I have to say I love this update. The art is fantastic. I always found Ariane's old face to look kind of odd, the SITA update was incredible and it holds up fantastically well back in the original dating.

I absolutely love the removal of the hidden action points. The game is actually playable now. Its about experimenting and finding different paths instead of a god awful pixel hunt on ever never new screen.

I will say that I don't really lose much in this change from hidden hot spots to a menu of options. Replay value isn't changed - if you are replaying you already know where the spots are. Now you just need the right set of responses. The improved graphics very much make up for this in my opinion. I've been able to recreate almost all lines in the new version, and while I still haven't gotten it to work in Safari have enjoyed it through with other browsers and wish Ariane a long and joyful life...

@ariane
Random thought...
I know you said you changed the game to sort of break it into two halves. Basically, I believe, it is pre-dinner and post-dinner. Also, I know you posted a mini-walkthrough on the best path. All well and good. Personally, I tend to prefer the self-discovery of figuring such things out for myself (not to say I can't skip reading the walkthrough until such time as I've done what I want... So not saying you shouldn't provide the walkthrough). My thought is that there isn't really any obvious way during playing to figure out what the results are from completing the first half. From a player's perspective, we only see it as a part I and part II by looking into raw code or reading about it on the forum or blog.

I wouldn't mind seeing an actual in-game display at the end of dinner saying: romantic-2, funny-1, smart-0 (or whatever the case may be). If you wanted to be more subtle about it, you could have Ariane tick off the points the player has hit... "You've been really romantic and funny so far. What do you have in store for the rest of the evening?"

Not sure you're actually looking to make any more changes (considering it's already a re-work of a long-standing title). It continues to be a great game. The play is just a bit more obfuscated than it used to be. Giving the player the results from the first part would not only give them working benchmarks, but it lets them know what the actual categories are that are being judged (right now it would be a rather difficult concept to grasp from only in-game content... although I realize most players have heard enough on the web to have a bit of a grasp before hand anyway).

I'm slowly posting walkthroughs on arianeb.tumblr.com for anyone that wants them, because I know occasionally I get stuck and need a walkthrough on these kinds of games.

As for keeping score, there is a little dot in the bottom left corner that if you hover over it will show you what Ariane is thinking and how you are doing. I agree, making that more obvious in the game text would be better.

If you want a more detailed scoreboard, my "testing" platform can be found at http://arianeb.com/dateariane/default2.htm with a complete list of all stats seen on the left. (Its also found in the download) Many of these stats are completely meaningless unless you are debugging code.

If you click below that little dot and enter the Konami Code: "Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A", the game goes into "cheat" mode giving you access to everything.

I declared that I am done with "beta" even though there may be a bug or two. Many people are still running into issues with certain browsers. I posted fixes on my blog http://wp.me/pHngs-Ti

Also there is a major advantage to having the links visible besides the touchscreen one: it translates. Hover links do not translate.

@ArianeB
Thanks for the update, really good work!
I sent you a PM regarding your blog, please take the time to read it. Thanks.

Anybody else seen these? I laughed.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZhLOCEDiw

Cochise wrote:Anybody else seen these? I laughed.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZhLOCEDiw

I saw one of someone playing inspiring celina

Didn't watch it though. Don't think I can take that

In the absence of any releases on the Adult Gaming front I've been playing this again. I have to admit that I'm still blown away by quite how good this is, especially for a game over ten years old. I finally got the that had been eluding me for so long. It seems Ariane has been absent from her site since January (no blog posts, no updates on tumblr...) So I can only hope that she's been beavering away on her third game to follow the ambitious but disappointing (And I say this only in contrast to the fantastic Date Ariane) Something in the Air.

I wanted to add my hearty congratulations for one of the true classics of the adult gaming genre.

Cochise wrote:
Anybody else seen these? I laughed.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpZhLOCEDiw


I saw one of someone playing inspiring celina

Didn't watch it though. Don't think I can take that


Hahahahahaha!! So funny !!!

i spent days on this game, one of the best made so far!
a checkpoint in erotic games' history

Anyone want to beta test the new Renpy version of Date Ariane?

Here are the links:

Windows: https://files.secureserver.net/0s6mmaNUQBRd3L

Mac: https://files.secureserver.net/0siiPwipWZ4z4I

Linux: https://files.secureserver.net/0s1iHKu7tElJ13


Featuring:
Over 330 new and improved pictures
78 new achievements
Completely rewritten code (now in Python)

First ever version with:
- Sound Effects
- Customizable Music
- Save games!
- Go back if you mess up!
- Auto Advance!
- Text to Speech

FAQ available at http://arianeb.com/dateariane/faq.htm

I'm hoping to release it wide in a week with the only change needed being a change in version number from 0.9 to 1.0.

Post here if you find bugs, text, graphics, and sound oddities that need to be changed before then.

I'm pretty sure 11 years is enough testing for the story.

*Gets Excited to play Date Ariane again*

I think Date Ariane, still stands up as the best in this genre along with LoP's Living with Temptation so I can't wait to play a new version of it. I'm looking forward to the eventual sequel too.

Found a bug
Tried playing a board game nude. Here's the traceback

DroopyLoving wrote:Found a bug
Tried playing a board game nude. Here's the traceback

Thanks, the bug there is that you are not supposed to be able to play the board game nude, so there is no picture of it.
I'll have to find how that was allowed (or if I can't, I'll just have to create the picture)

Found it, don't need a new picture.

Debugging Renpy code is way freaking easy compared to javascript.

I've just played it through a couple of times and I've got to say I'm loving it. The backtrack function is amazing it makes playing the game so much faster. I'm loving being able to save too. I hope there's some new secrets to find in this version (Rebecca threesome!?)

Great work anyway Ariane, it looks beautiful and plays amazingly.

PS: Nude boredgames are always fun, y'know you wanna make it happen.