Brainstorming for Cow Girl Flash Game

[Lurking Guy]

Originally Posted by Kelberon

As for the possible unpleasant connotations, I would suggest running the farm like a small business. Every one of the cow girls starts off as a hired employee, regardless of their stats or position. You don't buy them, you hire them. More personal feelings can develop from there, either of friendship or romance, but each cowgirl has a regular salary you have to pay out on a monthly basis.

Oh my. If not handled properly, the connotations of that could be even worse.

The idea of the ranch being sort of like a boarding house/farm/factory hybrid would be dandy. The girls being characters rather than objects who are willingly employed due to personal/economic situations seems like it works well. I feel the best way to handle it would be for them to receive food and shelter along with an allowance as their form of payment, allowing them larger sums if they take on other responsibilities on the ranch (cooking, cleaning, repairs, plumbing, exercise coordinating, budget management, etc). It also allows for you to go into town to look for new recruits, and for people to have differing ideas on whether what you do is right or wrong.

Originally Posted by Kelberon

Along the same lines, you could have a system for how much you alter a given cowgirl, and their feelings on it. For example, a cowgirl that's just a milker might have no problem with being given repeated items that increase their breast size and how much they lactate, but a cowgirl that does other jobs as well, or doesn't get milked at all, will resent it if you try to give them too much of such items, or give it to them at all.

To be honest, I'm not keen on the idea of items affecting the bodily status of the girls. I think that their lifestyles (what they eat, how much, exercise, work hours, stress, milking, etc) should influence how they change. Some of this can manually be changed, but I think it would be nice for personal interaction to play a role on how the girl acts and how she changes. Especially for younger ones.

Originally Posted by Kelberon

Finally, has the gender of the protagonist been set? I know that I'd like to be able to play both a male and a female version-you could even start as a cowgirl yourself, for the "easy" version of the game, since you could try to support the farm on your own to start.

I like the idea of being able to choose between human and bovine.

[Muhznit]

I suppose I'll give my .02 USD on a "light" backstory.

•In <timeperiod>, there is a shocking discovery that human breastmilk was drastically healthier for humans than cow's milk. (who knew?)
•As humanity slowly adjusted to this realization, the social stigma of "breastmilk = icky" began to decline and numerous women started to volunteer to give their own milk, sometimes for profit.
•After a stunning discovery of <plot device that gives you an advantage no other competitor has> You <and possible love interest> attempt to enter the competitive market.

If we get to hear names of competitors, at least one of them must be called "DD Dairy".

[Enji]

Personally I'd prefer if appearance has little to do with performance of various tasks. I know it's not a realistic view on the whole idea, but getting too realistic with an idea like this will start creeping into the realms of uncanny valley/squick. Some generic stats with baselines determined by your cowgirl's "breed" and how difficult it is to raise a particular stat would be fun enough for me.

Errrr let me try to reexplain, I'm of the camp that all types of cow girls can max out any stat, just a matter of how difficult or long the process will take depending on their body type/breed/whatever.

With drugs, there should be a diminishing results effect. Like the more you feed her a breast growth drug, the less effective it becomes. That way most things shouldn't hit the realms of insanity like barn sized boobs or something crazy like that.

There should also be a quality system for the milk as well. Depending on your particular cow's stats, determines the quality of the milk she produces. The better the milk, the higher a price it fetches. I think this would be able to overcome the hurdle of producing enough money for later game stuff without having to have a gigantic herd of cowgirls.

[Kelberon]

I have to admit, I'm not sure how running a farm like a business could have worse connotations than outright owning the cowgirls there. But as for items that change their stats, I think that while changing their lifestyle makes sense, players will probably have an easier time keeping track of concrete objects they give to the cowgirls. So I wouldn't count those out as an option.

As for size restrictions, that's a matter of personal taste...so maybe having that as an option in the game would be a good idea, so those who prefer things to stay more realistic (in a relative sense) can toggle that when they start a new game, and don't have to worry about it again. Then others who don't care as much about realism can leave it as is, and make things as crazy as they want. Or vice versa.

[Muhznit]

In a game practically built around a form of objectification, negative connotations are going to be there whether we like it or not. I mean, the majority of women we'll interact with in this will have lactating tits the size of her head. It's probably best to just deal with the lesser of multiple evils instead of trying to eradicate them altogether. It's not like we're milking them to exhaustion then sending them off to the slaughterhouse.

[Tinn]

Originally Posted by Enji

With drugs, there should be a diminishing results effect. Like the more you feed her a breast growth drug, the less effective it becomes. That way most things shouldn't hit the realms of insanity like barn sized boobs or something crazy like that.

Hmm, this isn't a bad idea. As much as I like the idea of barn-sized boobs, they probably shouldn't be too easy to attain. Perhaps each girl could have a limit on the amount of transformative items she could gain a benefit from each month/week/hour, with there being a diminishing chance of items having an effect if they're used before the time limit expires? That way, lifestyle and ongoing effects could have a much more important part to play, making caring for cowgirls a more important part of the game.
...And perhaps ironing-board-to-barn-sized effects could still be granted as a reward for completing certian extra-long subplots.

This touches on another area I've been meaning to bring up: specific effects of certian sizes. With both breast expansion and weight gain, certian sizes should realistically bring advantages and disadvantages, such as (for breast growth) difficulty reaching certian things, an increased liklihood of tripping, the inability to be milked without assistance, loss of the ability to stand, complete immobility, inability to pass through doorways, the ability to be used as shelter for other cowgirls, the ability to be used as a flood barrier, and so on. Now, some of those only make sense for sizes that might not end up being in the game, but it would be nice if some of the smaller sizes had an effect on (at least) the flavour text for actions and events.
Perhaps certian items could be used to get around some or all of these disadvantages (Muhznit's wheelbarrows or specially-modifed tractors would work), or more mobile cowgirls could be given the task of 'helping out' girls too big to move, reach and/or milk themselves?

Originally Posted by Enji

There should also be a quality system for the milk as well. Depending on your particular cow's stats, determines the quality of the milk she produces. The better the milk, the higher a price it fetches. I think this would be able to overcome the hurdle of producing enough money for later game stuff without having to have a gigantic herd of cowgirls.

Yes, let 'ratio of cream' be a statistic!

[mman123]

hmmm...

Come to think of it, Hatou of animal office (see page)
http://www.yomogi.sakura.ne.jp/~hato..._o_f001-5.html
has been trying to make a game somewhat similar to this for a very long time now. It might be a stretch, but you may want to talk to him and see if he would be interested in the very least.

...I don't know, just a thought...back to lurking.

[malhavoc]

Originally Posted by mman123

hmmm...

Come to think of it, Hatou of animal office (see page)
http://www.yomogi.sakura.ne.jp/~hato..._o_f001-5.html
has been trying to make a game somewhat similar to this for a very long time now. It might be a stretch, but you may want to talk to him and see if he would be interested in the very least.

...I don't know, just a thought...back to lurking.

This would be absolutely amazing especially if he did art for it as well! I foresee two problems though. Language barrier and profit. To my knowledge Animal Office isn't a paysite but I dunno how likely the artist would do it for kicks. The 'sample' pics on that link make me think it unlikely, to say nothing of copyright characters if you use his OCs.

Still it would be something to consider down the line once this game is established and going.

[Enji]

I'm curious if we as a community could raise enough money to hire an artist for this project

[Chaos Industries]

Originally Posted by Enji

I'm curious if we as a community could raise enough money to hire an artist for this project

I'd like to see an artist, but I reckon you wouldn't be able to draw the whole thing. Maybe for locations and a few stages, but unless you could get a dedicated artist who'd do lots for very little, or free, I might be out of range.

[Enji]

Originally Posted by Chaos Industries

I'd like to see an artist, but I reckon you wouldn't be able to draw the whole thing. Maybe for locations and a few stages, but unless you could get a dedicated artist who'd do lots for very little, or free, I might be out of range.

I don't quite understand. Are you saying you can do some art? Or are you just pointing out that we'd need a fair bit of money to get an artist to draw that much stuff for us? Because I figured that would be self evident. Sorry if I'm sounding rude or whatnot, I'm just really tired at the time of this posting.

[Chaos Industries]

Originally Posted by Enji

I don't quite understand. Are you saying you can do some art? Or are you just pointing out that we'd need a fair bit of money to get an artist to draw that much stuff for us? Because I figured that would be self evident. Sorry if I'm sounding rude or whatnot, I'm just really tired at the time of this posting.

Sorry if I wasn't very clear. I just mean that from the sound of all the features of the game, you'd need a hell of a lot of art, and that might be difficult. Sorry.