Something's in the Air

[Felix]

All this emphasis on endings has got me thinking of a brilliant idea for my "official 1.0" version: an elaborate achievement system (and the more elaborate the better).

I liked the Katawa Shoujo EXTRAS menu very much...
Gallery (thumbnails with important scenes, grey on those scenes you didn't achieve) - you could immediately see where you had skipped a scene...
Library (clickable links to finished scenes played, in a tree (text) format and a percentage sign)

[SYH]

All this emphasis on endings has got me thinking of a brilliant idea for my "official 1.0" version: an elaborate achievement system (and the more elaborate the better).

I liked the Katawa Shoujo EXTRAS menu very much...
Gallery (thumbnails with important scenes, grey on those scenes you didn't achieve) - you could immediately see where you had skipped a scene...
Library (clickable links to finished scenes played, in a tree (text) format and a percentage sign)

Yes! That gallery was an excellent way to track your progress. I once spent a couple maddening hours chasing a lone grey square in Emi's story that I was certain fell between two scenes I'd already revealed. It did too--but on a divergent timeline.

I almost woke up my daughter when I discovered it.

Having played SITA for the better part of eight(?!) hours, it's bed time.

[crossy]

Ok...

1. This game is freaking awesome!
2. Did I mention the game is awesome!
3. I have been playing it for far too long already but I cannot stop i have 39/40 endings, I think from the posts here i am missing one of Ariaine's Endings

So far I have: Ice Cream, Ariane and Rebecca, Phone Sex, Blackout Fun, Celebrity Sightings, House Party, Getting Drunk, Fuck Buddies, In Through Out Door, Saftey Pull out.

I think I have all of the others covered
-Ceterfold,
- 19 for Rachael - DID I SAY AWESOME YET!
- 3 Wendys
- 2 Bonnies
- Paint Job
- 3 related to story 4

Can some one please help me fine the last one I am missing, I think its one of the ones that has something to do with which prequel setting you choose. But I have tried lots of different alternatives and come up with nothing.

4. AWESOME

[ArianeB]

Having reached all 40 endings (thanks for the hints) I must say the following:

2) Dates - those who played have probably noticed that there are 4 "scenarios"
a) Second date with Ariane - large, complex and with 11 endings. This one in itself deserves being a full game, even without a threesome
b) Rachel - even larger, 19 endings... Damn, that would by itself be considered massive! And there are 2 extra girls in it too!
So far we have 2 huge dates with tons of possibilities
c) The "slept too long" - 3 rather lame endings with the longest decision streak being 3? I feel that this was a total waste of time and resources
d) similar to c) - tons of work involved, with greatly unsatisfying endings

Ariane - please don't get me wrong here, I truly appreciate the effort. But seeing the quality of your work in first 2 scenarios I feel sad that you've spent so much time on the 2 extra ones which just don't feel interesting at all. I absolutely believe that this time could have been spent much better

The problem here is that there is a big story arch that encompasses all four stories, that almost everyone misses. Not just blaman but my testers missed it too. Therefore, I blame myself for being too subtle about it, and wish I could be more like Quentin Tarantino, who is sort of the the inspiration for the big story arch.

Pulp Fiction opens up with John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson gunning down a bunch of guys, and its shocking. Next story Bruce Willis is wanted by the mob and is nearly killed by John Travolta, and we the audience are wondering, where the hell is Samuel L Jackson? Then something completely unexpected happens, a third party intervenes creating an even more violent scene than the opening, and finally we find out why Samuel L Jackson did not show up. Reservoir Dogs and Inglorious Basterds have similar story structures. It is what I tried to do in SITA, and most people miss it because they are engrossed in the smaller stories.

Major spoilers, don't read if you have not finished story 4:

Part of the problem I believe is that I am attempting to do a bit of original story telling that hasn't been done before. Not only it is difficult for me because I do not have many examples to follow, but also odd for the player because the story arch does not follow typical story arch conventions.

Each of the four stories contains two objectives: an internal story objective, and an arch objective.

Story 1: Another Date
Internal Story Objective: Give players of Date Ariane a new dating experience with Ariane, introducing a linear visual novel format, while also better defining Ariane's personality. In Date Ariane, Ariane is likeable enough, but we never get to learn much about her. Now we learn she is a former cheerleader as well as a gymnast, that she likes to do daring things, both physical daring as well as naked daring things, that she has no desire for a defined relationship, that she gets brutally honest when she gets mad, etc.
External Story Arch Objective: On every date you go on with Ariane, a surprise lightning storm hits right around 11:00.

Story 2: A Man About Town
Internal Story Objective: A return to the chaotic Dating Sim style of the first game. This could also be called "Date Rachel", and the rules of the game are a bit less defined than the linear story 1. Earlier versions were even more complicated than it is now, but I had to tone it down a bit.
External Story Arch Objective: On every date you go on with Rachel, a surprise lightning storm NEVER hits around 11:00. Despite multiple play throughs, everyone keeps missing this, and thus the forest through the trees is never seen.

Story 3: Magic, Malice, and Mayhem
Internal Story Objective: Both Ariane and Rachel are very likeable and every ending with them seems to be at least pleasant. Show some girls that are not as likeable for opposite reasons, and have the player lose control and the dates end badly, because some dates do end badly. Lack of player control is illustrated by making the story more "comic book": different text style, not always first person, multi-pane images, floating onomatopoeia words representing sounds.
External Story Arch Objective: Is there a storm? Or isn't there? There is! At this point you should be asking yourself, what makes Rachel so special that rain never falls on her?
Note: The reason why there are only two linear stories, is because that is all it takes to meet these two objectives. By the way, there are 10 different endings to the Bonnie the Bartender story, but only two count. The Bonnie sex ending is different the first 9 times you play her story, all 9 endings are bad (but mostly funny). The fact that you can't control the outcome, and that the outcomes are completely contradictory, is designed to make the greater point that having sex with someone you barely know has potential consequences.

Story 4: Tower of Ion
Internal Story Objective: A sudden change of genre, less romantic comedy, more sci-fi mystery. Hence, the many Fringe references throughout the story. Not only a change in story genre, but in game genre too: This is an adventure game, with many puzzles to solve to reveal more information. Adventure games generally don't branch out to alternative endings the way visual novels do.
External Story Arch Objective: Solve the mystery as to why it never rains on Rachel. If Rachel never gets to the LAN party, she never goes to the lab to see that conditions are ideal for the storm making machine. It never gets turned on.
Historical side note: I believe that I am the first romance writer to end a romantic story where one person give another a math lecture, then makes them solve a 4 dimensional linear algebra problem for them.

[ArianeB]

Can some one please help me fine the last one I am missing, I think its one of the ones that has something to do with which prequel setting you choose. But I have tried lots of different alternatives and come up with nothing.

4. AWESOME

Thanks! and hint

[lagoonfish]

@ArianeB
Thanks for the sequel of the superb game that defines a new genre. Really enjoyed playing.

As for SITA, I currently got 38 Endings out of 40 (according to the statistics in the Gallery) but now I can't figure how to get the last two.
From looking at the images in archive.rpa there are a lot of images that I haven't seen yet which makes me believe that even if one managed it to achieve all 40 endings one still hasn't seen all of the game's content yet.
This randomness seems annoying because no matter how hard I try, I never get the scenes that I haven't seen yet.
I suppose all the images contained in the archive.rpa are used in the game, am I right?
Any hints of what prequel settings are necessary to get those different path would be helpful.


I missing those parts:

1.) Rachel, sex scene (the animated one)
2.) Rachel, game center (lighning gun)
3.) Rachel, home game party (fighting the orange Monster)
4.) Rachel, Sunday Pizza breakfast
5.) Topless Waitresses serving meal
6.) Stacy (?) with Gym trainer at Bonnie's home (+scene with the police officer)

The game is very challenging, which I like, but I agree with the others who said there should be more rewards, especially longer and animated sex scenes and the option to have sex with all the other girls you can date as well (personally I would love to have a sex scene with Suki ;-P)


Thanks!

[crossy]

Most of those items are involved in one ending with Rachael, to focus your attempts it is a branch from the amusement park so keep playing around there. The police officer scene and a number or others which I only recently found myself thanks to Ariane's post about, comes from replaying story 3 a few times, quite a few in fact, there are several funny story lines explored there.

P.S. Ariane I was intrigued as to what the significance of the different font was.

[lagoonfish]

Thanks, will try that but...

...the amusement park always ends in I am going home alone or to the house party...
Are there any specific conversations at the dinner necessary to get the 3rd (gaming girl) branch?
Also it makes not much sense for me to replay story 3 several times with exact the same choices to get different endings... That would have better been branched...

[RobertBelesme]

"From looking at the images in archive.rpa . . ."

How did you manage to do this? What software tool did you use?

[lagoonfish]

"From looking at the images in archive.rpa . . ."

How did you manage to do this? What software tool did you use?

Ren'Py is open source, so people can analyze the code... ;-)
Search the web and you will find a sexy python script that can do the magic ;-P

[Fraekke]

@Crossy:

The Ariane ending you're missing is called "Makeup sex".
I got it by

Choosing the strip club and won prequel.
Going to the movies

That combined with Ariane's hints should be more than enough to set you on the right path.

@Ariane:
Indeed AWESOME work! And of EPIC proportions.
This just shows why you're basically the star of this forum. Your interactive novel has as much (or more) game elements as some of the other author's "non linear" stories. Don't get me wrong here: this place would be too boring without the other game designers, but I just wish some of them would stop abusing the term "non-linear".
As for missing the overall story arch I don't belive for a second that everyone missed it. I'll bet you anything Talero and a couple of the other guru's in here had noticed it (easy enough to say now, but I did!). It's just not a fact that makes for a big point of discussion any other places than in a major review, and even there you'd have to be careful about it because it might be considered spoilerish.
I'm in awe of the story writing that went into this. Rachel especially comes out very well defined, no matter which story you meet her in, despite being such a complex character.

Now for my own problems: I too am at 39/40. By my count I'm missing a rachel story. I have

Non-categorized:
Rather be reading, Dinner with a Geek, Dinner with a super model, Coffee Conversations

AP:
The amusement park, The loco cola girl, Ten of clubs, A man about town, Gamer girl, house party

Nightclub (?):
The bus from Rachel's house, The photo shoot, Concert and after party

Convention:
Costume contest, Arch angel, LARPing with arch angel, Skinny dipping, Interrogation Techniques.

That should be 18.

[crossy]

Thanks for your help, ill go try that now.

Dude you missed on of my favourites!

Nude Photo Shoot
I think its fairly self explanatory, but as mentioned earlier in this thread, there is more than one nude photo shoot!

[Fraekke]

question about rachel

how do you win the trivia contest

I don't think you can. When Ariane says Rachel likes to win, she was hinting at another contest you CAN win if you take a look around. The devil is in the (facial) detail!

[lagoonfish]

How did you get the Rachel gamer girl ending? I have been told it's branching from the amusement park, but I always get an ending with Rachel leaving after trying some attractions and rides or going together to the house party... Please give some hints.

[tlaero]

Ariane - please don't get me wrong here, I truly appreciate the effort. But seeing the quality of your work in first 2 scenarios I feel sad that you've spent so much time on the 2 extra ones which just don't feel interesting at all. I absolutely believe that this time could have been spent much better

Blaman, probably the second biggest challenge in writing one of these games is finding the right balance between story and user choice. The two are at odds. In my later games, especially Getting to Know Christine and Coffee for Keisha, I explicitly tried to tell more story and had a more linear game as a result. Judging from the reception for those games, it worked out, but there were people who wanted more endings instead of more story.

I interpreted SITA's story 3 as Ariane wanting to be able to tell a story without all the branches getting in the way. As a storyteller, I don't feel the effort was wasted at all.

Tlaero