I 100% feel that pain in my soul.
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Today I fixed some shop stuff and consolidated some story threads - the “City” route really didn’t need four branching paths (each with its own way of finding Fluffies). That’s been pared down to one. I’m also working on a dynamic shop system with a cart, subtotal for the cart, validation for things you’re only supposed to be able to buy once, etc.
Ah sorry, yes, these are new bugs due to my removals. Will fix tonight or tomorrow.
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These bugs have been fixed. I also fixed some issues where Alicorns were being shown when the Fluffy was rolled as a Pegasus.
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Realized I didn’t really know how much I needed to do for the completion of “Human Route: Part 1” (which is getting your Fluffy), so I made a flowchart. I’ll blur it with spoilers, just in case. It’s encouraging, because there’s not that much left to do to get a basic version out there, and I have to avoid getting distracted by some technical stuff that can bloat things (ie: Fluffies that are feral having worse colors than storebought ones, or ones in the shelter having worse colors, etc).
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I’ve created a small Discord server, mostly just to output a notification every time I push something through Git. I don’t expect very many things to come out of it seriously, but hey.
It gave an invalid link result
Works for me, unfortunately. Invite code is 8w8S7fKtyJ if it doesn’t work.
i’ve had ideas about something like this. my skill mainly lies in writing/communicating so if you feel like collaborating, feel free to hit me up here or in the fluffpile discord.
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Hey all - it’s safe to say that this project is a little dead, but I’m looking forward to having some mental bandwidth/life bandwidth and being able to embrace a smaller, more focused story. This met the typical game “too big scope, too quickly” and my motivation just waned. I got into some work drama that really sapped my will to live.
Thankfully @NotimPortant will be helping with some focused stuff in the future.
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Say it ain’t so. But anyway you put a hell of a lot of work in and I respect that. I hope you feel good about yourself for that
But anyway you put a hell of a lot of work in and I respect that. I hope you feel good about yourself for that
Somewhat! Admittedly I am frustrated because I’d like to finish something, and I went through this very intense two months of like, daily learning something new in Twine, and be exciting about where it’s going to go. Eventually, I kept thinking “I need to focus on writing story. Less technical stuff. More story.” and the idea of the big scope I set out for myself felt intimidating because I needed all these branches and alternative dialogs and stuff that reflected this big “open” design. Eventually it just kind of started falling flat; I wasn’t excited about writing any of it, and that’s my own fault for not embracing constraints and focus.
As pointed out, I didn’t have:
- A premise that was focused; the novelty was “you get a fluffy and make choices” but it needed a deeper hook or “point.” Instead of writing a bunch of ways to get a Fluffy, I should’ve just had one focused reason, and then going from there.
- A good gameplay loop; what’s the victory condition? Why would you want to play this game beyond the novelty of playing a Fluffy text adventure?
All this kind of contributed to “I really gotta write a lot in order to make this work, or all the depth of fluffy stats and the idea of having your actions influence the Fluffy’s disposition, or the idea of where you got the Fluffy mattering, suddenly don’t make sense.”
Instead, I’d rather embrace “let’s write a story about a solo fluffy with the objective of having them survive fall and winter” or “let’s write a story about a female fluffy whose goal is to keep her babies alive” or “let’s write a story about a daycare owner whose job is to keep Fluffies happy so they can make money.”
Like, each of those is more focused and more constrained. I still have that “Smarty Oregon Trail” idea which might have some legs.
In all honesty, I had some work shit that came up and really fucked with my brain (bad management hitting my mental health) so I just kind of lost motivation, then felt hella guilty at losing motivation (because I wanted to finish something, and I appreciate all the encouragement). I still think I’d like to use my Twine stuff and especially the Fluffy SVGs for something, but I don’t want to make any promises.
In the end, this thread is titled “prototype/dev” for a reason. If anyone wants to take the Twine files and learn (or ask me through DMs about it), feel free to. This also extends to the SVGs; everything is on Gitlab and able to be forked through Git, or just downloaded/taken/modified.
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After 12 years of games not being finished you shouldn’t let this one bother you
If I pick up where you left off can I make it a sex game
No, of course, but at the same time, I wanted to try to buck that trend. I don’t like proving you right, if that makes sense (if only in playful stubbornness 
).
I struggle with committing to and finishing projects outside of FC stuff, and this was all kind of an experiment (mostly since it isn’t tied to my real name, and sense of self-worth). I know that sounds dramatic — while this was meant to be a smaller-commitment thing and it taught me a lot, I’m still annoyed.
Absolutely, but tbh I might as well make something super degen anyways in that case.
As you should. Unfortunately game makers are just like the Defense Against the Dark Arts position in Harry Potter
That’s about the same brick wall I hit with fluffybreeder - I had an initial concept around genetics and that carried it for a while, but it lacked any real focus and as soon as I hit a real technical problem I just lost all steam.
I’ve tried to document a proper overall design/plan but just have never been able to keep up the mental energy to do so.
It’s the same problem every fluffy game runs into. It starts with a simple enough concept but we have so many things - smarties, pregnancy, foals, pillowing, depression, different fluffy types, subspecies, ferals - that people feel the need to add. And if you ask for suggestions you’ll most often get very specific stuff like “needs more abuse variety, add a blowtorch” which only adds to that bloat. We can’t help but overscope and then we burn out because this is a small fandom with a lot of bad rep, so the chances of the game actually getting recognition even if finished is slim to none. Our curse is one born not of laziness, but of ambition.
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