a fox I backstabbed to sneak by a wolf, could be blocking the way, or throw something in my direction to alert the wolves so they can sneak away while the wolves are distracted

and the transmogrification could be a simple accessory like the "QQ Bang" in Dragon Ball XV, where you combine a set of items or armor and equipments of similar stats and create an item that will overwrite the clothes's stats, I believe that's a simpler way to make a cosmetic system as oppose to a cosmetic and a functional set of the same equipment, I could be wrong

methodia1 year ago

I'll try my best to field these points again!

The customisation is a good idea, and is something I'd like to implement. It's something I am going to look into, but unfortunately I'm just one person making this, and though I'd love to work with other people, nobody seems interested in helping, so I've got to balance features with time and ability. Hopefully this is one of those things that is actually pretty easy, it *should* just be tweaking and saving stats, but it could be a massive pain. Though looking at the Items DataTable which has the stat modifiers for items, there doesn't actually seem to be anything in there, so not sure whats going on there. I'll explore it!
So, mouse-wiggle is a bit of a deceptive description. The way it works is just through cursor movement, so each game tick it tracks where the cursor is now, and where it was last to generate a distance moved and apply that as an increment on the struggle counter. In theory, it should work with any system that moves the cursor. Maybe I should add a game setting so players can choose wiggle, arrows or hammer E. The idea was to have it so if the cursor moved to the left of the screen, the character would wriggle left, and vice versa to make it more interactive.
With the Wolves, the way I saw it was that there are 20 in the game each time you play. They are faster, more intelligent and stronger than the other enemies you encounter, so each one is basically a mini-boss. At the moment, they are pretty much the same as the other species, though they do have boosted stats. They are the main enemy, just not the most common ones. Your point still stands though, the items are doable, and are on my list.
The stuff about karma and consequences is sort of something I was planning, though I was on a much more basic level. Things like wolves doing different things based on basic stats like aggression, horniness etc, so the aggressive ones are more likely to fight you than capture you. Those stats could then be modified through the game, so if you harm one of them, he'll remember it and is more likely to either be aggressive next time, or potentially hold a grudge and target you over other legitimate victims. Likewise, when the interactive sex starts to work, if you get him off a bit too well, he's more likely to want to try that again. That system would then work for the competitors as well. Again, the viability of all this is down to coding ability on my part.
Transmogrification of items is potentially a difficult one. I'd need to look in to mesh morphs maybe. It's not feasible to model all potential combinations, so I'd need to do something where it can generate itself. It's a thing to think about.

To be honest, at the moment my main aim is to get something a bit more fun to play, and hopefully with a few more sex positions and functional main features. Unfortunately, this game is having to take a backseat to other life stuff, as I need to earn enough to live on before turning back to the game. I'm working on ways to make this more sustainable, and in future I would love to work with other people on both this and other potential games, but for now it's just a case of getting what I can done on my own! The suggestions and feedback are genuinely good, even with a lack of resources, I still want to make this as good as I can, and just because I don't know how I'd achieve some things ow, doesn't mean I can't learn them.

The game you see now is about a years worth of work so far, with the first main chunk being pretty much fulltime for 6 months, which shows how long of a process this stuff is!

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