Trap Quest Development Plan

This page will be kept up to date with what Aika is working on, and an explanation of who is working on the game and what the future plans are.

Development

Who is working on the game?

Currently, 95% of the coding, bug fixing and creating new game elements and mechanics is done by Aika. Aika lives and works in the UK and manages this blog.

Danaume is the game's original artist, and one of only two individuals other than Aika doing continuous dedicated paid work. She has done lots of bits and pieces such as the map but her main project at the moment is her character window. She lives in the US.

Keriax is working on his alternate character window.

Wonderfuller is the game's third artist, and is also creating a character window.

Gurgles is the game's fourth and final paid artist, and is helping out with improving the Danaume character window.

JamJarMonster is the making the character window for Diaper Quest and is funded by the separate DQ Patreon.

MulchyGulcher (or MG for short) is the main contributor (coder). He is currently the only coder that's actually on the payroll.

MG, Phaos, Selkie, Niko and some others are collaborators on the project's private GitHub, which means they're actually coding and committing changes themselves, without much need for my input. Which is awesome :-) MG has done more amazing stuff than could ever hope to be documented here but my favourite work of his is the flavour and framework for dominating NPCs; Selkie has written some epilogues; Phaos has done lots including creating the succubus class from scratch. LGStephy made the Adult Baby Slave (which you'll only have encountered if you enable diapers).

Several other individuals have contributed and in some cases continue to contribute to the game. Kat is writing up some flavour text for monsters here and there. Nicole Redwood has written lots of the room descriptions. Anya Snowdrifter worked on flavour for when cursed items are worn or attempted to be removed. Lucas has added some titles for camera photo posters, and some underwear to the game. Narse was an early mentor that helped a lot with Aika's learning of the language. Scipio provided the code for graphical windows. LGStephy created the Adult Baby Slave, based on the wench.

What's being worked on right now?

Aika is always working on:

  • Bug fixes
  • Website and other admin
  • Reading and replying to comments and emails
  • Improving and optimising the code
  • Review and QA of collaborator's additions
  • Converting the contributions of others to actual i7 code

Right now, Aika is also working on:

  • Check out the latest blog posts or Aika's twitter for an idea of what Aika is creating at the moment.

Danaume is slowly (due to a wrist injury) working on:

  • A clothing window

What are the short term goals?

This is what is planned in the coming months.

New Region

I am currently building a new region which is only available to alpha testers for pre-alpha access. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Fleshing out the existing features

There are several features in the game which right now are really shallow, imbalanced and in desperate need of some love. I'm always slowly working on adding content to older things to make sure they aren't left in a semi-complete state forever.

Features that are still semi-complete include:

  • Candy machines & candy
  • Addiction mechanics
  • Imprinting
  • Hypnotic triggers
Epilogues

Once the player escapes the game, it's unlikely that they've got off scott free. They'll have some physical and mental changes to deal with in their new life, as well as possibly lots of money or lots of debt. The game will look at lots of these variables and tell you in three short segments what happens in the hours, weeks and years after your experience in the game. The possible combinations of these will hopefully create a huge number of potential epilogues.

These epilogues are slowly being created and added to the game, but are currently only available to alpha testers.

Medium Term Goals

This is things that are planned for the future, realistically within the next year.

Balancing the game

With win conditions there will arrive a greater need for balance. We'll have a proper look at fair interesting ways for the player to gain stats without encouraging excessive grinding or making the game too easy.

Character window improvements

The character windows will continue to get developed. We'll look at ways to incorporate the clothing that the player is wearing into the graphical interface.

Long Term Goals

There are future plans to deal with the fact that i7 is creaking at the seams trying to accommodate the complexity of the game.

More Modular Code

The game engine was coded with very poor coding standards and uses a lot of long if/else trees. The game would be much easier to expand, debug and would run faster if the code fully utilised calling functions and subroutines. Aika is slowly improving the old code in order to hopefully fight back the increasing lag between turns as the number of things that the game engine has to track and change each turn increases.

Very Long Term Goals

Assuming World War 3 doesn't destroy us all, you can hope to enjoy this stuff eventually!

Another game?

Aika already has plans for another game you'd all hopefully love, and is currently spending a bit of time learning the Unity engine in the hopes of one day making this a reality.

Where does the money go?

At the moment, about 40% is likely to make it to Aika after fees, taxes and reinvesting in the game.

Using September 2016 as an example, out of $11,481.00 processed within the month:

  • $436.34 (3.80%) was taken by card processing fees
  • $574.05 (5%) was taken as Patreon's cut
  • $10,470.61 (91.20%) made it to Aika's Patreon wallet
  • $40.00 was paid in fees during withdrawals to PayPal.
  • $400.00 was paid on art by Danaume.
  • $200.00 was paid on art by Keriax.
  • $300.00 was paid on art by Gurgles.
  • $200.00 was paid on art by Wonderfuller.
  • Approximately $200 was paid on other art for the Trap Quest Art pages.
  • Approximately $100 was lost in PayPal conversion fees when the money was converted to GBP.
  • Approximately $4500 (50%) was reserved to pay for income tax, UK national insurance contributions and compulsory student loan repayments.
  • Approximately $4500 went to Aika to help live a bit more comfortably and pay off existing other student debts!