Tk Hotel announcement (/F /M computer game)

[Ilohnoh1]

Hi all.

Very soon you will see the last pages of my latest comic, and then before starting its sequel, I am working on a new project:

"Tk Hotel"

I have made quite a few games already, of all kinds, but this one is in its own way unique... if just because it's an 'on-line' game. Yes, you read that right.

Now don't start expecting a tickling MMOrpg or something, because that's not what it is. But it is the very first tickle game where you can play alongside other Tickle Theater members, compete a bit and visit each other's places.

Okay, so what is it like?

Basically, the easiest way to describe it is that it is a little bit like the board game 'Monopoly', but different. This too, is a board game. It has streets and on those streets hotels can be built. Unlike in Monopoly each player can only build ONE hotel (at least for now, I might change that in the future). But also unlike in Monopoly, you can take a closer look at the hotel(s) and see the action inside.

This is a game where you own one hotel, where you build your hotel (you have to buy and place rooms as well as other facilities such as a restaurant, gym, a pool, shops, etc.) Not all are mandatory and some are 'uncommon' (to be unlocked/found) but you will need to match a certain target in order to improve your hotel's quality; The number of stars. You start off with a very small 1-star hotel and you can build it out to a massive 30-floor 5-star hotel! Of course people pay more visiting a luxurious hotel than they are willing to pay for staying at a 'dump' of a 1-star hotel.

You yourself stay in hotels too (as you travel around the board) and pay the owner of the square for the stay. You get to see other players' hotels as well and in your own hotel you will be able to see a number of rooms (with tickle action) animated. They're simple 2-frame animations and rather small, but you can go and 'spy' (look through the key-hole) to get a good quality closeup of the important part of the scene. Of course... you have to have guests otherwise there's nobody being tickled. But I'm not going into the gameplay any further right now. And yes, there are more guests than just the other players.

This is, as I said before, an on-line game. But it's not something that you're going to spend a couple of hours playing each day. Basically you get ONE TURN per day on which you move on the board, can manage your hotel, can enjoy the tickle actions in your hotel, can look at what other players have built and how they did their hotel lay-out and choices. There will also be some pictures that you can unlock. But basically, you get one turn per day... you collect the earned cash from visitors and if you have enough, you spend it on getting more rooms (extra capacity allows faster income), facilities (they have their own advantages too), etc. The program connects to the internet, but only for updating. It's not a real-time game, and bandwidth is practically nothing. It's something you log in to regularly (probably/preferably once a day) and slowly you see your hotel grow (you build it yourself), more people tickled in different ways, etc.

Finally, because of the nature of this game, being early is your advantage. By this I mean two things:
- There is a maximum amount of players: 46 in total. This number will not rise. If there are 46 active players, the game is full and nobody else can join, until someone decides to leave and release their hotel, or if they just stop playing for a long time and I'm doing a cleanup. FULL IS FULL.
- There are in total 8 streets. It doesn't really matter on which street you are (except the view is different) but the first time you log in you are allowed to pick a street and number. Do you want to erect your hotel at "Nylon Street 4", at "Feather Street 7" or perhaps at the wonderful "Laughter Boulevard"? When a number is taken it's taken and when a street is full it's full. So if you care about the street name, you want to be fast to claim your favourite spot. (I will be releasing the map ahead of time so you can already get a look at the available streets).

And for now... a picture. This is not an example of the game content or tickle action... it's the opening screen.

You see you need to log in to play, but this is a quite simple thing. This game is limited to Tickle Theater members ONLY. The way to sign up is (when the game is released) to send me a PM requesting for a passcode. Your name is equal to (or a part of) your forum name here and the pass code is a combination of letters/numbers that I will send you. You only need to type that once, it will then register you on the computer so you don't have to type that every time. Please don't send me PMs yet, but if you like to play this then I will later probably accept pre-reservations.

For now, please answer in the poll (honestly!) whether this is something you would like to play or not... it's just so I get an indication how full the game will get (if at all) and if I have to create a system for NPC players to help keeping the game running well (hopefully not needed).

 

[Bashiku]

I am F.J. Bashiku and I approve this message. Sign me up. And to think this is free project unlike few other game makers I know *cough cough*

 

[Ilohnoh1]

Oh yes, it's free. And what's more... (but that is not a promise just yet)... unlike any other games I have made so far, I may beta this one. A multiplayer game happens to be so hard to test by yourself.

So stay tuned.

And welcome on board, Bashiku

 

[Bashiku]

So... because I am testing subject I get biggest hotel don't I?

Or at least special figure

 

[Ilohnoh1]

So... because I am testing subject I get biggest hotel don't I?

Or at least special figure

I don't think you will be allowed to get past a 3-star hotel during beta. Whether or not there will be a database wipe after beta is not yet decided. It depends on things. Also, the beta will be a work-in-progress version of the game so you may not be able to get all the things that you can after release. Either way, the hotel can go 30 stories high, I don't think you will be able to reach that in beta anyway.

If there's going to be a reward for beta testers... I'm currently thinking of a room that can not be obtained unless you have been in the beta. But let's see.

 

[Bashiku]

So anyways... now that we have gone through under the table dealing. *cough cough*

I want to hear more about mechanics of the game. How will you earn money and points? Movement? Penalties? Will you have special places for events like in monopoly? Maybe a prison? TELL ME MORE!!

 

[snipes20081]

I gotta say, this may be my first post, but it is far from my first "I want to marry Ilohnoh" moment.

I have to say, you have a shit-ton of creativity my friend.

/endflattery

I REALLY hope I make the first 46, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

 

[SF85]

Sounds like a very interesting concept. I'd like to play it myself if the chance arises.

 

[Celerich]

Hell yeah I'd play! I'd have to balance this with playing updates to "Tower of Gargalesis", but I could manage. Easily. I'd love to help in any way I can. Even if you just want a cheerleader! GO YOU!

 

[Ilohnoh1]

Hell yeah I'd play! I'd have to balance this with playing updates to "Tower of Gargalesis", but I could manage. Easily. I'd love to help in any way I can. Even if you just want a cheerleader! GO YOU!

Beta-ing this one will not take a lot of time from your daily schedules I think. One of the reasons is that it is by design something that you will want to play for a longer time but at small chunks per day. Of course you can zip around the whole map (and if there's 46 players, you CAN definitely spend some time doing that). But to roll the die and manage your hotel does not take long at all and unless you want to explore other hotels and enjoy the scenes inside your own hotel you will be playing only a few minutes per day. It's something that plays in really small bits (and so it doesn't take much time, even at later level) and progresses slowly, but it will be fun for longer that way as well and you can see your hotel grow as days go by rather than be done and ready with it in one weekend. (my other games, possibly with exception of Eleptoclypse have been like those).

I gotta say, this may be my first post, but it is far from my first "I want to marry Ilohnoh" moment.

I have to say, you have a shit-ton of creativity my friend.

/endflattery

I REALLY hope I make the first 46, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Shouldn't be a problem I think, Snipes. By the way, I think you might like to join in when the beta phase starts. I'm thinking of guaranteeing everyone who does get into beta a spot in the live game AND allowing them to keep the street address that they initially picked. So get first in line to get the best spots. And thanks for the comments and going out of lurking mode (so to say). I appreciate the comment.

Sounds like a very interesting concept. I'd like to play it myself if the chance arises.

I'll keep this in mind. People who are the first to respond in this or similar way I do like to give a chance to join in as they are obviously showing a good portion of interest in playing.

So anyways... now that we have gone through under the table dealing. *cough cough*

I want to hear more about mechanics of the game. How will you earn money and points? Movement? Penalties? Will you have special places for events like in monopoly? Maybe a prison? TELL ME MORE!!

The first thing about mechanics is that I just found a new way of handling the graphics about 10 minutes ago. The engine at this moment has a bit of flashing problems, I don't want to use the method I used in Atlantis. But I found a new call which is quite fast and may reduce the refreshing problems quite a bit, yet keep things easy for me to do (and I do want to use animations in this one!) It even allows for zooming. I want to do some testing with that one first, but it's not unlikely that if the quality isn't bad when doing that, maybe you can even zoom in to places that interest you most... but let's see about that soon.

Then about game mechanics, okay, I'll let loose a bit more. I would have started with showing the board, but since it's not finished yet I can't do that right now. Answering your questions:

- How will you earn money and points?

You won't earn points, but I am planning to make a sort of 'score board' where you can see who's leading e.g. in number of guest-rooms, facilities, cash or something else. Input regarding what you want to see is welcome during beta and if not too hard I'll try to put that in there. Money is earned by getting guests. Of course. But there are more things to it.

Before getting into that, I will have to explain more about the structure of your hotel. The hotel is a bit like a flat building, but it starts off with just one (ground) level (or floor rather). Each floor has room for four 'rooms'. The very first 'room' next to the entrance is the lobby/reception. That's a fixed location and you can't change it, but the rest is pretty much up to how you want to fill it in. So you can e.g. next to the reception have three guest rooms, but you can also have a gym and two rooms to the right of it... or a shoe shop in the middle. After building the ground floor full, you can buy the next floor (and so your hotel becomes a higher building). The cost of doing this is not yet certain, but I'm planning to make this incremental, so the higher you want to build your hotel, the steeper the cost for adding more floors. This won't be drastic, but it may be noticeable. The 'explanation' for that is that the higher on top of the building they have to build more, the costlier it is because they need higher cranes, drag equipment and material to higher up, etc. Gamewise... the more guest rooms you have, the more guests you can get. The more stars your hotel has, the more you can ask for a stay... so as the game progresses, you will have more income. (If not you're doing something wrong, like asking WAY too much for a night. There's a good 'average price' per number of stars, but things are also a bit dependent on what the other hotel owners ask for a night at their hotel, compared to the quality of their hotel).

Okay, so basically, on each floor you can build up to three 'rooms', which can be guest-rooms (the ones people rent and sleep in... eh, get tickled in) but they can also be a restaurant, a shoe shop, a gym, a gift shop (yes, it's a TK gift shop!) and more. There are going to be exceptional rooms such as the indoor pool and movie theater which will occupy the space of two rooms. Alright, now back to earning money. Facilities (as I call them shops, restaurants, and other service places) have their own properties. So e.g. a restaurant will bring in some money if you have guests (because they will want to eat!) on top of what they pay for their stay... but it also has staff, so you will pay a staff cost. Provided you have enough guests, you should cover those costs and if you have a healthy amount of guests then you of course make profit.

A restaurant is something that you will HAVE to build in your hotel soon, because without it you won't be able to get a 2-star qualification. So even though you can build more and more rooms for guests into your hotel... without adding the restaurant you won't get a 2-star hotel. Requirements for the star qualifications will be visible in-game. A restaurant is something that you can build (if you have the money) without further requirements, but this does not count for EVERY possible room. I'll cover that under the next question.

Will you have special places for events like in monopoly?

There are a couple so called 'uncommon' rooms. This is where one of the 'special places' of the board comes in. The 'Free Parking' place in Monopoly is comparable to that in Tk Hotel. They are called "Squares" (Like in 'Main Square') and one of them is actually a "Corner". Between each street is one of these (8 in total) and NO HOTELS can be build there, so it's a bit like a safe spot. But more than that, it gives you extra advantages. You'll get a 'card' with special properties/actions that you can apply if you want. When you visit (stop on) one of these squares, you don't have to pay for staying at someone's hotel and you are approached by some shop. Each square has their unique chain so if you want one of each uncommon shops, you need to have visited all of the squares. For example, on "High Heel Corner" you will be approached by the "High Heels shoe shop", a shop that specialized in shoes for women. They will tell you they are interested in opening up a shop of their chain there and at that moment you have 'unlocked' this and can build it. This particular one will give you the advantage of getting extra money from staying guests (because women like to buy shoes), but this one will ONLY give that benefit for female guests. There is another shop for men. And that brings me to another thing I wanted to point out. This game is flagged as /M and /F. Generally, there's about a 50% chance for a visitor to be male and 50% to be female. If you have multiple guests, you typically have a mixture of these. However... there will be a way to send out commercials (put up posters etc. in town) and you can (if you want) pick one that is specially designed for women, or one that is designed to attract men. By doing this you will not only raise the amount of guests but also start shifting your target group and you will (over time, one commercial doesn't have that much effect yet but as you repeat the process you'll see it clearly) be able to make your hotel a "mostly women" or "mostly men" place. Mostly, because there will always be exceptions, but if you prefer /M you can get your hotel to be more /M oriented, and vice versa. Also, if you are equally a /M/F fan, you can keep the 50/50 standing by using the neutral poster.

Movement?

Like in Monopoly, it's one way traffic. There's no 'moving through the town in the way you desire' and this is done to keep things fair to all players. If there would be a choice through which streets you'd like to move, it has a risk that some streets are less travelled and that means some players have naturally less chance on income. So it's straight-forward. And it's counter-clockwise. The streets, by the way, are not equal in length. One of them is even only 2 squares! So if you want a street with a fairly unique name, you may need to be lucky and fast. The boulevard is one of the largest streets. Oh, and I forgot to say that in 'how to earn money': You don't have to hope and pray that one of the other players visits your hotel to get an income. It HELPS if another player happens to end up on your hotel as they are considered to be VIPs and they will pay the double cost of what 'npc-guests' pay. On the other hand, you are likely to have more npc guests than VIPS in your hotel per night. The amount of rooms you have is one factor that decides how many guests you will have spending the night, but there are more things that are counted in.

Penalties?
Well, possibly you can see 'not playing' as a penalty. Basically, to play optimally you want to log in once a day and roll the die. It's a 6-sided die by the way. You can log in more often but you can only roll once a day. Players who don't log in and play basically don't "stay and pay" at hotels, so they only get visitors and cash. And so that has to be compensated! I am probably going for a system that will make you 'auto-roll and move' if you have skipped a day (or two, not sure yet) and the cash that they have earnt (due to visits) will be LOST. Or I might stick it in a fund for a lottery or something but I'm not sure about that yet. This won't be an online gambling game.

Other things you may see as 'penalties' are natural costs. Depending on the size of your hotel (number of guest rooms) you may have to pay tax (not sure yet about how much or if this will work, has to be tuned at best). I have not intended to include any 'random effects' such as rooms breaking down and needing repair or anything like that. Such things may be a bit more advanced and if people really want that they might be implemented later, but this is definitely not one of the first things on my mind to include.

Maybe a prison?

No prison. But there will be a dungeon, so you can have a tickle slave somewhere locked up (and tickled of course) somewhere in your hotel if you should want this. Also that, by the way, is an uncommon room.

TELL ME MORE!!

Okay, some tidbits and loose ends then.
- Some rooms are animated, not all of them. Only when there are guests in it.
- Feather Street, Arch Road, Nylon Street, Tip-toe Path, Laughter Boulevard, Brush Lane, Giggle Road, Full Body Lane.
- Artwork picture bonuses unlocked at least with each star your hotel earns (4x) and planned for the uncommon rooms as well (8x). Once unlocked, the pictures can be opened any time.
- Players will be able to pick a name for their 'hotel owner' but no avatar (sorry, that would be too much artwork for the max of 46 players. Customization is not really an option in this setup, you will see only NPCs but I try to make a bit of variation in them...)
- Aside from extra (bonus) artwork to be unlocked, I think the most exciting part of the game is building new rooms to your hotel and then getting tickle action in them. But they may not contain tickle action every single day. You need guests too. Also if you like to play a bit with trying to find the right price of your rooms and try to 'do better' than your competition you may have fun with that. You will be able to see what others ask for their rooms, and see by looking in their hotel (visually) how many guests they have.
- Animation will be ONLY activated for the hotel YOU OWN. You will be able to see what others built and thus also get a preview on some uncommon rooms you don't have or rooms otherwise still unavailable to you at that, but if they have animation, you will have to get the room yourself!
- The Dungeon is ALWAYS occupied and animates unless of course you see it in someone else's hotel.
- It's full colour.
- During beta, suggestions for (special) 'rooms' are welcome and considered so if you have an idea, feel free to let me know.
- Animation can be switched off and animation can be sped up / slowed down. So you can tickle them slowly... or really fast... and alternate... or just stop the animation if for some reason your system doesn't like it (or you don't).
- I'm looking if it's possible to make zooming in is doable on different levels. The picture resolution is limited however, so don't expect too much detail on things (such as toes) when zooming in. Either way, the pictures in the hotel itself are scaled down quite a bit so you get a better view when zooming in.
- Currently there is only one type of guest room, but the guest (male/female) can be tickled in two locations: on the bed or in the chair. This makes for a total of 4 animations... More rooms (with guests) are planned, to give more diversity for guest rooms and their tk scenes.

There's more details and things I didn't tell about, but I'll leave it at this for now. Also one more thing: Things you read up here may still be subject to change. This is a work in progress (and at this very moment at such a state that there simply isn't anything to test yet, so Beta is not starting today) and things are bound to be tuned, changed or even dropped if there is a need for it. Also the beta may bring forth changes due to beta-player feedback.

 

[snipes20081]

Shouldn't be a problem I think, Snipes. By the way, I think you might like to join in when the beta phase starts. I'm thinking of guaranteeing everyone who does get into beta a spot in the live game AND allowing them to keep the street address that they initially picked. So get first in line to get the best spots. And thanks for the comments and going out of lurking mode (so to say). I appreciate the comment.

Well believe me, I would LOVE to get in on the Beta, but I don't check TT nearly frequently enough to secure a spot, whenever you do launch it. I check maybe once a day and that's it. I'd try to check back more, but my job and band kinda get in the way of that XD

I could easily find time to check the game once a day as well though, assuming I'm lucky enough to actually get in ^^;;

Also, no worries on the comment. After all the stuff you put out that's free and dedicated, the least you deserve is a compliment XD

 

[Xtreme09]

Count me in as a beta tester! This sounds very interesting and I would love to join in on it!

 

[10 armed tkler]

about time another iloh game has come out. I was close to writing an angry letter.:lol

 

[Ilohnoh1]

So far I see 6 names (in the replies above) and I just wanted to let them know that a spot for the beta is reserved for them if they at least check the forums once every few days:

Bashiku
Snipes2008
DEV
Celerich
Xtreme09
Tickler Dae

This is not the final list of beta-players, I expect the list will grow, but I want to give a heads up to those enthusiastic few Once beta starts you will hear right away.

 

[10 armed tkler]

ok. I just hope I can fix my connection problems by then.

 

[Nalandra1]

beta tester nalandra signs up for a mission

 

[Ilohnoh1]

ok. I just hope I can fix my connection problems by then.

Ok. If for some reason you can't make it, we'll see then.

beta tester nalandra signs up for a mission

Consider yourself added to the list.

- - - - -

And a small update: I just did some testing with the new function I found and I absolutely love it. I can use it to zoom in past the original size of the image and it still looks good! Of course my drawings are not line art (and have a slightly rough edge to them) but with that in mind I'm very happy with the result. And the tearing/flickering is quite minimal so far.

Edit: In past games I have kept the maximum game resolution to 800x600 so it can be played also on rather old monitors (SVGA). I could fit this game in the same frame but it loses too much detail in my opinion on full hotel view mode (which is the main view). So for this game, I am recommending at least XGA (resolution of 1024x768). More and more people get bigger screens these days so I think that probably shouldn't be a problem. With the new zooming technology I'm going to use for the first time in this project it would be possible to rescale according to screensize, but I have found out that the functions for those don't work correctly for all monitors so I prefer to avoid those.

 

[Ravenfan1]

Intriguing, you have my support. Ravenfan has joined the party.
party Lvl increased!

 

[ElFewja]

Interesting. I'm intrigued.

I'll check it out permitted I'm allowed in, Beta or otherwise.

Etc~

 

[TickleWiazard]

Looks fun!

 

[Ilohnoh1]

Intriguing, you have my support. Ravenfan has joined the party.
party Lvl increased!

Added to the beta player list. =)

Interesting. I'm intrigued.

I'll check it out permitted I'm allowed in, Beta or otherwise.

Etc~

Added to the beta player list. =)

Looks fun!

I hope so. I'm getting the first views of what the game looks like now myself (visually at least) and I think it's pretty cool. I'll be sharing a screenshot (without the tickling parts) soon but want to finish a bit more artwork first before I do so, so you won't see the temporary stuff. I'm just testing it with guest rooms right now but in reality your hotel won't exist just of guest rooms.

I have to make a small correction to the resolution of the game. The game window (and that is final) is going to be 1180x790 pixels. So you'll probably want to play at a screen that is 1200 pixels wide (or wider) and at least 800 pixels high. That makes it bigger than I have done before, but I didn't want to give up the good looks of the graphics. I tried them a size smaller but that just didn't look that nice.

One thing I can show you right now and that is the keyhole. I have attached a screenshot. As I explained, you can look through the keyhole to get a close up image of the person being tickled in the room (or an empty room if you ever wish to do so...) It is animated. Then along the side of the keyhole you see buttons. Four directional buttons, they are used to move the view left, right, up and down. In the screenshot attached there's not much visible of the woman being tickled, but I did that on purpose. You can move it into focus when you play the game, and you can also zoom in further, to get a close up view of the action (or other areas where the action is not). This is a separate window that is launched from the main hotel view, and you can drag it to some place and keep it there if you like.

 

[Bashiku]

Intriguing, you have my support. Ravenfan has joined the party.
party Lvl increased!

Ok our level increases, but let me tell you this... I am only warlock in this group bub!

Anyways I have to give it to Il... HE IS A TEASE! We finally see infamous keyhole and just partial photo, although we can imagine what is in the rest.

 

[ultimatetkster]

I'd love to be part of the beta crew. If you're still taking.

 

[maddocter1]

sounds really gd

 

[SF85]

Certainly sounds ambitious so far and I'm even more interested now. I'll be happy to help anyway I can.