Virtual Date Girls

[digits]

Disclosure: This one is about the style choice for VDG. Examples might come from the Leilani Date.

@everybody having difficulties reading the links at the bottom of the pages:
Every browser I know has Color defaults for visited and unvisited links. You're allowed to use this, and switch to colors contrasting with the deep (#FFFFFF) black of the background (generally somewhere inside the User's preferences).

@chaotic: Some .style in your code let me think you have tried to change the user-modifiable strategy described above.
Why don't you use a single CSS file, which would allow global tuning of your styles?
It might look like this

Code: Select all

.footText
{
   text-align:center;
   font-family: Georgia;
   font-size: 18px;
   color: #FFFFFF;
   background-color: #000000;
}
a:link {color: #FFFFCC}
a:visited {color: #CCFFFF}

You save this in a file: VDG.css

you add this in the head

Code: Select all

You change your code (example from street2.html)
Current:

Code: Select all

1. "I'll let you pick."

2. "Let's just go back to my place."

 

Modified:

Code: Select all

1. "I'll let you pick."

2. "Let's just go back to my place."

Wouldn't that be easier for you?

[Tjommi]

Sombreros and umbrella drinks around the house !

I think that Trenchcart got the best solution as well. As we all know that Virtual dating girls is going to a gigantic project, I support his suggestion of creating an own subforum to discuss it.

[madjaffa]

is there a problem with the rapidshare site as I get in excess of 29 hours to download
after about 40-60 mins download closes down, saying problem with server

[David]

madjaffa wrote : is there a problem with the rapidshare site as I get in excess of 29 hours to download
after about 40-60 mins download closes down, saying problem with server

No problem here, I just downloaded the latest version.

[madjaffa]

[quote]madjaffa wrote : is there a problem with the rapidshare site as I get in excess of 29 hours to download
after about 40-60 mins download closes down, saying problem with server[quote]
after two days I've got it in only 15mins happy now

[qbv8]

So you got it in 48 hours and 15 minutes? Wow! Looks like every single byte has been sent by special delivery service, individually packed as a gift ...

[Trucla]

I know that sometimes I look (I am) a bit acid. This is something I can't change. I'm the kind of guy who says: "The king is naked!", never "Last year, the king was naked.". But when I find something that (in my opinion) is wrong, I say it, say why, and try to point out solutions.

So here I am with a suggestion to Chaotic (for Virtual Date Girls), (partly) "ressurecting" the introduction of Virtual Date Crystal.

1st.- Make of Virtual Date Girls a kind of "Blind Date Agency";

2nd.- Create a psychological profile for each "girl";

3rd.- Instead of letting the player choose his date, make him reply to a quest;

4th.- His date will be the one whose profile better suits his replies to the quest.

About the profiles, of course (like in real life) there are hard and easy going (and the ones in the between). The hard ones should be hard to really conquest, and the easy ones, easy. This doesn't mean that the last ones can't be teasers. But this doesn't mean that they must in any way lead to a final failure.

These are my two cents for the game!

[Typisk]

Just thought that i give some feedback, the games sems nice and all but.

I have been trying for a wile now, i even tryd to do it as the walkthro said but still i get stuck on the way, like for exampel get drinks at the bar: check
go in to the bar again and get drinks: Fail
so i read thats it was a low chance that it will work so i try a cople of times but i cant be that unlucky:P

so i started it up in safari and it seems to be working better atm.
(oo i where running Firefox before)
Well tnx and hopefully u can understand what im writing.


Edit1: it seems what we have been doing so i can do it again for exampel she still got the dress, when i restarted the game.

[madjaffa]

qbv8 wrote : So you got it in 48 hours and 15 minutes? Wow! Looks like every single byte has been sent by special delivery service, individually packed as a gift ...

no two days of being time out on third day got a clean download in 15mins

[tlaero]

Hey Chaotic,

I appreciate you making the IE version of VDG. Thanks! It's a bummer that you need to make both versions though. I'm surprised that it's necessary. Are you sure the IE version doesn't work correctly in Firefox?

The changes you made for IE bring your code up to the standard. The old things were bugs that happened to work in Firefox. I'd be really surprised if the corrected code doesn't work there as well. Firefox can't require incorrect cookie code. It would fail on too many web pages.

If the IE code doesn't work on Firefox, maybe we can find a middle ground that works in both. It's a pain if you always have to make two versions of the code. I don't use Firefox, but I'll bet Erana could help.

Separately, in the 1.1 drop, I found a bug in the IE casinocheck10.htm.

vvar start = document.cookie.indexOf(cookieName + "=");

(Typo: "vvar" instead of "var"). That makes the game hang at that screen.


As for game feedback, I'm enjoying it. I like that what you buy in the stores opens new possibilities later in the game. That's a place where you've surpassed ArianeB.

I'm also enjoying the hitman backgrounds. I'm imagining a scenario where you're attending your cousin's wedding and you decide to hit on the southern belle you see there. Lots of neat potential things to do in that level, and it would result in a nice break from the, "take her to the bar, then the shop, then the strip club," progression these games tend to have in common.

I really like that Erica and Lei have such different personalities. It'll be hard to make them all distinct, but I appreciate the effort.

Suggestion: In the end, the game comes down to, "Have her drink n times and win m influence points." You might consider more complex influences. For instance, it wouldn't make sense to win an influence from just a walk in the park. But maybe have that account for a partial influence that, if combined with not lying about your job and holding the door for her somewhere ends up getting you a "gentleman" point or something.

Wouldn't work with Lei or Erica, for different reasons, but if the next girl is really smart (sees through your lies) and romantic (appreciates you holding her hand, etc), you could work out some nice paths to a win.

I'd also love to see a scenario where winning doesn't require getting the girl drunk. "Girl goes farther than she would otherwise because she's been drinking" is a bit stereotypical. It's cool for most of these dates, but it would be neat to have one girl that's above such things.

Suggestion 2: Negative influences. Rather than instant death when you say the wrong thing, give a negative influence. Get enough of those and she dumps you. But, have there be ways to recover from them and continue (ways to undo negative influences, etc).

You're currently using the existence of a cookie as your variables, but you could make your life a lot easier if you stored a value in the cookie and modified it. So, rather than haveing ERCdri1, ERCdri2, and ERCdri3, you could just have ERCdri that stores a value (1, 2, 3, etc). Then you could read the value and go straight to the right place rather than writing more htmls that check the next level cookie. That would also make it easier for you to add and remove points at will. If you need help figuring out how to do this, let us know.

Now some mildly negative feedback. I understand that it's a lot easier to put the options in text at the bottom of the screen, but I feel the game is much better served by clicking areas than text. For instance, in Lei's date, you could have clicking her butt says the ass line and clicking her head says the line she dumps you for. Having the option to have text at the bottom is good, but you should use it as infrequently as possible. Any time you can choose the text intelligently by clicking areas in the picture, you should. Gameplay is better that way.

And, lastly, most of the Asians I know are offended by people who call them, "Oriental." This is not to say people would be offended by your game. But it's likely that Lei (in game) would be offended by her date calling her that. I suggest a find/replace of "Oriental" to "Asian." Alternately, have her get mad at the phrase....

Keep up the great work,
Tlaero

[Bonhomie]

tlaero wrote :
I understand that it's a lot easier to put the options in text at the bottom of the screen, but I feel the game is much better served by clicking areas than text. For instance, in Lei's date, you could have clicking her butt says the ass line and clicking her head says the line she dumps you for. Having the option to have text at the bottom is good, but you should use it as infrequently as possible. Any time you can choose the text intelligently by clicking areas in the picture, you should. Gameplay is better that way.

Whole post was intelligent, but I have to particularly agree with this.
I loved Ariane, and I love what you're doing to add to the genre, but Crystal is still my favourite, and it is because of the 'click screen' method.
Some of the 'tiny' areas that you have to find are what makes the game so much fun, and the threesome is still the best set going.

The suggestions about positive/negative influences/scoring is very good, but I imagine it might be more difficult to programme - we are almost talking of some sort of meter, like a Shark on screen pleasure bar!

[Palladium]

A "mood meter" is quite easy to make. To do so Chaotic has to store *values* in the cookies (or better: Javascrïpt variables). Then it is a single line of code to increase or decrease a stat. This way he also could use a cookie/variable called "money" to buy things at the shop or visit the club multiple (but limited) times.

Changing game mechanics for different dates can make them more distinguishable. Chaotic did very well to give the 2 girls different characters but I doubt he can do this for 5 girls when he uses only "influence" and "drink" as parameters. What about a girl who does not like alcohol but prefers "honesty" or "wittiness"?

[erana]

@Tlaero: re, "oriental" vs. "asian", it really varies from person to person. I know a nice Malay lady (a VERY nice lady actually) that actually jokes that she is Western whenever an American calls her Oriental. (Since I'm European, she has no problem with me calling her Oriental).

The only Asian-race people I know that get ofended if they are called Oriental is the kind of people so worried with polite correctness stereotypes that would call a Black person "Afro-American"... even if he or she is from Europe (which, before you ask, is usually followed by a very insulted European heaping verbal abuse upon them). (Worst part is, I happen to know actual examples of that).

The above might be your cup of tea, or it might not be. Doesn't actually matter. What matters is that Lei is very plainly the kind of woman for whom polite correctness is a non-issue.

Just my totally not politically correct two cents.

[tlaero]

Hey erana,

It certainly does vary from person to person. It's possible that it varies from region to region too. I'm in the states and I work with a lot of Asians, mostly from Taiwan, China, and Japan. The people I know uniformly prefer "Asian" to "Oriental." But, as you point out, they're all from west of me, so "Oriental" really makes no sense. Since the same people live east of you, maybe they just don't mind when you say it. (-:

I don't get the impression that it's about political correctness, though. I think that the people I interact with genuinely don't like the term. Then again, since the game is free, it really doesn't matter what I or other people think. If Chaotic wants to have Lei approve of being called "Oriental," that's cool. It just jumps out at me when I see it.

tlaero

[digits]

The worst introductory line with asian people I know is make them think you believe chinese, japanese, korean are all the same.
But can't totally blame them for this as it's really poor-minded cliché. Even if genetics suggest we all come from the same village/small town a couple of hundreds thousands years ago.