Porn Game Replayability?

[Zippity]

For stuff like VN's I can see where something like a written out framework/outline would be a wonderful benefit. You could visualize your path's and see if they conflict to the story in some way. Then its just up to your writing to make it not conflict at all.

That is exactly what I tell upcoming developers when they ask for general advice... Making an outline of the entire story helps with keeping continuity in check, and they can change it over time and fill in all the nitty gritty details as they actually write/develop it all... Especially with highly complex choice effecting stories... But having a road map is really key in keeping everything lined up...

Zip

 

[Sikisk]

That is exactly what I tell upcoming developers when they ask for general advice... Making an outline of the entire story helps with keeping continuity in check, and they can change it over time and fill in all the nitty gritty details as they actually write/develop it all... Especially with highly complex choice effecting stories... But having a road map is really key in keeping everything lined up...

Zip

Having tight branching stories really does sell like hotcakes if you do it right. It's more difficult to do when you're just starting out though. I believe a more linear path for your first game with a small scope gives you a more apt idea of what you want out of everything.

Being Ambitious is a good thing in most situations, but you don't want to bite off more than you can handle. That's precisely why I think making games replayable is more important than making it expansive. I got the idea for this thread after playing a relatively shorter game called Dungeon Lord, which is really a mess of pictures and art thrown onto a really solid framework that I could play for hours on. What is already there gives you a little bit of strategy along with challenges if those strategies go up in smoke. It's frankly really impressive what he's done with one release.

 

[khumak]

That is exactly what I tell upcoming developers when they ask for general advice... Making an outline of the entire story helps with keeping continuity in check, and they can change it over time and fill in all the nitty gritty details as they actually write/develop it all... Especially with highly complex choice effecting stories... But having a road map is really key in keeping everything lined up...

Zip

For me this is proving to be more difficult than I thought it would be. I work in tech and am used to being very organized and methodical about my day job. That doesn't work for me at all when I put my developer hat on though. I find the whole process messy and disorganized.

I can't just sit down and say to myself, ok let's work on the backstory for Jane today. Go brain, go. My brain is like, yeah fuck you I want to think about that stripper scene again... I could force myself to write something for Jane anyway but it won't be much good. So I go through that stripper scene again and probably tweak it a bit and then move on to whatever the next thing is that pops into my head instead of working on Jane. But then a few days later I'll just be screwing around doing who knows what and an idea for Jane just pops into my head. That's when I write her story.

So I do have an idea what sort of theme I want pretty early and I know what sorts of characters I want. I also have some ideas for big events that I want to do and finales and stuff, but nothing is connected yet. I don't know why I'm friends with this person yet. I don't even know how I met her yet. But I know what she's doing in this big event later and I know that I have to come up with something earlier to justify that...

I also find that as I fill things in for certain characters or events I decide to completely change something I had already written before. Maybe I took an earlier event too far. Maybe one of my characters just doesn't make sense for this scene I want and I need to change their motivations and personality, or maybe their backstory a bit. So I'm not so sure about filling things in as I go if I were to try and do an episodic game or something.

I suspect for me I will need to have pretty much the whole game mapped out ahead of time before I start rendering anything. I definitely will make some tweaks when I get to the actual rendering but I need the story, characters, and events to basically all be nailed down and set up so they all feel like they fit into the puzzle to keep me from veering off course as I get caught up rendering an individual scene.

 

[Zippity]

For me this is proving to be more difficult than I thought it would be. I work in tech and am used to being very organized and methodical about my day job. That doesn't work for me at all when I put my developer hat on though. I find the whole process messy and disorganized.

I can't just sit down and say to myself, ok let's work on the backstory for Jane today. Go brain, go. My brain is like, yeah fuck you I want to think about that stripper scene again... I could force myself to write something for Jane anyway but it won't be much good. So I go through that stripper scene again and probably tweak it a bit and then move on to whatever the next thing is that pops into my head instead of working on Jane. But then a few days later I'll just be screwing around doing who knows what and an idea for Jane just pops into my head. That's when I write her story.

So I do have an idea what sort of theme I want pretty early and I know what sorts of characters I want. I also have some ideas for big events that I want to do and finales and stuff, but nothing is connected yet. I don't know why I'm friends with this person yet. I don't even know how I met her yet. But I know what she's doing in this big event later and I know that I have to come up with something earlier to justify that...

I also find that as I fill things in for certain characters or events I decide to completely change something I had already written before. Maybe I took an earlier event too far. Maybe one of my characters just doesn't make sense for this scene I want and I need to change their motivations and personality, or maybe their backstory a bit. So I'm not so sure about filling things in as I go if I were to try and do an episodic game or something.

I suspect for me I will need to have pretty much the whole game mapped out ahead of time before I start rendering anything. I definitely will make some tweaks when I get to the actual rendering but I need the story, characters, and events to basically all be nailed down and set up so they all feel like they fit into the puzzle to keep me from veering off course as I get caught up rendering an individual scene.

What I meant by a basic outline is just that... It can be as detailed or as un-detailed as you want... It's just a skeleton to get the basic plot ideas down as much as you can upfront... Just to get a basic idea or plan... Think of it as a bare bones skeleton on which you add the muscle, organs, and skin later on as you develop... Now, that doesn't always work for everyone... It's really just intended as a road map so you can help keep things straight going forward... Everything will be subject to change as you actually do the developing...

Only reason I even suggest stuff like that is because it tends to relieve some of the stress, especially later into development as things become more complex... Think of it as a tool to help with the process in order to keep story continuity straight and possibly avoid plot holes and so on... You can even adapt it and modify it as you go...

Some folks may even just write down their ideas, or voice record their ideas for reference later as another tool in the creative toolbox...

But as I said, it may not work for everyone... Each individuals creative style varies...

Zip

 

[Sikisk]

So I do have an idea what sort of theme I want pretty early and I know what sorts of characters I want. I also have some ideas for big events that I want to do and finales and stuff, but nothing is connected yet. I don't know why I'm friends with this person yet. I don't even know how I met her yet. But I know what she's doing in this big event later and I know that I have to come up with something earlier to justify that...

So If you have the ideas in your head already, maybe working backwards from those big plotpoints would help. Seems counter intuitive but it should help complete some of those missing links between Point C-H.

Start your skeleton from the foot as it were instead of the head. Then you can throw out anything you don't think makes sense later. If you know big bad gets his ass kicked by 3 gnomes, back up a bit to where you start collecting the gnomes. Once thats done you can intermingle that into the story naturally somewhere and somehow. Rough Drafts of anything are meant to be sloppy approximations of your thoughts. The problem becomes the fact that you would be your own worst critic and editing it down would be the most difficult part of the whole ordeal.

"This Rough Draft doesn't make sense to me, might as well start over." Don't do that either, form it into a workable scenario.

 

[khumak]

So If you have the ideas in your head already, maybe working backwards from those big plotpoints would help. Seems counter intuitive but it should help complete some of those missing links between Point C-H.

Start your skeleton from the foot as it were instead of the head. Then you can throw out anything you don't think makes sense later. If you know big bad gets his ass kicked by 3 gnomes, back up a bit to where you start collecting the gnomes. Once thats done you can intermingle that into the story naturally somewhere and somehow. Rough Drafts of anything are meant to be sloppy approximations of your thoughts. The problem becomes the fact that you would be your own worst critic and editing it down would be the most difficult part of the whole ordeal.

"This Rough Draft doesn't make sense to me, might as well start over." Don't do that either, form it into a workable scenario.

Yeah that's not what I meant. I don't throw everything out when I do a rewrite, it's more like overhauling an individual character or event while leaving everything else the same. My current method basically goes brainstorm, decide on main story elements, decide on some characters, big event A, big event B, wait for inspiration to connect big event A to big event B, decide where event A and B actually fit into the overall story. That sort of thing.

I just meant that for me it's a nonlinear process and is kind of scattershot at least until I have things pretty well developed. I can get more focused after that when I have a better feel for a scene that I can just jump right into and continue with. Maybe other people can be more organized about it. I suspect having some experience as a writer would help but I don't have that.

An example of the sort of issue I ran into with my mod where I was just developing everything on the fly is taking an early game sex scene far enough that it contradicts the dialog in the vanilla game for scenes that happen after it. So I had to twist things around trying to figure out how to fix that without scrapping my biggest event. If I had mapped things out better beforehand I could have avoided that.

 

[larry69]

What about games that aren't VNs? RPGs, puzzles etc