BEW - Ongoing Dev Thread (DAZ Artists Still Wanted)

[tlaero]

Oh man, that sucks Wolf. I'm sorry. Was it my StringReplace you were using?

Tlaero

[Wolfschadowe]

I was using the "find in files" functionality of Notepad++ which does replacement as well, and had "include sub directories" checked. Then I loaded a page into the browser to see if the smart quote was replaced with a standard one and image was corrupt. The fact that Notepad++ made 24000 or so replacements should have been my first clue. Tried a few more pages, and saw more corrupt images. Then I opened the image directory and saw all the images were corrupt Then I realized what I did, mentally shrugged and opened my backup program to do a restore only to see that it was doing it's nightly backup ANDHOLYCRAPIT'SDOINGITSBACKUPIVEGOTTOSHUTITOFFNOWNOWNOWNOW!!!!!

I saved most of the backup images from being overwritten with corrupt ones. If someone had been in the room, I'm sure it would have been funny to watch my reaction as I realized what was going on.

I was able to pull the reduced quality Jpegs from the latest build of BEW, but the originals were lost to the mists, because I had deleted the original BEW build that was all high-res from hotfile, and my local system...and the recycle bin, and the attempt to undelete the file failed. But at least I still had the images and didn't have to completely re-pose and re-render everything.

Wolfschadowe.

[ExLibris]

It's not apparent much in day one, and not at all in the office and bar scenes of day one, but any good story needs some conflict. As the week progresses, inevitably some conflict will arise and the player will have to decide if they are going to try and avoid the conflict and try to take a unicorn and rainbows happy path, or dive in and face the conflict, make people angry and take the associated hit in scores and relationship to come out the other side to see what's there. Kind of like the adage "The best sex is make-up sex." That can lead to deeper relationships, and therefore higher scores.

I'm very glad to hear you say that. One of the reasons SD3 is one of my favorite AIF games is because there's conflict, and because there's conflict the PC can't get everything he wants. Every ending means sacrificing something and because of that the decisions that player makes on behalf of the PC feel like they have real significance.

[Wolfschadowe]

Another question for the forum:

Since BEW isn't complex and big enough yet, (haha) I've decided to implement achievements into the game, especially since Tlaero's Adventure Creator tool now supports them.

I personally don't care one way or another about achievements when I play a game, but I know a lot of people love them. Because I don't really care about them, I have a hard time finding where the sweet spot is.

If I did 10 achievements per day, that would be 70 total achievement, just for perspective.
If I highlight "special" activities in each scene with an achievement, the number can get much higher. I can get 10 decent achievements just for the first office scene, if I wanted to get detailed. Throw the bar scene in and I could go really crazy and peg an achievement for every exit point found, which is about 14 different bar ending scenarios. Add in the unreleased strip club which is less complex because only one girl is involved, and there are still about 5 or 6 outcomes, so if I did that, now day 1 achievements would come to close to 30. Assuming that's the average for all 5 days, now we hit 210+ Achievements, which is probably too much. I could even build on that for finding all Upskirt opportunities in the game, or something silly like that, which could push toward 500 achievements. Again, way too much, I think.

I could also trim it down significantly and only do major accomplishments which could bring the total down closer to 20-30 across all 7 days.

So, in the readers opinion, how many achievements are too much, where's the overkill line? Is this a case of less is more, or is it the more the merrier?

Wolfschadowe

P.S. Progress status on Page 1 is updated.

[M]

I'd say something around 20-30 is probably fine unless the game is substantially larger than you've suggested.

[tlaero]

I'd limit the total achievements to around 20-30. Make them for major accomplishments. As a game designer, achievements are a tool you can use to guide the players to do things they wouldn't normally do. Start with one achievement for each major sex scene, then throw in a couple of extras for cool things you think it would be a shame if the player missed, etc. If you make too many, you'll annoy players.

Tlaero

[tonytiger]

I agree withe other comments on achievements 20 over the 7 days seems adequate. Not mentioned so far though are my favourite type of achievement one that doesn't affect the game but requires skill or serious investigation to get, something unique ie a very small context area (without msg) in a screen which reveals a bonus/extra not needed as part of the story but make us completeist geeks pull our hair out trying to do. Before the invention of achievements I loved trying to find the hidden rooms from the tubes? in mario and secret rooms in doom.

[tlaero]

Xbox games are inherently different than what we're making--they're longer and don't branch as much--so take what I'm about to say with a bag of rock salt. I'm a big fan of achievements on Xbox, and here's what I think make for good and bad ones there.

About 50% of the achievements should be for just playing the game through. These are achievements to get you to see the entire storyline and incent you to finish. In our games the sex incents you to finish and there tends to be multiple sex scenes so you'd probably have one achievement for every good end.

About 25-40% of the achievements should be for off the beaten path cool stuff you wouldn't have thought to do otherwise. These are the best kind, because they make sure your players find the hidden gems. These sorts of achievements tend to make a player say, "That was cool!"

About 10-25% of the achievements should be hard to get and give a challenge for the hardcore players.

The biggest "No-no" you can do with achievements is have ones you can only get on easy. If you'd get an achievement for doing something on easy, you'd better also get it for doing that thing on medium and hard. Don't make hardcore players play on easy.

All this said, in something I'm working on, I intend to have 12 achievements, and they're basically one per sex scene. It doesn't have to be complicated.

Tlaero

[Wolfschadowe]

Thanks for the input everyone!

This all helps me out a lot. The only achievements I usually get in games are the ones you get just for playing, and others I accidentally stumble across. I'm not much of a completionist and don't do things like find all the hidden packages and such. My motivation in games is generally story curiosity, and once the story is over, so is most of my interest in the game.

The consensus seems to be that less is more, meaning the fewest achievements to get the job done, including some gameplay/ending achievements, difficult path achievements, and maybe a few mastery achievements for the hardcore players, for a total of around 30ish.

I may push a little higher than that just due to the scope of the game, but not much. Day one alone looks like it will come out to about 850 pages, and there are 6 days to go.


Wolfschadowe

[Son-of-Odin]

Hi Wolfshadowe,
today i found your game (Version 0-8) and played it through. I must say: AWESOME!GREAT!
But one thing I have to critizise. Some of the different answers are really hard to find because sometimes there´s the "hand" always there without any gap and you´re only able to find more than one answer if you look at the left corner at the bottom if the picture-description changes.
I hop you understand what I mean. I can´t explain it more acurate because english is not my native language.

BTW If you still need a tester I´d felll proud if you PM me.
Greets
Son of Odin

[prayForPlague]

I enjoy the game like most everyone else. The only thing that bugs me and I really don't want to complain, is this. On the screen office-d1-2.htm when you first see Emily, the sheet of paper on the floor isn't clickable at that point. I initially noticed the paper, but when I moused over it the link didn't appear to change so I figured it didn't matter and I just ignored it. So then when you approach the desk and the paper is still visible, I figured it was still not clickable so I ignored it still. Obviously I was lost as to why I couldn't really progress much further in the game later on, until I eventually lost patience and searched some of the comments here on the thread to figure out what I was missing.

I just think it's slightly unfair to the player when something that was at one point unclickable, becomes clickable and important. I would really only know that paper then mattered through mouse searching. The game changes from something where I can look and think, to more of where I mouse over everything searching for a link to change even from screen to screen because it might now be important. I don't really like that. I am not sure it matters to most people, or if anyone has commented on it. Just thought I'd say something because it bugs me slightly. Otherwise though, Really great work on this game.

[Wolfschadowe]

Hi Wolfshadowe,
today i found your game (Version 0-8) and played it through. I must say: AWESOME!GREAT!
...Some of the different answers are really hard to find because sometimes there´s the "hand" always there without any gap ...

I hope you understand what I mean. I can´t explain it more acurate because english is not my native language.

...BTW If you still need a tester I´d felll proud if you PM me.

Son-of-Odin, I'm glad you enjoy the game,

I know what you mean. I've tried to make the game avoid pixel hunts, with larger click areas that should make sense. Even when there's overlap, there should be a little flicker. I've tried to limit overlap for the most part, but sometimes it's unavoidable. Also, most browsers will highlight the areas in the image if you use TAB and SHIFT+TAB to cycle through links.

Also, your English is much better than my German. about 20 years ago, I lived between Vilseck and Sulzbach-Rosenberg, and made several trips to Munich. Love the country and area and want to travel back with my family someday.

On the screen office-d1-2.htm when you first see Emily, the sheet of paper on the floor isn't clickable at that point. I initially noticed the paper, but when I moused over it the link didn't appear to change so I figured it didn't matter and I just ignored it. So then when you approach the desk and the paper is still visible, I figured it was still not clickable so I ignored it still.

prayForPlage, I was replaying that section earlier this week while adding and tweaking the achievements for that scene. I agree, that section annoyed me a little bit too because I kept trying to click on the paper too early...and I wrote it! I might tweak that a bit for the next version.

Wolfschadowe

[Super]

So, just curious: has your brain exploded from the sheer scope of this game yet?

Eh, I'm eagerly anticipating it, even though it will probably take forever to be released lol. Do you wish you'd have done a smaller title or are you happy with how it is?

[Wolfschadowe]

My brain has not yet exploded; however, there is a notable swelling that may be a precursor to a scanners style explosion.

I suspect the final game will be 7,000 - 10,000 web pages, so it will certainly be big. Day 1 alone is a little over 900 pages. I'm just verifying the coding and achievements before releasing to to playtesters.

I don't think I could pull off a smaller game and make it compelling. I'm making the type of game I would like to play, and I hope this one is as compelling to others as it is to me. I like for there to be at least a semi-decent story so that there is as much desire to see what happens next in the story as a desire to just get to the next erotic scene. But with that much story in this type of game, I think it needs to be balanced with more erotic scenes as well which is probably the main draw. Hopefully the story enhances the eroticism rather than just acting as filler, and vice-versa. To do that well, I feel that the game has to be generally longer.

Just making a long game wouldn't keep me interested though. Where I am having fun is building lore into the game.
Something that will be evident in later days, or even just the strip club branch of day 1, is that taking alternate paths, or even failure paths will hopefully add dimension to the game. Little bits of knowledge about other characters that make things they do more clear. Those that are interested in the story and lore will have fun replaying to find the why. This is also present in the current bar scene, but many of the bar scene payoff's are in day two.

An example from the not yet released strip club scene below (mild story spoiler)

On one branch of the strip club scene, you know you have to get help from one of the supporting characters in order to progress with the love interest, and you can secure their help but you don't know why they would help you in the first place. In one sub-branch, Brad can reject the help because he is suspicious of the supporting characters motivation.

On an alternate branch of the scene, you find out what motivates that supporting character to help Brad, but he misses an opportunity to get additional help from a second character which changes outcome possibilities.

On one of the failure branches, (with the strip club romance, not the game itself) attentive players can begin to understand the catalyst behind the event that motivates the supporting character to help Brad progress with the love interest.

The way I could have realistically made the game shorter is to have fewer love interests in the game from the current 5 planned, or have fewer player choices and make it more of a graphic novel than an actual game, but then again, as much as I like those, I like the challenge of the gameplay elements, and the additional replayability of multiple story paths. My only regret is that it will take so long to get done.

Wolfschadowe

[Super]

Perfectly understandable and appreciated. I've wanted a bigger one of these games myself

If you want to do something smaller yet huge, I might suggest doing done thing akin to SITA: make a series of individual dates as infividusl games, and have a pass code to continue your game. This might give you a smaller series of games released over time that still interconnect. Too late for this game, but hey something I e been wanting to see and you might be interested in for the future