Letting new people know that I have no intention of making a guide is more relevant to the conversation than a simple "No, there isn't one." because it tells people that there will never be one from my end.
I suppose that came out wrong. The proper response would have been both "There's no fan-made guide, and the dev can't make one themselves without taking time away from making the game." But the way they phrased it sounded like the dev not making one was the sole reason one would never exist, and came across as saying that they shouldn't have asked. (I may have read too much into that last part, as I've definitely had too many experiences in other threads with people basically saying "How dare you even ask that reasonable question.")
I don't want to get into some kind of flame war with you, so I'll just say this: you've written repeatedly about how easy it is to execute your idea for a perfect walkthrough. We don't need to have this conversation every single month in the lead up to each release.
I'm sorry if it comes off that way, but I'm not trying to argue that this is some easy thing that has to be done (which I tried to make clear in my last post). I was simply repeating what I had said in previous posts to explain why their claim of it being an impossibility is inaccurate. In the same sense that someone else repeated your previous response to the issue, I tried to further clarify based on the same things that were mentioned before. I guess I could've just linked to the previous post, but I never feel right giving such an impersonal reply. I tend to overexplain things because I want them to be as clear as possible, and since someone brought up an inaccurate claim (that an exponentially increasing number of guides would have to be written), I wanted to explain how it could be made more efficient. (And/or to workshop some basic structural ideas in the case that someone does decide to make one.) It's still a lot of work, and if nobody wants to go through all the trouble, that's perfectly reasonable. I certainly wouldn't take it for granted for some internet porn game. I just wanted to elaborate on the fact that, in addition to the dev not being able to provide their own walkthrough, there simply hasn't been anyone who's taken the trouble to write up a fan-made guide.
(Edit: To add to this (and explain why the next paragraph is just me going back to the topic), discussion on how a theoretical guide could be written is also a discussion on the nature and structure of the game itself, which I would think shouldn't be taken as too much of an off-topic discussion. I like discussing elements of game design and structure, and at its core, this game basically is a sort of converging flowchart with a bunch of variables saved outside of its normal flow. I'm certainly not trying to be hostile, and I would hope that going into excessive detail wouldn't make it come across that way, especially considering that I've seen actual devs of other games come in here and say something as ridiculous as "this game would be 10x better if it was free roam" without even offering an explanation on how this would fit within the kind of game you're trying to make. (Seriously, what was up with that?) I'm a game designer at heart, but previously-mentioned personal issues that I'd rather not go into keep me from being able to actually make any games myself, which is why I spend a lot of my time workshopping ideas and discussing the structure of games that interest me.)
It'd be more intuitive if all the scenes were connected by a flowchart but that would be one gigantic chart.
Yeah, I would say one of the most important prerequisites to making such a guide would be having some program that lets you write collapsible bullet lists and/or collapsible flowcharts. If I knew how to use a program like that, I might be able to *at least* get a basic framework down that could help people with the "invisible choices" issue, though I still wouldn't have the time to invest in finding out and listing all the stat requirements/gains. (I also doubt such a program would allow you to Ctrl-F what you're looking for...)
Incidentally (and on the subject of not usually wanting to just link to a previous post), I did my own mockup here, although if memory serves, the formatting on this site didn't allow enough sub-bullets (or whatever you call it) to cover the various splits. That's one reason a collapsible flowchart would be much better suited to this sort of thing.
Edit: Ah fudge, putting spoiler tags around the quote to keep it from wasting space causes a bunch of issues with all the square brackets I used in it.
Here's the post I was trying to pull it from.
it won't show the choices you need "kitty" the assistant to research by using a black light to summon her for her to investigate someone.
Yeah, this is the main issue I'm referring to. A lot of things can be bypassed using the cheat (although a guide would still be useful for people who want to get where they want "naturally"), but there are certain things that only become available if you took certain previous options. Right now, the only way to even know that they're there is to stumble upon them, overhear people talking about them, or in some cases by looking in the pictures and noticing that there's one that you haven't seen yet. Having some other way of knowing that they exist would make a big difference.
I wonder if, in the absence of everything else, it would at least be reasonable if we got together and made up a simple list of the most major invisible/missable "branches" and basic instructions on how to trigger them, like Brittany's maid subplot and the various fates you can choose for Monica? I know that Brittany's plot can only be triggered by asking Kitty about her or using a blue light in one of her scenes (although there may have been new ways added since then). I'm not really sure what else is "hidden" so far.
