The Howling (Twine) V00014B (31Dec2020)

[ouphe]

I didn't update the main screen, but the file name should be V00014A. if the file name has only V00014, then it'll have the sidebar issue when you load a game.

[zacman300]

the file says v00014A, but i still have the sidebar issue

[ouphe]

Ok, I made a few more adjustments which should give a bit of redunancy to prevent the sidebar problems. It should offer the main menu if you're doing initial Load from the title screen, should be blank for a moment if loading a game from the lair but show up once you click Lair, and otherwise should function correctly. Sidebar status should be displayed as follows:

Main Menu (new/load/credits): On title screen and load from title screen
Blank (might have a /): New Game intro, during combat, load screen if loading game from Lair settings
Regular sidebar (inventory, journal, status): All other times.

If it's not working like that, pull down 14B. If it's still giving you problems, we'll keep troubleshooting.

V00014B
Bugfix: Sidebar issue is still happening for some people. Should be repaired now. Also a few minor grammar/punctuation hiccups.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14ilCZl ... sp=sharing
https://www.mediafire.com/file/btol53wz ... .html/file

[CrusaderSweetie]

I would like to warn you (and other people, I guess) that Harlowe has a limitation that is a little annoying, that I learned while developing my own Twine games.

I doubt that this will cause horrible issues for the majority of players, but if someone played for a very long time without saving and reloading manually, it would cause more and more lag, due to the history array getting longer and longer. Also some performance issues, most notably with accessing arrays in general.

I also think that trying to switch to a more performance friendly format would take a lot of effort, almost needlessly so. I started a new project when I switched, rather than remake my older Harlowe game.


So basically, don't worry about it, other than making sure people don't rely on browser memory. Which they shouldn't ever use to begin with.


Anyway, the game is still great. And I haven't noticed any issues so far, so I'm likely being too cautious in the first place.

[Trebortron3]

Just found this game and I think you've done a fantastic job! I'm currently dabbling in some Twine games myself, and you've done far more with the system than I've managed to work out (if you wouldn't mind, could I shoot you a PM about how you managed to get some of the functions you did?)

I'm definitely looking forward to playing this more and seeing how it develops. However, I have got stuck currently, with the woods, the road and the village accessible, but I can't get the road clear or find anyone in the village who puts up a challenge. Reading this thread, it seems like it might be a case of grinding to get my XP up, but to be honest, I really can't be bothered with that, especially without knowing how long it'll take. I'm level 6 currently, and I have no quests left that I'm actually able to complete (which I'll admit is partially my fault, because I ate some quest givers before completing their quests, but since that's so encouraged by the concept and mechanics, it seems that maybe there should be some way to stop that from hamstringing your run). The combat/rape/swallowing mechanics are fun, but going through them dozens if not hundreds of times just to level up enough to open new options is tiring - though sorry if I'm missing something! I think I've explored every option available to me...

In terms of other feedback:

I definitely think the best quality of life improvement would be adding a "flee" option to combats. I've not needed it much, but my god, the Giggling Girl combat was awful. I wasn't a high enough level for it, because I went into the camp as one of the first things in the game, and I churned through all of the basic bandits because I was still exploring different options and getting to know the combat system. So I literally sat there going through all... what, 12 of them? Then unlocked the Giggling Girl and presumed she'd just be slightly tougher, but actually I couldn't lay a finger on her because of her armour, couldn't remove her armour because of her dex and couldn't swallow her because I couldn't damage her to lower her dex. It took absolutely fricken ages, and there was no way for me to just run away so I could level up more to face her again. I eventually managed to finish her off, but damn, it wasn't a fun fight.

Likewise, maybe a "let them go" option (as in to finish the fight peacefully, not to release the grapple). I didn't realise at first that approaching people would lead directly to combat, especially when some interactions (like the merchant caravan) don't work like that. I personally played as an absolute bastard, but if you wanted to play it as a more helpful wolf who only ate people who deserved it, this option would be useful, and could maybe counteract any bad reputation you've gained?

If the issue with me not being able to progress IS a matter of my level, then there should probably be a better way to increase your level beyond quests. I'm struggling to find decent fights that give me a proper amount of XP. The best I've come across are the trolls and ogres in the cave, but to find them I have to churn through goblins and ratfolk and so on, which is making it take a long time. Maybe an area that consistently poses high threat and tough fights (possibly even accounting for your level and spawning tougher enemies the higher you are) would be good.

Very minor point, but in the sex options, the line "her/his ass aches from the pounding." is never capitalised, while the others are (Oh, and having those lines about the person's state based on what you've done to them so far is incredible, one of my favourite things about the game!).

Also, if you're given the quest by the bandits to capture the elf queen, then eat all of the bandits, you still have the "howl" option after approaching the elf queen. I clicked it out of curiosity and the bandits still appeared and acted as though the bandit leader was still around, and they carted the elf queen off, which is a shame! Maybe remove the Howl option once the bandits are all gone, or otherwise acknowledge that by maybe having the new bandit leader approach you and complete the quest once the elf queen is gone?

-

Okay, so the rest of this is just going to be suggestions, but it sounds like you've already got a lot more planned so feel free to take or leave these.

I'd have really liked to take the elf queen back to my lair. I have the slave collars from freeing the slaves in the bandit camp, and it would have been nice to use that one her (though it did say I put a collar on the waitress after I bought her, so maybe that was due to having the slave collars in my inventory?)

Some other options for the farmer's daughter would be nice, particularly nice ones. I really like the dynamic of her being willing, and it'd be nice to be able to treat her nicer than the others, like the waitress, particularly given the hinted pregnancy (which I also love). Maybe options like bathing her yourself (instead of demanding she clean herself) or sex options that aren't as dominant, like going down on her or something.

More lair additions would be cool. So far I've got the farmer's daughter, the waitress and the goddess statue. Not sure if any others are available after getting beyond the village, but maybe a shop in the village could sell you some basic stuff. Not necessarily stuff to interact with, but stuff like the goddess statue, aesthetic stuff included in the description. Maybe a proper bed for you and/or the farmer's daughter, a dog bowl for the waitress etc. Maybe some things that have small mechanical benefits, something like a home distillery that slowly generates potions? Or sex toys that give an extra option for interacting with the people in your lair.

It'd be really nice to have some species-specific descriptions during fights/sex with non-humans. I'm presuming this would be quite difficult, because I'm guessing the current build doesn't really "know" that you're fighting, say, a Ratman - it just uses the name "Ratman" like it would use the name "Leo" for one of the random humans. But currently I think my biggest non-mechanical critique of the game would be that interacting with everything small enough to eat is basically the same thing. There's definitely enough variety to make the system itself interesting, I don't think it's a matter of adding new interactions, but the descriptions of fucking and swallowing a ratman or a kobold are identical to fucking and swallowing a human. If it's at all possible, some basic descriptions (fur vs scales vs skin/tail vs no tail/human-sized vs small creature) would make a big difference. It could be as simple as adding words like "tight" while fucking smaller enemies, or a line about them not being as filling or going down easily while swallowing them.

Currently armour makes enemies survive inside you for longer, which is fine and makes sense, but it still gives you health. Maybe this is by design, and if so that's fine, but in my head it seems that you wouldn't really get anything of value by digesting armour - if anything I'd expect the opposite. It also mechanically means that removing clothes from enemies you can easily swallow is detrimental, and just means you spend extra options to gain less health.

Is it possible to use potions outside of combat? Currently I suppose it wouldn't be very useful in most places, because outside of combat you can just go home and rest, but in somewhere like the cave where you can't always leave immediately and enemies can force you into battle, it would be useful to maybe be able to drink potions from the inventory? Now that I write this, I guess it'd mean you'd never use the combat option because doing it from the inventory would be free... Maybe you could somehow lock out that option from the inventory during combats? Does the game 'know' when you're in a fight?

*EDIT* - I knew I'd forgotten something! The ability to rename the people at your lair would be fantastic. You get the option when you first acquire them, but you can't change your mind later.

*ALSO EDIT* - The Memorable Flavours mechanic is fun, though it'd be nice if other characters interacted with prey while they're still in your gut. It happened once with fucking the farmer's daughter while her mum is in your gut, which was nice, although it was quite basic (I think something like "She touches your swollen belly"). I just tried swallowing the waitress and then interacting with the farmer's daughter, and there wasn't anything that time. When I did the reverse (swallowing the farmer's daughter) I got this message: "(set:)'s 1st value is the boolean value 'false', but should be a 'to' or 'into' expression.►
The (set:) macro must only be given a 'to' or 'into' expression." and it didn't count her as being in my stomach or give me the digest option. It did acknowledge her in the Memorable Flavours section though, so it must have counted her as being immediately digested.

Right, well this is quite long enough now! Sorry about the wall of text, and thanks again for the game, it's very enjoyable and has a lot of potential. I look forward to seeing where it goes next (and if someone could confirm whether I just need to keep grinding to unlock more areas, that'd be great)

[ouphe]

Stuck at village...

I toned down the requirements, but there is a few memories you have to unlock along with a little bit of reputation/notoriety/quest completion required in order to encounter the first 2 chapter bosses. After the second one is dealt with in the village, it will unlock the road to continue.

Fleeing/mercy

This is an issue with how I actually designed the engine. There are a handful of variables which are set up to trigger upon entering the combat in preparation for it either ending with a kill or with a game over. That means in order to set up a flee/mercy option, I'd need to be changing the overall coding to make sure it could account for letting someone live or running from a boss fight. On future games it would be much easier to design that by changing the location where the variables were triggered, but it would require a complete overhaul of this game to accomplish that. Similar issue to the female protagonist request that crops up now and then.

XP gain

I tried to ensure a decent balance between challenge and xp, but fine tuning that is always a problem. I'd look around a bit more and see if you can find some memory scraps to encounter the 2nd boss.

Typo/grammar

I'll adjust this as soon as I get the chance to really work on the game again. Life has not been very good for my ability to sit down and code lately.

Elf queen and bandits

I can set up a quick variable check to fix that, or I might change how they react to you if you already cleared out all the bandits prior to howling in the queen's chamber.

Elf queen and slavery

I have pondered setting up a few more slave-taking options, but right now it's just three that you can acquire. The waitress will escape if you don't put a collar on her, so yes that was due to having them in your inventory.

More sex options

I can understand the appeal in adding some more actions and a bit more variety in nice/neutral/cruel for each partner.

Lair additions

I have only like 3 lair changes and 3 girls right now, but as could be surmised I am planning to add other decorations in the future so you can customize it a bit more. There will also be some different interactions with the girls based on how the lair looks.

Size acknowledgement

That is actually an interesting one as well... It wouldn't be too vicious to add a size marker to a creature, and then having a variable check for each action phrase so you could get modifiers like tight, spacious, gaping, filling, barely noticeable, bulging, etc... that corresponded more closely to the actual relative sizes of things instead of having elf, goblin, and bear all with similar text lines. There is a little variation currently in place, but not a lot.

Digesting armor

So you heal as long as you have someone in your stomach. The armor reduces the amount of damage you do, but acids will still get through the cracks and eat away at a victim. There is also an assumption that any sort of leather straps, tanned hide armor, or that sort of thing would still have some nutritional value as a bonus, but the intend concept is just that you are digesting the person through the armor. Rationally, I could redesign that to heal based off a fraction of the damage caused, so if you did 20 damage through digestion, it'd heal 4, but if you only did 5 due to the armor, it'd heal 1.

Potions outside

Exactly as you said, most of the time you can just slink back home and rest to recover hp. The game does know if you're in combat, it changes the sidebar based off of that.

Renaming your bitches

This wouldn't be too hard, just an additional dialogue option that would put you at the variable input window again.

Memorable Flavors

I added a couple of interactions for exactly that reason, but it gets into the mass-variable problem. If there are only like... 4 prey, and you design it so the sequence doesn't matter, then you have 15 different possibilities that you'd have to write out. A, B, C, D, AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD, ABC, ABD, ACD, BCD, ABCD. If you wanted to add variation based off the sequence, such as having waitress in gut when you meet farmer's daughter, and a different one for farmer's daughter in your stomach when you catch the waitress, then that increases the amount of writings even more. I have been a bit more focused on the combat and storyline as the game developed, so I would need to shift focus to a lot more of the variable writings if I wanted to get that to work out in a better sequence. There are still bugs here and there, so I will try to fix that one when I find where it came from.

[daeway]

I'm sure you've been asked this before, but is it possible to play as a female werewolf? If not, could it be possible in a future update?

[ouphe]

There would be a lot of overhauling to be done to add a female werewolf option for the player character, so that is not something I'll be working on at this time.

I am at some point going to start working on another game when the inspiration strikes, and will try to include a lot of the suggestions I've gotten while designing this one.

[daeway]

You said you were thinking about another game? This is an idea I've have for a while, but lack the tools to make it. Set in a late 1800s metropolis, a freelance detective agency ran by two women take on murder cases and after finding the culprit, one of the women eats them. The idea is similar to a Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson dynamic, where one woman is eccentric and determined while the other is practical and an every-woman. The former is also an apex predator that swallows up evil doers but the latter is normal. The idea is for a game where the team must find evidence, examine it, and investigate suspects to determine who did the deed, and then punish them. More scandalous is that nobody knows that this woman can eat people, leaving many to presume the culprit disappeared without a trace.

As for your game, I love the concept of being an apex predator. Too many games on this website have the player be a predator but still constantly have to tip toe around everyone, hurting the power fantasy quite a bit. I much prefer a Vgame to either have one predator, or let the player be the apex predator.

[ouphe]

That sounds like it could be a fun murder mystery to put together.
I agree with the lack of ferocious predators available, hence this game and the snake game I'm currently designing.

[Trebortron3]

Fleeing/mercy

This is an issue with how I actually designed the engine. There are a handful of variables which are set up to trigger upon entering the combat in preparation for it either ending with a kill or with a game over. That means in order to set up a flee/mercy option, I'd need to be changing the overall coding to make sure it could account for letting someone live or running from a boss fight. On future games it would be much easier to design that by changing the location where the variables were triggered, but it would require a complete overhaul of this game to accomplish that. Similar issue to the female protagonist request that crops up now and then.

Ah, gotcha. That makes sense.

Elf queen and bandits

I can set up a quick variable check to fix that, or I might change how they react to you if you already cleared out all the bandits prior to howling in the queen's chamber.

Either way sounds good!

Elf queen and slavery

I have pondered setting up a few more slave-taking options, but right now it's just three that you can acquire. The waitress will escape if you don't put a collar on her, so yes that was due to having them in your inventory.

Ah, good to know! I don't think I've come across the third possibility yet, probably because I'm stuck at the village. But yes, if you do get around to adding more, my vote is definitely for the elf

Lair additions

I have only like 3 lair changes and 3 girls right now, but as could be surmised I am planning to add other decorations in the future so you can customize it a bit more. There will also be some different interactions with the girls based on how the lair looks.

Sounds great!

Size acknowledgement

That is actually an interesting one as well... It wouldn't be too vicious to add a size marker to a creature, and then having a variable check for each action phrase so you could get modifiers like tight, spacious, gaping, filling, barely noticeable, bulging, etc... that corresponded more closely to the actual relative sizes of things instead of having elf, goblin, and bear all with similar text lines. There is a little variation currently in place, but not a lot.

Glad to hear it would be manageable! Obviously no pressure, but yeah, I think it'd be cool if that was added in.

Digesting armor

So you heal as long as you have someone in your stomach. The armor reduces the amount of damage you do, but acids will still get through the cracks and eat away at a victim. There is also an assumption that any sort of leather straps, tanned hide armor, or that sort of thing would still have some nutritional value as a bonus, but the intend concept is just that you are digesting the person through the armor. Rationally, I could redesign that to heal based off a fraction of the damage caused, so if you did 20 damage through digestion, it'd heal 4, but if you only did 5 due to the armor, it'd heal 1.

Ah, that makes sense. I'd not really considered things like leather/hide armour having some form of nutritional value. Go with whatever approach works best for you!

Memorable Flavors

I added a couple of interactions for exactly that reason, but it gets into the mass-variable problem. If there are only like... 4 prey, and you design it so the sequence doesn't matter, then you have 15 different possibilities that you'd have to write out. A, B, C, D, AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD, ABC, ABD, ACD, BCD, ABCD. If you wanted to add variation based off the sequence, such as having waitress in gut when you meet farmer's daughter, and a different one for farmer's daughter in your stomach when you catch the waitress, then that increases the amount of writings even more. I have been a bit more focused on the combat and storyline as the game developed, so I would need to shift focus to a lot more of the variable writings if I wanted to get that to work out in a better sequence. There are still bugs here and there, so I will try to fix that one when I find where it came from.

Oh, I absolutely get you there. I guess rather than expecting a reaction for every combination, I think it'd be nice for key combinations to have a specific result, such as interacting with the farmer's daughter while you have her mother inside of you - I know that does give a sentence of acknowledgement, but it's more about your belly being full than who's inside it.

That being said, I definitely agree with you that it's better for now to focus on combat and storyline, so no pressure to add even more variables for stuff like this. Just thought I'd mention it because it had occurred to me

[LegitUsername]

Is this supposed to be a fetish game or a rage game? The RNG is ridiculously bad.

[ouphe]

What issues are you dealing with? I need some more information in order to bugfix...

[LegitUsername]

Did I not say? Awful RNG. The kinda stuff that makes you try 35 times only to slam your head into a wall because it STILL doesn't work.

[LegitUsername]

Did I not say? Awful RNG. The kinda stuff that makes you try 35 times only to slam your head into a wall because it STILL doesn't work.

[Revx_Z]

Did I not say? Awful RNG. The kinda stuff that makes you try 35 times only to slam your head into a wall because it STILL doesn't work.

No, you did not say. We can't read your mind, we don't know what "It" is that doesn't work. The game has more than one scene with RNG in it, you need to explain your issue more specifically than just 'the game' or 'the RNG'.
I'm guessing you were fighting a creature. Which creature were you fighting, and were you trying to claw it or eat it or what?
Can you perhaps post a screenshot of how the game looked for you when the problem happened?

[LegitUsername]

Did I not say? Awful RNG. The kinda stuff that makes you try 35 times only to slam your head into a wall because it STILL doesn't work.

No, you did not say. We can't read your mind, we don't know what "It" is that doesn't work. The game has more than one scene with RNG in it, you need to explain your issue more specifically than just 'the game' or 'the RNG'.
I'm guessing you were fighting a creature. Which creature were you fighting, and were you trying to claw it or eat it or what?
Can you perhaps post a screenshot of how the game looked for you when the problem happened?

RNG isn't specific to one enemy here, it was all across the game that I was having trouble. Either way, got it solved in PMs anyway.

[Arrek]

Always a pleasure to see updates to this game, even if I'm a bit behind the curve. I'm actually working on a very similar type of game, heavily inspired by this one. Would love to compare notes sometime and see how you have some of the *ahem* guts of this game set up.

If yours is set up in any way similar to mine, you might be able to add a Flee mechanic that is conditional on the type of enemy you are facing. Adding something like a $enemyIsBoss check to the main combat screen, for instance. If the tag is set to true, then you are in a fight where escape is not an option (think the werewolf hunters or some unique characters like Brutus) and the Flee option would be removed. If the tag is set to false, then the flee option is available. If you want to make it a challenge to escape, add a check like the attack roll, but instead of hit/miss, it would result in escape or not escape.

The resulting "escape" resolution to combat would set all the variables how they need to be set. No XP, gold, or bounty gain but otherwise the same as the "Enemy defeated" screen. Quest related variables that rely on enemies being defeated would not change (think the catgirl counter for the farmer's quest).

Of course, this is me assuming that your combat variables are set to resolve at the end of combat rather than mid-combat or pre-combat. I'll cook something up and send it your way if you like.


In the meantime, I'll be keeping an eye on this! Looking forward to future updates!

(So, I just found out that I can open html documents in Twine and look at the story layout after typing all this out. I'm gonna look into this one and see if I can slap something together.)

[ouphe]

If you are looking through the game's coding, especially comparing to some of the earlier versions, you'll see a lot of learning curve while I was programing Howling. If I go in and re-do a lot of the code, I could add in a few things such as an escape/flee by having the location set and using a display: monster code for the combat. I was testing a similar thought process for some of the NPC generation in Beta Omicron Alpha, if you look at how that game pulls the variables for each of the 20 girls, along with how they "wander" the map.

[Emperor_Palpatine]

This looks really interesting. Is there a way to play without downloading it? The google drive link just gave me back uncompiled HTML.