BEW - Ongoing Dev Thread (DAZ Artists Still Wanted)

[Wolfschadowe]

EDIT - See help wanted link...http://the-new-lagoon.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2920&start=330#p77449

Hello All,

It is with no small amount of terror that I present an early draft of what will hopefully be my first game, and not my last. Brad's Erotic Week (no relation to Fleet's game) is intended to be something between a Virtual Date and Choose your own adventure, but that's probably too idealistic. This proof of concept includes one major branch through day 1. The second branch is not available in this posted version. The full game will be 7 playable days across three continuous acts. It is a branching story, so choices made in day 1 will carry through day 7.

The next post has continuously updated progress notes and a basic roadmap.

I'm sure there are bugs, spelling mistakes and broken links in this proof of concept version.

I appreciate any constructive commentary, advice, or ideas. This is the first time I have ever done 3d art, game making or storytelling, so please be gentle.

Thanks in advance to everyone who takes time out of their busy days to play with this. I know I am having a lot of fun making it. See the included readme for more information.

Brad's Erotic Week (0.0.8) -- Disabled
Brad's Erotic Week (0.2.3) -- Disabled ~19 MB 3/4/2014 -- Only the bar branch is enabled for Day 1. Day 2 content is not present.
Brad's Erotic Week (0.2.3.1) -- Disabled
[b]Brad's Erotic Week (0.4.0)-- Disabled

Game Released! See release thread here: http://www.the-new-lagoon.com/viewtopic.php?uid=76667&f=3&t=3448&start=0

Changes from 0.0.8:

• Re-enabled the end of day Recap
• Minor story changes and enhancements in the Bar scene, plus general bug and continuity cleanup.
• Abbreviated achievements are enabled for existing scenes.

Changes from 0.2.3 to 0.2.3.1:

• Changed relationship threshold for the Day 1 office to enable a blocked achievement. This achievement should now be accessible.

Changes from 0.2.3. to 0.4.0

• New user interface
• Redesigned achievements and menu system
• Ability to export and import save games as a backup (Import overwrites existing saves)
• Ability to export and import achievements.
• The above two features support those of you who play in the various privacy modes, or clear cookies and cache.
• New short 12 page bonus scene hinting at the story to come for those mastering the Demo.
• Various bugfixes and enhancements.

The next test version will be Season 1, Episode 9,
Wolfschadowe

NOTE: -- This post was heavily edited on August 16th 2013 to be more applicable to the current state and development of the game.
Last Updated: April 3rd, 2014

[Wolfschadowe]

Reformatted status update and Plan. This is the current plan, subject to change. I will try to keep it updated once every week or two. I'll give estimated timings for areas in progress.

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Game Build Progress update
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January 15th, 20115 Update Link:http://www.the-new-lagoon.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2920&p=81541#p81541
November 7th, 2014 Update Link: http://www.the-new-lagoon.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2920&p=79697#p79697
October 13th, 2014 Update Link: http://the-new-lagoon.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2920&p=78540#p78540

Description of My Process

• Step One: Outline. I have a full outline of the game that includes plot points, character sketches, and general story-form of the game. This is completed for all 7 days, although I tend to modify it occasionally, hopefully for the better.
• Step Two: Storyboard - This is where I plot every page and response in MS Visio. I use a torn page shaped box for new pages, and an arrow shaped box (not connecting line) for player options.
• Step Three: Rendering - I create the image that matches the item in Visio. I also change the icon for that page to one that indicates that I've rendered the image. I also link it to other pages that may use the same image.
• Step Four: Logic - I go through the Storyboard and assign variables and functions to appropriate web pages and player responses. I color code the visio storyboard with variables, but most of this is done in MS Excel to aid calculations and track variables. I have Excel set up so that I can quickly map out a new path and determine what relationship values each path will have at a particular junction point, and what all the variables are set to at that point. I just built this tool recently, it has validation, and error checking built in. I can make changes to the node, and it will automatically reflect on every path, and helps me balance the relationship check difficulty.
• Step Five - Web Pages: I take all the information above, and actually build the web pages in Tlaero's Adventure Creator based on the Storyboard, which now contains information for each page including the image to use and game logic included. Once I've created the web page, I again change the Visio icon for that page to reflect the page is created and active.
• Step Six - Achievement Integration: Determine appropriate achievements and sub-achievements (endings & Activitites) and build out the achievements menu to include the new ones. I used to do this earlier but found it is better to do this last because things tend to change as I build out actual web pages and get ideas or cut parts out as I see the flow come together.
• Step Seven - Release to Playtest after running through spellcheck and doing a validation pass. That generally takes about a day. I just started doing Validation on day 2 scenes, and each validated page is reflected in the visio storyboard. Validation means that I've checked to ensure the pages and functions are working. I still miss stuff though, which leads to another big thank-you to the playtesters!

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Game Build Details - (Roadmap) - Total pages completed - 1973
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Released to Projects
Ver 0.0.8 - Proof of Concept - Released to Projects. - No other planned release.
Ver 0.2.3 demo - Resubmission of the content from 0.0.8 with updates and achievements.

Completed, Playtesters only:
Ver 0.0.9 - Bar scene, Day 1 (Wednesday) with new difficulty system and back end, plus recap re-enabled. (playtesters only.)
Ver 0.1.5 - Complete Bar and Strip Club Scenes. No recap. V0.1.5 playtester Initial release. (playtesters only.)
Ver 0.2.0 - Full day 1, including new Achievement rebuild, and the Intro, Wednesday Office, Bar, Club and Diner scenes. (Playtesters Only)
Ver 0.2.2 - Day 2 Morning coffee scene. A little bigger than the intro, and primarily sets us up for a more interesting Day 3 morning, which ends Act 1.
Ver 0.2.3 - Thursday (Day 2) 1/2 of Office, story elements.
Ver 0.2.4 - Thursday Day - At the office, minus one branch that I forgot
0.3.0 - Thursday afternoon transition. Home scene before going out, plus a branch in the office I forgot. (Medium/Moderate) - Wave 3 Playtest Onboarding

In Playtesting
0.3.5 - Thursday Evening Campus Scene. (Small/Simple)
In Progress:
0.4.0 - Thursday night at the bar. This will branch to Faith and Emily endings for Act 1 (Large/Complex) 57% complete (Playtest Group 4 Onboarding)

Roadmap: --- Original Schedule, subject to change after the current Voting.
Subject to change, not everything is listed. (Small <100 web pages. Medium 101 - 250 web pages, Large > 250 web pages)

Thursday Night Branch A
0.4.5 - Faith Alt, and Faith/Emily Main endings.(medium/moderate)
0.4.6 - Emily Main and Emily Perfect endings. (medium/simple)
0.4.7 - Emily Alt Ending. (large/simple)
0.5.0 - Branch group A complete. Day 2 Bar / other paths - Recap - (small/complex) - Final Wave Playtest Onboarding (Final Playtest group Onboarding)

Thursday Night Branch B
0.6.0 - Thursday night Strip Club: Faith Emily fail, Natalie day 2, Strip club dates with Faith and/or Emily (Medium/complex)
0.6.5 - Natalie Main ending (medium/moderate)
0.6.7 - Natalie Corruption ending and supporting transition scene that was supposed to be in 0.3.0 (medium/simple)
0.7.0 - Faith Main and Faith Perfect Endings (medium/simple)
0.7.5 - Faith/Emily Perfect ending.
0.8.0 - Branch group B complete: Day 2 Strip Club paths - Recap (Small/complex)

Friday Morning
0.9.0 - Friday Morning coffee / Act 1 Finale (Medium/moderate)
1.0.0 - Act 1 Release (Bugfix and playtest approval from 0.9.0

Act 2 (Friday Day - Sunday Day)
1.1.0 - Act 2 Scene 1 Friday Day. (Medium/Simple)
1.x.x - Act 2 Content Placeholder
2.0.0 - Act 2 Release

Act 3 (Sunday Night to Tuesday Night)
2.1.0 - Act 3 Scene 1 - Sunday Night
2.x.x - Act 3 Content Placeholder
3.0.0 - Game complete. Act 3 Release.

Expansions (if interest remains)
3.1.0 - Placeholder for expansions if there is demand.

Thanks to everyone for your continued support, input and feedback!

Wolfschadowe

Last updated:January 21st, 2015

[LRM]

First suggestion.
Include a date (maybe date and time (GMT)) with your download so players can tell there is a change/update.
Lou

[ExLibris]

I haven't actually played the game yet, but I do have a couple of general points.

1. I'm personally against releasing a game bit by bit, as you risk burning out your audience by forcing them to replay the same parts again and again in order to get to the new content in each new version (assuming save incompatibility).

2. If there are bugs, spelling mistakes, etc. there's no need to let everyone see them. Get a handful of playtesters to go through the game first and identify the problems (I'd be happy to volunteer). It's quite easy to spellcheck html files, and someone on this forum wrote a perl script for finding broken links.

3. Having a readme file is good, but I would add your email address since the game is undoubtedly going to be distributed beyond this forum. Also, it's titled "Virtual Date with Serenthia"

I'll have more specific feedback once I've had time to play the game. Best of luck.

[rabbie]

I tend to agree with the above comments, i find my self trying to ignore the bit by bit releases to avoid getting burned out. A small demo before the full game is fine, i think the game "Arron's Life" did this pretty well. Good luck with it, always great to see new people making games

[Wolfschadowe]

First suggestion.
Include a date (maybe date and time (GMT)) with your download so players can tell there is a change/update.

Great idea, Thanks!

ExLibris and rabbi, Thanks for the insight about bit-by-bit games. I was originally thinking about doing a release here for each major branch completed, but your points on game fatigue make a lot of sense. I'll recruit some playtesters for those and probably hang back on future general releases.

And thanks for the heads up on the script for finding broken links. I'll check it out.

Wolfschadowe

[M]

I generally agree about the piecemeal releasing pattern people seem to be fond of, but this was actually a pretty decent start. The characterization seemed like it might be a little shallow, but that seems to be fairly normal for these things and it's hard to really gauge that if it's supposed to cover seven days.

It almost lost me at the beginning when you're stalking the mystery girl, but at least the character showed some awareness about that later.

The entire threesome sequence at the end is just packed full of broken links, though.

EDIT:

Also, the recap sequence at the end tells you that you weren't able to patch things up with Faith after she saw what happened with Emily even if Emily never showed up at the bar.

[ExLibris]

Overall, I enjoyed this first part. It could definitely use some thorough proof-reading, as I noticed a number of homonyms and inappropriate capitalisation that spellchecking alone isn't going to catch. I only found one broken link though (function n1bar76h()). The cityscape could definitely use some visual cues to tell you where the bar is as well.

As others have said, the opening sequence doesn't do a great job of selling the PC to the player. PCs in adult games tend to fall into two categories. They're either aspirational (ie. they're someone the player wants to be) or anonymous (ie. a blank slate for the player to project themselves onto). Brad initially comes across as a sad creepy stalker, so he's neither.

I've only played the game through once (on hard) so I may be missing some things, but at the moment it feels very linear. There are no real branches that I could see, and there are long stretches where there's just one option to click.

[Wolfschadowe]

It almost lost me at the beginning when you're stalking the mystery girl, but at least the character showed some awareness about that later.

Brad initially comes across as a sad creepy stalker, so he's neither.

Thank you both. Great feedback. It sounds like I definitely need to change the tone of the intro somehow. Not to mention killing the spelling errors and bad links.

My main goal in posting this initial section of the game was to see if there would be interest and if it would be enjoyable, or if I was producing pure trash, and should just hang it up before spending too much more time on it. Initial reactions seem generally positive despite the embarrassing spelling errors and links, so..onward.

For those interested, in spoiler tags below is some context around the opening scene. There is some general information about the future storyline.

The intended tone of the opening scene is to set the stage for a change from famine to feast in Brad's love life. Following Serenthia (the coffee shop girl and the reason for the stray reference in the readme file) is intended to portray Brad as trying to work up the nerve to ask her out, clumsily trying to make it seem like a coincidental alignment of schedules.

In my current outline/storyboard, the scene repeats itself a little more interactively on Day 2 where Brad is questioning why he is still so drawn to her after the events at the Bar or the Strip Club the night before. The morning of Day 3 ends what I loosely define as Act I with a catalyst that changes the status quo of their morning routine. Ultimately Brad discovers that she wrapped up her business at the coffee shop after the first couple of days and was only returning out of curiosity about Brad following her.

The spoiler below contains some information about exit conditions from the bar scene that affect Day 2. Most is nonspecific, but there is 1 specific example.

There are 5 major exit conditions from the Bar scene that have significant impact to day two, and several minor conditions that can modify the major paths. For example, early in the bar scene if you spot the coffee shop girl, and go after her to try and buy her a drink, it has an impact on the relationship with Faith, and limits progress on the threesome branch, as well as some day 2 activities. If you don't chase the coffee shop girl, you can progress farther with Faith, but not as far with the coffee shop girl later.

Once again, thanks to everyone who is playing this and sharing their advice and insight. I am using it to improve my skill and hopefully make this a better game when it's done.

Wolfschadowe

[M]

Okay, I might be wrong about the broken links in the threesome section.

The option to ask Faith to join you after Emily notices her is definitely a broken link. I initially assumed that was the trigger to start the scene, so I found the HTML file that was the beginning of it and went exploring from there. That didn't work very well at all.

After that I found a different way into it, or maybe the intended one, and everything worked fine.

After a couple spins through I'm not sure the recap scene is consistently working right, though.


Overall it's definitely something you should continue.

[ExLibris]

I would definitely like to see you continue as well, although I can't help feeling that seven days is over-ambitious.

[rabbie]

Is it just me or does faith look totally different when she leans over the bar after you bring up the other guy at the bar who stares at her? Might be the lighting.

"My main goal in posting this initial section of the game was to see if there would be interest and if it would be enjoyable, or if I was producing pure trash, and should just hang it up before spending too much more time on it"

Its a really well made game and i think you should keep going for sure, it has a nice bit of intrigue going for it too.

[Wolfschadowe]

Is it just me or does faith look totally different when she leans over the bar after you bring up the other guy at the bar who stares at her? Might be the lighting.

That's about where I switched from a Spotlight fill to an UberArea fill light. I also did a makeup correction on her at that point. You will see a distinct line down her jawline when she is in profile a screen or two before that, and that's what the makeup change fixed. Those two combined at about the same time is probably what makes her look different.

M - I'll hunt down that link you mentioned and see what's going on. There's a couple of different paths that get to that point loading different pages with the intended link. Thanks!

Wolfschadowe.

[hrmf]

One thing that bugged me a little was not having visual cues about whether I was meant to hunt around between a few possible choices, or whether I was just supposed to click through to the next page after getting some exposition etc. Maybe you could come up with a convention with respect to either clicking the text on the bottom of the screen or else clicking in the image. But I'm impatient at these things, I'll look around a little bit and then view source if I get stuck. Maybe other people enjoy it as a difficulty thing.

I like that you have fairly good cues to let the player know when something went wrong. I wouldn't mind something a little more general once in a while that would indicate the player's overall status, like "Faith seems kind of pissed at you" or something. Like the meters in the last few chaotic games, only not necessarily so literal. The end of day recap does this in a way, but it might be like to have like a checkpoint or something.

Overall, good work, looking forward to the whole thing. There are some good ideas in here.

[jfrancois323]

If i remember, all the games from Tlaero use the clicking on text and/or in the images. This is a part of the games i like. It gives more possibilities !

Wolfschadowe, the game is great you should rewrote a little bit the intro, it sound like harassment, except that point, the game look nice !!