- Thread starter Oedipal_Underwear
- Start date
- Oct 24, 2019
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Agree with the others that Twine/SugarCube format is a good starting environment for things like this. Harlowe doesn't seem to have caught on nearly as much since it came much later and doesn't strike me as making things any easier to write. If anything, it seems to make it harder for folk who might want to pull in more javascript frameworks to help out as they grow more experienced.
There's a number of reasons why you don't want to have your VN reach out to pull media from online sources.
- The internet is constantly changing. Your links which are there today may go away quickly. This is often called "bit rot".
- You may piss off content providers by using their links for your VN. They may retaliate in ways that hurt your consumers and your reputation. You may be held liable and sued for infringement by rent seeking parasites.
- When I see online links, I don't know whether they may hide driveby attacks or attempts to monetize your VN in unsavory ways. That's an immediate hit on my opinion of you, and you haven't even established any good standing with me yet.
- Your consumer may download this VN and go somewhere where the internet isn't available. Think of places like China that sit behind a massive government run firewall or places deep underground or in the ocean. Your VN won't work there.
In your Harlowe project (or SugarCube if you switch) create a folder called "media" where Twine ends up publishing your html file. Go back to each of your links in your VN to open it in a browser. Then do a "save as" on each image or video to save it to this folder. You may want to create subfolders to organize things (eg "images" and "videos", etc) if you think you will end up with enough files that it would end up getting out of hand under a single folder. You can rename the imgur generated gobbledygook filename to something descriptive while you save.
Change your links from the img src="
There's a number of reasons why you don't want to have your VN reach out to pull media from online sources.
- The internet is constantly changing. Your links which are there today may go away quickly. This is often called "bit rot".
- You may piss off content providers by using their links for your VN. They may retaliate in ways that hurt your consumers and your reputation. You may be held liable and sued for infringement by rent seeking parasites.
- When I see online links, I don't know whether they may hide driveby attacks or attempts to monetize your VN in unsavory ways. That's an immediate hit on my opinion of you, and you haven't even established any good standing with me yet.
- Your consumer may download this VN and go somewhere where the internet isn't available. Think of places like China that sit behind a massive government run firewall or places deep underground or in the ocean. Your VN won't work there.
In your Harlowe project (or SugarCube if you switch) create a folder called "media" where Twine ends up publishing your html file. Go back to each of your links in your VN to open it in a browser. Then do a "save as" on each image or video to save it to this folder. You may want to create subfolders to organize things (eg "images" and "videos", etc) if you think you will end up with enough files that it would end up getting out of hand under a single folder. You can rename the imgur generated gobbledygook filename to something descriptive while you save.
Change your links from the img src="
You must be registered to see the links
" to src="media/whatever.ext" for whatever you called it on save. When you finish, congratulations. Your VN is totally offline. Note that html knows that "/" is the one true directory and filename separator and not that "\" bullshit that Bill Gates and M$ tried to pull with Winders.
- Oct 24, 2019
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A couple more things to keep in mind when you do this change. Linux and other non-Winders platforms use case sensitive filesystems. Winders and NTFS will allow you to use mixed case when saving, but it will totally ignore it on load. So you can introduce broken file link problems if the filename in your img src tag is not the same case as the file on disk.
The easiest way to fight this problem is to leave everything lowercase. Don't let winders hide the file extensions in Explorer or some tool you may use may end up doing an uppercase JPG as the extension when you save and you won't see it.
Publish your content by packing both the html and the media folder content up into an archive using something free and open source licensed like 7zip. There's no reason to spend good money on things like Winzip and Winrar. Use the version number on the archive name. That way there will be no confusion between versions. Don't have the archive with the title as the top level folder in it unless you put the version number on it. That way menu pulldowns like "extract archive here autodetect subfolder" will use the archive filename as the new foldername and not end up extracting your new release on top of the user's old one.
The easiest way to fight this problem is to leave everything lowercase. Don't let winders hide the file extensions in Explorer or some tool you may use may end up doing an uppercase JPG as the extension when you save and you won't see it.
Publish your content by packing both the html and the media folder content up into an archive using something free and open source licensed like 7zip. There's no reason to spend good money on things like Winzip and Winrar. Use the version number on the archive name. That way there will be no confusion between versions. Don't have the archive with the title as the top level folder in it unless you put the version number on it. That way menu pulldowns like "extract archive here autodetect subfolder" will use the archive filename as the new foldername and not end up extracting your new release on top of the user's old one.
- Mar 30, 2021
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Thanks! I'm 99% sure that's an error on my part (and not an image just getting deleted). Amended for the next time I update this.
- Mar 30, 2021
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phupdup: I really appreciate the help/input. Between now and the next update, I'm going to seriously look into all of this and do my best to implement your suggestions. As full disclosure, this is a fun side project for me first, which I'm sharing with others second, so I didn't exactly have others' best interests in mind when I started. But if even a handful of people actually like this and are eager to see it continued, I'll do my best to switch over and accommodate. Your input is super helpful.
- Sep 7, 2019
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Sugar Cube/Twine would be a major boost to this game! You would have so many options/tricks you could use - and all of us would benefit from the versatility! If you find time and can - please do so!
In the meantime - I am enjoying myself and look forward even more kinkiness!
It is my understanding that a game can't be "text based" and "real porn" at the same time, cmiiw
- May 5, 2019
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- Nov 27, 2017
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I think that text-based is meant to imply that there are no pictures at all. Otherwise, all porn games with a story, but no voice acting, including visual novels, would count as "text-based".
Overall, it likely doesn't matter. Considering seeing the two side by side should indicate to anyone reading the tags that there are porn images... and then there are the sample screenshots. It's probably only important if someone is specifically looking for text only, didn't read the tags, and maybe assumed that there is only a token amount of images in the game... i guess? Or maybe "text-based" makes them worried there won't be enough images?
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- May 30, 2018
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- May 5, 2019
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Maybe but I am used to a lot of "text based" (mostly HTML) has images (both real life porn or 2D or 3D).
So that phrase alone leave me confused.
- Mar 30, 2021
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Carrie Emberlyn. Spoiler: she's gotten more girly IRL over time, and the "brother" will follow that trajectory
Sister: Georgina Gee. Mother: Dee Siren
Hey Oedipal_Underwear! I took a look at your work as of now, and it really shows potential. The advices of both phupdup,
Slothi and Shadowhunter9 seem to gather all my suggestions for improvement and critique. So I would link up myself onto their critique. But - I do appreciate your work until now, it is really well done. I look forward to your progress with this project! It trully is refreshing seeing a first version in this quality.
Slothi and Shadowhunter9 seem to gather all my suggestions for improvement and critique. So I would link up myself onto their critique. But - I do appreciate your work until now, it is really well done. I look forward to your progress with this project! It trully is refreshing seeing a first version in this quality.
- Mar 30, 2021
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TBH, the gay content is more secondary, so (as I think back on what I included) it would be difficult to have the POV present as purely gay. Also, while most characters are optional in some form or another, most story paths will bring you through someone who isn't a cis male. That said, feel free to skip through anything uninteresting and just pay attention to what you like.
I'm intrigued. The overview seems nice, but the images aren't my favorite. While I like a good plot as a base, I'm also somewhat hard to please when the female characters aren't attractive. Is it still worth of playing, or at the characters better than those on the preview?
I'm not trying to be rude to the dev btw, it's just a matter of personal preference. I don't want to end disliking the game and being unfair reviewing the game just because I don't find the characters pleasing.
I'm not trying to be rude to the dev btw, it's just a matter of personal preference. I don't want to end disliking the game and being unfair reviewing the game just because I don't find the characters pleasing.
- Mar 30, 2021
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That's a fair question. I guess my answer is you'll have to download to get a better idea. If the images of the family in the main story route aren't your cup of tea, there are still other encounters that pop up along the way. And the "Create a Family" mode allows you a fair bit of choice with your character models -- there's less content for that atm, but I'm working to update that.
- Mar 30, 2021
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I'll be updating in the not-too-distant future. There won't be much new content for the main story, but I've been trying to catch up with content for create-a-family mode & and I spent a good deal of time overhauling all the images so they're downloadable and stored locally.