VN Ren'Py Game Development Process: Outlining a Ren'py VN Game Approach? (Long)

[HiEv]

I know others have already pointed out the weakness of non-linear play... I thought I'd add to that the weaknesses of an affection system.

With any scoring system in a game... you'll invariably end up with an "if tina_affection >= 6" type check.

I kind of disagree here. You've basically explained ways that an affection system could be implemented poorly, and your complaints are valid there, but that doesn't mean that it can only be implemented poorly.

The fix is simple (well, simple to describe, not necessarily to implement), make it so that all combinations of scores lead to something interesting happening.

Flirt with two different girls at the same time? Maybe one girl gets jealous and drops the affection level needed to do things with her so that the other girl doesn't win you.

Your character sits at home all day masturbating? Maybe you'll find a porn online of one of the girls. Or maybe one of the girls will come to you since she's worried that you never go out and do anything.

Remember, the player doesn't have to be the only one who pursues people. NPCs can pursue the player too.

If your player chooses NOT to spy on your roommate in the shower... what is the UPSIDE to not doing that?

There are three potential upsides. First, some people role-play in their games, and they might feel it's out of character for them to do that. Giving the player options in situations that involve ethical choices can be important that way. It allows you to choose whether your player is a good guy or a bit of a douchebag. You don't want your players to dislike the protagonist.

Second, it could be that, while watching has the upside of seeing a nude scene, it has the possible downside of her catching you and holding that against you. Then it's a risk-reward situation. She might not even react immediately if she catches you spying on her, but only use it to "blackmail" you into doing something for her later on. That way you can't just immediately reload a save if she catches you, like you could if she reacted immediately.

Third, you could also have a "karma" system, where if you do good things, then good things are more likely to happen to you. Perhaps you miss out on the shower scene, but instead you get the scene in the pool where her bikini falls off and she needs to press her naked breasts up against your back to hide them from everyone else.

The important thing is to make sure that no matter what the player chooses, it leads to something interesting. The player shouldn't have any options that don't either lead to character building, interesting scenes, or both.

Anyways, good luck with the game!

 

[khumak]

I kind of disagree here. You've basically explained ways that an affection system could be implemented poorly, and your complaints are correct there, but that doesn't mean that it can only be implemented poorly.

The fix is simple, make it so that all combinations of scores lead to something interesting happening.

Flirt with two different girls at the same time? Maybe one girl gets jealous and drops the affection level needed to do things with her so that the other girl doesn't win you.

Your character sits at home all day masturbating? Maybe you'll find a porn online of one of the girls. Or maybe one of the girls will come to you since she's worried that you never go out and do anything.

Remember, the player doesn't have to be the only one who pursues people. NPCs can pursue the player too.


There are three potential upsides. First, some people role-play in their games, and they might feel it's out of character for them to do that. Giving the player options in situations that involve ethical choices can be important that way. It allows you to choose whether your player is a good guy or a bit of a douchebag. You don't want your players to dislike the protagonist.

Second, it could be that, while watching has the upside of seeing a nude scene, it has the possible downside of her catching you and holding that against you. Then it's a risk-reward situation. She might not even react immediately if she catches you spying on her, but only use it to "blackmail" you into doing something for her later on. That way you can't just immediately reload a save if she catches you, like you could if she reacted immediately.

Third, you could also have a "karma" system, where if you do good things, then good things are more likely to happen to you. Perhaps you miss out on the shower scene, but instead you get the scene in the pool where her bikini falls off and she needs to press her naked breasts up against your back to hide them from everyone else.

The important thing is to make sure that no matter what the player chooses, it leads to something interesting. The player shouldn't have any options that don't either lead to character building, interesting scenes, or both.

Anyways, good luck with the game!

I tend to agree that your game is going to have more appeal, and in particular more replayability if most of the choices lead to some type of reward even if there is also a downside so you have some reason to make a different choice when you replay the game. That can be just as simple as getting to see a different render or two (for instance the peeking example). Maybe you know you're going to damage your relationship somewhat by doing it but getting to see her strip is worth it, especially if you know you can recover enough points eventually that you're not locked out of "winning" by choosing that option. Maybe she catches you but discovers it's a turn on and starts down the path to becoming an exhibitionist when you make those types of choices even though initially it damages your friendship.

Taking too many actions like that could lead to to a game over/bad ending because you've reduced your relationship beyond the point of no return, but as long as you're spacing out those types of decisions and building that relationship back up it could leave more room for options that would normally be clearly bad or even game over situations to be recoverable and yield a scene that players might find to be worth it.

I tend to be against choices that lead to abrupt game over/bad endings. I would rather see some sort of penalty for that choice combined with some sort of rewarding scene even if the penalty is large enough to make the rewarding scene not really worth the trouble most of the time. After a few replays maybe you know you can absorb that penalty and build your "score" high enough to get the ending you want whereas on an earlier playthrough it might mean you're probably getting a bad ending eventually.

There's also the option of having some of the choices just there as a way for the player to customize the game a bit to fit their own fetishes/preferences better. Maybe certain choices lead to foot fetish type stuff while others lead to more blowjobs. Maybe some choices lead to MMF scenes while others lead to MFF at the same point in the game. Maybe some choices lead to bondage type scenarios while others lead to seduction scenarios. Maybe some choices lead to dom vs sub scenes, etc.

 

[79flavors]

I kind of disagree here. You've basically explained ways that an affection system could be implemented poorly, and your complaints are valid there, but that doesn't mean that it can only be implemented poorly.

I never meant to imply that affection systems were bad. Just that they are inherently bad.

Which is to say that, unless you give your affection system some thought beforehand - a developer can so easily fall into the same traps as so many other games that have gone before.
I say "inherently" because the logical, simple solution to how to code points based systems tend to lead to some of the issues I've already described. Though the issues tends to be mainly around linear games rather than open world games; where points based systems tend to work better.

My reply was only to offer this dev some of my thoughts, in the hope that it would cause him to think beforehand and avoid some of the more obvious pitfalls. I have no illusions that I am right... I'm not. Nobody ever is. But forewarned is forearmed.

I also wanted to highlight that not every solution to these problems was automatically better. You fix one problem, but run into another. Though I probably didn't go into that side enough... I wanted to point out that any system (including simple choices) can lead to an exponential increase in actual work/costs. Having a meaningful decision that leads to 2 separate well constructed scenes, can mean twice the writing and twice the rendering work. Which is good, but expensive. If that benefits the game... great. But often, developers tend to have a single "good" route planned and the "other" routes aren't given the love they need. As a dev, you devote time and effort into a route through your game even you don't think players should take.

Again, my point isn't to say not to implement systems in a specific way. Only that it's handy to be aware of the pitfalls ahead of time. Not necessarily to implement "better" systems - but so you don't get bogged down trying to write code/scenes that requires more experience that you might have right now. Even if that means NOT doing something you'd like to add, but aren't sure you can right now. I suppose I'd rather see a simple game finished than a more complex game abandoned.

 

[FranceToast]

Having a meaningful decision that leads to 2 separate well constructed scenes, can mean twice the writing and twice the rendering work. Which is good, but expensive.

Dan Fabulich

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:

Traditional gamebooks tend to be pretty short. The average story in a 110-page book in the most popular “choose a path” series is only six pages long.

It’s not hard to see why. If each page of a choose-a-path book allows the reader to choose between just two options, a seven-page story requires 128 pages of text. If you want eight pages, the author has to deliver twice as much text, 256 pages. And if you want to write a twenty-page short story, you need a book more than a million pages long.

And he is just talking about text!

 

[FranceToast]

Hello! I can share my experience if tht helps!

Spoiler: Experience

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Oh, man-sorry about your hardware woes...I was reluctant to even start until I beefed up my gaming PC and set up some long neglected backup systems. Hope third time is the charm!

 

[khumak]

Hello! I can share my experience if tht helps!

Spoiler: Experience

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Ouch, you seem to have unusually bad luck with hardware. You might consider getting a cheap external drive for backups. I have a 1 TB flash drive that only cost me about $50 if I remember right. It's slow but I hardly ever use it (I mostly just bought it to transfer files easily when I upgraded computers). In your situation though I could definitely see doing a backup once a month or something though. That way if you had another failure you'd only lose a month's worth of work. Technically you could have the external drive fail at the same time but that would be so unlikely that I wouldn't worry about it (I work in IT and even managing thousands of routers and switches I almost never see that happen).

 

[khumak]

I’ve definitely learned from my last two experiences and now have backups on two internal drives, a external drive, and might upload my files online as private lol. A real motivation killer so I hope I never experience it again.

On that affection system. I planned on doing something similar but with a sub / dom behavior, but after reading the discussion on here, I was thinking maybe after doing a few dom options, the sub options will look red, but still can be accessed. I feel limiting the player is unnecessary, but making the option different will let the player know this option isn’t reflective of what they normally do. Idk about the idea though.

I've been considering something similar if I make a game that has NTR. It's a relatively popular genre but it is also violently opposed by a large number (maybe a majority?) of users. If the options that led to it were highlighted in red or something then I think most people wouldn't care if it was there since they could just avoid it. I think in most games the options that lead to it are relatively obvious anyway but I have seen exceptions where it wasn't. It could wind up being a moot point anyway since I don't like NTR myself so I'm still struggling with how I could write scenes like that which were both satisfying to NTR fans while at the same time not overly frustrating for me to develop.

In most cases I wouldn't even consider adding any content that I strongly dislike but NTR is a bit of a special case IMO for adult games. In addition to adding content that actual NTR fans want, I think it gives you a better way to add negative consquences to the game without things like abrupt bad endings. It also makes for the type of adversary that actually makes sense in an adult game. Do something to piss off your girl, she might do something to make you jealous/etc. At first it might just be some flirting, maybe kissing/groping or something but if you keep provoking her it could progress to her fucking them.

I think my biggest objection to it in most of the games I've seen is that there doesn't seem to be any proportionality to the decision. There should usually be some build up to it unless that character is just an obvious slut.

I think in my case the key will probably be to think about it from the perspective of the female NPCs and try to set it up so that they'll only choose that option if the "bad guy" is more appealing than the MC for some reason, whether it's because the MC is ignoring/neglecting her or because of some stat/quest/grinding competition that the MC loses or whatever. I think I would have a hard time writing NTR scenes for a bad guy who had no redeeming qualities (and just having a big dick is not redeeming enough).

 

[FranceToast]

It could wind up being a moot point anyway since I don't like NTR myself so I'm still struggling with how I could write scenes like that which were both satisfying to NTR fans while at the same time not overly frustrating for me to develop.

As someone who almost alway ends up playing 'the good guy route' in Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and DragonAge type games, I hear ya, LOL. I like how

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has various paths, but really the overriding guide to continue the story is "don't be an asshole to Mary" - to be fair, I haven't played recently and this might have changed, but I like the approach for that kind of game.
My story has a pretty straightforward 'don't be an asshole' guide as well, but I have run into an intriguing branching where "ok, maybe I am an asshole" could lead to a different possibly still satisfying end game. But, not sure how frustrating, as you said, it will be to develop.

 

[khumak]

I think having ntr optional is a must because a lot of players won’t try the game if there is even an ntr tag lol. The red color ntr option is good. If you’re using renpy, I recommend maybe using a variable and if for the ntr options. At the beginning of the game or maybe even a button toggle that can turn ntr off. Any option that has an ntr option can simply be hidden if ntr was disabled already. Or maybe even having the two options of disabling ntr completely or having ntr options marked in red.

My coding knowledge is limited so there may be a better way of doing it, but I’d probably just use imagebuttons and a simple variable to hide the ntr options.

In my first game I had a choice which unlocked hypnosis. If you didn’t select it, all hypnosis content was locked. I’m not sure how much was implemented in the version I uploaded on the internet, but it’s a simple fix to hiding content a person may not want. You can check it out if you like. I think it was called King’s Game.

It would be simple enough to do both ways. In fact you could even add both options to the same game so players could disable it completely at the beginning or just have the options highlighted in red but still available. I think the red highlight option sounds superior from a gameplay standpoint since then it's not necessarily all or nothing. Some players might want to see some of the NTR content but not all of it. There could be some voyeurism involved that doesn't take it as far as for instance a blowjob or full penetration. So players might find some groping or something to be a turn on while still not wanting to see the "bad guy" actually get to fuck them or whatever. Or maybe they don't even know what it is so they might start down the path before deciding whether they like it or not. Something like a red highlight option would provide an easy way for the player to decide where to draw the line.

 

[79flavors]

On that affection system. I planned on doing something similar but with a sub / dom behavior, but after reading the discussion on here, I was thinking maybe after doing a few dom options, the sub options will look red, but still can be accessed.

I've been considering something similar if I make a game that has NTR. It's a relatively popular genre but it is also violently opposed by a large number (maybe a majority?) of users.

I guess both points come down to why you are writing your games.

If you're after money... then the more paths the better.
Try to keep everyone happy. Try to gain the most followers from different genres, so you can gain the most potential income.

If you're trying to learn about writing games... then the logic is the same, but for different reasons.
In trying to learn the most about the process... you'll end up trying to implement the most you can. Which in turn will probably mean lots of content for the most amount of players. Who knows... you might even make a bit of money too.

But if you just want to write "your" game. Then play to your strengths.
You don't need sub behavior in a dom game. Not if your passion for dom comes across as good writing/gameplay.
Same for NTR. If you're not chasing the mighty buck... it doesn't matter if large portions of the community won't play your game and end up coming to your game thread just to say they aren't going to either (though why anyone bothers still boggles my mind). The community that have been just waiting for an NTR game done right might be bigger than you hoped.

Ultimately, diversity and niches can be a good thing.
If you're hoping to reach out to the "boy ends up banging his sister, mom and all his friends" market... you're really going to have to come up with something quite special to stand out among the 400 other games (most of them 0.0.1 versions) competing for players attention.

Then afterwards... once you've finished your Dom/NTR focused games.... you can write purely Sub/Harems game to show you can. A single game doesn't have to have everything, unless you're chasing short term cash. But you could deliver everything across multiple games... and earn some long term cash from different groups by becoming recognized as one of those developers who delivers what they set out to do in small discrete packages.
Hell, maybe once you've finished your first game... maybe you'll have learned enough to tackle all those nasty pitfalls of multiple genres, multiple stats and multiple story arcs that the rest of us are terrified of.

 

[79flavors]

The red color ntr option is good. If you’re using renpy, I recommend maybe using a variable and if for the ntr options.
[...]
My coding knowledge is limited so there may be a better way of doing it, but I’d probably just use imagebuttons and a simple variable to hide the ntr options.

I wish I could remember the games I'd seen it it... but you can definitely code choices in RenPy that appear as different colors. I agree red is probably the most obvious choice here.
But your can also code pictures into the menu choices too. An small warning sign icon for example. Or anything your mind can consider.

And yes, there's the obvious "ntr_enabled" variable to hide/show or color the menu choices.

But if you discover how to do all that... there's always the option to offer "Show/Hide or Warn" to content like this. Where "Show" is just a normal menu option, "Warn" is the same option but colorized in some way and "Hide" means the player never even sees the option.

I think you'll run into story issues if you let the player toggle things like NTR on/off midgame. What if they play with it off for the first half of the game, then switch it on later? How can you construct a scene knowing the player may not have seen previous interactions?

I would however be tempted to try to not directly ask the player with a straight up yes/no right at the beginning of the game. Maybe put some low level choices in the game early that the player can choose not to get involved with. If that player consistently avoids that content (2 out of 3 maybe?), then the NTR flag gets set and they never even see it again.
Thought NTR might be a special case. It's like Marmite. There is seemingly no middle ground.

 

[FranceToast]

I would however be tempted to try to not directly ask the player with a straight up yes/no right at the beginning of the game. Maybe put some low level choices in the game early that the player can choose not to get involved with. If that player consistently avoids that content (2 out of 3 maybe?), then the NTR flag gets set and they never even see it again.
Thought NTR might be a special case. It's like Marmite. There is seemingly no middle ground.

I'm a yes on Marmite, LOL.
There is a Harry Potter game here that has a questionnaire at the start for Harry (you) maybe from Hogwarts? Kind of like "So 'arry, what do you think about having sex with another guy then?" And one of the responses you (Harry) can make is "S'unnatural, I think, and I'll have no part of that nonsense!" and the next question is "Well then, what about two girls then?" And Harry (you) can say "BLOODY BRILLIANT!" LOL (I am sure the game did it better than my paraphrasing.)

There is also a game that asked me at the start if I wanted M/M and NTR, and I said no to both, but both options were pretty clearly still there in the game-so yeah, it can be a tough thing to negotiate, for both the dev and the player.

 

[frap]

You don't need sub behavior in a dom game. Not if your passion for dom comes across as good writing/gameplay.

Excellent point. I'm currently working on the script for a game with lots of different options as to: who you are (gender wise), who you date, how you date, what you're looking for vs what the NPCs are looking for, etc.

One of the characters you can date gets you two different endings depending on how you respond to her when she's (not so) subtly testing you out to see if you're submissive. She's a pro Domme, and if you want, you can become her alpha slave. However, if you choose differently she can help you become a Dom(me) as well and the two of you can train subs together.

As the D in a D/s relationship myself, I'm more comfortable writing from the viewpoint of one, but as a writer, I'm also used to putting myself into the heads of people I'm not. I'm not into femme dom, but I know several subs who are, so I feel confident writing from that viewpoint. [RE: writing as someone I'm not: I wrote a short story in the first person where the narrator was a narcissistic tool that I still despise. (Not an actual person, the character I made up to be the protagonist!)] That's fun to me, though.

That said, I'm a bit of a completionist and will play through even the options I don't like just to see everything. I understand that not everyone does that, and I also understand that some people don't want to go down the gay paths, or lesbian paths, or bisexual paths, or threesome/quad paths, or femme dom paths, or... and I'm writing it so they don't have to. They can choose (isn't that the whole point of these types of branching games?)

I don't have any plans for NTR or cuck (unless you're so sensitive that hooking up two NPCs that are obviously perfect for each other, and offer you a romp - which you can graciously decline - counts as that in your eyes.)

The long-term question, once I have it written and coded however, is how to get the artwork done. I play with Daz some, and have some models that are a necessity for two of the characters, but I'm not a picture-making artist, I paint with words. That can wait until I finish this monstrosity anyway.

 

[HiEv]

Dan Fabulich

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:

Traditional gamebooks tend to be pretty short. The average story in a 110-page book in the most popular “choose a path” series is only six pages long.

It’s not hard to see why. If each page of a choose-a-path book allows the reader to choose between just two options, a seven-page story requires 128 pages of text. If you want eight pages, the author has to deliver twice as much text, 256 pages. And if you want to write a twenty-page short story, you need a book more than a million pages long.

And he is just talking about text!

Yeah, but that assumes a simple branching method, so of course it means exponential growth. Fortunately, there are much better ways to handle such things in games than you can do in paper books.

---

I’ve definitely learned from my last two experiences and now have backups on two internal drives, a external drive, and might upload my files online as private lol. A real motivation killer so I hope I never experience it again.

If it helps,

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and

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make it pretty easy to store your code online.

I learned a long time ago that backups are your friend. I have my stuff backed up on both of those two sites, a different internal drive, two external drives, a USB stick, and my iPod. Heck, I've been coding professionally since about 20 years ago, and I still have backups of code I wrote way back in 1994 when I was in college.

 

[lancelotdulak]

Ren'py is "programming for people who are REALLY not programmers".. i wouldnt worry about that
DITCH THE FLOWCHARTING. IT will mentally lock you in and stop you from being creative. Flowcharting is awesome for some things (most) but it's like "writing software" imho. Its great if you want to put out tropefilled generic stuff but it will destroy your creativity.

I think your big problem will be mine. Getting back into 3d. The tools are LIGHT YEARS ahead of when i was using 3dsmax and rhino. On the other hand.. well if you use daz youregoing to need shitloads of assets and theyre either very not cheap or hard to find (there are lots of freebies.. and lots of places to get um.. i think of them as demo objects....). And no modern 3d software for some reason is remotely competant at importing other softwares content even with the same format.

On programming/variables/scoring. Look up classes (C++ etc) and read a bit. not complex stuff. Not to use in your code but rather to see the advantages of databases and classes. If you have a Class called 'characters'.. with every possible variable a character might have... it will be ram inefficient but .. well use neglibible ram anyway. And you dont have 14 different sets of variables. You justmake a character and plop the relevant values into the class/database. The ones you dontuse for that character dont matter as theyll never be used. Variables can Really mess you up as things get more complex.. ie e"shit what was that variable for" "argh i forgot what i called the variable i used for character x's (something) attribute/check

 

[FranceToast]

Ren'py is "programming for people who are REALLY not programmers".. i wouldnt worry about that
DITCH THE FLOWCHARTING. IT will mentally lock you in and stop you from being creative. Flowcharting is awesome for some things (most) but it's like "writing software" imho. Its great if you want to put out tropefilled generic stuff but it will destroy your creativity.

LOL, I started flow charting the beginning of my story, then just moved to a word processor and started writing out my story first, with a few alternative directions in different documents. It has been fun-I have my main story outlined, and have gone back to flesh out the set locations, character back stories, etc. So yeah, a straight flowchart quickly became too restrictive, although it will be great to bring form and rigor back to my story at some point.

I think your big problem will be mine. Getting back into 3d. The tools are LIGHT YEARS ahead of when i was using 3dsmax and rhino. On the other hand.. well if you use daz youregoing to need shitloads of assets and theyre either very not cheap or hard to find (there are lots of freebies.. and lots of places to get um.. i think of them as demo objects....). And no modern 3d software for some reason is remotely competant at importing other softwares content even with the same format.

Yes. I am both amazed at how advanced 3D rendering has come, and surprised at how siloed it seems in terms of formats. At the same time, I'm kind of disappointed how basic Hexagon feels as a modeler, it really feels limiting so far, although I'm sure a lot of that is me expecting more, LOL. I've already hacked up some Daz3D models to customize them for my own use, but it is pretty slow going, even for someone with 3D knowledge.

 

[FranceToast]

3) Programming: Probably my weak spot. I really have very few special needs, but I'm not sure if they are easy/hard.
Any feedback, tips, warnings appreciated!

Just an update on my progress-I was dreading getting into Ren'py, but I have to say it is pretty fun so far. I had forgotten how 1) exacting programming is in terms of just basic typing skills, LOL, and 2) how oddly satisfying it is to have something not work, and then just keep flailing around it until it does work and avoiding that error log from popping up.

Granted, I've done very little so far, but even just getting the "enter your name" thing to work, getting a simple conversation working, and getting a rudimentary footnotes and wiki system framed out, has been pretty cool.

1) Start Small: I began with a big story - started to outline it (as a script), and then started to put it into Twine, as a story boarding/flow chart process. But after reading a lot of good advice on this site about starting small, I decided to put the main story on hold, and took a small side story from it to develop first. It is pretty linear, but has some branching paths.

I finished scripting out my small side story, and it is...complex, LOL. So I took a break and focused on this small prologue chapter that introduces what you, the MC, does for a living, and it is kind of becoming its own story. How the heck does that happen?

 

[FranceToast]

Sometimes I have to sit back and wonder what I'm doing. It has been fun going through the Daz3D/Renderosity/Renderotica sites (as well as the F95 Assets thread, of course) looking for resources. It has been challenging but fun doing simple renders, and trying different lighting/environment tricks. But right now I'm rendering the MC's...body parts, and trying to match colors of said body parts, as well as trying different scales of said body parts, and I'm just wondering how I got here.

 

[Marzepain]

Hi, sorry about necro this thread from 2018, but I was reading it and as it was mostly about an affection system, I felt it missed a point.
Tracking what exactly happened is unnatural as most people can't remember what they had for lunch today. This implies that Twine with it's exact route tracking is a bad fit for the idea that is in peoples head. You have to funnel what has happened in the story into some mental model that is probable made up of a number of dimensions. Those dimensions get expressed in variables that can influence the story, but that may be of limited effect. In psychology there was a long debate if personality even existed because the situation people are in determines most of the outcome. As a writer you determine the situation, so most of the time you can make your characters what you want whether they like it or not.

An affection system is a reduction of the idea a person has about some other person. It is reduced to 1 dimension, but lust, love, friendship, admiration, shame are different dimensions and even living vicariously is something that happens. In psychology there is a halo affect in that being appreciated in area leads to a better view in another, but it has it's limits.
The problem is that being nice irl. can lead to the friend trap. One could ignore that in a game, but it would be better if one was aware of it.
One of the most important aspects of seduction is how you can make a woman feel. Emotion is meant to be motion, but the rational part of the brain puts the breaks on it. She may lust after you, but does not find you mating material. The most nasty thing for a woman is her friends calling her a whore. So either impress her friends, avoid them or let her have and excuse. I have seen woman acting "drunk" by drinking apple cider, claiming it was beer, just to have an excuse to do what they want to do. Another excuse is simply lying about intentions in an obvious way. For instance the super sexy star touring the continent telling the girl he will love her for ever. Quite questionable and sub par in a normal state, but in an emotional state she may actually believe it or she may believe she can get away with it.

In fast seduction there is also something like the wait in bed just where she decides she is going to have sex with you or not. This is because she herself has an idea about herself and she has to justify it to herself. This justification is regularly seen in taboo stories for instance those that have inc. content.

Reducing all this complexity to just 1 variable leads to equations like 10 compliments + 3 gifts = sex. Again it may be fine in your game, but it's not realistic.
If it's not realistic you might not be creating a story, nor a game mechanic, but simply a image gallery with a complicated access method. Again nothing wrong with a gallery, but if your aware your doing that, you can optimize your game to have less story and mechanics and focus on the images.