@Twistty &
@Cirelc Thank you for the work on this thread.
Due to my poor memory and lack of morning stimulants, I believe the following are a summary of the suggestions from the prior thread. If I missed something or misstated please reply, as all of this is going back into my road map.
1) The prolog is too short before being dumped into the sandbox game. I agree and was holding off until I could afford the art assets for older people. I've already spent several hundred dollars on the art assets I have and was going to wait until Patreon at least helps me recover costs some. As someone who is unemployed and using this as an opportunity to change careers towards novel writing (Writing a fantasy novel under another pen name) and game development, my resources are limited. This was the reason I decided against animation until later. A single image takes between 45 minutes and 3 hours to render on my current hardware. That being said, being caught out telling versus showing hit home to the writer in me, so I've rendered a placeholder image of the conversation with Emily's parents and am rewriting the prolog into a scene showing the final fight with her parents before she makes the huge mistake of leaving her safe home for California. I'm adding this to my 0.0.3 release that I was planning making available for alpha testing today. This may delay release as I finish up this weekend, we'll see.
2) A comment about not liking games that force the character into making bad choices to advance the plot. It makes unbelievable characters who "Oh! A dark alley, I should go there!" Couldn't agree more, I'd like to say it just seems that way at the moment as I don't have all the content in yet that shows the good paths; however, I did make a choice on what content I created first that gave the impression. I'm making and releasing an adult game before its complete so I focused on the path that would show adult content early so as to build up a following. Also, the early bad events show the consequences of her bad choice in the prolog of leaving home before she was ready.
That being said, I want to tell a branching story with both good and bad options, believe-ability and self-harm should be the player choice and not mine. The theme I want to explore is the long term consequences of the choices we make. To that end, I want the easy or impulsive choice to lead towards bad (Giving up her dream) endings and only the series of hardest choices allowing Emily to stay true and become a movie star. This path will be in the game and I hope I do it justice, but it will be the hardest and slowest path to accomplish.
That's what I remember from the old thread, please comment if I missed something. I'm running a poll on my Patreon page for what to focus on in update 0.0.4. So far the vote is leaning towards doing Max's apartment.
When I plotted out this game (Yes, I have a huge mind mapping of the full novel plot arcs with the major branches) I decided that this game would be released as a free download on Itch with my support coming from Patreon versus game sales. Now that I'm OP on this page, we need to address the tension between my pre-release content on Patreon and the links here. I believe the best answer is to let this community to decide. I will go ahead and update the links to the version on Itch as this is the most tested and stable version
UNLESS someone in this community posts a link using the link guidelines to to an updated version. Then I'll update the links to that version. I believe this is the best way to avoid my conflict of interest.
Without giving away spoilers, If you want to understand the general direction the game will progress in, read The anatomy of story by John Truby. I use his cheat sheet to plot my novels:
1) Self-revelation, need and desire
2) Backstory and story world. <- We are currently here
3) Showing weakness and need
4) Inciting event
5) Desire
6) Ally or allies
7) Opponent, Mistrey
8) Fake ally opponent
9) Changed desire and motive. First revelation and decision
10) Plan
11) Opponent's plan and main counterattack
12) Drive
13) Attack by ally
14) Apparent defeat
15) obsessive drive, changed desire and motive. Second revelation and decision
16) Audience revelation
17) Third revelation and decision
18) Gate, gauntlet, visit to death
19) Battle
20) Self-revelation
21) Moral decision
22) New equilibrium
