BEW - Ongoing Dev Thread (DAZ Artists Still Wanted)

[Morgwen]

I don't know if I'll continue to make the High-Res available, or just post the low-res version. The only purpose of the high-res is for those who want what was the significantly better images. I kept the low-res available for those with bandwidth concerns. Once I'm satisfied with the low-res quality and size, I'll probably dump the high-res version because it will be big.

Wolfschadowe.

I have no problems with big files. You can offer both the "orginal" and a low-res version, so everybody can choose what is more important.

[me3]

Tlaero, For what it's worth, local storage works fine for me in both Chrome and Firefox on a file:// url (I tried it in Safari and it works there too, but I haven't tried Windows browswers). As an example, save this file locally and open it up in various browsers. Apparently there was a bug which got fixed recently in Firefox that got it working again.

I think using this instead of cookies would probably save you some headaches (like not having to pass that command-line flag to Chrome for the local cookies), and since you're using strings for all your variable names anyways, it doesn't seem like it would be too annoying to convert over to it from cookies. Anyways, this is all a little off-topic, sorry.

I'd have to agree, this should work fine, the only browser that seems to have any issue with it is IE, all others work just fine. Not sure how far back it goes for each browser, but with the exception of IE (only got added in 8) they've all had support for localstorage for quite a few versions, so logically it should work in many of the older browser versions too.

Test script probably reports a "full storage" in IE, but that's not true, as the error checking is just a bit inaccurate and assumes that's the only error thrown. It's a simple test script after all :P

[ExLibris]

That said, I am concerned about this game's length. If it's 7 times longer in total than Day 1, it'll be enormous.

I have to admit that that concerns me as well. Not from a file size standpoint, but in terms of playability and simply being able to complete the game.

As a for instance, there are already 43 achievements and it takes the game a noticeable amount of time to check each of them. What's it going to be like when there are 200+, which is the way things are headed.

Also, I suspect that a mere three save slots is going to be insufficient for the full game. Ideally there should be some means of keeping track of which save is which as well (although I guess you could always just note that by hand).

Anyhow, I've started adding my bug reports, so that should keep you busy for a bit.

[Wolfschadowe]

As a for instance, there are already 43 achievements and it takes the game a noticeable amount of time to check each of them. What's it going to be like when there are 200+, which is the way things are headed.

Yeah, That concerned me too. About a third of those 43 achievements are game spanning, meaning for testing purposes, they have been abbreviated to day one, but will actually need contributors from following days to be completed. Each day will not have 40+ Achievements. Still, it is a lot of achievements. Each scene has a completion progress achievement, an ending achievement (found all the endings), and a Mastery achievement, plus 2-4 special event achievements.

I can probably cut this down a bit, but I'm not sure I want to. Part of my intent with the achievements is to give completionists that want to see everything a way to track their progress. Currently I'm still leaving out things like conversation branches that add lore but don't effect overall game-play and just limiting to those things that will have an effect later in the game. Also, scenes have an achievement for finding all the endings, but not an achievement for every ending that influences the game later. For example, the Bar scene has 13 endings that influence the game later. The strip club has 8. If I tracked all of those endings as achievements... Well, too many, although the office alternate view tracks to this level as sub-achievements, or achievement progress. There are also some overarching things like kissing every girl in the game at least once through multiple playthroughs (not possible in a single playthrough.) That one is not an actual achievement, but you probably get the idea.

That's part of the reason that I created the alternate achievement view currently accessible from the Intro completed achievement screen. That view gives a status of achievements by day and scene, along with two options for viewing them, either a summary view like the Club and Bar scenes, or a full detail view like the Office scene. I suspect the summary view would be enough but I'm interested in feedback from testers about which of the two (or three if you count summary verses detail in the alternate view) would be the best for the full game. My plan is to use one of the three methods going forward. If one of the alternate methods is used, I'll make a better image for the menu screens with visible hit targets to replace the placeholder city view image that is currently there.

Also, I suspect that a mere three save slots is going to be insufficient for the full game. .

It would be relatively easy to add more save slots, but I don't want to go overboard. At some point it will become cumbersome to the player to keep track. There is a fourth, quicksave slot available in the general game that is intended to help those that like to do a save, play forward a few screens and restore in order to assess their options.

Wolfschadowe

[tlaero]

I spent some time tightening up imgQual and imgRes and joined them into a single utility I'm calling jpgConv. It's in the current drop of AdventureCreator. Results are promising. BEW1.5 went from 371M to 45.

Tlaero

[ExLibris]

As a for instance, there are already 43 achievements and it takes the game a noticeable amount of time to check each of them. What's it going to be like when there are 200+, which is the way things are headed.

Yeah, That concerned me too...

The other downside to having so many achievements is that once you've been playing the game for a while it could take a lot of clicking to find the new achievement you've just earned.

Perhaps the achievements should be broken up into different categories?

Thanks for the feedback Tlaero.

...I want to call out are the images that don't have toptext. For at least some people, a sexy image with a good description is twice as erotic as the image alone. It's a ton of work, I know, but I think you should never have an image without toptext. Whoever said "a picture is worth 1000 words" never met a good writer

It is only when watching the dancers on stage where the toptext is missing, and I was wondering if top text for that would add or detract from just watching. This is an area I was waiting for feedback on before committing one way or the other.

My pesonal opinion is that when Sylvia or Riley are dancing, toptext isn't required. Brad doesn't have any feelings for them, no relationship is going to develop and as far as I know they have no larger relevance to the plot. He's just there to watch them, so putting the player in the same position makes a certain kind of sense.

Natalie, and by extension Azumi, are a different matter though.

[Wolfschadowe]

Perhaps the achievements should be broken up into different categories?

That's what I'm doing in the alternate achievement view. They are categorized by day and scene. Have you had a chance to look at that achievement view yet?

My pesonal opinion is that when Sylvia or Riley are dancing, toptext isn't required. Brad doesn't have any feelings for them, no relationship is going to develop and as far as I know they have no larger relevance to the plot. He's just there to watch them, so putting the player in the same position makes a certain kind of sense.

That was my thought too, although I'm not really consistent on it because I have some commentary during Sylvia's dance, but then a player is more likely to watch Sylvia dance than Riley since Natalie is in the scene at that point.

Wolfschadowe

[tlaero]

Now let's talk about "difficult for the wrong reasons." This is something I struggle with. You want the game to be challenging, but not arbitrarily so. If most players need to look at the code or read a walkthrough, you've made it too hard. At the very least, when they get the answer from the walkthrough, you want them to say, "Oh, that makes sense. I should have thought of that." The biggest problem I have with BEW is that major, major storylines are hidden behind small, easy to miss hit targets.

For instance, as far as I can tell, you have no chance of succeeding in the strip club unless you offer a tip after Natalie has taken her top off. But there's only one screen where you can do that, and the hit target isn't where you'd expect it to be (for the first tip you click on the top of her stocking where you put it, for the second you click on her foot), and there's a large "wrong" hit target to continue, and it's a part where you've clicked through a few times already. No amount of playing on easy or medium can give you a hint for this. No amount of replaying will reveal it. Your only chance of finding it on your own is to carefully sweep your mouse across every inch of the image for every single image in the game. That's neither erotic nor fun. It's one thing to hide a bonus behind a hidden target, but the main success path shouldn't do this.

When people say, "I can't get anywhere with the girls" you want someone else to say, "don't be a jerk to them and they'll come around," not, "You've got to get to the point in her tease where she's topless and on the pole, then click the bottom of the screen."

Tlaero

[tlaero]

My pesonal opinion is that when Sylvia or Riley are dancing, toptext isn't required. Brad doesn't have any feelings for them, no relationship is going to develop and as far as I know they have no larger relevance to the plot. He's just there to watch them, so putting the player in the same position makes a certain kind of sense.

That was my thought too, although I'm not really consistent on it because I have some commentary during Sylvia's dance, but then a player is more likely to watch Sylvia dance than Riley since Natalie is in the scene at that point.
Wolfschadowe

Ignoring the fact that this particular image has toptext, consider the following.

Look at n1clubril007.jpg and imagine it with no text. Now imagine it with:

"Riley sways her hips seductively as she slowly unbuttons her blouse."

It doesn't matter who's in the scene. If its worth doing a sexy image, it's worth writing sexy words to go along with the image. The people who don't care won't read the text anyway. But those of us who DO care will highly appreciate it.

Tlaero

[Wolfschadowe]

The biggest problem I have with BEW is that major, major storylines are hidden behind small, easy to miss hit targets.

Those are not intentional, but I appreciate what you are referring to. I try to fix them where they occur, and I try to make the hit targets sensible so that there is a head slapper type feeling when something that was missed is found later. The paper in the office scene was certainly too hard, especially because it was visible, and non-interactive for two screens prior to when the player needed to click on it. This is resolved in the current version and I think it resolves the issue back to the standard for these games.

For instance, as far as I can tell, you have no chance of succeeding in the strip club unless you offer a tip after Natalie has taken her top off. But there's only one screen where you can do that, and the hit target isn't where you'd expect it to be (for the first tip you click on the top of her stocking where you put it, for the second you click on her foot), and there's a large "wrong" hit target to continue, and it's a part where you've clicked through a few times already. No amount of playing on easy or medium can give you a hint for this. No amount of replaying will reveal it. Your only chance of finding it on your own is to carefully sweep your mouse across every inch of the image for every single image in the game. That's neither erotic nor fun. It's one thing to hide a bonus behind a hidden target, but the main success path shouldn't do this.

I'm not sure I agree with this one, but I'll think about it. I do agree that having to sweep every image for hidden spots is not fun, every hit target should have meaning and be obvious...at least in hindsight. The girl in the window at the bar is an example of that. In this case all the dance screens up to this point have two hit targets, the top 3/4 for watch and the bottom 1/4 for tip. There are about 15 opportunities to tip the dancers using the same hit targets before Natalie has her top off, and 3 screens to tip her with her top off. The only times Sylvia or Natalie can't be tipped are when they are nude, or transitioning between states (i.e. removing clothing)I feel that the tip location consistency creates a precedence that combined with the three critical opportunities to tip Natalie while topless are sufficient to overcome the non-overt tip location. That's just my opinion, and I could be wrong, of course, so I'm open to ideas on how to subtly fix the section if it is indeed too difficult. Maybe make the tip area larger? I don't want to put table-text in, that would be too obvious.

I think a general pass over the image, (1-2 second scan, watching for mouse flickers) should be able to reveal anything on the screen that is non-obvious. Anything smaller should be obvious (at least in hindsight, i.e. lips to kiss, ass to stare/grab, etc...), or, at least obvious in hindsight.

Wolfschadowe

EDIT - Looking at those screens again, the tip areas are smaller than I thought. They are the bottom 1/8 of the screen. I'll make them larger, maybe the bottom 1/3 or 1/4.

[Wolfschadowe]

It doesn't matter who's in the scene. If its worth doing a sexy image, it's worth writing sexy words to go along with the image. The people who don't care won't read the text anyway. But those of us who DO care will highly appreciate it.

You sold me. Top text for all the dance images coming in the next build. Guest authors welcome to contribute.

Wolfschadowe

[ExLibris]

I think a general pass over the image, (1-2 second scan, watching for mouse flickers) should be able to reveal anything on the screen that is non-obvious. Anything smaller should be obvious (at least in hindsight, i.e. lips to kiss, ass to stare/grab, etc...), or, at least obvious in hindsight.

Alternatively, if you use Firefox, you can just tab through the links on the screen.

However, I do agree that concealing links, either by making them small or by having a more obvious link present to distract the player, is not a very interesting form of gameplay. I actually wouldn't mind all that much if all of the options were visible as text links. You would be sacrificing a certain amount of player agency by giving that information to the player rather than allowing them to find it, but it would eliminate the tedious business of actually finding the links and focus the player on deciding what to do next.

I do think that this game is going to be difficult, perhaps overly so, but that has more to do with its size and complexity.

That's what I'm doing in the alternate achievement view. They are categorized by day and scene. Have you had a chance to look at that achievement view yet?

I did glance at it, but unfortunately the cityscape made me think it wasn't implemented yet. On closer inspection it does seem to be much easier to use. However, I do think it needs a bit more explanation about how it works.

[Greebo]

...ass to stare/grab, etc...), or, at least obvious in hindsight.

It must be my warped sense of something, but using hindsight to refer to ass staring made me grin!

[tlaero]

In this case all the dance screens up to this point have two hit targets, the top 3/4 for watch and the bottom 1/4 for tip. There are about 15 opportunities to tip the dancers using the same hit targets before Natalie has her top off, and 3 screens to tip her with her top off.

Wow, I missed all of those. I found the tip when Natalie had her top on, because I clicked the top of her stocking. The only way I found any other was by doing "findstr /i ntempa *.htm" to figure out why I couldn't make any progress.

I don't think clicking empty areas is right, though I've been known to use empty area hit targets in my games ("get behind her"). I think you've got to make it so that the person is clicking something in the image. Since tips are put in stockings or panties, it's fine to have the tip target be on those spots. I understand what you were doing. From the POV camera angle, holding up a tip would show up at the bottom of the screen. But it certainly didn't work for me.

Maybe if "Continue" was always the upper left quarter of the screen and anything interesting was over an intelligible hit area? That way you don't think, "oh, clicking her is just continue again." Or, better yet, "Continue" is always table text so the image border lets you know there's something to do.

That said, I disagree with ExLibris. I think hit targets are good and don't think you should make them all be table text.

Tlaero

[tlaero]

The more I think about this, the more I like it. From now on, in my games there will never be a hit target that is just "continue." Continue will always be in the bottom table as "(Continue.)" That way, if you see a yellow outline on the image, you know there's something worthwhile to click in there somewhere.

I think the other things I said are still valid, especially having hit targets not be on empty space. But I think the continue problem is the biggest offender and easiest part to fix.

Tlaero