Virtual Date Rachel Part 2

[Dcyberjf323]

Wow !!! Congratulation Chaotic !! a great game as always

he give me a headache to try getting number roulette win (i don't win!! )

[ExLibris]

Wow !!! Congratulation Chaotic !! a great game as always

he give me a headache to try getting number roulette win (i don't win!! )

Winning at roulette or blackjack is entirely random. Frankly I'd just edit casinoplay1 & casinoplay2, but if you want to do it without cheating I would bet on red or black rather than a number. You have a 50% chance of winning, and it still counts as a big win for the purposes of the secret ending (which winning at blackjack doesn't for some reason).

[Dcyberjf323]

Wow !!! Congratulation Chaotic !! a great game as always

he give me a headache to try getting number roulette win (i don't win!! )

Winning at roulette or blackjack is entirely random. Frankly I'd just edit casinoplay1 & casinoplay2, but if you want to do it without cheating I would bet on red or black rather than a number. You have a 50% chance of winning, and it still counts as a big win for the purposes of the secret ending (which winning at blackjack doesn't for some reason).

oh !! so, i win thank !!

[Serge]

Here is the french version


https://rapidshare.com/files/1979002710 ... __aise.zip

What I've done

Tanslate in french (of course)
Compress pictures to réal JPG. (118 Mo are now 68 MO)
Transform gif files in JPG and use anim picture is too long to do but if done the global file will be about 30 Mo.
Correct bugs. I think that my feedback send to Chaotic was quiet the same as Ex Libris's feedback.
Modify all files to have each character's text color in _style.css.(If you don't like one color just modify this file)
Casino easier to win (and Blackjack avaliable for secret ending) but still random.
Rachel drink and tired is going up
Rachel eat and tired is going down
But you can't drink, eat and have fun in the same place so do the good choice.
Rachel fun and Rachel drink needed for each sex scenes.(and to let her date going alone with Nelena)
Transform a little bit Sarah's ending and use some pictures not reachable in Chaotic's version.
Transform Rachel's date in Superman for each sex scenes.

Enjoy.

[kessie8yl]

This all sounds very familiar when it comes to Chaotic's new games... Although he does seem to have taken up the messages and fixed the bugs much more quickly this time.

I used to look forward to new games from Chaotic but the formula has indeed become tired and the scenes repetitive.

If he needs new ideas for scenarios he only needs to check out a site like Literotica or Storiesonline. I wouldn't suggest he copy any of them verbatim, but there are all sorts of topics covered in many different ways that would get us away from the "go out and have fun before you can fuck me" routine. As someone already said, we had sex on the first date - so where's the tension?

Give the characters a personality and make sure their actions more or less fit that personality. Of course they can be a little "naughty" now and then but to have a character go from being a shrinking violet to rolling about in a threesome with a couple of strangers within a matter of hours doesn't ring true. Chaotic has a large enough "stable" of leading ladies now, he should be able to find one to suit any given story.

There could even be perfectly "good" endings to a first date that involves nothing more than a bit of what used to be politely called "heavy petting", either under or over clothes. It would certainly increase the anticipation for the next instalment. Or, if every game has to end in sex, have a romantic evening with your girl, take her home and then go back and screw the waitress/cloakroom attendant/stripper/prostitute or whatever... Three games without getting the leading lady into bed would have fans pulling up trees to get their hands on Game 4 lol

To repeat what I have said in other posts about Chaotic's recent games - I fully accept that it isn't easy and there is no charge for these games and Chaotic deserves huge amounts of credit for what he has produced in the past - but these free games are being issued as a shop window to his Offsite section, so basically we are being persuaded to pay for "more of the same". Given the tired stories and the bugs, etc, I just can't see that happening.

Sorry

[SquallLion]

great! another game !

[thundergod]

There could even be perfectly "good" endings to a first date that involves nothing more than a bit of what used to be politely called "heavy petting", either under or over clothes. It would certainly increase the anticipation for the next instalment. Or, if every game has to end in sex, have a romantic evening with your girl, take her home and then go back and screw the waitress/cloakroom attendant/stripper/prostitute or whatever... Three games without getting the leading lady into bed would have fans pulling up trees to get their hands on Game 4

That is absolutely right. If he feels he has to push games out...and I understand the reasons why he would...he could not only lessen his workload and reduce the cross-game similarities, but build anticipation for his games, by making some of these women harder to get. Make 1-3 free and 4 the payoff behind the paywall. I can't imagine he wouldn't do well with that strategy.

Rachel is easy, and that's fine, and maybe there could be a dozen or more games in which the purpose is for Rachel to help the PC "corrupt" another known character that isn't, at the beginning, so much into the group sex thing. Maybe Rachel, like School Dreams 2, is just a fantasy of the PC that doesn't actually represent real life. But if the final payoff is good, people will absolutely chain through escalating levels of sexytime. That's what AIF is all about (not that anyone makes any money off of it ;-) ), but I see no reason it couldn't be implemented in Chaotic's games.

I do like the games, at least in conception. But others have shown what's possible in this realm. Keeley, for example, was a game and a half but could have been about four games, and all of them would have been less buggy and redundant than Chaotic's games. If these were just hopeless ideas I wouldn't care, but I really feel Chaotic is wasting potential quality.

[ExLibris]

In Chaotic's defence it does look as though he initially planned Rachel 2 to be a little more elaborate than it turned out. Specifically there are about half a dozen variables that are set early in the game, but never get tested.

kessie8yl wrote:
Three games without getting the leading lady into bed would have fans pulling up trees to get their hands on Game 4

thundergod wrote:
Make 1-3 free and 4 the payoff behind the paywall. I can't imagine he wouldn't do well with that strategy.

I certainly see spreading the game out over 3-4 dates as a good idea (and one which worked well in Keeley and Christine), but separating those dates into 3-4 games and then making people pay for the one that actually has sex in it seems like it would have the following effects:
1. Next to no one would play games 1-3 because they don't have any sex, unless they were somehow a pre-requisite for playing game 4 (which I don't see a foolproof way of doing with Chaotic's current system)
2. People would resent being so blatantly manipulated into shelling out money, which would reduce the goodwill people feel towards Chaotic and probably increase piracy of his games

[kessie8yl]

In Chaotic's defence it does look as though he initially planned Rachel 2 to be a little more elaborate than it turned out. Specifically there are about half a dozen variables that are set early in the game, but never get tested.

kessie8yl wrote:
Three games without getting the leading lady into bed would have fans pulling up trees to get their hands on Game 4

thundergod wrote:
Make 1-3 free and 4 the payoff behind the paywall. I can't imagine he wouldn't do well with that strategy.

I certainly see spreading the game out over 3-4 dates as a good idea (and one which worked well in Keeley and Christine), but separating those dates into 3-4 games and then making people pay for the one that actually has sex in it seems like it would have the following effects:
1. Next to no one would play games 1-3 because they don't have any sex, unless they were somehow a pre-requisite for playing game 4 (which I don't see a foolproof way of doing with Chaotic's current system)
2. People would resent being so blatantly manipulated into shelling out money, which would reduce the goodwill people feel towards Chaotic and probably increase piracy of his games

I never said anything about making people pay for the final game... I guess it was a little naive of me but to be honest the suggestion just came off the top of my head as I wrote it... It's not even specifically aimed at Chaotic - I just thought it'd be a neat idea and the devs are always asking for ideas. I'd be pleased if any of them followed up on it - although if they decide to make money out of it, a "freebie" by way of thanks would be welcome

[Greebo]

Why not have a free version with the sex scenes pixillated out and then people could pay for the unexpurgated versions

[thundergod]

I certainly see spreading the game out over 3-4 dates as a good idea (and one which worked well in Keeley and Christine), but separating those dates into 3-4 games and then making people pay for the one that actually has sex in it

No, the others would have *some* sex in them, for sure. Just not the big payoff sex. It is, frankly, one of the problems with most games in this genre is that once the player has satisfied the conditions, pretty much whatever sort of sex the author is willing to allow is immediately available. Because while it's true that some dates work like that, many more don't, and the activities escalate only with future dates.

He would, of course, have to make some sort of forced linkage between the games -- a passcode or whatever -- as Shark has done with his games. He could also go to the Shark/Puso method of making everything paywalled until some amount of time has passed, or until there's a completed series of new games.

As far as goodwill, I take your point, but think that goodwill would be most increased by putting out high-quality games that reward the effort to play them. If the reason it's difficult is because there's pressure to push out "complete" games on a tight schedule, then make the games smaller and easier (to create, I mean).

[ExLibris]

Ah, okay. I think that the maxim "anticipation makes the heart grow fonder" can also be applied to other parts of the body, so I definitely support the idea idea of extending the relationship rather than every ending being "wham, bam, thank you ma'am".

The major problem would be creating the forced linkage between the games. You could do that with a compiled game, but not with easily edited HTML. It's been been done a couple of times in AIF that I can't think of: The Extra Lessons (which I quit on the first turn when it didn't recognise 'Samantha' as a synonym for 'Samantha Jones') and Afternoon Visit (which was one of my favorite games when it came out... thirteen years ago; the years have not been kind to it). RAGS also has the capability to save metadata and transfer it to another game, but as far as I know only the Rough Landing series has taken advantage of that. If Chaotic is intent on monetizing all the work he puts into his games, I think that paywalling everything would be the best option.

I also agree with your point about goodwill. However, at playforceone Rachel 2 currently has an average rating of just over 90% (which is higher than most of Leonizer's games - and higher that the original game). So despite the recycling of ideas a lot of people are enjoying the game. That doesn't give Chaotic much encouragement to change his current mode of operation.

[thundergod]

The major problem would be creating the forced linkage between the games.

I'm not really thinking about force. Shark's password(s) (was it only the one two-episode game, about to be three if I understand his plans?) don't "force" you to play the whole series if you can just extract the password from someone else, which usually isn't too hard. They just create an encouragement to do so. Ultimately, the difficulty of strong enforcement here just isn't worth it. People *will* pirate the games. But not everyone will, and a bit of encouragement to play the whole series in sequence will build anticipation for each new episode, assuming they're well-written. I don't know if this increases his profits, but I doubt it could hurt them.

It's been been done a couple of times in AIF that I can't think of

We did discuss this, elsewhere, regarding what "could have been" with the School Dreams series were GoblinBoy willing to give up his entire life and make the ultimate branching AIF of all time. Not worth revisiting the discussion, but I think it makes a lot more sense in these relatively focused graphic date-sim-type games than it does in AIF, especially AIF with the scope of GB's games. The games we're talking about here are shorter, with fewer options and less coding. And one hopes the result of more editing would be better games, better options, and less coding. That's the point of this discussion, I think; by not trying to constantly deliver one massively complete game each and every time (and frankly, the Rachel games are pretty complex as his games go...I mean, rendering/coding all those multiple-partner scenes is hard work, which is why the swapped head and identical dialogue are such a cop-out), Chaotic could put more into the fragments he creates.

If Chaotic is intent on monetizing all the work he puts into his games, I think that paywalling everything would be the best option.

Everything, or everything on the Shark/Puso model of new games being paywalled and older games being free? Not sure I think the former would work. But, as you write:

Iat playforceone Rachel 2 currently has an average rating of just over 90% (which is higher than most of Leonizer's games - and higher that the original game). So despite the recycling of ideas a lot of people are enjoying the game. That doesn't give Chaotic much encouragement to change his current mode of operation.

...which is depressing (Leonizer's games, wonky English and/or logic and bad sex mechanics aside, are really much more confident, exploratory, and ambitious). I think, though, that this might be a Rachel-specific effect. Tons of group sex options do tend to influence opinion. In any case, I doubt the response to free games would mean as much as a better response to paywalled games, but I'm not Chaotic so I don't really know. Maybe he just does it for the love. ;-)

[phreaky]

@exlibris
Yeah I also noticed that rachel 2 gets a good rating @pf1, I think that's mainly because there are a lot of girls involved, and the ending options are many

Personally, theme-wise, I like leonizer's games better because of the variety they offer, although sometimes I must admit that they lack branching options. Chaotic's are better in terms of branching options, but really, the theme and dialogs are getting a bit boring

Graphic-wise, I'm also not really satisfied with rachel 2. Most of the boobs still look too silicone-tits to me. And the sex scenes, it's lacking variety. Now this is a bit weird, because in my opinion, this is where we can put the art and beauty, which should make it really enjoyable.
Making the sex scenes can really make me explore different aspects, such as location, positions, expressions, angles, etc.

So I still don't get it why chaotic only make a very standard sex scenes, which is frankly - borrowing tlaero's opinion - not really erotic enough

Leonizer's sex scenes are much varied in my opinion

But then again, I still admire chaotic's games including this one, especially for the effort he put to make so many endings and possibiliites

[ExLibris]

@exlibris
Yeah I also noticed that rachel 2 gets a good rating @pf1, I think that's mainly because there are a lot of girls involved, and the ending options are many

I initially assumed that as well because Getting to Know Christine is sitting at just under 94%. But the original Rachel game, which has just as much group sex as the second and better characterisation as well, is sitting in the mid 80s. So I don't really have an explanation for that phenomena.

Graphic-wise, I'm also not really satisfied with rachel 2. Most of the boobs still look too silicone-tits to me.

I have to admit that I look at Rachel and wonder, how the Hell she can get away without wearing a bra? And with only one wardrobe malfunction an evening? Not mention the amount of strain they must put on her back.