Well, what can I say about this? (0_-)
Only a little:
- Regarding dead ends - I tried to avoid them as much as possible, and if they exist somewhere, it's only because of errors in the code.
- Regarding time management, salaries and the cost of some actions - yes, this requires debugging and more precise tuning, I selected price tags for, as it turned out, a little broken code, I will fix this soon. I am also trying to remove or rework the additional spending of action points after entering a location, and accordingly going into negative values.
- Regarding adding time... I thought about it, really - but it doesn't fit into the idea of the game. Although it's too early to talk about it, because nothing fits into the idea of the game at all yet, except for one negative ending.
- Regarding corruption, character development and so on - I'm not a min-maxer, I respect halftones and gray areas. And no, the game world will not be completely filled with assholes and nymphomaniacs, although, undoubtedly, many want more interaction with the characters.
- Archetypes are great. Template behavior is great. But it's even better when you have the opportunity, skill and desire to work with it, developing it. Partly for this reason, in the first version, it's not so easy to get to the NSFW content with Jenny, and once you get to it, a dialogue branch opens. In general, yes, there will be archetypes and simplifications - after all, this is not a plot-romantic story, but rather a game about resource and time management, but I will try to make the characters more non-standard, and apply situations and locations not so trivially. Unique locations... Definitely not in the near future. If there are any, there won't be many of them, and they will not open right away, requiring the performance of certain actions or progression through the characters' plot. I don't see the point in inflating the available places beyond measure - I prefer to fill the existing ones with content and variability. Besides, it fits into the logic of the game world - the character gets to an unfamiliar place with a clear initial goal, as a person who has changed his place of residence more than once, I can confidently say - when you have moved and are broke, you do not waste time searching for interesting places.
- The appearance of the characters, their design and the general design and style of the game... yeahhhhh... for now this is my Achilles heel... There are several options that I am considering, including the introduction of dialogue boxes, but I do not have the minimum taste and knowledge in CSS and design, so this is postponed for now. I am already proud that I thought of making the dialogue highlighting in color, trying to select a "shade" for each character. Not the best solution, but for 0.1-0.5 it will do as for me.
- The writing style is a sore subject. Different options are tried, but everything rests on experience. Unfortunately, without being a genius from the first scene you cannot start writing something gorgeous. You need to learn, select, find a balance, and so on. In general, I'm in the process. And also translation... translation from language to language loses a lot, and translation in a topic like this... I'm working on that too.
- As for the picture description, that's not quite true. Pictures are selected to match the description or idea. If there are a couple of minor deviations in the image or text, the text will take precedence. I'll try to demonstrate this later.
In fact, I'm just trying to eat this pie gradually, without choking or getting indigestion. I have a relatively clear plan, I can see the end result and the approximate final structure. Will I succeed? Shit, I hope so. I don't want to bloat or oversaturate the game - because this is my training ground for mastering skills, and because it's not a full-fledged sandbox with an open world. If you look into the code, you can see that the approach to creating events in each location is different, and this is due to the fact that I learn and try different methods. I admit, when creating it, I was mostly guided by such a relatively old game as Debt, ideally - Simply Mindy. I want to do something similar, at least - try. The timer is one and a half months, endings, ways to achieve them and a relative lack of resources as an incentive. But this is VERY far away.
And I am really grateful for the feedback. It's awesome. I especially appreciate it when people write their opinions to me in letters like this. Thank you!
