House On The Hill [Development Thread]

[TacoHoleStory]

Warning: there may be potential spoilers in this thread.

Oh boy, episode one release was a mess. There were a few bugs, a couple I'm surprised I didn't catch - I must have ran through the entire game close to one hundred times.

Current goal: rework episode one

Clear up any messy code:
Mostly done now.

Make point and click less annoying:
I've added a button that highlights all main interactable items for a second so you can find them. "Secret" items are still hidden to challenge players who like to find stuff.

Make the roommate interactable in free roam for mechanic:
I've done some of the work for this already

Rework game mechanics to remove punishment for "incorrect" dialogue and add more player control:
My current plan for this is to split off the int. point system to use it in free roam interactions with the roommate. There will also be a choice system implemented for the main story dialogue, choices in this will branch to minor paths and then bring you back around to the main story. The results of the dialogue choice should be clear to avoid frustration. The choice system for the main story dialogue will alter the type of lewd scene you can see at major events. There's a lot of renders and coding to do for this.

Major update regarding direction of game development: https://f95zone.to/threads/house-on-the-hill-development-thread.84609/post-6176278

 

[TacoHoleStory]

Whip and heart slowly fill up with color as you choose one path. The eye is for viewing the interactable objects. Screenshot quality makes the edges look weird. Might add numbers next to the whip and heart to make your score clearer.

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Did a lot of random stuff today. New GUI below:



New mechanic mostly set up, still need to set up info screens for clicking whip + heart and set up a little icon to go next to dialogue options that boost either.

 

[TacoHoleStory]

Needed the roommate to look up in free roam interactions, but then i figured i should add a feature of making her walk around topless and naked. So I had to render 6 images for each pose in each room. 72 images to render so far, and I made her expression slightly different when naked. Couldn't find a file for one of the poses in game, so that'll have to go, but I've added two new poses.

One pose:

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Feeling good about the current state of the game. All new elements are working smoothly:
- roommate free roam interactions
- dom and love stats
- object highlighter (the eye)

I've removed the intelligence system for now until I figure out a better solution that adds challenge but keeps things fun. All the poses are rendered. Roommate is fully interactable in free roam and now looks at you when she talks in free roam. I may add a short tutorial for the love and heart, basically a one sentence pop up overlayed on the screen.

 

[TacoHoleStory]

- Added more interactivity/dialogue for locked doors.
- Added a system that selects random dialogue from pose specific, general dialogue and story added options for free roam interactions. I.E. you steal a card from roommate, dialogue is added to the general dialogue list and is randomly chosen as a response when you speak to roommate in free roam.
- Wrote a bunch of dialogue.
- Made roommate occasionally randomly start an interaction with you when you enter a room.
- Fixed a bug with the show object button.
- Fixed and rerendered some images.
- Cleared up the peeping events to work properly without the intelligence point system. Should be easy to add a new system now when I can think of one that'll work.
- Did a little character development.
- Free roam in game roommate interaction menus now have a heart and whip icon and required points next to relevant choices.

 

[TacoHoleStory]

View attachment aaa.mp4
- Each pose in each location have different dom and love interaction choices added.
- Minor dialogue paths added for some stuff.
- If she poses with a book or remote they get moved away from their standard locations.
- General cleanup/development and other small stuff I don't remember.

 

[TacoHoleStory]

I really hope people appreciate small details.
- added two more secret events
- rendered some images for secret events and knocking events
- added dialogue and paths for knocking events
- added lockpick object to find and made it work with bedroom_2 door
- edited roommate free roam images to fix alpha
- added paths to other minor things
- cleaned up even more code
- added a "mini tutorial"
- added titlescreen type intro, choice info for intro and music for it
- edited 4/8 scenes of main story dialogue and made more dialogue paths for them
- added more dialogue for roommate poses/rooms

 

[TacoHoleStory]

I've focused my thinking on story the past few days. Here's an unrevised story pitch:

A retired drug smuggler moves in with his shy roommate, but after months of peaceful off the grid living, things are shaken
up as his roommate begins to act strange. He fears she's gotten herself into trouble and investigates to make sure she's safe, but soon finds out that he's the one in danger.

Can he find a way to clean the stacks of cash hidden under his bed? Will his roommate find out about his past? And what's with this girl he's seeing?

Why
I've decided on this big story change for one main reason, "slice of life" type stories have a much harder time building tension and getting people engaged. That would be fine if this was more lewd focused, but story is important to me. Also, people (or at least the most vocal people) seem to want more dramatized stories here. I found that surprising but kind of encouraging as well.

Problems with this pitch
Most characters in lewd games that do anything immoral for work are immediately expected to be type cast as someone who has zero morals in all parts of their lives, and in most, you play the game as some type of sociopath. It lands flat as far as story in every game I can remember and I think when you see the word "drug" or "prostitute" in any lewd story pitch it dampens most peoples expectations. I need to work on it to avoid this.

The good things about this pitch
The player has to hide things from his roommate or risk ruining the relationship and there are potential external threats. This adds some tension to the story.

It gives a more interesting goal of finding a way to clean huge amounts of money, on top of the old goal of protecting his roommate by finding out what she's up to. These goals will come into conflict, adding an additional layer to the story. The goals also feel more natural (and less toolish), the old one being "get money to buy a ticket to a concert to see a girl". There's also a way that everything ties together which should feel satisfying.

What I've done so far
I've added an entirely new scene before the previous start and focused on finding a "save the cat" moment to add to the scene to build sympathy and help dispel the notion of the MC being immoral. It also introduces the main story beats.

What's next
Revise the rest of the story. This will require a few re-renders to make sure the roommate fully matches her slightly altered character (more shy) and a lot of dialogue rewrites, especially for the main character. My current plan is to add a new final scene for episode 1, which will be a cliff hanger, but this might change.

 

[TacoHoleStory]

For anyone who actually reads this, I've taken a long break due to being burnt out from developing this game. While creating the first episode, I worked 8 hours most days for a month and had no experience in what I was doing. I'd like to say the response to the first episode didn't contribute to me taking a break, but it's tough spending a lot of time on something and getting the response i did. I understand why a lot of games get abandoned on here now.

Anyway, I've decided that the visuals need to rebuilt from the ground up. There seemed to be a split between people who disliked and liked the renders, but overall I think I can improve the body shapes, expressions, etc. It's going to be an absolute slog re-rendering everything but at least I can keep most of the code, and it's fairly easy to add to the code due to the way I've written it. Overall, I feel the game mechanics are good and really don't need any change, only one or two additional mechanics added in at a later date.

I'm dabbling in AI interpolation software. I'll be able to render at 15FPS or lower and use the software to scale up to 30fps. This means I'll be able to spend twice as long creating renders (increasing their quality) and still have smooth animation. The drop in quality of animation is barely noticeable, while the increase in texture detail is a big plus.

The story still needs to be rebuilt, but in throwing away everything I've done so far, I feel free to create something much better.

TL;DR: I'm throwing away the old story and creating a new one, re-rendering everything in higher quality, re-working all of the models to look more varied and realistic, using AI to speed up animation workflow, keeping all the game mechanics and most of the code I've created so far.

 

[TacoHoleStory]

Nailed down new render settings and have worked on the main roommate character's face to make it more realistic. Next I need to work on the body and get her some dforce hair so i don't have to spend so much time messing with it.
Frames take 12-15 minutes to render at this quality. Each second of animation @ 15fps will take 3.5 hours to render and then the AI will hopefully upscale to 30fps, basically instantly with no problems. Dforce hair might take a couple of minutes per frame, but it's quicker and easier than carefully positioning it myself.

 

[hiya02]

15min doesnt sound too bad... but it depends on the hw of course. Try to make her body realistic too.

 

[TacoHoleStory]

Final roommate model:


The house environment still needs more work. The items need to more accurately portray character. The main interest needs to have her room matured a little while retaining a nerdy sort of innocent/shy girl feel.

I've spent some time considering the most effective way to deliver the story and content, and have decided to scrap the sandbox based mechanics for something more linear. I've begun work on a new story that feels like it has legs and ties together nicely. I should be finishing up the writing for the first episode soon and starting work on the renders and code.

 

[TacoHoleStory]

So I gave the AI frame interpellator another shot on the first render for my game. And I'm kind of blown away by the results.

Here's the original animation:
View attachment est.mp4












Here's the animation at 12fps and then upscaled back to 24fps using the AI:
View attachment 12fps upscaled.mp4












I don't see any notable quality drop or artifacts. It took 12 seconds of processing time to double the amount of frames which would have taken 2 hours if i had rendered them. I maybe notice a little bit of jitter that wouldn't be present if i had rendered them but it seems like a very good trade off.

313% zoom on interpolated image and original side by side. This is probably the most complex part of the scene and i see absolutely no difference in quality.

Definitely going to use it on all animations with little moving parts like this in the future.

I have a new working title for the revamped game and I'm going to move to a new development thread and keep things cleaner over there on updates. New thread: https://f95zone.to/threads/a-normal-life-development-thread.91290/