What would you want in future HTML Dating Sims?

[tlaero]

Wed did animated gifs in our early games, but I like series of images animations much more. They're much more versatile and give the writer more control.

Tlaero

[SoulMate]

I should start by saying how much i like the HTML games.
They are so much better than many of the flash games floating around on the web.
Especially the storyline, replayability, challenging endings and also the images.

Finding every ending (even sometimes a secret) is a real challenge.
Looking into the source code makes it a bit easier, but sometime still challenging.

There are also a few drawbacks in these games. For example, they open in a new window, the title tag when hovering over the images area tags are unhandy, saving the game state is not always possible (mostly in the older games) and the interface has not really my type of design.

Even with these drawbacks, i admire the work and the creators of these games. They did a wonderfull job!
I know how hard testing can be, and these games had a lot of it.

But me, as a webdeveloper, couldn't resist to create something that could solve a few issues i had.
So (even before i know this forum of which i was unfamiliar with yesterday) i made a script that changed all the html files into a single game.js (acutally json) and used that data.js file as a input file for a new game engine.
creating the data.js file does not work on all games.
i recently started to work on support for some newer html games and so far Amy and Jessica work and others to some extend.

The script that analyses the code to create a data.js file also found a few issues in the current games.
There is still a lot of work to do to make this even better, but with some help and testing

The game runs serverside and local through html/javascript/css and is tested on Firefox/Chrome and limited on different versions of IE.
The game can be saved and loaded (into the browser localstorage) and a debugger is available (but currently hidden by css "display: none")

I was looking for a way to share this code, so thats the reason i found this forum.
[removed links]

[LRM]

@ SoulMate
Do you have written permission (for every game/site you provide your modification) of the game owners/authors/copyright holders to perform this modification?
If the answer is no I suggest you remove your links.
If I must there will be consequence!
Lou

[SoulMate]

@ SoulMate
Do you have written permission (for every game/site you provide your modification) of the game owners/authors/copyright holders to perform this modification?
If the answer is no I suggest you remove your links.
If I must there will be consequence!
Lou

Sorry Lou,
Didn't realize the copyright. Bad mistake.
I removed the links to the website and my scripts with modifications to the original games.

Ill try to contact the authors first

[LRM]

Thanks, I'm not trying to be a hard ass (MSgt Ret, comes pretty easy). I don't want people to stop posting links to their product because we overlooked something and allow this or any unauthorized modification.
Lou

[redle]

It sounds like you are just wrapping the data and not actually modifying anything (although it's possible I'm misreading it). The best way to do this and remain legally in the clear is to distribute the tool that does the wrapping. That way you distribute only your own work and people run the tool themselves on whichever games they already have.

[LRM]

There's legal and there's moral. If legal for me to punch you in the nose, I'll bet you wouldn't be happy if I did.
I'm trying to look out for Shark's, SoulMate's and the copyright holder's interests.
Lou

[SoulMate]

@redle, i think its a grey area.
I'm not really changing the game itself. But like converting an music file to an .mp3 file wouldn't change the actual song, but stil the original is altered.
So to be better safe than sorry, ill handle this the way is should be done.

Ill also look at my scripts to see if i could make some kind of editor to create such data.js (json) files so the owners/creators can make the transitions themselves.

[LRM]

I like the way you think!
Thanks again.
Lou

[tlaero]

Amy and Jessica are extremely old with simple html. It's more interesting to see how things work with something more recent like Coffee For Kiesha. I'm interested, though in hearing what problem you're trying to solve by moving to json. As a game developer, what does it do to make my life better or what functionality does it let me add to my games that I couldn't with the current method?

Tlaero

[SoulMate]

The more complex games requires some more coding.
Mostly converting the _game.js to soms predefined json structure (by hand takes a while, by code is hard to parse).
I'm thinking to make my own implementation of _functions.js which act as a API on the engine and use _game.js for now, that would save me a lot of time.

The advantages of having all the code in the engine en the configuration in json files is:
You can add functionality to (older) games without having to replace a lot of html files.
With JSON it's possible to make scripts that check for logic bugs (to some extend) (i found a lot in the games from vdategames.com, like missing pictures, broken links, weird characters in the page.
Currently there is a kind of debugger integrated, which
- Shows you all the links in the page and what happens when you click a link (checks the game variables and see if the conditions are met and to what page you are redirected)
- Shows all changed variables
- make it possible to save the game, change some things in data.js (JSON) and restore the old state and continue testing
- Change game variables (not yet possible but not that hard to build)
It's more easy to change the styling of the whole game at once.
And probably more interesting stuff

There are also disadvantages:
It's harder to write custom code which is not included in the engine itself (I'm already thinking of an api for reading and writing variables, and redirects to pages for example)
Requires more understanding of javascript code to improve the engine (although the code is not really complex)

@TLaero
If you allow me to publish (or send them to you some other way) the current data.js files for some of your games you could test them for yourself.

[Super]

So, if I am to understand this correctly, this would make saving easier and have it so people can't cheat by changing the URL?

I must admit, I'm not too sure about what you're offering, but I might be interested for my WIP.

[SoulMate]

I made some modifications to the game-engine to implement more features from Coffee For Kiesha.
It's now possible to reach some (maybe all) of the ending, but the minigames, sounds and image animations, and score tekst are not working yet.
Other games are also improved by this modifications

The game-engine itself can be downloaded here (for the next 14 days)
http://www.fileconvoy.com/dfl.php?id=ge ... 330f33176d

Currently its hard to create a data.js (JSON) file, because it needs to be done by hand.
An interface to create such files should be welcome. Don't know if i have the time myself to create such thing.
data.js files can also be created from most existing games (to some extend) by running analyse.py (which required python and maybe a unix environment)
NOTE: the structure of data.js could change in the future

I'm curious if someone could get it running

Some screenshots:
Coffee For Kiesha


Lissette

[tlaero]

But AC already does all of that. I understand saying, "We have this problem, and we need to make these changes to fix it." But it sounds like you're just changing things for the sake of changing them. I don't see the benefit there.

Not trying to dissuade you from spending your time and effort however you want, but an alternate approach is to create a game, see what part is hard, and work toward fixing THAT problem. _game.js is not the difficult part of making these games. If you really want to help HTML Dating Sims creators, came up with a way to simplify making deeply branching dialog trees. Or find a way to automatically fix pop through in Daz. Or help us find a good way to do hit targets on touch devices. If someone solves any of those problems, I'd be all over them.

Tlaero

[SoulMate]

True, AC does do a good job for creating the game logic.
If the analyse script keep doing his job, there is no reason to build a new tool for that.

The code that AC produce, could be improved so it will be more mobile friendly but there will be some limitations and i guess we'll run into some boundaries.
Most of these boundaries are solved by the new enigne, which i think has less limitations because it runs as a single page application.

I spend an hour to modify the engine to be more touch device supported. The only thing that bothers me is that you can't see where to click on a image (there is no mouse to see the hovers)
Some screenshots (some of them have the debugger turned on) made on my mobile and tablet
http://share.pho.to/5OGAa

About the deeply branching dialog trees, what are the problem you run into creating them? I Like to think about that one.

What do you mean by "automatically fix pop through in Daz" ?