- Mar 8, 2018
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First person I 'met' was the older sister from DoD, and...she's even got the same name Tracy Turner. What's going on? 
Was short and sweet but I'll support you since I see potentiall and I want to see where u'll go with this. Cheers
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V2 will be released for the mac too. I'd actually like to have some feedback about some things on the mac when I release it, so it's good to know who is a mac user. I will maybe contact you with some questions. I don't own a mac, so I cannot test the mac-version. Atleast in theory that should not be a problem with Ren'Py.
She will actually be part of the game, but not as a main-character.
Btw. does she have an actual name in DmD? At the moment I have her named 'Josie' in my scripts but I'd like use something better for the reference.
She will also be a side character. First as a teacher in the tutorial (which will be redone) and later the player will discover that she has another job during the night.First person I 'met' was the older sister from DoD, and...she's even got the same name Tracy Turner. What's going on?
In the past week I've added a time-system to the game. The player will be able to control the time in a limited way with a special device. Each day is split into 144 x 10 minute parts. The NPCs are currently getting their activities and graphics assigned for each of these 10 minute parts. The ingame time does advance at a fixed interval of 5 seconds but the device does control by how much. Currently the player can either stop the time completely or he can pass up to 12 ticks aka 120 minutes in 5 seconds.
The idea behind all this is to give each character a somewhat realistic daily routine for each weekday. It just takes quite some time to create all the graphics and script-logic.
The time-system does affect the gameplay in many ways, for example:
- locations like the cloth store will only be accessible during opening hours
- the player can not stay awake for an unlimited amount of time until he has to sleep
- a NPC can actually kick the player from a location if he is not allowed to be there at this time, for example a shop is closing or Meagan and Emily want to sleep without having someone creeping around in their bedroom
- it would even be possible to add a 'follow-mode' that allows the player just to watch what the NPC is doing during the day
- During the night the graphics will be modified with a color-matrix night-effect. Since I don't have the computing power to do additional night-time images I have decided to 'cheat'. Special locations for night-time-events will still get 'real' night-time-images.
I have not implemented this yet but what I will probably do is to set a limit on how long the player can stay awake. If he is to tired he can no longer advance the time with the device until he goes to sleep.
Another thing that I'm working on is dynamic choice-menus. These are conversation menus where the can player talk to a NPC about topics like:
- What are they doing right now? (to trigger event)
- To borrow or payback cash (which I will probably bind to sympathy points)
- What your favorite outfit is, the NPC will wear it if sympathy is high enough
- Mar 11, 2018
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- May 28, 2017
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Great game so far, and definitely very interesting setting. Looking forward to the next version.
I'm not too fond of the auto time advancement either. Giving the option to stop it is obviously something I'd take, but at the same time, I question the benefit of such system to begin with. The main problem with the auto-time advancement is that we don't actually see the NPCs moving (unlike in let's say The Sims). So what happens is that NPC1 is on the screen now in Area1, and 5 seconds later, NPC1 moves elsewhere. The problem is "moves elsewhere" means they simply disappeared from the screen in Area1. If you're currently on the screen that has 3 different areas to go to, you wouldn't actually know where this NPC moved to because you don't physically see them walking to Area2, Area3, or Area4.
Clarity is a real big issue with this system because events could potentially be triggered with a combination of NPC+Time+Location, meaning that finding NPC1 in Location1 at 4.50PM and having no event to trigger wouldn't tell the player if it's any different with finding NPC1 in Location1 at 5.00PM, 5.10PM, 5.20PM, 5.30PM, etc.
If using 24x1-hr system, at least it's on a much smaller scale that it's easier for players to figure out who goes where at what time and what happened. It's also much easier to associate with our IRL time mechanism (we generally associate "lunch time" with 12PM or 1PM, and not necessarily 11.50AM, 12PM, 12.10PM, 12.20PM, etc). It'd also be more convenient for players to try things differently at certain time.
Using the 144x10-minute system would simply leave too many possibilities that players could end up spending too much time doing nothing. Or worse, they could easily miss things without realizing. I assume that there will also be a lot of NPCs involved in the game. Multiply that with 144x10-minute activities, that's A LOT of things for players to remember.
Sorry if I sound too negative about this time system, I just don't want the game to focus too much on trying to be realistic at the cost of game enjoyment. I feel that games need to enjoyable to play first and foremost. 144x10-minute time system sounds like it's going to be a nightmare to play.
I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not. If you want time-system in the game, why the really awkward 144x10-minute system instead of a more common 24x1-hour? To me, this sounds like it's going to be overly complicated without receiving a comparable return.
I'm not too fond of the auto time advancement either. Giving the option to stop it is obviously something I'd take, but at the same time, I question the benefit of such system to begin with. The main problem with the auto-time advancement is that we don't actually see the NPCs moving (unlike in let's say The Sims). So what happens is that NPC1 is on the screen now in Area1, and 5 seconds later, NPC1 moves elsewhere. The problem is "moves elsewhere" means they simply disappeared from the screen in Area1. If you're currently on the screen that has 3 different areas to go to, you wouldn't actually know where this NPC moved to because you don't physically see them walking to Area2, Area3, or Area4.
I understand the desire to create a realistic daily routine for the NPCs. However, I feel that you should also consider how the players are going to play the game. The players will need to find these NPCs to talk and trigger events. I feel that 10-minute interval is ridiculous because what would happen is that the NPCs would be moving around and the players would be moving locations all over the place trying to find these NPCs without really knowing if there's anything to find/miss.
Clarity is a real big issue with this system because events could potentially be triggered with a combination of NPC+Time+Location, meaning that finding NPC1 in Location1 at 4.50PM and having no event to trigger wouldn't tell the player if it's any different with finding NPC1 in Location1 at 5.00PM, 5.10PM, 5.20PM, 5.30PM, etc.
If using 24x1-hr system, at least it's on a much smaller scale that it's easier for players to figure out who goes where at what time and what happened. It's also much easier to associate with our IRL time mechanism (we generally associate "lunch time" with 12PM or 1PM, and not necessarily 11.50AM, 12PM, 12.10PM, 12.20PM, etc). It'd also be more convenient for players to try things differently at certain time.
Using the 144x10-minute system would simply leave too many possibilities that players could end up spending too much time doing nothing. Or worse, they could easily miss things without realizing. I assume that there will also be a lot of NPCs involved in the game. Multiply that with 144x10-minute activities, that's A LOT of things for players to remember.
Sorry if I sound too negative about this time system, I just don't want the game to focus too much on trying to be realistic at the cost of game enjoyment. I feel that games need to enjoyable to play first and foremost. 144x10-minute time system sounds like it's going to be a nightmare to play.
Hey Skylaroo, thanks for the feedback!
I actually have very similar concerns. The reason why I picked 10 minutes for now was:
For the problem with the NPCs walking off the screen and not knowing where they are I've added an orthographic housemap yesterday. Each NPC has a little icon and it roughly shows in what room/location they are. I still need to add some kind of marker for the players location and I also don't like the shadow ... it's all work in progress. A follow-NPC-mode could also counter this problem but I'm not sure about that, it has a creepy stalker taste to me.
For events to trigger it is possible to have a 'time-range' for something to happen. For example the mail-guy could show up between 9:00 and 17:00 (9am - 5pm, the game has a 12hour/24hour switch).
Okay I gtg, another render just finished and I need to keep my graphics card busy. The real-life time-management.
I actually have very similar concerns. The reason why I picked 10 minutes for now was:
- I wanted to be able to assign activities that are not very time consuming to the NPCs, for example changing the outfit
- the color-tint effect for the night does not make 'big jumps' when the sun sets/rises unless the player advances the time in big steps, but I guess that would be a acceptable
For the problem with the NPCs walking off the screen and not knowing where they are I've added an orthographic housemap yesterday. Each NPC has a little icon and it roughly shows in what room/location they are. I still need to add some kind of marker for the players location and I also don't like the shadow ... it's all work in progress. A follow-NPC-mode could also counter this problem but I'm not sure about that, it has a creepy stalker taste to me.
For events to trigger it is possible to have a 'time-range' for something to happen. For example the mail-guy could show up between 9:00 and 17:00 (9am - 5pm, the game has a 12hour/24hour switch).
No need to apologize. That is exactly the constructive feedback I want.
Okay I gtg, another render just finished and I need to keep my graphics card busy. The real-life time-management.
- May 28, 2017
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And this is the example of being realistic is not a good thing IMO. While changing outfit might only take 10 minutes ("not very time consuming activity"), I find it unnecessary because changing outfit doesn't necessarily matter time-wise. There's no real difference between changing outfit at 6AM or 6.10AM or 6.20AM, etc. If there is no importance of the timing itself, why not just make changing outfit instant?
I really hope you won't continue with 144x10-minute system. Our typical day could be explained in "Wake up, breakfast, shower, work/school, lunch, work/school, go home, dinner, relaxing, sleep" and if you try to break that up into 144 blocks of 10-minute activity, all you get is a lot of repetition that isn't much different than if breaking it into 24 blocks of 1-hour activity.
Regardless though, I think the game is very promising and I look forward to the continuation. I just hope the gameplay will continue to be enjoyable too
- May 28, 2017
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Hope you don't mind me adding a few more things to comment on.
8 hours in 10-minute blocks means 48 blocks. If that mailman NPC is required to trigger an event, what will happen is that as a player, at 9AM I would go to the front yard of the house and click the 10-minute advance button between 1 to 48 times just to meet this mailman so I can trigger the event. That is not a great gaming experience.
So going back to my original point, I understand your desire to create a realistic game, but one thing you should not forget is that it still is a video game. If there are things that could be considered as inconveniences IRL, I hope they wouldn't be brought into the game just for the sake of being realistic.
Cheers and all the best
It's a small unimportant thing, but I wish that map, or at least the NPC icons are clickable to instantly teleport the player to their location. I understand it isn't realistic to be able to do so, but with how many rooms/locations in the game, I felt like it could be a worthy QoL improvement to look at in the future.
I hope it's not too late, but please no. This is a great example of where being realistic is not a good thing for a video game IMO. Imagine if you called a plumber to your house, and you're simply told that the plumber will come to your house to fix your problem anytime between 9AM to 5PM while you're by yourself. You'd most likely be frustrated waiting for the plumber because the time frame of their arrival is far too large, and you wouldn't want to wait that long just in case they showed up.
8 hours in 10-minute blocks means 48 blocks. If that mailman NPC is required to trigger an event, what will happen is that as a player, at 9AM I would go to the front yard of the house and click the 10-minute advance button between 1 to 48 times just to meet this mailman so I can trigger the event. That is not a great gaming experience.
So going back to my original point, I understand your desire to create a realistic game, but one thing you should not forget is that it still is a video game. If there are things that could be considered as inconveniences IRL, I hope they wouldn't be brought into the game just for the sake of being realistic.
Cheers and all the best
The game is on a 1 hour time system now. I'm still not happy with it and I will probably rip out the 5 second interval thing too. I found it annoying to wait up to 5 seconds to advance the time ... it's a bit difficult to explain and nobody has played this version yet. I guess I have to move back to the traditional click-button to advance time or do-this activity to pass time scheme. I wanted to try something different but it does not seem work very well.
About the plumber example: that is not how it would work, he would show up instantly the time-range as long the player is home at some point in that range. But I think I described that wrong. I always try to leave some wiggle room to trigger events.
Meanwhile I'm splitting my scripts in smaller parts. Turns out a 'screens.rpy'-file with 3000+ lines isn't that practical.
About the plumber example: that is not how it would work, he would show up instantly the time-range as long the player is home at some point in that range. But I think I described that wrong. I always try to leave some wiggle room to trigger events.
Done. This was easy to add. I just have to be careful later to add more logic, because I don't want the player to have access to rooms when they are locked temporary. I don't want the player to teleport magically behind closed doors by using the map.
Meanwhile I'm splitting my scripts in smaller parts. Turns out a 'screens.rpy'-file with 3000+ lines isn't that practical.
@f95zoneuser463
I believe the daughter from DmD can be named whatever you want but I thought that I have heard the name Dottie used before for her.
I believe the daughter from DmD can be named whatever you want but I thought that I have heard the name Dottie used before for her.