Game Genre: Run or Rape

Yep, this is no mistake and this is no clickbait. There is a run or rape genre in gaming actually and I'm discussing it in an educational if not at least analytical way for other game developers. Regardless of how well this can be salvaged or used for your games, it is a game genre in itself and as such should be mentioned at some point somewhere. Though I guess it might be one of the newer ones and I don't know how long it will hold up.

Creation of the Run or Rape Genre

The run or rape genre is more a sub-genre of the jump and run type. That's also where the name comes from. We're talking about games that will have you run, jump and fight enemies just like you would imagine it from a jump and run game. The difference is the rape part which is usually done in different ways.

Side-note: Even though the genre title would be thought to only describe games that contain sexual content in combination with running away from the targets, the genre is often used to describe any action type of games that contain real-time gameplay and sexual content, such as jump and run, run and gun, fighting games and beat 'em up games as well as the action-adventure sub-genre of adventure games.

Typical Elements

Typical elements or most common elements for this genre include...

Grappling

Grappling is usually done by enemies under different circumstances or events. These events usually are 'on enemy contact' but are sometimes limited to 'when armor is broken', 'health is below x%' or player 'died'. When grappled the player is tasked with varying jobs, depending on the game, to break free from the grappling. Failing to do so will usually result in a sexual animation. Most often this sexual animation can be interrupted by still breaking from the grappling. Examples for the jobs that have to be done go from literal button mashing to passing in combinations of directions. (using directional keys)

Armor System
"Ghouls 'n Ghosts" is not the only game where you lose your armor. I don't know whether this idea originated from that game now that I think about but often you can see the protagonist lose their armor depending on an armor value that decreases on taking damage or tied to the amount of health the player has left.

Lust System
Many games even contain a lust system. Even though it's contained in many games it's purpose differs immensely. Some games use it to make it harder to break the grapples and other games use it for a completely different game mechanics. There are even games out there that only use it as a cosmetic effect. (lame :P)

No Death
Another aspect that should be mentioned here is that this genre of games does not include the idea of "death" as other games. The only deaths that are linked to this type of game are exhaustion, vore (being eaten alive) and strangling. Additionally losing all health is considered losing your endurance to move and to defend.

Sex in Video Games

Sex, sexuality, nudity and so forth in video games can create huge issues. It's not like video games didn't have a bad light in the past years, the treating of sexuality by developers in an immature kind of way is still an issue. Then again sexuality itself is a tough topic that is not so easy to talk about and treating sexuality maturely is not as easy as one might think. (I should definitely address this topic as well)

Conclusion

Aside from the RPG genre and few exceptions, this is the first time I actually saw a platform type of game pick up an armor system, so kudos for that, however, it is just weird that this genre of games has involved. Though it could have been predicted if you look at what kind of crazy sexual movies, books or even fanfiction exists. Then again gaming - just like art - is an artistic medium, so as long it complies with the law it's fine.

I know it's weird to read, see or even play such a game genre, especially if your idea of sex is something sacred on a ritual level, yet a game genre is a game genre and the more game genres you know the more you can draw from. As I mentioned before the armor system is very unusual for platformers. Grapples are usually only used in fighting games etc. etc.. Additionally we don't know where the future will lead us, I can only hope it's towards a better future. Oh and last but not least... again freedom of expression, so don't attack creators of these games.

(Great, now this is on the front page... I need to make sure to start writing the next post almost immediately... whelp!)

My Experience With Sleeping Paralysis Phenomenon

This was a very shocking moment. I'm intentionally not saying that it was frightening or scary because it wasn't.

Good Morning, Sun!

It happens too frequently and too often that I happen to go to bed when it gets light outside and I really hate it. Regardless of that, I think there's no reason to trying to stay up it doesn't feel right so of course, I lie down into my bed, prepared to go to sleep. Occasionally depending on my mood, I try the energy practice I talked about in the My Hero Akademia post and sometimes I just fall asleep. It often happens that I hear weird noises but I either think it's just something explainable or my imagination. That's most often the case, not always though.

This Was Unexpected...

I didn't experience this before though, it's the first time for me. I don't know if I slept already but I assume I already drifted off, regardless I was awoken by a weird noise. It was like something holding its breath and breathing out near my ear. As a reaction to this noise, I immediately open my eyes widely. Well, what do you expect, we're driven by curiosity, obviously, and there I saw it. It was a black figure leaning towards my bed with its hands outstretched.

How I Reacted

Now, of course, many would've panicked. This is not how I reacted though. I immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was in sleeping paralysis, however, my body did not feel stiff, quite the contrary I was even able to look away closing my eyes from the shock. I mean if you open your eyes and something is too near to you, of course, you want to get the distance. Moving from a lying position is a bit tough though so it was only my head that moved, besides my consciousness or unconsciousness was already determined it was something like sleeping paralysis. After a short moment of having my body calm down, I opened my eyes again and it was gone.

Recall

The way I felt after seeing it, the way my body was pounding and my heart raced, I recall this feeling. I've felt it before. Every time I have such an experience of seeing something like that is bad, regardless of how it looks like. Spider web, shadow person, orb, vortex, whatever it is, the immediate reaction from my body is the same and afterward, it's always gone.

Final Thoughts

As a wizard I've been training myself already to get rid of any feelings of fear, these are toxic for yourself. I remember writing a post about fending off demons where I mention it that fear is a bad thing. I assume my unconsciousness is not ready yet, as I'm linking these symptoms (heart racing, throbbing body) that are initiated by the sight of something unfamiliar to fear and even though I know I'm not scared I still feel them. Then again it's the same with performing a presentation. Even if I'm 100% ready and prepared for it and I don't have any doubts my body still can't be calm.

Regardless I still think I handled the situation as good as I could, I just wish I would be able to stay unconsciously calm to better understand the situation and maybe even ask or interact with it?

For science, you know.

For the science of magic, spirituality and the psyche.

Balancing in Terraria: The Is-State (Part 2)

A few days ago I made a blog post where I went through the mind and thoughts that go and might have gone through the discussion of balancing. We came up with how we wanna put our classes. Now it would be interesting how far we are off. To determine this we have to analyze Terraria's balance.

Analyzing the Balancing

The factors we looked at when balancing were

• How is the class played
• How much defense should it have
• How much damage should it have

So let's look at the defense and damage that Terraria provides us.

PyPlot of Terraria's defense per tier per class

To do this I looked at the defense of each armor for each of the four implemented classes and plotted these numbers using Python and the MatPlotLib module. It does not seem to plot but the x-axis shows the tiers I used. These tiers are: 0 - fresh game; 1 - brain of Cthulu / eater of worlds defeated; 2 - Hell reached; 3 - cobalt mined; 4 - Mythril anvil; 5 - Adamantite forge; 6 - mechanical bosses defeated; 7 - chlorophyte farmed; 8 - Plantera defeated; 9 - golem defeated; 10 - lunar event + Moonlord defeated. To run a little over the numbers the end-game armors that are craftable using Luminate once the end boss the "Moonlord" has been defeated have 78 defense on the melee armor, 68 defense on the range armor, 46 defense on the magic armor and 38 defense on the summon armor. generally, you can see the trend to be that the relation melee > range > magic > summon can be found here again. Which goes perfectly with what we assumed to be the case.

The next information we need to look into would be the damage. Now calculation the damage is a bit tough due to the following reason:

• Weapon damage numbers are affected by weapons bonuses
• We have to calculate in critical strike damage and critical strike chance
• Some items hit multiple times
• There are buffs provided by the armor set bonus that affects the values
• Items may deal a lot of damage but have a huge use time or cooldown

Due to all these factors, we need to sit down and actually test the items. Though this has proven to be difficult too due to these reasons:

• Attacking a target dummy may not provide buffs
• Target dummies are not affected by homing attacks
• Target dummies are not attacked by minions

And yet this is our best bet.

Preparing and Running the DPS Test

To prepare the DPS tests I downloaded a mod called CheatSheet, to allow me to get any item in the game without farming it first. I've created a new character and a new map and gave myself the best items available at that moment to my knowledge. I must also admit that I used the star cannon and the coin gun (with gold ammunition). Tests that can be done on a target dummy were done so. I'm assuming only one target dummy that is hit with no rebound. We're assuming a single target flying boss for these. I know technically there should be extra tests for multiple target and etc. but this should do for a simple comparison since single target DPS is required for the most bosses. any other tests for minion masters and magic buffs were done on bosses with only one hitbox. Additionally, I only changed armor and weapons as well as specific ammunition and necessary accessories like the mana flower or multiple worm scarfs (to negate boss damage). The damage number was guessed given the number shown by the in-game item "DPS meter". An approximate number should not do well then comparing the exact math but for a graph to look at it's enough.

PyPlot of Terraria's damage done by classes per tier

Thus due to the circumstances, the damage numbers may run wild if you try it yourself but it should be near with a few exceptions. Anyways as you can see in the graph we have a relation of magic > range > melee = summon.

In comparison our idea of balancing was magic > summon > range > melee. Now we were right with magic being top, though summon damage is much lower than range or melee in the actual game. I must say that I did not calculate any other items. This was just the plain minion damage. If the minion master would use the other classes items his damage would increase but even then it would not be higher than range damage.

Generally, though all the classes seem to be very similar during the progress for the tiers only splitting significantly after the Moonlord. The only difference is the range class which has a huge damage boost when using the star cannon, which requires farming stars during the night and the coin gun which in the damage tests consumes your gold. both these resources should be easily achievable when the time is put into it. Honestly, I am disappointed by the early mage damage and the overall summoner damage in comparison to the survivability.

Conclusion

So, in the end, it turns out we were right with the defense but wrong with the damage.

Now due to the lack of defense on some classes and the low damage output of them, it doesn't surprise me anymore that I preferred to play tanky melee all the time. You deal almost the same amount of damage compared to the others. Of course, there's no 20% more damage potion for melee or there is less damage increasing accessories for melee, but with that defense difference, I don't know.

I guess in our modding plan we need to mush the damage of a few classes. :P