Skilvrel wrote:I have a question regarding submitting self-made predators. The submission guidelines state that we're less limited, but just what are these limits on predators?
From what I've gathered thus far in the thread, spiders are one example of predators you'd rather not see, but what else is not wanted?
More specifically, which of the following are accepted/maybe accepted/rejected outright?
Beetles and other huge creepy crawlies?
Undead?
Golems and similar magical constructs?
Male marsupials with pouches?
Bellymaws?
Monstrous looking monsters?
Not that there's any guarantee I'll be making suggestions for anything like that, but it's nice to know just how... ah, exotic things can be.
Short answer: Any of these can work if they are well-written and fit in the existing vore system. A vore move should be able to share digestion messages with the oral, anal, cock, absorption, or plant archetypes. The appearance of the enemy can vary greatly as long as it fits the setting. The better an entry is written, the more likely it is to be accepted regardless of my personal preference and the more likely it will earn a spot before other entries. Long answer is below.
I'm gonna go on about this for a while 'cause it's a good question.
Restrictions on monsters in the game are one part personal preference on my side, two parts commitment to game-feel, and two parts code limitation. That's not really clear in the guidelines since I'm just throwing lists of shit you should avoid, so I'm glad to have the opportunity to explain it better. First, the preference.
I've been giving less importance to my own preferences lately because, even though the game started out as something for my personal use, it's pretty damn obvious that it's not anymore. Y'all are presumably enjoying it or you wouldn't be here (thanks, by the way). That said, I have to test and write lines and all that good stuff, so I'm spending a lot more time around the content than anyone else and I want to not be repulsed by what I'm working on. Spiders fall into that bad category, partially because I am arachnophobic but also because of how I envision their relationship to vore. Some people look at a spider and think "It's got a mouth; it's got a stomach. It could eat me with its mouth and then I'm in the stomach! Yeah!" Meanwhile I'm thinking "Shit, this nasty clicking fucker wants to liquefy my insides and grgarahrgararhah...!"
Linking this answer back to your question, the issue is that things like spiders, creepy crawlies, and undead are tied to hard vore in my mind. This conflicts with the preferences I intended for the game, as well as the code, as I'll mention below.
I do not, however, want to refuse a submission purely based on my preferences. If you want to use an insectoid predator or something similar, you just have to make sure to write it really well. As an example we can take the game Milia Wars. I don't like female preds or prey, I don't like spiders, and I don't like unbirth... so when I see this big drider thing sticking my character into her womb, I predictably react with a good, hearty "FUCK!" But the weird thing is that it worked; the art style, the sound effects, the connection to the gameplay... all of these things combined to make something that was arousing in spite of my preferences. You can do the same thing with writing; it just has to be really fucking good. Now for game-feel.
I think I talked a little bit about this in the guidelines file, but the setting of the game is meant to be a sort of dark fantasy. It uses a bunch of classic fantasy tropes and creatures like goblins but makes them hungrier. A good example of what I'm going for is a setting like the PS3 game Dragon's Dogma, where there's a lot of big mythical fuckers that look like they can eat you (and some of them do). We can stretch the game-feel a little with creatures that don't usually show up in a fantasy setting, like the aforementioned kangaroos. The more such requests I receive, though, the fewer I am willing to keep, to the point that the ones that remain will be those which are well-written. Most of the things you mentioned, though, don't conflict much with the feel of the game, which is nice. The golem is already taken, though.
Another issue with certain submissions that threatens game-feel is the sense that a writer has too much invested in their entry's character. The game is a dungeon with mostly generic monsters, not is a museum for people's original characters. It's important for an enemy to be interesting but anonymous so that they don't distract too much from the game's setting. Granted, I am not entirely blameless since the default dungeon population includes cameos from video game characters, but you can do this yourself as long as you avoid particulars.
The biggest issue with some of the submissions is the limitation of the code. To a certain degree, I am able to tailor certain enemies to the user's request with things like special abilities or behaviors. However, the vore system itself is fairly limited; it supports full swallowing and gradual digestion, with five different types of swallowing (oral, anal, cock, absorption, plant), and any given enemy can have, at most, three such vore moves. Comparing this to the list above, we hit a bunch of walls. Hard vore is out because the player needs to remain intact inside of a predator according to the current system. Pouch vore can't be done as a different sort of vore move, but it CAN share digestion messages with oral vore if the final destination is the stomach. The more I am expected to fudge the code for an enemy, the less likely it is that I will do so. That's not to say you shouldn't try... if something is interesting enough, I might go for it, but that gets back into the preferences issue.
So to sum up, if you really want to submit something, you should do so regardless of what my preferences may or may not be. Just keep the setting in mind, stick to the established vore types, and write the fuck out of it. Make it amazing.
