I don't think that's the issue exactly. I wouldn't expect any lovey-dovey romance given the title and core plot of this game. But I think there may be a disconnect between what we consider public and private, or rather which category we think of first and let define the other. It's a question of emphasis.
I tend to think of 'private' first in the strict sense as cut off from everyone else, where I think you/the game more considers it not-entirely-public: I.e. the public path might be turning out entirely free-use sluts, but the private path will still involve some sharing with other people.
I think where I am with the route structure is more in the public means Public as in people know what she is doing and private is more in the line of only you know what she is doing and why.
This will probably become more apparent as the game goes on. I have plans later in the game to implement an area corruption mechanic. If you corrupt a girl in the school in a private way you get 1 point to school corruption but if you corrupt her in a public way you would get 2 or maybe 3. Since that system isn't in the game yet, and won't be for a while, it might be a little less clear what the goal of the game is until you get there.
i meant that upon starting i noticed that ui looked bit different so it could be the explanation for incompatibility (not excluding other things i was not aware at the start)
tracker of npcs via showing face near the location. which i approve (+)....
(x) = no good
'without being accidentaly spoiled on other characters that they might not want tips on.'
eh, dont they need tips to progress?
or did u imply those who would want to operate without tips? then they will not go there. problem solved
or dunno, try not to look. (tbh never heard or thought about that concern)
i feel like it would be a minority (thus majority is punished) caz if it is a sandbox - it is all about optimization of clicks and ui (imo) extra 6-8 clicks can easily be 16 per ingame day, which pile up and will comprise some fair share of technically avoiable repetitive clicking (which some may call a grind)
in other words nothing should disturb players from following quest chain tasks (including text hehe; though yeah, while saying this i recognize that here that argument might be not that valid as the game is leaning towards vn with sbx ui...similar to crucial investigation/candy legacy for example. and pathes... surely it is also vn approah which i always advise to avoid under all cost in sandboxes [as it is not just vn renpy skip from answer to answer. so it will never work. i will be eitherr left with negging feeling of unseen content ... orwwith option to go through some bulky save-load proceddure(with or without some tons of routine clicks) ...whereas actual game will be 2-3 times shorter than it should)
i am always failing to find those tricky uni locations and going somewhere i dont need to. so i make tons of unnecessary clicks in caz my muscle memory fails me. id prefer dunno, colored map maybe. or all shown at once. or removing inactive somehow ...or showing active (like witth aj and alx) on the right...
...
(x)also skip is not a permanently available button.
A surprising amount of people like to play these games in the dark and explore around to find stuff on their own. I know cause I'm one of those people. Its a small thing to do to make that play-style more playable.
I can see the VN comparison. I like games that have lots of text and story, where you get to know characters before getting to the sexy bits. In order to do this I need to limit myself in how many paths there are because I couldn't possibly write 10 paths for every character to the degree that I would like to with the time I have.
Karlee's private path is probably going to come in at something like 45-50k words. I know that's not for everyone, and I'm cool with that. Part of the reason I decided to make this game to start with is cause no one else is dumb enough to commit that kind of time to writing in these games, and if they do the game has like 5 images that you see over and over.
My compromise in this is to write 2 full paths for almost every character and instead of say, doing a path for Karlee that is about her becoming a "insert kink here" type of a slut, I'll just add another character with that kink as the thing that makes her character unique in the game.
The game is more about collecting sluts than taking 1 slut and giving her a bunch of different paths. Doing it this way I can start getting completed characters in the game faster and kickstart the collecting process. This is way more doable for me in the limited amount of time I have.
Keep in mind that this is only the sixth release of a game that is going to have dozens of characters by the time it's finished. I havent even started on the teachers in the school, the PTA, the Project that you'll unlock after you break Sarah (think Akabur's witch trainer). I can't stress enough that this game has just started.
I agree that the nav isn't ideal. There are reasons for that too. As the game goes on there are going to be random events that pop in locations so I need the MC to "walk around town" in order to encounter them. And again there is a personal preference thing here. I'm the kind of guy that likes poking around trying to find everything in a game without the hint system. I've played games that have really, really streamlined nav systems and I did not enjoy them. If you go too far in that direction it stops feeling like a game and becomes more about just picking scenes from a menu. (which I realize is what all of these games are but I like it when I have to move around a world to get to the correct menu.
)
Its something that I do think about and hopefully I'll come up with something cleaner that still has the MC walking around and is easier to navigate. If you know any other games with similar needs to Sluttown that you think do a good job let me know and I'll check them out.
Skip doesn't work on pages where you can type in text ,cause if it did you wouldn't be able to name characters anything with a c in it. It also doesn't work on most pages that have multiple options.
