Have there been dating-sim projects out there ?

[PyTom]

Hm... I've been considering writing a DSE2, but I'm having trouble getting it to congeal in my mind. I think this is largely because "dating sim" is an underspecified problem.

For example, there's no one interface that is common to all dating sims. The DSE1 (and other games, like IIRC True Love and May Club) use a planner-based approach. The flash games, and maybe tokimeki, seem to use a time/energy based approach, with the user picking one choice at a time.

These choices may be presented to the user in many ways: As normal menus, as text buttons, as image buttons, or as an image map. Each has advantages and disadvantages.

This flexibility makes it hard to write a DSE2, since supporting everything in a single package is difficult. (And is more than I'm willing to do for something that I'm not sure will be used.)

So I think what's best is for me to start working with game-makers who want to make dating sim-style games. I think the idea would be to get specific decisions from a game-maker, and then implement that. I could then throw the result up on the cookbook page for others to use.

This also prevents me from having to do things completely myself. For example, if there's a game that wants an icon-based menu, it would help if I could use a pre-made set of icons, rather then having to mock them up myself just to demonstrate a system that may (or may not) ever see use.

[monele]

Sounds good ^^. It's probably better to have it on a case by case basis.