At the point of writing this post I'm currently procrastinating finishing up a text entry. I need to cap it off with a sentence. Or I might look at it, and decide it's done, I'm not sure yet. But, as I finished this text entry, I reflected on where my mind is in relation to Shield High. The past week has been a hard, painful slog of work. I'm doing cleaning mostly, adding in boring monotonous text entries that all need to be there, and that you, as players, will probably read once go "Neat" and then only skim the first line of to work out which one it is. I know cause I do this all the time. Thankfully, you'll also encounter these rarely enough that they won't feel dull and monotonous to you. I'm just writing them all back to back, which means they do, and it sucks.
I've been mixing up those text entries with entrance texts, which are equally painful to write, but much more likely to give you some positive feedback on the game. When I run around and test the game does feel a lot nicer to play because of them. However, in writing this one text entry, something sort of...clicked, in my head.
For the past little bit, while I've been getting back into the swing of things, I've been concerned my characters won't be interesting anymore. Karen and Samantha felt so...the same, in writing their texts for when you lose. They weren't, of course, they did different things, but I was still concerned I'd run out of ideas quickly. The monotonous text work has only made that worse.
But today something changed. I wrote a text entry for the gym, and mentioned some girls playing volleyball. I've mentioned groups of girls around the school before in these, but somehow being confronted with another one, similar, but distinct from the others, something settled in my head about how I always worked with Shield High. I think...I remembered that characters are meant to be a bit ridiculous. I'm meant to be exploring ideas that seem kind of silly but could maybe be sexy. Or ideas that fall into more fringe fetishes that maybe I don't even like. And for some reason, writing about these girls who aren't even in the game yet has made that sit better with me. I think maybe I'm picking up a bit more of my old passion for the writing that I lost. Up until now I've been running largely on the passion for the game-side of porn. (Which I have a lot of).
Now we just hope that said passion lasts, and this wasn't a momentary flash. I'll keep you all posted on that, and expect some stranger content in the coming weeks. Good strange, I hope.
Pudding Earl
Good luck! Strange is good. :D
ReplyDeletePresence of passion in your writings is always good^^
ReplyDeleteBTW, I don't know if you did this already, but I think that Shield High needs moar advertisement. Have you tried to post on one of these sites?
http://www.ulmf.org/bbs/forumdisplay.php?f=6
https://forum.fenoxo.com/forums/other-adult-games.23/
https://legendofkrystal.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=2631&cache=1 (update or something)
http://www.tfgamessite.com/index.php
Or even http://www.hypnopics-collective.net/smf_forum/index.php?board=11.0 (I remember there was a light mind break in RAGS version), etc.
With best regards.
Thank you for the suggestions, I have every intention of advertising Shield High with the next patch. The first release was more a "Look, I'm back, look how pretty my engine is and how my combat is functional this time." And the second was really more of the same. I showed them to a friend who'd never played it before and...she was utterly lost. So I realized, you kinda need to have played the older versions to really appreciate what I've got out right now.
DeleteWith that in mind, a major part of what I'm doing in this next patch is making information more present. Letting you know what each room actually is, telling you which class you need to go to next. Letting you know what clicking the interact button will actually do. And also having each button to move around the map say where it goes. It's not going to be perfect, but hopefully it will be enough to communicate how to progress through the game, and make it more welcoming to new comers.
And then naturally the other half of the patch is doing the exact opposite by adding in new mechanics that have never been part of Shield High before because why would I ever do anything the easy way?
As an additional note I need to stop repeating the plan for the update over and over. It's a terrible habit.
DeleteYou could use something like hyperlinks (text), not sure if that's what you're already thinking. Not sure if dymanic links are easier than having a virtual map and NSEW U/D direction inputs.
ReplyDeleteBut you could have the days options. "Morning class" "playground" "library" "gym".
Then "midday class" "playground" etc. after the first class.
So have the classes listed, also the important locations. Also give ability to add notes. "Playground" (combat arena), or (morning owner meeting) for when there is an event/meeting that is scripted. Can still have the "random" encounters when you try and go to a class.
I'm not entirely certain how you're thinking of these hyperlinks, so I'll address both possibilities that come to mind as what you're suggesting. If you're thinking links in the entrance text where I mention the places, that's...probably doable, but not with the bit of code I know, and I'm not going to spend a day or two researching something that'll maybe work. Especially considering I love the NSEW U/D system, since it gives a clear mental picture of how all the places fit together, which I personally enjoy.
DeleteThe other option, which I suspect is more what you're thinking is a list of places you can fast travel to, or something like that. I've toyed with the idea a few times, but every time I come to the same conclusion. Which is a sort of fast travel option would undermine parts of the game that either exist now, or will exist down the line.
It detracts from the sort of exploration aspects of Shield High that it kind of relies on. Like, yes, you don't really go around the rest of the school unless you're looking for someone(yet, I have a plan to mix up the classes just enough to give you a reason to travel the whole school), but if nothing else, a number of characters do, or will, sit in the immediate area, and they might get overlooked if you can fast travel.
From a technical side of things, it'd also require me to work out pathing again. The last attempt I made at pathing was a DISASTER. As I recall, I ended up hardcoding paths for the AI to move around because my dynamic pathing never worked out. I could skip the pathing, but then the random events become effectively worthless, since they'll always be skipped. Fast travel also removes those few times when you click a button one too many times or something, and end up in a place you wouldn't cross normally. While rare, that chance does increase the scope I can use for events.
FINALLY, the notes. Letting players add notes isn't something I intend to even consider for a long time. For the simple fact that I haven't learned how to do text input, and I'm a lazy bastard about learning new skills so I'm stubbornly refusing to do it. I will however consider it very far down the track, when I am planning to add in some higher functionality that would involve text entry, and thus mean I could work out the notes.
Yeah the second version was pretty much it. Although as opposed to fast travel, I was thinking just list ALL the areas (taking away the empty rooms that were just connections in the Rags map). So like the classrooms, gym, lib, center ground and the few others.
ReplyDeleteHad to rewrite this as after writing a bunch heh... realised we were thinking different concept. So no, not the same map with fast travel links to locations, but pretty much remove the map and just have direct links to the rooms. The 'map' is just those rooms.
The RANDOM encounters you wanted (ones with dynamic pathing that didn't work) you fudge instead. So instead of making a map, have AI path it, and see if the PC hits it while walking, you just use odds instead. If it was maybe around 20% change to hit the AI pathing when going from class A to Class B, instead just roll the dice when player who is in Class A, clicks to moves to Class B.
All mandatory encounters you hardcode, which is pretty much what was done in the Rags version with the location put in front of a room you had to go into :).
If you've played Inform game engine games (or others more text based) it's pretty much their system.
As always, just thoughts. And I feel ya on the map exploration part, I play lots of RPG games. But as you've found, it can also be tricky to code and if you can do something that feels like it without having to make a virtual version of it.
BTW, for the notes, was thinking game generated notes (or tags) not player. So the game changes the 'playground' link to 'playground' (combat arena) to tell the player there's a combat due today. Or the location of a current owner etc. for morning meetings.
I'll be honest, how I'm picturing what we're talking about and how you're picturing what we're talking about are probably two very different things, and I'm not entirely sure I follow your train of thought entirely.
DeleteThis is probably down to me knowing how the back end of Shield High works, and you only being able to suppose it, because some points you make about removing the map strike me as odd. Primarily because from a coding sense there is no map, rooms just know which button leads where, and the map is sort of artificially created as a result of that. It's lead to a few silly glitches.
As for random encounters, the random stuff I have so far isn't like, 20% chance of occurring when you hit X spot. It's like, the game checks, finds it needs a plot, and so picks one off the list of available plots it has, populates it, and places it on the map. So once you go there, it'll always happen, and thus I kind of do need to have paths laid out for certain if any form of travel is to take place that would skip places.
And finally the notes, while obviously not being used as you've suggested because I'm not using most of the suggestion, have prompted an idea for a small tweak that will be added in the coming update, that will make sure that you know where to go for your fights and things.
Heh yeah not easy to describe. But yeah your method is still a map. If room A has two doors (N,E) and they go to rooms B and C, and they have dome doors etc... if you draw that on a paper it's a map basically. Just one a computer can understand. Goes back to The Bards Tale, that was the map the games used, you could map it out using graph paper heh.
DeleteIt's also what enabled you to have or need pathing. If you have pathing, you have a map, virtual or otherwise. To go from Room A to B it's W,N,N,U,N,E say.
What I meant by remove the map, is just remove all those hallways, remove the doors. Just have Classrooms A, B, C, playground, Library etc. And you can jump from one to any other and the game assumes you walk there. Just without having to go through the process of all those N,N,E,W etc.
You can still put 'door' if you want by having some rooms needed to get to others. As in if there was a Library front desk you had to go to before the actual Library. But with this style you'd keep those down to a minimum as without NSEW moving, it's harder to visualise for the player (they forget what room is needed to get to the next).
The current way of encounters you mention would still be the same. Instead of putting plot encounter in front of the Class room B (so you can't miss it), you stick it onto Class room B. Because classes is one thing you can't skip ever. It's no different from what you did before.
With 'map': Leaving class A, you walk to class B (W,W,N,E etc.), one room S of it you hit encounter you placed there "just outside the classroom you meet..."
With links: While in class A, you click the button for Class B. That triggers the encounter you tagged to class B "just outside the classroom you meet ..."
It plays the same text wise, just without the navigation and still allows must have encounters.
And it allows for random encounters (non plot) without AI NPC tracking as you go through the rooms, just roll dice. I assume you wanted to have some truely random ones, why you mentioned the AI pathing.
Anyway, just mention this to clear up the concept I was talking about. Because like you, like talking about games and mechanics and coding and find tossing around ideas always useful :).
Ah yes, I get what you mean now. I've had this discussion with another friend who was proposing something similar, and the end of the day the answer for doing things the way I am is "I like this method more." Either way, I appreciate the suggestions.
DeleteStuff like this sits in a weird spot for me from a discussing games perspective. While I do enjoy discussing mechanics and such, a lot of game theory has already been covered. Theory related to porn games however is largely unexplored, and I'm constantly dwelling on ideas relating to how porn fits into games. Hence the Earl's Musing that'll be coming next week.