Thanks so much for the responses, guys! I'm feeling pretty inspired right about now...
To Maruta - you were very helpful, thanks! I'm glad you found the intro interesting - it seems kinda long to me, but hopefully it won't be so bad once the rest of the content is finished...
Midnighticequeen wrote:Cons: I know it was a demo but I wished that the dating scenes where done for Shuppin too, I find him very interesting. I also wish I could spend some time just hanging out with my friends, since I hardly see them after the opening of the game.
Heh, I'm glad you find him interesting - the main reason I haven't gotten around to writing any of his scenes is because at first, at least, he's supposed to be a stereotypical, shy, emo-type guy, which I find difficult to write in an interesting way... (he's also the most difficult character for me to draw, hur
) Rest assured, though, there should be plenty of scenes with him by the time the game is done.
Though you won't be able to call your friends up like you can the boys, there'll be plenty of opportunities to meet up with them in either random events / clubs or just going to the places they usually hang out. Also, the 'hang out' command should lead to scenes with whichever girl you have the highest relationship values with, which will in turn lead to more points with the boy each girl is associated with...
...hopefully.
Midnighticequeen wrote:Questions:
Do the birthday of my character matter in some way in the game? Will I get a birthday gift from any of the men or my friends if I know them well enough? How long have you been working on this game and is this your first VN?
More Questions: How did you get the image map to work, I'm still a little clueless as to how to use it.
Yup, I'm hoping to implement something like that for the player's birthday, though I'm not quite sure how I'd make it so that the event would still run if the birthday fell on, say, a weekend or holiday when no events are run...
(actually, here would probably be a good place to ask - I'm guessing it'd be pretty simple, but is there any way to combine variables in python? At the moment, the player's birth month and birthdate are two separate variables - how would I go about adding them together? (e.g. "birthdate" + "birthmonth" = "playerbirthday" or summat similar
)
As for the imagemaps, I'm not really an expert either, tbh - which one did you mean? I used them for pretty much every menu in the game, heh! The main day planner code was something like this:
Code: Select all
$ result = renpy.imagemap("IM-dpgrey.png", "IM-dphover.png", [
(305, 178, 414, 284, "study"),
(415, 170, 515, 284, "relax"),
(516, 178, 614, 284, "hangout"),
(615, 178, 719, 284, "exercise"),
(316, 286, 415, 399, "makeup"),
], unselected="IM-dpnormal.png", focus="imagemap")
There wasn't really much to it - 'dpgrey' was the image for the buttons I didn't want to be clickable (pretty pointless for the day planner actually, but for the diary page it let me have greyed out options which would become active when the player met certain characters), 'dphover' was for hovered buttons and 'dpnormal' was just for normal buttons. 'result' is the name of the variable the player's choice is stored in, so I had to pick a new name when I had a load of imagemaps in a loop... which I probably shouldn't have had in the first place, but eh.
I'm not sure what problems you were having with them, but if you tell me in more detail, I'd be happy to help...
I've been working on the game since sometime in late September, as far as I remember, and it's my first VN. *blunders through coding*
monele wrote:
One little thing I noticed is that activity icons react only on opaque parts. It would be nice if they reacted as simple squares, so the whole icon reacts (including the box and name).
Heh, yeah, I didn't realise imagemaps actually did that until I'd made them all... I'll definitely edit that, though, as it's admittedly pretty hard to click on some of the buttons because of the transparency...
monele wrote:
Ok, I've played some more and it's shaping up to be some *very* nice dating sim ^.^, boys or not
.
Interface thingies : I'd change the ring bell sound for a simple "ping". I keep wondering wether there's someone at the door or not ^^;... I'd also try to do something with the day-to-day activity choosing... maybe remove some dissolve interactions so that it goes quicker (going through this for a whole game will be..... urr!) and, if possible, that a single click is needed (click = stat change displayed along with spoken comment along with the buttons ready for the next day). Mm... though I can see how it'd interfere with her day-to-day comments :/
And as said above, a small "+5" above stats would work wonder. As it is, we have to mentally compute the result of an activity, and to do so, we need to remember the previous stats and their new state to know what changed.
I did originally have more of a 'ding' sound, actually - it wasn't a particularly good one, though, and a was having a hard time finding decent sound effects, heh! I'll have a look for something less doorbell-like, though.
Hopefully, once the content and events and whatnot are added, the player shouldn't have to see the stats scene quite so often, but it is pretty tedious at the moment, I'll admit - I really wanted something more Tokimeki Memorial-esque, where the game would just automatically do what you told it to for a week or so, but I don't have any coding skills to speak of and hit a dead end pretty quickly - it's the same with showing stat changes, though I'm assuming something like that wouldn't be too difficult to implement? At the moment, aside from maybe one overlay, there's hardly any coding in the game that doesn't just involve a load of imagemaps one after the other, heh!
I'll definitely give your suggestions a try, though, especially concerning the stats, since most of the time even I forget what raises what by how much...
monele wrote:Kweshuns now :
Can Marius currently be dated outside the arcade? He seems to always redirect to his working place
.
Same question with the other guy.
What's the effect of going out alone somewhere? It's not shown clearly :/
Some dates seem to rely on your choices but also maybe on your stats? (DDR + fitness?)
-I haven't coded his other dates yet, but if your relationship with him is at neutral, he'll only meet you at the arcade. Even in the demo, though, you can get his relationship values to the next level very easily unless you intentionally annoy him, so it shouldn't take the player long to unlock his other dates.
-I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with Shuppin yet - I'm thinking that since he's going to be harder to woo than Marius, on the rare instances he does agree to date you at neutral, you could visit places other than his work... but I'm not too sure yet, tbh!
-At the moment, it doesn't really do anything.
I do have vague plans for it, though, namely involving meeting characters you can't actively choose to meet up with normally (i.e. non-dateable characters will usually be at certain places on saturdays etc.).
-Yup! Certain boys are more interested in certain stats, which will affect the outcomes of your dates (though making the right choices is still the most important aspect.)
Jo'ogn wrote:Spiffy! Even though I am no big fan of "click up your stats", it looks professionally nice!
As monele pointed out already, the week end activities, like going out could do with some event, or dialogues. Are test papers coming up, like in "Toki Meki Memorial 2"? Or what's all the smartness good for ( ;
Does the players character change appearance? I was thinking that if I spent much time on getting "shiny", she should become more appearently pretty. While she could turn more tom-boyish when she's all for exercise and geeky if she's high on smartness =D
The pace of the intro is alright. Like I said, when all I can do is "clicking up stats", I wish for some storyish events.
The Tokimeki Memorial games (well, the girl-oriented ones, anyway) are the only dating sims I've actually played, so yeah, there's a lot of influence there - including tests, heh! The smartness stat is good for impressing certain boys who are into intelligent girls, though.
But when the game is complete, there'll definitely be far more in terms of events and less 'clicking-up stats' - each menu choice other than relaxing, which is only good for relieving stress, will have a chance of activating a random event, which depending on your stats / clubs / relationships etc. could be part of an arc, or something like that.
I hadn't really thought about the character's appearance changing - it's something I'd probably only think of implementing once every other part of the game is complete, as to be honest having the character portrait there in the first place was pretty much just an afterthought on my part, but it's a really good suggestion!
Thanks again for all the suggestions! (and sorry for this long-ass reply, jesus...
)
).
