BEW - Ongoing Dev Thread (DAZ Artists Still Wanted)

[MysteryMan2333]

Just recently stumbled upon this gem of a game. Really impressive stuff for this early in the development cycle! It's hard to believe that this is your first attempt at the genre because I think this has the potential to become one of the all-time great VDate games if you actually manage to finish it.

Chalk me up as one of those people who didn't realize how fully fledged out the bar scene was at the end of day 1. I thought you could just make out a little and call it a day, but wow, was I wrong.

If you keep losing playtesters, let me know as I'd love to get more up to date releases of this game. Either way, best of luck to you wolfschadowe!

[Wolfschadowe]

Update to the Game Progress Post:

May 22nd, 2014 - I just finished coding the last page for the day 2 office. Looks like it comes in at 697 web pages for that scene bringing the game total up to 1831 pages. I still need to do my logic and validation pass and spellcheck on the scene. I have maybe two or three renders to do for the home transition, along with a bunch of webpages to account for all the branches coming together, also I need to polish off the remaining bugs that playtesters found, and then this will be out the door. Playtesters, watch for a release in the next week or so. Those in playtest group 3, watch for a PM from me sometime next week for invites! Those of you who are still interested will come on board with this release.

I still haven't got the story working for the Natalie corruption path yet, but I don't really need it until release 0.6.7, so I have time to get it figured out. Currently it's too forced, and businesslike and I need to soften it a bit somehow. I've decided to push it out and work on it later after my subconscious has had some time to chew on it a bit.

A question for anyone who's playing the released demo. Has anyone obtained the "BARFLY" Mastery Achievement yet? How about the "DRUNKARD" or "BAR GAMER" Achievements? The DRUNKARD achievement is earned for completing all the bar activities, and the BAR GAMER achievement is earned for finding all the endings to the scene. The BARFLY Mastery Achievement is earned by finding all 9 achievements in the scene, including the DRUNKARD and BAR GAMER achievements.

And also:

Just recently stumbled upon this gem of a game. Really impressive stuff for this early in the development cycle! It's hard to believe that this is your first attempt at the genre because I think this has the potential to become one of the all-time great VDate games if you actually manage to finish it.

Wow! Thanks for the kind words MysteryMan, and thanks for playing! I hope the full game lives up to expectations.

I thought you could just make out a little and call it a day, but wow, was I wrong.

Earning the BARFLY Mastery Achievement is the indicator that you've seen everything in the scene. Earning both the OFFICE MAX and BARFLY Mastery Achievements means you've seen just about everything in the Demo. There are probably some minor conversation branches that may have been missed, but it's a good indicator of completion. Each of the 13 endings to the bar scene lead to different paths through the rest of the game. Some paths only have minor differences, while others are significantly different, and there is overlap. For example, endinng 1 may allow paths A, B, E, and F, while ending 2 is very similar, it allows paths A, C, E, and H, to be determined by later choices in later scenes, and so on with all the endings. Over the course of the three acts, new paths will open and others will close depending on player choices leading to the ultimate ending at the end of Act 3.

If you keep losing playtesters, let me know as I'd love to get more up to date releases of this game. Either way, best of luck to you wolfschadowe!

I have one playtest slot remaining for Group 4, that will onboard with version 0.5.0. If you're interested, PM me and I'll put you on the list. First come, first served.
I'm not currently planning on replacing inactive playtesters. Part of the reason that I'm bringing on 4 waves of testers is because I expect everyone's availability to vary throughout development of the game, so some who sit dormant for a few releases, or need a break is understandable. Hopefully they will re-engage later after a breather.

Wolfschadowe

[crossy]

Awesome dude, keep up the good work. I played this again recently and even though I had found most if not all of the paths the first time I was enthralled as I played through it again and again and again. I may even play it again tonight! Some of the achievements are hard to get / find but thats a good thing I feel.

Looking forward to play testing when I get my chance!

[Wolfschadowe]

Awesome dude, keep up the good work. I played this again recently and even though I had found most if not all of the paths the first time I was enthralled as I played through it again and again and again. I may even play it again tonight! Some of the achievements are hard to get / find but thats a good thing I feel.

Looking forward to play testing when I get my chance!

Thanks crossy, I'm glad that the game has some legs. My intent has been to make a game that someone can play to burnout, set it aside a while, come back to it to play again and be taken all over again. Hopefully that will hold true to others as well.

PS. You are in group 3, so watch for an invite as soon as this release is ready.

Fun fact: The spell-check export I just did came out to 72,999 words. Subtract the number of webpages (page filenames come with the export) at 1,831, that brings the total actual content wordcount to 71,168 words.

Wolfschadowe

[tlaero]

Nice, Wolf. Just to put that into perspective, my first novel was 80,000 words. Your game is officially huge. <smiles>

Tlaero

[Comis]

A question for anyone who's playing the released demo. Has anyone obtained the "BARFLY" Mastery Achievement yet? How about the "DRUNKARD" or "BAR GAMER" Achievements? The DRUNKARD achievement is earned for completing all the bar activities, and the BAR GAMER achievement is earned for finding all the endings to the scene. The BARFLY Mastery Achievement is earned by finding all 9 achievements in the scene, including the DRUNKARD and BAR GAMER achievements.

Just for the record, I've obtained the BARFLY achievement twice at this point. I did it before, but apparently the cookies expire after 30 days, so I lost all the achievements. Still, once you know what they are, it doesn't take that long to get them back, so I did it again.

[Wolfschadowe]

Just for the record, I've obtained the BARFLY achievement twice at this point. I did it before, but apparently the cookies expire after 30 days, so I lost all the achievements. Still, once you know what they are, it doesn't take that long to get them back, so I did it again.

Hmm... the BEW cookies shouldn't be expiring quite that fast. They should persist for a year or more, not counting clearing browser history cookies. Also they are browser dependent, meaning that any achievements earned via Chrome will not show up in IE or Firefox. The same is true for Save games as well.

Has anyone else had disappearing achievements syndrome at 30 days?

Wolfschadowe

[tlaero]

We switched storage methods fairly recently. Maybe the previous achievements were in the old format.

Tlaero

[Comis]

I have only played it in IE, so that can't be the reason. I haven't downloaded a newer version, so any changes made with the storage method shouldn't impact it. I'm almost positive I haven't deleted my cookies in that time, but I suppose there is a slight possibility that I did and forgot about it. All I know for certain was that when I last played in mid-April, I had all the achievements. When I went to check last night, I was down to 3, and it wouldn't let me view the ones I had. After playing through the game, I'm back to where I was, and it still has me listed at 32 of 57 achievements, 3 of 3 for the intro, 17 of 26 achievements for Wednesday, with the office (3 of 3 although 10 are shown when I select it) and bar (10 of 10) listed as 100% complete. Now that I'm thinking of it, the math doesn't add up. Neither 3 or 10+10=17. Also, 3 or 10+3+10 doesn't equal 32. Now I'm curious about where it is getting the numbers.

[Wolfschadowe]

The public version hasn't changed since the achievements were added, so it's not the public store change. Another possibility is that the localhost cookies all share the same public store. What that means is that if you play a lot of these games downloaded to your computer, it's possible to fill the public store and older information is deleted on a first in-first out basis.

Regarding the achievements mismatch, when the original download's hosting service died and I uploaded the later version, it actually began with full day 1 and some day 2 content. I never intended to re-release, but since I had to upload and provide a new link, (and because I'd lost the original proof of concept), I stripped out the additional content from the current test build, so the available scenes were the same but new features like achievements would be present. It is entirely possible that I missed some from the tracking and it is displaying extra numbers for the strip club scene that aren't possible to get in the demo. In other words, the achievement reporting in the demo is likely buggy due to my quick and dirty hack job.

With that said, earned achievements shouldn't be disappearing unless your public store is filling up, or you delete cookies. Even if they aren't reported correctly, that's just a cosmetic thing, and the back-end knows what you've earned.

Wolfschadowe

[Wolfschadowe]

Playtesters,

Version 0.3.0 is now available on the BEW site.

Welcome to the round 3 playtesters. Check your PM's for login if you've already confirmed your status. If your credentials don't work...sometimes a space sneaks in at the end of the password when I copy/paste it to the forum. I'm checking out for 12 hours or so. time for ZZzzzz.

Wolfschadowe

[Wolfschadowe]

Status update from the first page:

June 11th, 2014 - Version 0.3.0 was released a little under two weeks ago and the wave 3 playtesters were onboarded. There are two who haven't responded yet, but I'll give them to the end of the month before swapping them out for the top two wave 4 testers. I know we all have lives.

Most of the last week or so has been spent doing bugfixes on the last release. I also reworked the Achievements status reporting section since it was broken and rebalanced a few of the paths to make them actually accessible. Finally I've got the day 2 bonus scene about half done. Bonus scenes are linear scenes unlocked by earning all achievements for a day, and show part of the story from a different perspective. For example, the day one bonus scene shows what happens when Emily shows up at the Bar if Brad went to the strip club during day 1. Those scenes are pretty easy from my standpoint since there's no game logic or branches, just various forms of "next". I haven't started rendering the day 1 bonus scene yet.

Also I've got several paths of the day 2 bar date storyboarded through the bar portion. The day 2 dates begin at one of three locations, and will generally branch out to a new location for the Act 1 Climax (pun definitely intended). That new location could be Brad's Apartment, Emily's place or Faith's, as examples.

Again, I'd like to thank all the playtesters for your help, input, dedication, and patience! The game would probably be crap without all of you.

Wolfschadowe

[MysteryMan2333]

Just chiming in because I figure we're about due for an update

[Wolfschadowe]

Just chiming in because I figure we're about due for an update

Sure, why not.
From the front page:

June 30th, 2014 Mainly been building out the day 2 bar over the last couple of weeks, doing renders and tuning the branches and logic to account for the multiple ways to get to each scene and handle them. There are seven success paths through the day 2 bar, and each can be a failure path as well. The paths are somewhat dynamic in that choices made during the first night at the bar will determine which of the 7 paths are available. Next, based on player actions through previous scenes, the game determines which paths are passable. For example, let's take paths A-G. That's seven paths. Now, in the Day 1 Bar scene, if Faith Joins in on the fun, that opens paths A, B, C, and F at the Day 2 Bar. Now if after Emily leaves, Faith gives Brad a blowjob, all four paths are still available, but now paths A, C, and F are failure paths, but B is still a success path if Brad makes it through the day 2 office. On the other hand, if Brad just gets a kiss from Faith at the end of Day 1, then A and B are failure paths, but C and F are passable, unless other activities in other scenes close them down. Oh, and if Brad gets the blowjob, but fails at the office on day 2, that may open path G as a success path, and close off A, B, and C.

The key here is that whether or not the paths are passable, or available are backed by the story and characterization. Trial and error won't be necessary to figure out the magic combinations. Well, maybe some trial and error, but it will be informed trial and error. When the player fails a path, they should understand why they failed and likely on a second play-through of the same path see the hints and foreshadowing about what to choose. In other words, win/lose paths should be sensible and decipherable from story elements, not just random hit/miss. Back to the example, on some paths, if Emily finds out about the Blowjob from Faith...Well, let's say she's not going to be happy about it. Yet on different paths she may not find out about it, or may not care when she does find out. The key here is that passing or failing should make sense if the player knows the characters and story. Failures should be "oh, that makes sense" and not "What the fuck?", although often failures are based on someones relationship being too low, there are also failures based on past decisions.

Now, also keep in mind, this is just for the Bar destination during day 2. If the player chooses the date in a second destination, there may be new paths available, such as K, L, and O. But with a blowjob, only K is passable. With just a kiss and going home, K and O are passable, and under other circumstances, only L is passable. Meanwhile, starting out at the strip club on day one, opens paths A, D and G at the bar, and M, O, and N at the second destination on day 2. So basically, decisions made in the scene that's available to the public at the bar have lasting effects throughout the game, as do decisions made in subsequent scenes. the choices you make will follow you throughout the game...and sometimes come back to haunt you. Paths are chosen based on actions through the game, and then modified by other actions. For example, Faith joining Brad and Emily in the booth is one path. If Faith just watches, that's a second path. The blowjob is a modifier to both paths that determines pass/fail criteria later, and also locks or opens branches to the paths. This is just one example, there are many more modfiers throughout the game.

Once the player gets on a finishing path for Act 1, around the middle of the day 2 bar scene (or about the middle of the other dates for the end of day 2), that path is locked, for better or worse, until the end of Act 1, with fewer options to change paths and fewer branches through the climax of the Act. It's not quite linear at that point, decisions will still increase or decrease relationship points, and it's still possible to fail out of a relationship, or even lose the game. Once the player advances to day 3, most specifically the afternoon of day 3 when Act 2 begins, the game opens up again with multiple branches.

Anyway, progress continues, and I'm still having a lot of fun building the game.

Wolfschadowe

[smokindavis]

That sounds amazing.