Need a bit help with this project of mine

[Hakkie]

Hi there,

I'm one of those massive lurkers of this forum, been visiting for almost 3 years now, but never really posted alot.
The reason I am posting right now, is because I am making a game for the last few months and I could use a bit of input here and there.

The Game
Its all about David Owen, a 20 year old guy who has had some bad times in live lately.
He made up his mind and is leaving for a backpacking trip to australia.
However, in this game you play David in the last few days before he sets off to this great adventure.

The central question in this game is about to make as much of this short period as possible.
You are for example dating Amanda Tyler for 2 months now, but still haven't managed to get into her panties.
Another target, who is being developed, is a girl who is going to buy one of the last items of you, before you leave. (You sold almost everything to get some money for the trip)

Now what I try to do is make a scene picture for every large part of the game, like a date for example, to visually stimulate the text of the date. Then, smaller pictures of details and characters are presented if you examine.
The idea is that you can't do all in one playthrough and you will have to make some choices down the road, to further complicate (or, make more fun I hope), I am making some side-story puzzles, you don't need these for a playthrough, but it should make it more rewarding if you finish these.

Technical
The game will be made with TADS3 and graphics done with DAZ3D.
These are all massive challanges for me, as I am not a native speaker, haven't got prior experience with TADS3 (and only a bit overall codering experience) and still learning my way in DAZ3D. However, so far its been a fun journey, but it had ups and downs along the road.

Pictures
Just to give you a few pictures (who doesn't like pictures?), check these:

Opening scene:


Park scene:


Master-chef scene:

Sorry guys, only decent pictures this time around


Current status
I'll be honest, the game is far, far away from being released.

Prologue / introduction 100%
In this, the player get introduced to the character, to a few hot topics in the game and can do a few mini-puzzles.

Amanda Tyler 30%

She is your 22 year old girlfriend, who you still have to have intimate with.
Character is finished, quite a few pictures are finished and one full erotic scene is finished.

Kimberly Gomes 10%
She will be buying one of your last posessions, before you leave.
Character is finished, few pictures are done but need reworking and the initial scene has been written down, but not coded yet.

Mother 5%
(Don't worry, you won't get intimate with your relatives, perverts )
Basic storyline in my head, she will be the portal to a scene.

Father 5%
(Don't worry, you won't get intimate with your relatives, perverts )
Same as mother, will be a portal to a scene.

Questions
Now, that was a big wall of text to finally ask your input.

1) Can you think of a good title for this game? I've been tinkering with "Going down under", but perhaps you have something more original?
2) This game will use some sort of intimacy-level system, you have to do certain things to increase the girls intimacy to further progress with her. Would you like to see this as a player? I mean, should I say "Kimberly = 80 points" or something? Or should I obscure that and give only hints in the text that you progressed?
3) How important do you think the conversations in a AIF are? I'm using the ask X about system. Its a great system, but I am having trouble in determining how much effort I should put into expanding this to a satisfying degree. Any input on this?
4) Objects, ooh, you can go wild on objects. In a room can be a zillion objects to further enhance the story, but other then that, would have no use at all. Is it important for you to be able to examine television for example when you can't interact with it?

Now, these are my first few questions, hope you understand the broad idea and give me some input.

BTW, I found out the hard way, creating a game like this is a massive undertaking. If you have tried or created a game yourself you'd know that. So, I can't say when it will be finished or even, if it will be finished at all.
I just hope, that by posting this here, it keeps me motivated or at the very least, gives others some inspiration to create something themself.

Thanks!

[fleet]

Hi. I also create games using DAZ 3D for the graphics. I like your artwork.

Now to your questions, these are my opinions.
1. I like your title choice. It's short and catches the reader's eye.
2. It would be helpful to see intimacy progress (either showing a numerical value or progress bar).
3. When I've played games where the player is required to enter phrases, I have often been frustrated when my wording does not exactly match the game creator. Using a menu system is better, in my opinion.
4. I see no value to the game player in examining a screen object (television, in your example) when he can't interact with it.


I would recommend having a native Englsih speaker assist with editing/proofreading.

I hope you continue to have fun making your game.

[rabbie]

All of this is just my opinion, other people look for different things in games and honestly...making the game you want to make is always the best way, its easy to spread your self a little thin when trying to please to many people.

I like the pictures, they have a certain cinematic quality to them, not sure if it was a design choice to do that instead of a more dry realistic look but i do like it.


1. Going down under sounds just fine to me, i wouldn't worry to much about a title not being catchy enough... its not really a big deal either way its not like there is a huge rush of aif games coming out right now... before you would have to try and stand out from the crowd, something short and sweet, easy to remember is fine.

2. I disagree with fleet here, i think a brazen progress bar can be a little immersion breaking... Subtle hints are what i prefer to see, you can make it clear that you two now have a closer relationship without outright stating it.

3. While i agree with fleet that a menu system is better, do you think it would be possible to use both , putting extra content and letting the player play with what the NPC's respond to and how while using the menu system to direct the story and have more control over what the player is saying. I think coming from aif first then moving on to occasional visual novels i have gained some enjoyment in asking NPC's as much as i can and seeing how they respond. But if its one or the other, id say go for the menu.

4. People in AIF do love to examine everything they possible can, and it fleshing out the world when you do it well. But i don't think you really need to be able to use everything... a decent compromise here would be throwing something into the description, like for the tv as an example

You look at your shiny new flat-screen TV, you flick through the channels and find nothing worth watching "Day time TV sucks..."

Or something like that...

I hope you keep it up, as someone who has tried and failed many time to make a game its great to hear someone giving it a shot, Posting here and having people bug you for progress reports might help motivate you

[ExLibris]

2. My preference would be to emulate SD3 and have a description of the character's relationship (eg. "Kimberly likes the PC" or "Kimberly is angry with the PC") that the player can see by typing 'score' or 'status'. That way the people who don't want the hint don't have to see it, and the hint itself doesn't break immersion by revealing the mechanics behind it.

3. My personal feeling is that ask/tell is pretty ineffective at characterisation (menu-based conversations are better at that), although it does have the advantage of involving the player (assuming that the topics are reasonably intuitive). If you want a more in depth discussion of conversation in AIF see http://bbben.aifcommunity.org/talktovsaskabout.htm or http://overanalysingaif.blogspot.com/20 ... ation.html

4. Secondary implementation of the kind you mention goes a long way towards establishing the believability of the gameworld. There's nothing that takes me out of a game quicker than trying to examine an object only to be told "That's not important" or "It's an <x>". Yes, properly implementing those objects is more work and not every player is going to notice them, but for those who do the effort is worth it.

Anyhow, best of luck. If you have any coding questions you might want to post on aifarchive, as I don't know how many TADS3 gurus there are here.

[Hakkie]

Thanks for the in depth answers. Really good to see your views on the take.

1) So, the topic title is safe, good to know

2) The intimacy progress is more controversial it seems, but your views on this reflect in some way how I would try to do this. I had in mind to do something with the npc_in_room_desc, like:
Amanda is looking at you, waiting for you to do X.
Amanda is here, she seems to be blushing.
Amanda is playing with her hair, flirting with you.
Amanda is standing next to you, holding her arm around your waist.
etc.
But, the score option hadn't crossed my mind, will dive in to that. Would be helpful for debugging purposes as well.

3) As I kind of expected, this is the most controversial. Even as I have played quite a few games, I have trouble in saying which conversation is better.
I've read ExLibris blog post about it and say I agree on almost all accounts.
- Ask/tell can be a guess the verb problem, wich is really annoying
- Menu-based can turn into the "try all options, without reading text"
Now I have also investigated some kind of a combination of both, see below if you are interested:
http://kwi.homepage.dk/t3/convmenu.htm
With this, you can still "ask amanda about me" or you could type in the number listed below in the screen.
But, the way I see this, is that the player will never "ask amanda about me", but will type in the corresponding number, so it plays out as a menu-system imho. I kind of like to have some hidden-gems and I am afraid that a menu-system will, or make sure its not discovered, or would be an option in the menu, and thus not hidden.

Will think about it more, before making a final decision.

4) I'll try to put in all the "logical" objects, or perhaps I should say, what I think is logical to be in a room. Some objects can be manipulated, some not, again, for some hidden-side-story puzzles. Hopefully the player will not be disappointed he can't interact with all of them.

ad1) about the pictures, yes, it was my idea to make it look a bit more realistic, I kind of like playing with light and shadows in daz3d and that changes a character from toony-like to human-like.

ad2) I also noticed the lack of tads3 "gurus" here and I am wondering why. Could be personal opinion or that I haven't downloaded the "good" games for other platforms, but my view was that games made in Tads3 where of higher quality then games made in other platforms.
That basically was the tipping point for me to go ahead with tads (and besides, I like it now, so not changing anymore)
(Don't be mad if I accidentally stepped on someone's toes please.)

Again thanks for the input, really helpful!

[ExLibris]

I also noticed the lack of tads3 "gurus" here and I am wondering why. Could be personal opinion or that I haven't downloaded the "good" games for other platforms, but my view was that games made in Tads3 where of higher quality then games made in other platforms.
That basically was the tipping point for me to go ahead with tads (and besides, I like it now, so not changing anymore)
(Don't be mad if I accidentally stepped on someone's toes please.)

Choosing an authoring system is a matter of personal taste. All of the major systems will do pretty much 99% of what you want (although I'd knock that down to 90% for ADRIFT5 since it's still very much in beta). TADS3's comparative lack of popularity probably comes down to the fact that while it's the most powerful of the common authoring systems, it also has the steepest learning curve. Inform 7 has its 'natural language' coding and ADRIFT offers an interface. Both are a lot less intimidating to the newcomer, and most of the time games made with them are just as good. The result is that while TADS2 used to be one of the most popular AIF authoring systems, TADS3 has been overtaken by Inform7 and ADRIFT.

[Hakkie]

I just recoded a part of the conversation into a new system that is basically the menu-structure like suggested.
Below is a sample of how it would look in the game.

I was kind of worried that by presenting all possible topics you could talk about, that it would be a bit too easy, so I am thinking about a system where sometimes you are presented with 2/3 possible questions/answers for a given topic.

Its up to the player to decide which one he chooses, sometimes it will have consequences and sometimes just for flavor.

What you think?

Oh, btw, a fun neat feature of this module is that the player can click on the question or type in the number. Works the same as the bar on top of the screen, where you can click on "north" and you move north.

[karrek]

I think that conversation system looks neat. I'm always in favor of authors experimenting with how the characters interact.

I know it would be harder to code but if you're worried about listing all possible topics you could try something where certain topics don't show up as an option unless the player has done something else first.

[M]

That conversation system looks pretty neat.

[fleet]

The conversation system looks like it will be easy for players to use.