Game, with text, mechanics, features of sorts (hiatus)

Projects
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I am, like many, someone with way too much time during quarantine. Through convoluted means, this has lead to me starting development of this game, which as of yet has no name. To be concise, it is a text game, with no images, and it is at a very early state of development, but it still has a nonvanishing amount of weight gain and fat related content, and that is the only fetish content in this game as-is. If you are on Windows, Defender keeps flagging this thing as a Trojan, which I take offense to, but it is a common problem that I wrote a bit about in the discussion below. To get around the fact that Defender thinks my game is a virus and will delete it on sight, try this:

  1. Attempt download, and extract the exe to somewhere. Defender will likely delete this within a minute. If it does not, you are done, and can play the game.
  2. If the exe was deleted, Defender will alert you that it detected a threat. Go to the threat alert (probably under the virus and threat protection tab in your control panel) and there should be a box marked “Actions.” That should have “Restore” as an option, and selecting that should make the exe appear back where you downloaded it. Try playing it again. It should run now.

Alternatively, I have posted the source code below which you may compile yourself if you think this is all a bit suspicious. That is sadly the only way you will be playing it on Mac, as I know I am too lazy to ever get around to compiling that myself.

DOWNLOAD LINKS
Windows executable:

NEW THIS UPDATE:

  1. There is something strange in the forest. Come and visit a new settlement!
  2. Dungeon mapping has been altered, now your map of the dungeon updates as you walk.
  3. Over a thousand new lines of dialogue – kill me!
  4. Thrilling combat? Or something.
  5. Yeah man there is more fat stuff all right.

This game is going on indefinite hiatus, to be remade at a later date. The full info is in this post:

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Might I suggest uploading it as a zip file? Most virus blockers will block it as its a .exe download.

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Off to a great start! I updated the link which now goes to a zip of the game.

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Windows is still marking it as a trojan man. Gonna hold off on a download until someone can confirm this as virus-free just to be safe.

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I did some digging of my own. only a few anti-virus systems seem to flag it as a repfilemalware, which is a common false detection given to some third party software. I then ran it and checked, all seemed fine, so it should be safe to run.

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I’m also getting it flagged as Trojan:Win32/Wacatac.B!ml by Windows Defender. The exe gets removed/quarantined before I can take a look at it or upload to virustotal.

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This seems a nice little text-adventure, I like the setting and writing, so far, and the actual flow of the game works well. I have one small gripe, which is the relatively awkward control setup, but that’s expected for this specific genre.

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The great start becomes fantastic! I will dig around and see if there is some common issue causing Defender to flag the exe, hopefully will find something within a day or so. I can think of a few tricks thrown around in the code that I am wondering if Windows does not like. Other than that, not sure what is raising the flags.

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Pretty cool start but I’m getting annoyed with it closing and starting me over after every death.

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Glad you like it so far! Can I ask what part of the controls are awkward? General navigation? I am considering some revamps to movement currently, so it would help to know what exactly should get attention.

This is something I have been thinking about also. I am either going to buff the player stats next update so that death is not a concern early on or, more likely, implement a save feature. I forgot to include it in my priority list but consider it a 0th order priority, to be done very soon.

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Are we supposed to be able to encounter the dryad in the dungeon in this build or is it just the enemies and exit so far? Is there a condition I need to meet?

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So, I was able to check the file with virustotal, and this file does, according to virustotal, appear to have a form of Trojan virus on it, which is concerning. If possible, please try and do something about it, as, from what I’m reading, this seems like a decent game, I just don’t want to put my computer at risk to run it.
Edit: apparently that’s not a new thing, my bad, hope it gets fixed soon!

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Glad you like it so far! Can I ask what part of the controls are awkward? General navigation? I am considering some revamps to movement currently, so it would help to know what exactly should get attention.

Action/Inventory controls are number+enter whilst movement is wasd+enter. Thus I’m shifting hands about the place constantly, as this is a very two-handed setup, whilst being a fetish game, and some of us are southpaws.

Centralizing locations for buttons / reducing total number of keys required would probably be the big thing. But, as said earlier, this isn’t a massive impediment to the enjoyment of the game, just a complication to the process.

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So after digging around much I have discovered that the .exe getting flagged is simply a known issue with Windows Defender. Apparently, it uses some machine learning model to guess what is and is not a virus, and the model thinks the file resembles an extant Trojan. The main reason for this, I am guessing, is that it is small, an executable, it has commands to allocate memory (used often in Trojans), and importantly, the file lacks a digital signature. I lack an associated digital certificate which could enable me to sign, and I would have to buy one in order to sign properly. For reference, programs made with other software (e.g. RPGMaker) will probably get a certificate from the software itself. I am not using a utility, so I don’t have anywhere to mooch the certificate from. I can say that this is a frequent issue for Windows Defender, and others have reported identical issues. Aside from that, I do not particularly want to buy a digital certificate, so I am stuck here. If there is anything I can do to assure people it is not a virus, I will do it, just ask me. There also seem to be people in the thread who have run the file and don’t seem to have joined a sinister bitcoin-mining operation yet, so maybe they can vouch for the program? I also have managed to upload a copy of it to VirusTotal and although a few security suites on there think it is malicious, a vast majority do not, including several larger antivirus suites. Hope that is reassuring to anyone on the fence.

I understand the hesitation, and frankly don’t blame people for it. I will continue looking for fixes, but frankly this seems like it will remain for some time. Hopefully a later build of the game is meaty enough to pacify Defender. In the interim, if you want to imperil your machine with my “Trojan,” here is how to get the exe to stick past Defender:

  1. Attempt download, and extract the exe to somewhere. Defender will likely delete this within a minute. If it does not, you are done, and can play the game.
  2. If the exe was deleted, Defender will alert you that it detected a threat. Go to the threat alert (probably under the virus and threat protection tab in your control panel) and there should be a box marked “Actions.” That should have “Restore” as an option, and selecting that should make the exe appear back where you downloaded it. Try playing it again. It should run now.

Nope, currently the dryad exists solely to sit on a stump and offer a single line of dialogue. Consider it the lamest teaser for the next update I could think of. Enemies and exit are everything.

I very much like this idea. I was not thinking of convenience when I put dungeons in but looking back WASD does not make much sense to add midway through the game. I will see if I can add button layouts to my list of improvements for the next update.

5 Likes
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Just some notes I took while playing. It’s late at night, and I died, so I’ll come back for a more thorough playthrough later.

  • In combat, when it says we have three moves, I thought that meant I only had three chances to combine the right actions to take down the boar. I didn’t realize it was just telling me my 3 attacks were slash, jump slash, and block. I was confused.
  • At the first chance to accept the demoness’s help, I accepted, but her dialogue implied I refused her.
  • I like how the demoness talks. There’s an odd rhythm to it. It’s almost like poetry.
  • Sometimes the tense in the narration changes. A minor thing, but noticeable.
  • When fighting the salted boar monstrosity, I thought I would still be able to eat the strange meat blocks after the fight. I didn’t want to risk doing it during the fight, and I was sad when I realized I missed my chance. Why? The narration even said some of the crates were still accessible.
  • The vibe of this story that I’m getting through the narration is so damn immersive. A town being covered in salt is new, fascinating, horrifying, and so quiet and strange. I love it. And then when the salted boar wasn’t called something expected like “salted boar” but “the monstrosity of Rime city,” I was shook. Truly excellent building of atmosphere going on here.
  • The text adventure elements here are done well. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that people would appear in places I’d previously been to after leaving and coming back. And the fact that I realized I had to backtrack to find the resting place made sure I found what was waiting for me there. I was only expecting to get my health back when resting, too, so leveling up was a pleasant surprise, and made perfect sense in retrospect.
  • I slapped the table in shock when I saw the dungeon map pop up. :smiley:
  • The attack options really should start at 1 instead of 0. From a keyboard perspective, I think that would feel much better. I do appreciate how you used wasd instead of nesw for the north east south west movement in the dungeon.
  • I nearly died trying to thicken a tzimmet, but every time I managed to hit, it just gained 0 pounds? I wanted to see a plump fairy fall out of the air.
  • After you’ve gotten something in your inventory for the first time and then emptied it again, the original text for an empty inventory is gone. I’m fine with that, I feel like it’s acknowledging that I’ve gained understanding and maturity about how the items work, but I wanted to point it out in case it was unintentional.
  • A tip for the dungeon navigation section, there’s a pretty simple way to make the console wait for a specific key, instead of just any key. You can tell it to wait for wasd or i, and then it will move as soon as wasd is pressed, instead of the player having to press enter too. Might feel better that way.
  • Maybe mark certain actions in the combat menu “free actions” if they don’t trigger a chance for the enemy to attack you.
  • Died for the first time because I didn’t know where/if I could rest in a dungeon. Guess I’ll figure it out on my next playthrough.

That’s all for this time! I’ll surely be back later.

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physically cant download on account of windows saying its a virus lol

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Update on current progress: I was hoping to release the new version to the game by now but I have been rather busy lately with “real work” that is “distinct from some fetish text adventure game,” so expect it sometime in the next week instead. The preview is that it will double or triple the current size of the game – which is unimpressive, as the game is currently rather small, but that is purely in terms of the number of distinct areas you can travel to. The new areas are not tutorial areas, so they will be more dense in terms of actions you can take and people to talk to, as well as actually having branching paths you can take through the tasks that will exist.

The update will also add a (very costly, unsustainable) way to lose weight, many ways to gain it, more effects to gaining it, and two quests will suddenly begin existing. I am in the process of completely gutting some of the mechanics in v01, which is my excuse for the long delay. I wanted to be able to add dungeons which are not just rectangular, so that I can implement mazes with “fun activities” down the line. After that and the actual visible, interactable content is implemented, I will throw in the ability to save and load, and that will mark the next release, the forest update. Still don’t have a real name for the game, but I am just kicking that can down the road until I can pump out a couple more updates.

I really appreciate the feedback! I made the purposeful decision to have the game border on actual menace and horror, with not that many jokes, because why not, so I am glad the atmosphere is appealing. The demoness’s dialogue will get a check over, and I also need to add something to it about gluttony. It is an actual stat that will increase in certain situations and affects your ability to cast magic which is vaguely demonic – currently, that is just Thicken. Right now, gluttony can be raised by eating more food than you should, and the amount of weight the target gains scales with gluttony. Of course, you can imagine that having a stat literally called “gluttony” will cause problems in a game like this down the line, but that is not a worry yet. Right now, if you accumulate some food from killing tzimmets or the flower and then consume a lot all at once, it will raise the stat, and then you can make snek fat.

For resting, it cannot happen in a dungeon. It makes the game a bit tense at times, but it will be a little better once I get the saving implemented, and a death does not shoot you back to the start.

Did the instructions in the post below not work?

If not, I can see if there is another workaround.

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I really can’t even do that, it prevents the download from even starting

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im no security expert but try bloating the file size somehow maybe if it gets big enough it will get ignored

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I have returned to give a brief update on everyone’s favorite suspected Trojan virus. Believe it or not, this game is not dead, nor have I been taking a break. I have, however, been extremely constrained in the time I can spend on this project, due to a couple IRL projects I am on having looming deadlines that required a lot of effort on my part. I originally planned to not post here at all until I actually had the next update, but it has been so long that I figured I ought to at least scream something into the void, as it will likely be a bit longer before the update is ready.

To be a bit more transparent about what is taking so long, as well as to maintain enough interest in this game to light a fire under me, I can say a bit about my development goals and current progress. The game is supposed to slowly develop the main character you play as while the story progresses, and the update involves quite a bit of dialogue, which is substantially more work for me to write than the code, oddly enough. I am currently sitting at somewhere around 500 to 1000 lines of dialogue, if my reckoning is correct, and there is still quite a bit more to write. I plan to finish that, and then I will need to debug the new dungeon mapping utility I have, as I intend to have quasi-randomly generated dungeons on the following update, and this utility needs to work properly for that. There are several more instances of weight gain in this new update, and it should be more descriptive than what is in the current version. Saving is not currently included in the next update, as I intend to get the update out so the bravest souls can attempt it with their single lives, witnessing the abomination I have made, while I toil for an extra couple weeks to implement the saving utility. You can expect 7 or 8 new NPCs in the next update, several with expansive amounts of dialogue, and some revamped combat, with a few stat changes internal to the player character which may have an effect… of course, this includes the weight gain, references to fat, feederism, sadistic demons, etc., as well as a general gloomy, pessimistic atmosphere.

Also, if anyone has any remaining interest about this project after this long month+ has passed, you can ask me things I guess. If you clicked on this topic hoping for the update – psych! And, uh, my bad.

9 Likes