I... kinda wanna argue for an all female enemy list. I understand why you like the idea of them being mixed in, both for a grounding in reality and like a present that you have to spend extra time to get...
We'll return to this.
...I also think you'd be spending time on AI, modeling, and animations...
There's the animation controller. Combat controller. Sound controller. AI behavior tree. Pathfinding and navigation. The base actor. These all exist within the general game and are not unique to female enemies. All actors, including friendlies, inherit from these.
The major difference being female enemies have a much larger set of non-combat animations and sounds. Non-female enemy models will be limited in variety. I'm not opposed to pre-builts even, but it still far outweighs the mundanity of essentially re-dressing the same enemy type.
Most mo-cap animations already feature the male lead. The added volume of animations for male enemies is trivial relative to protagonist animations. Hand-crafted and pre-made combat and knockout animations are also on the table for male enemies. Where female knockout animations will be mo-capped so she ends up in a specific pose, say "back-pain" then transitioning to splayed out, male enemies can use a true ragdoll model and blended with a base set of animations. These are already all within the animation controller, while not trivial, they're straight-forward.
No one really says much about it, you don't have to justify it. Cause otherwise you have to do a lot of justification and it will bog everything down. It won't just bog everything down, it will swamp it. It will quicksand it. It will setting concrete it.
I'm sorry I not sure I understand, can you elaborate on this? Examples if you can.
stay away from normalcy and stuff that has the connotation of victims. Girls at the gym, normal everyday uniforms, normal clothes... that might satisfy the stalker impulse, but I think because it does it can feel off. It shouldn't feel like you're cornering and preying on a normal lady,
Also can you please elaborate on this because I'm not sure if we're understanding each other.
Assuming what I think you mean here, there are no connotations to victims. These are female zakos that play into the quests and are openly hostile to you. We've seen schoolgirls, girls in curve fitting business suits, girls in sweatpants and sports bras as zakos in other media. I think they fit the zako trope far better than the "you're-nothing-to-the-boss-but-he-still-went-out-of-the-way-to-make-these" out of context and hyper sexualized zako outfits seen in many games.
Not that I don't enjoy those outfits, quite the contrary. But outside of well funded organizations like military, everyday outfit zakos are so low on the pecking order, the bosses can't even be bothered to think about them much less give them proper uniforms. There will be some outfits that will be sexualized but for the common zako, she'll have to make do with alluring versions of everyday clothing. And to me, alluring is far more interesting than "leaves little to the imagination" because alluring piques the interest and makes me want to dig deeper.
....sex animations are shockingly plentiful....
You have a link to these? I've experimented with many SexLab compatible animations. ALL of them are unnatural and amateurish. Nearly all of them also do not properly account for physics.
VR based systems like Virt-a-mate suffer from the same problems that dedicated inertial mo-cap systems do; and there are several. Ignoring the usual suspects like drift, missed frames and calibration (which themselves are not trivial to diagnose):
- Resolution limited by the number of sensors. Most systems feature only about a dozen to a couple dozen sensors. Meaning...
- Only captures skeletal data. Things like muscle contraction and chest inhalation/exhalation are missed.
- Inertial systems perform poorly when movements are small.
- Drift following large changes in actor placement.
- Drift following large changes in angles.
And returning to...
I... kinda wanna argue for an all female enemy list. I understand why you like the idea of them being mixed in, both for a grounding in reality and like a present that you have to spend extra time to get...
I only skimmed other posts on this thread so I'm not sure what your dev experience is; I'm not trying to overstep your own experience working in games.
Two things about this:
1.
Just from my own experience, when making a major decision, one of the fundamental questions that I/we always ask is:
How does this decision add
value and
enjoyment to the game.
Humans are emotional creatures. Some may seek to deny this. Yes even incredibly rational and logical humans like yours truly are hopelessly dictated by deep seated subconscious emotions we cannot even be aware of. Value and perceived value play an important role in how much someone will enjoy something.
People derive little value from clicker games. These are, for the most part, to pass time. You're unlikely to ever find a major Cookie Clicker convention.
In contrast, if you've been anywhere near the game industry in recent memory, then you've no doubt observed the fervent passion over "soulsborne" games--its most recent superstar, Elden Ring. IMO, Dark Souls' lore and story are good but not in itself exceptional compared to contemporaries. However, you'll find few fanbases as passionate as the Dark Souls fanbase. Why is this?
People value what they have to work for.
It's no secret that you have to fight for every inch that Dark Souls gives you. Every boss. Every encounter. Every corner. Most new players will see that death screen countless times before they find the combat, the lore, and the story. Overcoming and beating the game derives tremendous value and enjoyment for players.
In other games: Achievements. High scores. Completion rates. None of these have a direct outcome on gameplay. But to many players, they add meaning, value and enjoyment.
In contrast, people don't value things they didn't work for or things given to them for
free.
People value scarcity.
Scarcity is related but different. In the Borderlands series, players might spend days or months grinding for a rare gun. For most of its known existence gold has had little use. Its scarcity makes it valuable in many ways. Even artificial scarcity like diamonds or Supreme clothing; people value these because of their perceived scarcity.
Game development is all smoke and mirrors. Many players might not be able to
understand why they enjoy a particular game, they just do. As a dev, I always seek to maximize the value and enjoyment players get from a game.
2.
Ryona is entirely psychological.
From the perspective of a casual observer, ryona would seem to differ very little with other practices within BSDM, something like discipline and punishment. The same perhaps even. (We're using pain just as an example; ryona isn't necessarily limited to pain nor does it even have to feature it.)
They're both sexual eroticism. They both involve the inflicting of pain against another party. And most times, one party is or is eventually dominated by the other. However, we all agree that ryona is NOT the same thing as BDSM discipline and punishment; BDSM itself also being entirely psychological.
Unlike BDSM, it is crucially important in ryona that the receiving party is not a willing recipient of the pain--or at least in the case of roleplay, the recipient is assumed to be non-willing.
Another important distinction is that in ryona, the relationship between the two parties is not a mutually amicable one.
The recipient is likely actively resisting such attempts to inflict pain or, at the very least, does not or would not permit it. The act and perception of overcoming the resistance of a non-amicable recipient is perhaps the most important feature that distinguishes ryona. (
people value what they have to work for...anyone?)
But lets not stop there.
From the perspective of a casual observer, the enjoyment of uh....zakos would seem to be the same as ryona. A [female] zako whom is an unwilling recipient of ryona being inflicted upon her.
Which means any female character in general including females from fighting games, heroines and villainesses receiving ryona should satisfy the zako itch.
Right?
Not even. The difference between the broader ryona and zako ryona is the status between the parties involved. Ryona makes no distinction about the status of the recipient and her opponent. However, for the zako enjoyer, the zako must have her status curtailed so far down and her worth made into such insignificance that her opponent may subject her to acts of ryona with impunity.
Zako enjoyment is entirely psychological.
BSDM. Ryona. Zako. One might be a subset of another. There might be overlap. But all these categories are not the same. They have important and significant psychological differences.
Psychological. It's all in your head.
When you watch a movie. Or play a video game. You construct a reality in your head. And if certain features of that reality mimic close enough the reality with which we are most familiar with, then we say it is 'immersive.'
There exists a thin line between categories of psychological eroticism. When we are immersed, that thin line is solidly defined establishing the intertwining roles, relationships, statuses, and emotions of the parties involved. The further we break immersion the quicker we dilute those psychological differences until eventually even the psychological aspect is broken and we're force to return to reality and assume the position from the casual observer viewing pixels on a screen.
The clear distinction of
our psychological eroticism is crucially important because the value we've derived thus far multiplies with it and returns the abstractions we will eventually use to construct the experience (and hopefully enjoyment) our head.
Now, we could debate all day about whether a squad of expendable female zakos or female zakos mixed in with male cannon fodder's is closer to the bottom of the pecking order but then we'd have strayed far beyond the realm of objective discourse at which point, I don't find such debates all that worthwhile.
That being said, I think its important to now define and clarify the demographic with which this game is intended.
Within the zako community, I find that there are two primary camps of zako enjoyment--most of us probably fall somewhere along this spectrum. There are likely others and the two main camps overlap, but there IS a distinction.
1. The hackers and slashers.
The inflicting of pain IS the fetish itself. Usually, on as many females as possible and little downtime in between. This is what you usually see in the Giga films and games like the Senran Kagura series where the name derives from. Pain and body piles are the reward.
I don't actually have any data to back it up, but from anecdotal observation this seem to be the larger camp. Or at least the more visible one from what I've observed on this board.
2. The hunters.
The end goal is the zako herself. His chosen method may vary but following a successful hunt, he will bring her somewhere more secluded to enjoy a well earned reward. Sometimes the hunt will yield several zakos, in which case he'll generally take some downtime to enjoy and snack on all of them.
Now, from the perspective of the pure hacker/slasher you're interested in pain and piles and moving on to the next, so naturally, hypersexualized outfits are mandated because we ain't got time to stop and smell the roses.
For the hunter, each stage, from the chase, to examining the pretty gift, to the unwrapping, to the unwrapping of the next layer, and maybe another after, then "getting to know her" is important. Each represents a successful step and usually increase in her sexualization.
Like vanilla and chocolate, there's no right or wrong. Just preferences that differ between people. If you've followed along this far, then you'll understand that the target demographic is the latter group.
Also, thanks for the input. I feel like this was a productive discussion. The game's still a very far way off so at the moment, nothing is set in stone yet.