- May 4, 2017
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well thanks for the reply. good luck with the update, I look forward to it, but i echo the sentiments of others -- if the updates are short, it'll feel like a slog going through it all over and over again.
Also, don't go losing your day job over this game haha.
I'm always happy when people pay attention to these things. Belle, as a character, turned out to be an absolute necessity for me to tell the story I wanted. It's all too easy for porn games to simply copy Akabur's style and have a smartass protagonist who outmaneuvers everyone else in dialogue (often verbally defeating strawmen, but that's a different issue). I love Akabur's writing, but I wanted to do something different, and I didn't want the main character to have too much of a personality (he's an extension of the player). Enter Belle, a character who can crack jokes, be naughty, explain game mechanics, and break the 4th wall as necessary. Writing the game's dialogue before her introduction to the story was really hard, but once she joined it got a lot easier. She's the narrator in some ways.
This is always a problem with games like these. I see this with, say, Summertime Saga too, for example. With a linear story, you can easily set "checkpoints" for players to continue from with new updates (see Dating My Daughter), but it's not quite that easy with more open games.
Luckily, the three initial girls are almost completely separated in the early stages of the game. The only part you have to play again is the intro/tutorial, and you can skip through that by holding Ctrl. Once past that, you can focus on the new girl(s) since the last time you played.
Later versions of the game will support loading saves from previous versions, allowing you to continue from where you left off. I currently disallow this since it would break saves, but I have a plan for how to make it work eventually.
I suggest waiting until 0.2 if you can. The early game will feel much more complete since you can then visit all three of the game's initial girls, whereas 0.15 contains only two of them.
- Aug 25, 2017
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Akabur's style, eh?
For a moment I was afraid you'd plan to only update once a year while bitching that you never have time for anything.
Belle works very well for now.
Since the theme of the game is mind control and manipulation the MC should probably grow bolder with increasing power (or increasing courage, if you want to make that dependent on stats progression). Unless you plan for him stay a reluctant protagonist or want to offer a clean/corrupt branching.
I usually have reservations about MCs that feel too socially awkward but I'm not trying to push here. It's even worse when games go from shy introvert to "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" in the span of like 2 scenes.
Anyway, for narration and comic relief Belle seems much better suited than a faceless voice in the background or a wisecracking protagonist.
The protagonist in LLtP is awkward during the tutorial, but I quickly grow his confidence once he gets his first spells. After that point, he'll remain relatively stable in how he's portrayed until the end-game, except for situations in which he needs Courage or high-level spells. I can't really do much character development for him in an open game like this without making things absurdly complicated, so I have to find other solutions (mostly just putting character development into other characters instead).
The original design document for the game actually described the protagonist as a completely awkward and unpopular laughing stock, but I decided to move away from that concept once I solidified the story mechanics. I'd rather keep him a "blank slate" to serve as an avatar for the player, rather than have him behave in ways that players won't recognize themselves in at all.
- Aug 25, 2017
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Alright, that should work.
Of course that raises the question how open of a game this is supposed to be eventually. You wouldn't need much variation in character development if the only relevant choice was which girl(s) the MC is going to corrupt. I suppose there could be 2 endings depending on what you do with the princess once we get to that point.
Apart from that, where does the open game come into play?
Are you planning to branch according to alignment (so the player's decisions are the deciding factor) or according to stats (so story progression depends on how you choose to "level")? Both? Neither? Something else entirely?
Thank god that original design didn't make the final cut then. That shit is annoying enough in certain books. In games it can be so much worse as you're supposed to somehow identify with the guy. If my options are blank slate or laughing stock I'd opt for the former every time.
Obviously that's just my personal opinion and others may feel differently.
The open game comes from letting the player have full control over what he does and in which order he does it. Most adult games follow a linear path from start to end, but I don't do that.
It sounds like you may be talking about how open-ended the game is, which is a different matter altogether. The ending will be a linear series of challenges, and the player's choices throughout the game will determine how many of these challenges he will have a chance of succeeding at. There will be multiple ways to deal with these challenges, but it will mostly be about discovering a series of plot points before you get to that part. The more of the story you can uncover through your actions, the better your chances of winning are. Everything in the game will be able to factor into this in some way.
- Aug 25, 2017
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So the problem with character development would be that some/many/most scenes would need different dialogue depending on character stats (mostly courage I assume)?
If the player has full control over what he does and the order he does it in a lot of scenes would play out differently anyway, unless you structure them in "quest chains" that are completely separate from each other.
No, I was mainly interested in how you plan to implement the open gameplay, but from your description of the end challenge it seems I guessed completely wrong about the intentions of the Crone and/or Belle. Interesting.
And sorry for bombarding you with questions. I'll try to stop now.
Yes, dialogue would vary based on many factors. This is already a challenge in the game right now, and it's only going to get worse. Version 0.20 is the most flexible and most complex of the updates so far, with dialogue that will play out differently based on actions you have taken before. It can be as simple as someone saying "I already told you about this" instead of explaining something a second time, or as complex as having two completely different conversations based on just about anything. This is hard enough to deal with when writing a single character but would get infinitely worse if I had to take it into consideration for the entire game.
Version 0.20 is out for patrons! I've been working so hard on this that it feels like I could sleep for a week. 
Changelog:
- New scenes for Primrose (featuring more than 60 new images).
- The current day of the week is now shown when time progresses.
- Disabled the loading of old saves to prevent crashes and story progression issues.
- Lifted the time limit completely for now. It will be reintroduced in a later version.
- Backgrounds now use JPG instead of PNG, reducing the size of the game on disk.
- Tweaked clue names in the code to reduce the risk of accidental spoilers in case of crashes.
Changelog:
- New scenes for Primrose (featuring more than 60 new images).
- The current day of the week is now shown when time progresses.
- Disabled the loading of old saves to prevent crashes and story progression issues.
- Lifted the time limit completely for now. It will be reintroduced in a later version.
- Backgrounds now use JPG instead of PNG, reducing the size of the game on disk.
- Tweaked clue names in the code to reduce the risk of accidental spoilers in case of crashes.
- Sep 29, 2017
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- Aug 22, 2017
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Sounds great. The new release only has to find it's way here to the f95zone somehow.Version 0.20 is out for patrons! I've been working so hard on this that it feels like I could sleep for a week.
Changelog:
- New scenes for Primrose (featuring more than 60 new images).
- The current day of the week is now shown when time progresses.
- Disabled the loading of old saves to prevent crashes and story progression issues.
- Lifted the time limit completely for now. It will be reintroduced in a later version.
- Backgrounds now use JPG instead of PNG, reducing the size of the game on disk.
- Tweaked clue names in the code to reduce the risk of accidental spoilers in case of crashes.
- Oct 19, 2016
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Never fear, my donor is here (or at least he gave me the link but that wouldn't rhyme)Sounds great. The new release only has to find it's way here to the f95zone somehow.
0.20:
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- Aug 22, 2017
- 867
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Brilliant. I never feared though. As always it is a matter of time and I'm usually damn patient.
I'm more nervous about this release than I was about 0.15. That one was pretty straightforward for the most part, but 0.20 contains a lot of complexity and somewhat dynamic scenes. There is a very real risk that I've created continuity or logic errors that I didn't foresee, but I hope not. If you should come across anything like that, let me know and I'll try to fix it for the next version. If there are more serious bugs I'll release a hotfix.
- Jul 26, 2017
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okay i tried the game. first of all i didn't encounter any bugs, it was well done. although i have some criticism.
first of all good job with fixing the file size. it will encourage more people to try if it's just a small game i'm sure.
but the story of primrose, it was just...bad?
first of all good job with fixing the file size. it will encourage more people to try if it's just a small game i'm sure.
but the story of primrose, it was just...bad?
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