TFs for Niche Races

[Yulaur_the_Small]

Hey there, spacers.

I finally decided to try and participate in the community, and hopefully get to know what people want out of this game.

As for me, above all, it's the amount of customizability that drew me to this game in the first place. In my opinion, the more options there are to make your character truly unique, the better. I ultimately look forward to the day that there is a TF for every known race in the lore.

While I am aware that there is currently work being done on the (from what I am aware of) highly anticipated Milodan TF, I have hardly seen work on ones for more niche races that only have a few, if any, characters representing them; an example being Cruff and the Kalabast race. There are so many races that have yet to have any CC (character creation) options tied to them, and I hope this post will spur some of our community's talented writers into action.

I would highly encourage anyone here to write their own opinions and responses to my ramblings in the comments below. And thanks for reading.

 

[Theron]

If you want niche racial TFs, you're probably better off writing them yourself, instead of waiting for 'community writers' to do it for you. Many have left, and those who remain probably already have more projects than they can complete.

 

[Wafflesnake]

To expand on why doing it yourself is the best option,

Excluding just commissioning someone directly, the hoops to "spur some of our community's talented writers into actions" are

• There are not many community writers.
• Of those few community writers, one has to be available to write your idea: it is guaranteed that they already have too many of their own ideas
• Of that subset, the writer also has to be interested in your idea

The last two hoops are arguably interchangeable or just a loop. New idea > adds to list of ideas to work on later > new idea > adds to list etc.

People with only ideas and the ideas themselves are a dime for a million. That's why there's a thread where people vent their desired content into the void

 

[Yulaur_the_Small]

Yeah, I understand what you mean. and you all have made several valid points.

To be honest, I'd love to write stuff and get my ideas into the game, but I'm sure that it would take a lot of work and experience to write something worth actually being in the game. I'm guessing that you first have to be approved by an admin or dev to even have the chance of writing something to be considered for the game, (I've wanted to write for several communities that allow contributors, every time shot down real quickly.), and if not, I'm sure there's at least some sort of screening process to make sure only quality content gets into the game (judging by how well it's written overall.)

This post itself was ultimately here just to be a first interaction with the community, even though I was hardly expecting any replies in actuality. I'm just glad to get my name out into the sea of people. I doubt anyone would want any of my cringe writings in their games, no matter the genre.

But if I were somehow given the chance, I would gladly put my all into it.

Again, thanks for listening to my incoherent ramblings.

 

[Theron]

I'm guessing that you first have to be approved by an admin or dev to even have the chance of writing something to be considered for the game, (I've wanted to write for several communities that allow contributors, every time shot down real quickly.), and if not, I'm sure there's at least some sort of screening process to make sure only quality content gets into the game (judging by how well it's written overall.)

The only thing you need to do to submit something is fill out a legal form (mostly confirming you're letting Fenoxo & Co use your stuff and any characters are no longer under your full control). There is no guarantee your submission will be accepted, but I'm pretty sure you can clean it up and try again if it's not too bad.

Also, there's no guarantee your submission will be in any time soon, even if it is accepted. They have a huge backlog.

 

[Couch]

I strongly encourage you to try writing items yourself. They're much easier than most other kinds of submission, since they don't require writing full sex scenes unless you want to, meaning you can probably bang out an item in about a day. Look at some items that other people have done and try to put about that much effort into your work, and you shouldn't have any trouble getting approved.

 

[Yulaur_the_Small]

Alright, I guess I'll try and submit something I had in mind, but was unsure.

I'd be happy if any of you happened to check it out.

 

[Wafflesnake]

the usual way to go about it is post a Google doc with the permissions set to suggestions. technically you should use the event submissions forum if you have something workable and the ideas forum if you're looking for help defining an idea. but since the common denominator is that you are actually going to write something it doesn't really matter which too much.

 

[Yulaur_the_Small]

the usual way to go about it is post a Google doc with the permissions set to suggestions. technically you should use the event submissions forum if you have something workable and the ideas forum if you're looking for help defining an idea. but since the common denominator is that you are actually going to write something it doesn't really matter which too much.

Yeah, I did that. I made sure to read all the provided materials on how to submit before writing a doc.

Right now, I think it should be in the process of being approved for public view. Wish me luck.

Edit: I'm unsure if it got rejected or not, seeing as its disappeared from the "Event Submissions" subforum. I posted it at a weird time, so it might have timed out, if that's possible?

 

[Yulaur_the_Small]

If it's of any relevancy, I decided to create a new race, but I think I might have to create a character to go with it for it to be considered?

Truthfully, I would've liked some peer review and feedback before posting it, but that would mean sending it to others manually or sharing a link, and I think you can only share links to docs ascertaining to content creation within posts about said content. If anyone has any knowledge on how things are done on the administrative side of things when it comes to community content, an explanation would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Wafflesnake]

external links need approval iirc. i think only links to the wiki or fenoxo website get auto approved. not sure what's been going on with that.

posting on the forums is the peer review and feedback. that's the entire purpose of the forums i mentioned, did you look at any of the other posts in either forum? whether or not you get feedback is a different question.

i would not personally recommend doing a new race, especially as a first submission. that's increasing the scope of the project by a lot, as you've already ascertained with the need for a character, not to mention the extra lore required that still has to fit in with the existing lore.

 

[Yulaur_the_Small]

I pretty much read all the guidelines and did research into stuff that would fit in with the established lore.

From what I remember, the lore of any given race has to have something loosely related to a point in human history, whenever or wherever that may be. I really just wanted to make a baseline to work off of for if I were to make an NPC or transformative item, the race is really just a starting point, but I understand what you mean. I did post it to "Event Submissions" after reading all the rules and guidelines for posting a submission, as well as reading all the supplemental materials provided to give a baseline on how to write content. I'm just unsure of if I did everything right in the end, and I would like feedback from others overall to know if I did anything wrong. I'm thinking that maybe I did the post itself wrong, rather than the actual content of the document.

Edit: So I looked into the "Ideas" subforum and found a thread where you're supposed to dump possible codex entries, so I guess I'll post it there first before going any further with the race (i.e. making characters or TFs based off said race), though currently it's awaiting mod approval to be seen publicly.

 

[Yulaur_the_Small]

It's been a couple of days since I posted the race under "General Codex/Races Thread", and am still waiting for it to be approved for public view.

Truthfully, it's still better than it being rejected outright, so I'm willing to be patient and wait for it to be verified.

 

[Hurshana]

I strongly encourage you to try writing items yourself. They're much easier than most other kinds of submission, since they don't require writing full sex scenes unless you want to, meaning you can probably bang out an item in about a day. Look at some items that other people have done and try to put about that much effort into your work, and you shouldn't have any trouble getting approved.

I figured it was more complex than that.

Is the engine at a point where you can plug in basically any TF item and as long as it's just something on top of the standard skeleton and doesn't mess around with things like non-biped states it's just something that's automatically adjusted for in sex scenes?

What about flavor perks from TF that have gameplay impact--like Icy Veins?

 

[Wafflesnake]

i'm not quite sure i understand your phrasing as the way you've asked your questions makes it seem like you don't play tits at all.

I figured it was more complex than that.

Is the engine at a point where you can plug in basically any TF item and as long as it's just something on top of the standard skeleton and doesn't mess around with things like non-biped states it's just something that's automatically adjusted for in sex scenes?

sex scene mentions your penis > game checks what type of penis you have > scene outputs a description of penis type. that's kind of the entire point of having individually transformable and referenceable body parts. that's also why couch said writing a tf is easier because you don't have to write any sex scenes. its been like this since coc1. did you think someone wrote individual scenes for every anatomical variation?

What about flavor perks from TF that have gameplay impact--like Icy Veins?

if it impacts gameplay its not just for flavor. the two ideas are kind of mutually exclusive. i'm not sure what's confusing about Icy Veins either. game looks at: do you have icy veins? if yes, don't take cold damage on uveto. if no, check the other requirements.

 

[Wafflesnake]

It's been a couple of days since I posted the race under "General Codex/Races Thread", and am still waiting for it to be approved for public view.

Truthfully, it's still better than it being rejected outright, so I'm willing to be patient and wait for it to be verified.

posting it on the forum has nothing to do with it being accepted or rejected. you can submit things with the google form without ever posting anything on the forums.

 

[Hurshana]

i'm not quite sure i understand your phrasing as the way you've asked your questions makes it seem like you don't play tits at all.


sex scene mentions your penis > game checks what type of penis you have > scene outputs a description of penis type. that's kind of the entire point of having individually transformable and referenceable body parts. that's also why couch said writing a tf is easier because you don't have to write any sex scenes. its been like this since coc1. did you think someone wrote individual scenes for every anatomical variation?


if it impacts gameplay its not just for flavor. the two ideas are kind of mutually exclusive. i'm not sure what's confusing about Icy Veins either. game looks at: do you have icy veins? if yes, don't take cold damage on uveto. if no, check the other requirements.

I don't know, I'm not familiar with what goes into coding a game like TiTS.

It's a flavor perk because it exists to reinforce the TF (frosty fox resists cold), but it has gameplay implications because it changes how you approach certain areas like Uveto.
The point I was trying to get at is what you would want to do to ensure similar attempts at race-based perks are acceptable. Because some have no gameplay value, like manes, but others do.

 

[Wafflesnake]

I don't know, I'm not familiar with what goes into coding a game like TiTS.

coding was never relevant in this conversation. you brought it up.

It's a flavor perk because it exists to reinforce the TF (frosty fox resists cold), but it has gameplay implications because it changes how you approach certain areas like Uveto.

no, by definition, flavor does not affect gameplay. so you are correct that a mane is more flavor, but again because icy veins has a gameplay effect it is by definition not flavor.

 

[TheShepard256]

I think something important to add to this discussion is that Icy Veins isn't the only way to gain immunity to Uveto's environmental damage; you can use a consumable for temporary immunity, or equip gear with a specific tag or that gives enough Freezing resistance for permanent immunity (at least, so long as you keep them equipped). Same with wings; there's both an accessory and a Kineticist ability that allow you to fly, but they come with Evasion increases that wings lack. So while they both have gameplay effects, neither of those effects are exclusive to their TF. Granted, there are some TF-exclusive things with gameplay effects, but those tend to be retained if you TF away from that form.