Wednesday, 2014-06-11
Version 0.3.0 was released a little under two weeks ago and the wave 3 playtesters were onboarded. There are two who haven't responded yet, but I'll give them to the end of the month before swapping them out for the top two wave 4 testers. I know we all have lives.
Most of the last week or so has been spent doing bugfixes on the last release. I also reworked the Achievements status reporting section since it was broken and rebalanced a few of the paths to make them actually accessible. Finally I've got the day 2 bonus scene about half done. Bonus scenes are linear scenes unlocked by earning all achievements for a day, and show part of the story from a different perspective. For example, the day one bonus scene shows what happens when Emily shows up at the Bar if Brad went to the strip club during day 1. Those scenes are pretty easy from my standpoint since there's no game logic or branches, just various forms of "next". I haven't started rendering the day 1 bonus scene yet.
Also I've got several paths of the day 2 bar date storyboarded through the bar portion. The day 2 dates begin at one of three locations, and will generally branch out to a new location for the Act 1 Climax (pun definitely intended). That new location could be Brad's Apartment, Emily's place or Faith's, as examples.
Again, I'd like to thank all the playtesters for your help, input, dedication, and patience! The game would probably be crap without all of you.
Early development history
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Wolfschadowe
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Monday, 2014-06-30
Mainly been building out the day 2 bar over the last couple of weeks, doing renders and tuning the branches and logic to account for the multiple ways to get to each scene and handle them. There are seven success paths through the day 2 bar, and each can be a failure path as well. The paths are somewhat dynamic in that choices made during the first night at the bar will determine which of the 7 paths are available. Next, based on player actions through previous scenes, the game determines which paths are passable. For example, let's take paths A-G. That's seven paths. Now, in the Day 1 Bar scene, if Faith Joins in on the fun, that opens paths A, B, C, and F at the Day 2 Bar. Now if after Emily leaves, Faith gives Brad a blowjob, all four paths are still available, but now paths A, C, and F are failure paths, but B is still a success path if Brad makes it through the day 2 office. On the other hand, if Brad just gets a kiss from Faith at the end of Day 1, then A and B are failure paths, but C and F are passable, unless other activities in other scenes close them down. Oh, and if Brad gets the blowjob, but fails at the office on day 2, that may open path G as a success path, and close off A, B, and C.
The key here is that whether or not the paths are passable, or available are backed by the story and characterization. Trial and error won't be necessary to figure out the magic combinations. Well, maybe some trial and error, but it will be informed trial and error. When the player fails a path, they should understand why they failed and likely on a second play-through of the same path see the hints and foreshadowing about what to choose. In other words, win/lose paths should be sensible and decipherable from story elements, not just random hit/miss. Back to the example, on some paths, if Emily finds out about the Blowjob from Faith...Well, let's say she's not going to be happy about it. Yet on different paths she may not find out about it, or may not care when she does find out. The key here is that passing or failing should make sense if the player knows the characters and story. Failures should be "oh, that makes sense" and not "What the fuck?", although often failures are based on someones relationship being too low, there are also failures based on past decisions.
Now, also keep in mind, this is just for the Bar destination during day 2. If the player chooses the date in a second destination, there may be new paths available, such as K, L, and O. But with a blowjob, only K is passable. With just a kiss and going home, K and O are passable, and under other circumstances, only L is passable. Meanwhile, starting out at the strip club on day one, opens paths A, D and G at the bar, and M, O, and N at the second destination on day 2. So basically, decisions made in the scene that's available to the public at the bar have lasting effects throughout the game, as do decisions made in subsequent scenes. the choices you make will follow you throughout the game...and sometimes come back to haunt you. Paths are chosen based on actions through the game, and then modified by other actions. For example, Faith joining Brad and Emily in the booth is one path. If Faith just watches, that's a second path. The blowjob is a modifier to both paths that determines pass/fail criteria later, and also locks or opens branches to the paths. This is just one example, there are many more modifiers throughout the game.
Once the player gets on a finishing path for Act 1, around the middle of the day 2 bar scene (or about the middle of the other dates for the end of day 2), that path is locked, for better or worse, until the end of Act 1, with fewer options to change paths and fewer branches through the climax of the Act. It's not quite linear at that point, decisions will still increase or decrease relationship points, and it's still possible to fail out of a relationship, or even lose the game. Once the player advances to day 3, most specifically the afternoon of day 3 when Act 2 begins, the game opens up again with multiple branches.
Anyway, progress continues, and I'm still having a lot of fun building the game.
Mainly been building out the day 2 bar over the last couple of weeks, doing renders and tuning the branches and logic to account for the multiple ways to get to each scene and handle them. There are seven success paths through the day 2 bar, and each can be a failure path as well. The paths are somewhat dynamic in that choices made during the first night at the bar will determine which of the 7 paths are available. Next, based on player actions through previous scenes, the game determines which paths are passable. For example, let's take paths A-G. That's seven paths. Now, in the Day 1 Bar scene, if Faith Joins in on the fun, that opens paths A, B, C, and F at the Day 2 Bar. Now if after Emily leaves, Faith gives Brad a blowjob, all four paths are still available, but now paths A, C, and F are failure paths, but B is still a success path if Brad makes it through the day 2 office. On the other hand, if Brad just gets a kiss from Faith at the end of Day 1, then A and B are failure paths, but C and F are passable, unless other activities in other scenes close them down. Oh, and if Brad gets the blowjob, but fails at the office on day 2, that may open path G as a success path, and close off A, B, and C.
The key here is that whether or not the paths are passable, or available are backed by the story and characterization. Trial and error won't be necessary to figure out the magic combinations. Well, maybe some trial and error, but it will be informed trial and error. When the player fails a path, they should understand why they failed and likely on a second play-through of the same path see the hints and foreshadowing about what to choose. In other words, win/lose paths should be sensible and decipherable from story elements, not just random hit/miss. Back to the example, on some paths, if Emily finds out about the Blowjob from Faith...Well, let's say she's not going to be happy about it. Yet on different paths she may not find out about it, or may not care when she does find out. The key here is that passing or failing should make sense if the player knows the characters and story. Failures should be "oh, that makes sense" and not "What the fuck?", although often failures are based on someones relationship being too low, there are also failures based on past decisions.
Now, also keep in mind, this is just for the Bar destination during day 2. If the player chooses the date in a second destination, there may be new paths available, such as K, L, and O. But with a blowjob, only K is passable. With just a kiss and going home, K and O are passable, and under other circumstances, only L is passable. Meanwhile, starting out at the strip club on day one, opens paths A, D and G at the bar, and M, O, and N at the second destination on day 2. So basically, decisions made in the scene that's available to the public at the bar have lasting effects throughout the game, as do decisions made in subsequent scenes. the choices you make will follow you throughout the game...and sometimes come back to haunt you. Paths are chosen based on actions through the game, and then modified by other actions. For example, Faith joining Brad and Emily in the booth is one path. If Faith just watches, that's a second path. The blowjob is a modifier to both paths that determines pass/fail criteria later, and also locks or opens branches to the paths. This is just one example, there are many more modifiers throughout the game.
Once the player gets on a finishing path for Act 1, around the middle of the day 2 bar scene (or about the middle of the other dates for the end of day 2), that path is locked, for better or worse, until the end of Act 1, with fewer options to change paths and fewer branches through the climax of the Act. It's not quite linear at that point, decisions will still increase or decrease relationship points, and it's still possible to fail out of a relationship, or even lose the game. Once the player advances to day 3, most specifically the afternoon of day 3 when Act 2 begins, the game opens up again with multiple branches.
Anyway, progress continues, and I'm still having a lot of fun building the game.
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Monday - 2014-07-28
It’s amazing how much time can be taken up by family during the summer months. Not that I’m complaining much, but it is difficult to get a lot of work done on an AIF game during the summer breaks in my situation. Anyway, work has progressed slower than I would have liked this month, but I’ve still been making steady progress. The main impact has been rendering time, but I expect that to loosen up next week and I’ll be back up to speed on that. On a brighter side, I had an epiphany and was able to finish storyboarding the campus scene that I had pushed back. I also have the Day 1 and Day2 Bonus scenes fully storyboarded as well. I also have more of the day 2 Bar scene storyboarded as well. I’m pretty happy with how it’s coming together. Once the bar scene ends and the day splits out to the Act I endings for the day, it should go a lot quicker. The endings are all pretty linear once you get to them, and either will finish successfully, or fail out relatively quickly without much branching. The same is true for the endings associated with the Strip Club branches. The Act I endings will all come together for the Day 3 morning. Act II will begin with Day 3 afternoon.
It’s amazing how much time can be taken up by family during the summer months. Not that I’m complaining much, but it is difficult to get a lot of work done on an AIF game during the summer breaks in my situation. Anyway, work has progressed slower than I would have liked this month, but I’ve still been making steady progress. The main impact has been rendering time, but I expect that to loosen up next week and I’ll be back up to speed on that. On a brighter side, I had an epiphany and was able to finish storyboarding the campus scene that I had pushed back. I also have the Day 1 and Day2 Bonus scenes fully storyboarded as well. I also have more of the day 2 Bar scene storyboarded as well. I’m pretty happy with how it’s coming together. Once the bar scene ends and the day splits out to the Act I endings for the day, it should go a lot quicker. The endings are all pretty linear once you get to them, and either will finish successfully, or fail out relatively quickly without much branching. The same is true for the endings associated with the Strip Club branches. The Act I endings will all come together for the Day 3 morning. Act II will begin with Day 3 afternoon.
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Wednesday, 2014-08-13
Ariane was one of my inspirations for the game. I loved the complexity and replayability, but felt that it came up a little short in telegraphing the impact of choices, so to me, they often felt a little arbitrary. What was great about it was that I felt that I had a larger impact to the story than a lot of other games. You could take Ariane to the same activities and she would behave a little differently there based on how much she had to drink, or what your reputation with her was. It struck me as different because at the time, most other games were very linear and you had to have the exact sequence right and there was only one outcome. Even multiple endings were often limited to a choice of where to go 3/4 of the way through the game.
I doubt BEW will ever live up to the standard of Ariane, or Tlaero/Phreaky for that matter, but I hope to at least get to the bottom of a list containing both.
Ariane was one of my inspirations for the game. I loved the complexity and replayability, but felt that it came up a little short in telegraphing the impact of choices, so to me, they often felt a little arbitrary. What was great about it was that I felt that I had a larger impact to the story than a lot of other games. You could take Ariane to the same activities and she would behave a little differently there based on how much she had to drink, or what your reputation with her was. It struck me as different because at the time, most other games were very linear and you had to have the exact sequence right and there was only one outcome. Even multiple endings were often limited to a choice of where to go 3/4 of the way through the game.
I doubt BEW will ever live up to the standard of Ariane, or Tlaero/Phreaky for that matter, but I hope to at least get to the bottom of a list containing both.
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Monday, 2014-08-25
I had forgotten how complex the bar scene was to render, especially with all the bottle and glass transparencies and such, so that has slowed down the renders a bit, and I've had to lower the image quality slightly as well in order to get reasonable render times. I've also played with camera angles a little more so there will be more images with just the wall as a background in the interest of time. Still, it's looking good and I'm making solid progress. A little slower than I'd hoped at this point so I've been working back and forth between the day 2 campus scene and the day 2 Bar scene. The reason for this is because I'm still story-boarding the bar scene, and it's a pain in the ass to scroll between tracking image renders and filling out logic and storyboard for alternate branches every 5 minutes.
It's a lot easier to have two files open (one for each scene) and do storyboard work on one, while the other is tracking rendering. That helps keep continuity flow through the images. As a result the Campus scene that was delayed due to writers block is getting good progress too, and will be released along with the bar scene for the next round of playtesting.
I'm also rearranging my road-map a little. Once I finish the bar side branches for day two I'll build out the one scene from Act 1 in day three. After that I'll loop back around and do the Strip club side of Day 2 and the resultant scenes. This is possible because the final scene in Act 1 only has a few branches, and the impact of the strip club side to the scene is relatively small and easy to account for and adjust. The result of this is that it will give the playtesters a chance to experience the full Act 1 sooner, at least for the Day 1 Bar -> Day 2 Bar paths, and provide feedback and input to the experience.
Also, it was originally planned that I would have five groups of play-testers on-boarding. I scaled that back to 4 groups of 5 due to interest levels; however, recently the wait list has grown to a length of five, so I've decided to re-instate the original schedule of 5 rounds of playtesting. So good news to everyone that is on the wait-list as of this posting, you are all now in Group 5. (...) As a result, Group 4 will probably on-board a little earlier as well. There will not be a 6th group. The purpose of the number of playtesters and staggered groups is to counteract burnout from the early playtesters and bring fresh eyes in for new looks at the earlier scenes. It is a balance because more playtesters add complexity and overhead as well, so each group brings diminishing returns. Because of those diminishing returns, I set the limit to 25 total playtesters from 5 groups. To be honest though, I'm humbled and amazed to have 25 people actually interested in the game, let alone interested enough to help playtest. That's not even accounting for the 1030 downloads that the rough demo has seen. Amazing. Simply amazing. Thank you all!
Below are a couple images from the unreleased portion of the game.
From Day 1 if you choose to go to the Strip Club:From Day 2 at the office:
I had forgotten how complex the bar scene was to render, especially with all the bottle and glass transparencies and such, so that has slowed down the renders a bit, and I've had to lower the image quality slightly as well in order to get reasonable render times. I've also played with camera angles a little more so there will be more images with just the wall as a background in the interest of time. Still, it's looking good and I'm making solid progress. A little slower than I'd hoped at this point so I've been working back and forth between the day 2 campus scene and the day 2 Bar scene. The reason for this is because I'm still story-boarding the bar scene, and it's a pain in the ass to scroll between tracking image renders and filling out logic and storyboard for alternate branches every 5 minutes.
It's a lot easier to have two files open (one for each scene) and do storyboard work on one, while the other is tracking rendering. That helps keep continuity flow through the images. As a result the Campus scene that was delayed due to writers block is getting good progress too, and will be released along with the bar scene for the next round of playtesting.
I'm also rearranging my road-map a little. Once I finish the bar side branches for day two I'll build out the one scene from Act 1 in day three. After that I'll loop back around and do the Strip club side of Day 2 and the resultant scenes. This is possible because the final scene in Act 1 only has a few branches, and the impact of the strip club side to the scene is relatively small and easy to account for and adjust. The result of this is that it will give the playtesters a chance to experience the full Act 1 sooner, at least for the Day 1 Bar -> Day 2 Bar paths, and provide feedback and input to the experience.
Also, it was originally planned that I would have five groups of play-testers on-boarding. I scaled that back to 4 groups of 5 due to interest levels; however, recently the wait list has grown to a length of five, so I've decided to re-instate the original schedule of 5 rounds of playtesting. So good news to everyone that is on the wait-list as of this posting, you are all now in Group 5. (...) As a result, Group 4 will probably on-board a little earlier as well. There will not be a 6th group. The purpose of the number of playtesters and staggered groups is to counteract burnout from the early playtesters and bring fresh eyes in for new looks at the earlier scenes. It is a balance because more playtesters add complexity and overhead as well, so each group brings diminishing returns. Because of those diminishing returns, I set the limit to 25 total playtesters from 5 groups. To be honest though, I'm humbled and amazed to have 25 people actually interested in the game, let alone interested enough to help playtest. That's not even accounting for the 1030 downloads that the rough demo has seen. Amazing. Simply amazing. Thank you all!
Below are a couple images from the unreleased portion of the game.
From Day 1 if you choose to go to the Strip Club:
spoiler: show
spoiler: show
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Monday, 2014-09-08
Working to finish up the short campus scene. Short for BEW is 74 pages total. That scene is about 31% complete taking into account all phases, (Storyboarding, rendering, writing, programming). That number is deceptive though, compared to the time as the Day two bar scene is about 20% complete, and it's a large complex scene that will probably be about 400-500 pages all told. Storyboarding is only 60% or so complete on that, and rendering is 17% done, give or take what the final value will be for total pages.
I've also been taking some time setting up for bringing on some help, and I'm very happy to announce that a writer/programmer and a second programmer have joined the team! I have one Artist working on the application exam. Considering the size of the game, having two total artists helping out would be great, but it's a huge time commitment, not for the faint of heart, so no disappointment on my part if nobody else has time/interest to help.
The Writer needs no introduction. I am happy to announce that Lady Tlaero herself has volunteered to help out with the writing. Considering that her Keeley games are the inspiration for BEW, and the AC tool she wrote is key to my ability to make a game like this to begin with, I am honored and humbled to have her help!
Also joining the team as a Programmer is kexter. Recently kexter has been helping Tlaero with the latest release of AC, and has already shaken his head sadly at my clumsy coding and begun cleaning it up. Thanks kexter!
BEW will be a better game (and available faster) with the help of these two, and I look forward to being able to announce a couple of artists joining in the near future.
Working to finish up the short campus scene. Short for BEW is 74 pages total. That scene is about 31% complete taking into account all phases, (Storyboarding, rendering, writing, programming). That number is deceptive though, compared to the time as the Day two bar scene is about 20% complete, and it's a large complex scene that will probably be about 400-500 pages all told. Storyboarding is only 60% or so complete on that, and rendering is 17% done, give or take what the final value will be for total pages.
I've also been taking some time setting up for bringing on some help, and I'm very happy to announce that a writer/programmer and a second programmer have joined the team! I have one Artist working on the application exam. Considering the size of the game, having two total artists helping out would be great, but it's a huge time commitment, not for the faint of heart, so no disappointment on my part if nobody else has time/interest to help.
The Writer needs no introduction. I am happy to announce that Lady Tlaero herself has volunteered to help out with the writing. Considering that her Keeley games are the inspiration for BEW, and the AC tool she wrote is key to my ability to make a game like this to begin with, I am honored and humbled to have her help!
Also joining the team as a Programmer is kexter. Recently kexter has been helping Tlaero with the latest release of AC, and has already shaken his head sadly at my clumsy coding and begun cleaning it up. Thanks kexter!
BEW will be a better game (and available faster) with the help of these two, and I look forward to being able to announce a couple of artists joining in the near future.
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Tuesday, 2014-10-14
The last few weeks have been working on finishing up version 0.3.5 to release to Testers, and also getting some work done on version 0.4.0. That scene is about 25% done, and 0.3.5 is about 85% done, but that last 15% should go pretty quick. It’s likely that 0.3.5 will be out to playtesters by the end of the week, if everything goes well. Then it will be time to put the throttle down on version 0.4.0, which is one of the most complex scenes of the game.
Both kexter and Tlaero have joined the dev team. Okay, created the dev team since previously it was just me. They’ve both been a great help! kexter has rewritten the back-end of the game, cleaning up code and also tweaked the front-end style a bit. He reworked the savegame system and also fixed and reworked the achievements system. Now it sports pop-up notifications similar to what you’d see on your x-box or pc games, shows unearned achievements with hints and earned achievement status.
Tlaero, on the other hand, wrote the entire 122 page campus scene in less than a week. WOW! It was a great help and we are making the standard editing and tweaking passes of the writing while I finish rendering a few pages that were added for continuity and flow. I expect that with all this help, things will go faster!
The biggest challenge going into version 0.4.0 is modeling the complexity of the game. It’s like herding cats. For example, I spent 2 or 3 days storyboarding a branch in the bar scene that I realized wasn’t needed because the scenario was impossible to achieve. My current MS Excel models don’t cover those types of scenarios and I’m currently looking for modeling software that can help with the planning. So far, the decent ones I’ve looked at are Chat Mapper, and articy:draft. When articy:draft gets its modeling functionality out with their version 2.4, it looks like it may be the best option for me, even if it’s a little pricy. Chat Mapper comes close, but doesn’t quite fit the bill. It is a close second, and much cheaper if articy:draft totally hoses the modeling tools. If anyone out there knows of similar software that can validate dialog path logic, doing things like scanning for inaccessible branches, route modeling, etc, let me know!
I’m still looking for a couple of DAZ artists to join the team. Rendering is really the bottleneck, with storyboarding being a close second. One promising candidate started the test, but he got caught up with work and hasn’t had a chance to finish it yet. There hasn’t been much interest in the artist position, and I can understand why. It really is a lot of work to create the images, and that’s even before getting to the computing time it takes to render one, and for a volunteer project... Well, frankly, I don't expect much interest in putting in that much work.
Speaking of rendering images, here’s a couple more teasers.
Meeting Azumi at the Strip Club on Wednesday:Chatting with Azumi in the campus quad on Thursday evening:
Note: Azumi, similar to Jasmine, is one of several characters I cut as a romanceable character in the interest of FINISHING THE DAMN GAME. She has been downgraded to a supporting character included where her story intersects with the current romanceable characters, but once the full game is done if there is demand for expansions, I will add her back as a love interest along with the cut portions of her storyline.
The last few weeks have been working on finishing up version 0.3.5 to release to Testers, and also getting some work done on version 0.4.0. That scene is about 25% done, and 0.3.5 is about 85% done, but that last 15% should go pretty quick. It’s likely that 0.3.5 will be out to playtesters by the end of the week, if everything goes well. Then it will be time to put the throttle down on version 0.4.0, which is one of the most complex scenes of the game.
Both kexter and Tlaero have joined the dev team. Okay, created the dev team since previously it was just me. They’ve both been a great help! kexter has rewritten the back-end of the game, cleaning up code and also tweaked the front-end style a bit. He reworked the savegame system and also fixed and reworked the achievements system. Now it sports pop-up notifications similar to what you’d see on your x-box or pc games, shows unearned achievements with hints and earned achievement status.
Tlaero, on the other hand, wrote the entire 122 page campus scene in less than a week. WOW! It was a great help and we are making the standard editing and tweaking passes of the writing while I finish rendering a few pages that were added for continuity and flow. I expect that with all this help, things will go faster!
The biggest challenge going into version 0.4.0 is modeling the complexity of the game. It’s like herding cats. For example, I spent 2 or 3 days storyboarding a branch in the bar scene that I realized wasn’t needed because the scenario was impossible to achieve. My current MS Excel models don’t cover those types of scenarios and I’m currently looking for modeling software that can help with the planning. So far, the decent ones I’ve looked at are Chat Mapper, and articy:draft. When articy:draft gets its modeling functionality out with their version 2.4, it looks like it may be the best option for me, even if it’s a little pricy. Chat Mapper comes close, but doesn’t quite fit the bill. It is a close second, and much cheaper if articy:draft totally hoses the modeling tools. If anyone out there knows of similar software that can validate dialog path logic, doing things like scanning for inaccessible branches, route modeling, etc, let me know!
I’m still looking for a couple of DAZ artists to join the team. Rendering is really the bottleneck, with storyboarding being a close second. One promising candidate started the test, but he got caught up with work and hasn’t had a chance to finish it yet. There hasn’t been much interest in the artist position, and I can understand why. It really is a lot of work to create the images, and that’s even before getting to the computing time it takes to render one, and for a volunteer project... Well, frankly, I don't expect much interest in putting in that much work.
Speaking of rendering images, here’s a couple more teasers.
Meeting Azumi at the Strip Club on Wednesday:
spoiler: show
spoiler: show
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Friday, 2014-10-17
For anyone wondering why it's taking so darn long... well it's because I'm apparently insane. I ran the numbers today and it looks like Act 1 will come out to about 4000 pages of branching story. The full game will be close to 11,000 pages. Looking a little more deeply at Act 1, and it's 4000 pages, I haven't actually counted, but I'd estimate that a single playthrough will touch an average of about 750 pages, roughly half of which are common to the major branch (ie club side or bar side). That means, playing the game once you will see 750 pages of the overall story. Play it twice, and take a completely different route, like going to the club instead of the bar, and you will probably see 400-500 new pages for a total of say 1200 pages. A third playthrough of one of the major routes may pick up another 250 new pages for 1450, again for another 250 for 1800, and now you probably will start seeing more duplicate content, maybe only picking up an average of 150-200 new pages a playthrough, and that's just Act 1. There is a bit of diminishing returns as you go on through branching playthroughs where you're seeing more and more of the same content to pick up minor branches, but you can already see the vast amount of replayability. The game is huge, not necessarily because of the overall length, but because of the sheer number of ways to get through the day.
Using just the publicly released content as an example, the Public Demo has over 400 story pages (not counting things like the main menu, save/load, etc..) If we subtract out the pure repetition of the intro, and the home transition between the office and the bar, that leaves 397 story pages. For the sake of math, let's put that at 400 branching pages. A single playthrough will touch an average of 150 pages from start to finish, (I counted) leaving 250 unseen pages. If we consider half of those as common path pages that we see on nearly every playthrough, that means 75 common and 75 unique pages, roughly. So a second playthrough will pick up as many as 75 new pages bringing the total pages seen to 225 out of 400. A third playthrough may pick up an additional 50 pages taking you to 275 out of 400. A fourth, maybe to 325. A fifth, let's say 375, leaving small minor branches here and there to pick up over a dozen or so playthroughs for completionists. But without going into that detail, lets say 5 playthroughs for the Bar scene, at the minimum, to see all the major storylines through the scene.
Assume similar stats for the Strip Club and you will see a minimum of 10 playthroughs total, just to see the major content for day 1 alone. Add another 3 or additional playthroughs to see all of the Day 2 office scene including branches from the previous 10, and we haven't even started on the effects of Day 2 bar and Strip Club, and other paths... Well, you get the idea. When All 3 Acts are available and feeding into each other, a single playthrough will touch about 2500 of the 11,000 pages. But those are just estimates, who knows what the true final result will be.
And... right about now, those new developers that signed up to help with the game are saying to themselves... "Oh fuck, what did I just get myself into."
For anyone wondering why it's taking so darn long... well it's because I'm apparently insane. I ran the numbers today and it looks like Act 1 will come out to about 4000 pages of branching story. The full game will be close to 11,000 pages. Looking a little more deeply at Act 1, and it's 4000 pages, I haven't actually counted, but I'd estimate that a single playthrough will touch an average of about 750 pages, roughly half of which are common to the major branch (ie club side or bar side). That means, playing the game once you will see 750 pages of the overall story. Play it twice, and take a completely different route, like going to the club instead of the bar, and you will probably see 400-500 new pages for a total of say 1200 pages. A third playthrough of one of the major routes may pick up another 250 new pages for 1450, again for another 250 for 1800, and now you probably will start seeing more duplicate content, maybe only picking up an average of 150-200 new pages a playthrough, and that's just Act 1. There is a bit of diminishing returns as you go on through branching playthroughs where you're seeing more and more of the same content to pick up minor branches, but you can already see the vast amount of replayability. The game is huge, not necessarily because of the overall length, but because of the sheer number of ways to get through the day.
Using just the publicly released content as an example, the Public Demo has over 400 story pages (not counting things like the main menu, save/load, etc..) If we subtract out the pure repetition of the intro, and the home transition between the office and the bar, that leaves 397 story pages. For the sake of math, let's put that at 400 branching pages. A single playthrough will touch an average of 150 pages from start to finish, (I counted) leaving 250 unseen pages. If we consider half of those as common path pages that we see on nearly every playthrough, that means 75 common and 75 unique pages, roughly. So a second playthrough will pick up as many as 75 new pages bringing the total pages seen to 225 out of 400. A third playthrough may pick up an additional 50 pages taking you to 275 out of 400. A fourth, maybe to 325. A fifth, let's say 375, leaving small minor branches here and there to pick up over a dozen or so playthroughs for completionists. But without going into that detail, lets say 5 playthroughs for the Bar scene, at the minimum, to see all the major storylines through the scene.
Assume similar stats for the Strip Club and you will see a minimum of 10 playthroughs total, just to see the major content for day 1 alone. Add another 3 or additional playthroughs to see all of the Day 2 office scene including branches from the previous 10, and we haven't even started on the effects of Day 2 bar and Strip Club, and other paths... Well, you get the idea. When All 3 Acts are available and feeding into each other, a single playthrough will touch about 2500 of the 11,000 pages. But those are just estimates, who knows what the true final result will be.
And... right about now, those new developers that signed up to help with the game are saying to themselves... "Oh fuck, what did I just get myself into."
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Friday, 2014-11-07
For today’s status update I’m going to change it up a bit and talk about the failure mechanic of the game. One of my biggest gripes in many of these types of games, and indeed, in most types of games, is the insta-fail mechanic if you don’t get everything just right. Even most games with multiple paths will simply do a score check and if you aren't up to snuff, the girls says “Sorry loser, you’re on your own,” and the game ends. Now ultimately, that is the case with all games. It’s not much of a game if you can’t fail, and BEW does indeed have some insta-fail conditions, but hopefully those will feel about right when they do, and won’t be much of a surprise. Let’s call these “hard failures.”
A bulk of the failure conditions in BEW are “soft failures.” A soft failure is when the current path or relationship ends, but the game can still continue. Many times, multiple paths and relationships can be running at the same time, so failing one won’t end the game.
So, what do I mean by paths and relationships?
A relationship is the main character’s status with one of the women. Using the demo as an example, the demo has two love interest characters, Emily and Faith. In the full game, each will have about six unique paths, or storylines, each with a different ending.
Paths
The paths are sorted into three categories: Elite, Standard, Alternate. Those categories have their own level of difficulty in addition to the standard game difficulty. So the hardest parts of the game are Elite paths on Hard difficulty. Essentially, trying to play an Elite path on Medium difficulty is about the same as a Standard path on Hard difficulty. This means that the full game will have about 10 elite paths, 10 Standard paths and 10 alternate paths, each with unique endings.
Elite paths are for the hardcore, completionist players, and are required to unlock the special Mastery achievements that grant access to bonus content. Usually, failing a check on an Elite path will simply reduce the player to a standard path, or an Alternate path. Alternate paths are the lowest level paths and anytime the player is on one, they are at high risk to losing their current relationship status. For example, failing a check on an Emily Alternate path will end the relationship with Emily. It is sometimes possible to promote back to a main path later if the player is careful. If no relationships are possible with any woman, then the game will end. There are also some specific criteria for advancing to Act 2, that if they aren't met, there will be a negative ending to Act 1.
The most difficult paths are corruption paths. Corruption paths are Elite paths similar to the Perfect paths, but part of the goal is to take a woman to the extreme limit of her character, finding those hidden, deep aspects that they themselves may not be aware of early in the game. In this context, corruption doesn't mean making them bad, just that it is a catalyst to significant change. These are kind of high-risk, high-reward paths and usually failing a check on a corruption path results in an immediate end to the relationship, or occasionally the game, without the chance to demote to a standard path like the Perfect paths do. Standard paths often have multiple routes to the same endings, and generally fail down to Alternate paths. The alternate paths generally will lead to ho-hum endings, and often playing on Easy difficulty will end up here.
Also, it’s possible to go through Act 1 successfully without achieving any romance conditions with the 3 Act 1 women, thus “saving” yourself for the Act 2 women.
Playtesting update: I have determined that the next group of 5 playtesters will come on with the release of 0.4.0, which is the next release. The final group of 5 playtesters will onboard with 0.6.0.
Game Build Status: Current work is on version 0.4.0, which is a big scene for the Bar on day 2. Also, the game has been updated to use AC5 as the “engine” meaning it will be touch compatible for all you tablet users! (and smartphone for brave souls). Once we have a couple more areas of the back end as “feature complete” we’ll recompile the current demo in touch compatible format, with the new achievement system and also a short bonus scene that will unlock for anyone who completes the Demo Mastery achievement. Look for that in the next few weeks, although I don’t have a firm ETA on it due to the upcoming holidays.
As always, thank you all for your continued interest, support and patience!
For today’s status update I’m going to change it up a bit and talk about the failure mechanic of the game. One of my biggest gripes in many of these types of games, and indeed, in most types of games, is the insta-fail mechanic if you don’t get everything just right. Even most games with multiple paths will simply do a score check and if you aren't up to snuff, the girls says “Sorry loser, you’re on your own,” and the game ends. Now ultimately, that is the case with all games. It’s not much of a game if you can’t fail, and BEW does indeed have some insta-fail conditions, but hopefully those will feel about right when they do, and won’t be much of a surprise. Let’s call these “hard failures.”
A bulk of the failure conditions in BEW are “soft failures.” A soft failure is when the current path or relationship ends, but the game can still continue. Many times, multiple paths and relationships can be running at the same time, so failing one won’t end the game.
So, what do I mean by paths and relationships?
A relationship is the main character’s status with one of the women. Using the demo as an example, the demo has two love interest characters, Emily and Faith. In the full game, each will have about six unique paths, or storylines, each with a different ending.
Paths
The paths are sorted into three categories: Elite, Standard, Alternate. Those categories have their own level of difficulty in addition to the standard game difficulty. So the hardest parts of the game are Elite paths on Hard difficulty. Essentially, trying to play an Elite path on Medium difficulty is about the same as a Standard path on Hard difficulty. This means that the full game will have about 10 elite paths, 10 Standard paths and 10 alternate paths, each with unique endings.
Elite paths are for the hardcore, completionist players, and are required to unlock the special Mastery achievements that grant access to bonus content. Usually, failing a check on an Elite path will simply reduce the player to a standard path, or an Alternate path. Alternate paths are the lowest level paths and anytime the player is on one, they are at high risk to losing their current relationship status. For example, failing a check on an Emily Alternate path will end the relationship with Emily. It is sometimes possible to promote back to a main path later if the player is careful. If no relationships are possible with any woman, then the game will end. There are also some specific criteria for advancing to Act 2, that if they aren't met, there will be a negative ending to Act 1.
The most difficult paths are corruption paths. Corruption paths are Elite paths similar to the Perfect paths, but part of the goal is to take a woman to the extreme limit of her character, finding those hidden, deep aspects that they themselves may not be aware of early in the game. In this context, corruption doesn't mean making them bad, just that it is a catalyst to significant change. These are kind of high-risk, high-reward paths and usually failing a check on a corruption path results in an immediate end to the relationship, or occasionally the game, without the chance to demote to a standard path like the Perfect paths do. Standard paths often have multiple routes to the same endings, and generally fail down to Alternate paths. The alternate paths generally will lead to ho-hum endings, and often playing on Easy difficulty will end up here.
Also, it’s possible to go through Act 1 successfully without achieving any romance conditions with the 3 Act 1 women, thus “saving” yourself for the Act 2 women.
Playtesting update: I have determined that the next group of 5 playtesters will come on with the release of 0.4.0, which is the next release. The final group of 5 playtesters will onboard with 0.6.0.
Game Build Status: Current work is on version 0.4.0, which is a big scene for the Bar on day 2. Also, the game has been updated to use AC5 as the “engine” meaning it will be touch compatible for all you tablet users! (and smartphone for brave souls). Once we have a couple more areas of the back end as “feature complete” we’ll recompile the current demo in touch compatible format, with the new achievement system and also a short bonus scene that will unlock for anyone who completes the Demo Mastery achievement. Look for that in the next few weeks, although I don’t have a firm ETA on it due to the upcoming holidays.
As always, thank you all for your continued interest, support and patience!
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Friday, 2014-12-12
The last few weeks has been focused on new features of the game as a whole. In about a week, I'll re-release the existing demo with new features. I just released a test version of the Demo to playtesters to go through and find all my mistakes. Also, progress on the overall game is also continuing well. Thank you all for your patience.
New Features in the Demo:
The last few weeks has been focused on new features of the game as a whole. In about a week, I'll re-release the existing demo with new features. I just released a test version of the Demo to playtesters to go through and find all my mistakes. Also, progress on the overall game is also continuing well. Thank you all for your patience.
New Features in the Demo:
- Reworked game menu system
- Reworked Achievements system
- New Options menu
- Ability to export / import savegames. (intended as a backup, import will overwrite existing saves)
- Ability to export / import earned achievements (Savegame exports do not include Achievements.)
- Bonus Scene menu item appears when the Demo Mastery achievement is unlocked, launching a short Bonus Scene.
- New user interface
- New credits reel
- Reworked Intro Story
- Rewritten Area Target text to take advantage of touch functionality.
- Touch functionality for touch capable tablets. (Smartphones not officially supported, but the game should work on those too.)
- A big thank you to kexter and Tlaero for all their help and hard work over the past few weeks in adding all these features, and helping with the rewrite of the scenes!
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Thursday, 2014-12-18
Today we are releasing a new Proof of Concept / Demo for Brad's Erotic Week. I want to shout out a huge thank you to the dev team and testers who put a lot of effort into redesigning the game as a whole, and also carving out the new Demo.
Work is continuing on the next scene of the full game, and right now the bottleneck is me getting everything rendered. A lot of the last month has been setting up and designing the infrastructure to increase the speed of development and I think/hope we are in good shape to do that. Once the Day 2 bar scene is done, There are a few fairly short climax scenes (pun intended) These are essentially the endings for Act 1, on the Bar side paths, followed by a transition scene to officially end Act 1 for Friday morning. After that, I'll do the last big scene for the Act, which is the Day 2 Strip Club, followed by a relatively tame and easy dinner/movie date option, and the remaining relatively short "endings" for Day 2 and then Act 1 will be ready for release! Okay, sounds easy when I say it like that, but that's still about a thousand pages away, give or take a few hundred.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new demo. The main reason we are releasing a new one is because of the touchscreen support for those who want to try it out on their tablets! It may work on smartphones as well, but I'm not sure the small screens will be very playable and smartphones are not officially supported. At your own risk there folks. The bonus scene is a little spoilerish, so don't play through it if you don't want the spoiler. (...) When you unlock the Bonus scene, a new menu item will appear to access it.
Thank you all for your patience and continued support and interest!
Today we are releasing a new Proof of Concept / Demo for Brad's Erotic Week. I want to shout out a huge thank you to the dev team and testers who put a lot of effort into redesigning the game as a whole, and also carving out the new Demo.
Work is continuing on the next scene of the full game, and right now the bottleneck is me getting everything rendered. A lot of the last month has been setting up and designing the infrastructure to increase the speed of development and I think/hope we are in good shape to do that. Once the Day 2 bar scene is done, There are a few fairly short climax scenes (pun intended) These are essentially the endings for Act 1, on the Bar side paths, followed by a transition scene to officially end Act 1 for Friday morning. After that, I'll do the last big scene for the Act, which is the Day 2 Strip Club, followed by a relatively tame and easy dinner/movie date option, and the remaining relatively short "endings" for Day 2 and then Act 1 will be ready for release! Okay, sounds easy when I say it like that, but that's still about a thousand pages away, give or take a few hundred.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new demo. The main reason we are releasing a new one is because of the touchscreen support for those who want to try it out on their tablets! It may work on smartphones as well, but I'm not sure the small screens will be very playable and smartphones are not officially supported. At your own risk there folks. The bonus scene is a little spoilerish, so don't play through it if you don't want the spoiler. (...) When you unlock the Bonus scene, a new menu item will appear to access it.
Thank you all for your patience and continued support and interest!
-
Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Thursday, 2015-01-15
It’s the why is this taking so long update. I just wanted to let you know that progress is continuing well for BEW. There was a bit of a slowdown over the holidays as this odd concept of “family” butted into my work causing all sorts of fun and distractions.
I found myself writing an entire branch for Day 2 at the bar that was impossible to reach. When that happened, I realized that my logic models were inadequate, and I’ve spent the last week or so updating those and getting the complexity of the game under control. In the process, I found an entire branch of the Day 2 office scene that was accidentally unreachable due to a bug. So now, logic model updates are almost done! Yay! The story half of the Day 2 Bar is completed, minus a render or two and I’m working on the erotic branches now. In this case, the erotic branches, if navigated properly, are foreplay to what are essentially the Act 1 “endings” at various locations. Endings isn’t quite the right word since the game continues into Act 2 and 3, in fact, there’s a Friday Morning epilogue/transition/cliff-hanger to lead into Act 2 that is story based, but it’s going to be these post Day 2 bar/club scenes that mark the end of the erotic side of the Act. There are 15 distinct erotic endings to ACT 1 planned, although there may end up being a couple more than that. These are the positive endings. I’m not counting failure paths and failed endings in that number, of which there will be several. Some decisions beginning as early as in the Office on Day 1 have an impact on what scenes will be available at the end. It’s this persistence that adds complexity. Well, the persistence combined with trying to make sure that there is a reason behind every result. An example of this from the Wednesday Bar scene is in spoilers. (I think the Demo has been out long enough to use this as an example.)
So back to the original aspect, why is this taking so long? Well, primarily because I should have left the second branch of the Strip Club off and just done the initial game about Faith and Emily, and added the rest through expansions over time, if there was interest. I have no regrets about it though. As always, I’m still having fun with making the game! Also, I’ve determined that each web page, from start to finish, takes an average of an hour to create. That’s not one hour all in one go. That’s taking the planning, storyboarding, logic modeling, testing, rendering, post work, and then, finally, creating the webpage in Adventure Creator into account. That’s just my time, not counting the time that the other Devs and Testers put into the game. I average about 3 hours a day that I work on the game, which is about 3 pages a day. Currently the game has 2018 pages created… well that’s about 2018 hours of work so far. Although, with the addition of the Devs, I do see my time per page dropping somewhat. I must say, when I started the game, I expected it to go much, much faster than this...
So meanwhile, after stealing too much of everyone’s time with this long post, here’s a couple more images in spoilers:
Natalie and her friends at the all-night Diner on Wednesday:Faith and Emily at the beginning of your date on Thursday at the bar:
It’s the why is this taking so long update. I just wanted to let you know that progress is continuing well for BEW. There was a bit of a slowdown over the holidays as this odd concept of “family” butted into my work causing all sorts of fun and distractions.
I found myself writing an entire branch for Day 2 at the bar that was impossible to reach. When that happened, I realized that my logic models were inadequate, and I’ve spent the last week or so updating those and getting the complexity of the game under control. In the process, I found an entire branch of the Day 2 office scene that was accidentally unreachable due to a bug. So now, logic model updates are almost done! Yay! The story half of the Day 2 Bar is completed, minus a render or two and I’m working on the erotic branches now. In this case, the erotic branches, if navigated properly, are foreplay to what are essentially the Act 1 “endings” at various locations. Endings isn’t quite the right word since the game continues into Act 2 and 3, in fact, there’s a Friday Morning epilogue/transition/cliff-hanger to lead into Act 2 that is story based, but it’s going to be these post Day 2 bar/club scenes that mark the end of the erotic side of the Act. There are 15 distinct erotic endings to ACT 1 planned, although there may end up being a couple more than that. These are the positive endings. I’m not counting failure paths and failed endings in that number, of which there will be several. Some decisions beginning as early as in the Office on Day 1 have an impact on what scenes will be available at the end. It’s this persistence that adds complexity. Well, the persistence combined with trying to make sure that there is a reason behind every result. An example of this from the Wednesday Bar scene is in spoilers. (I think the Demo has been out long enough to use this as an example.)
spoiler: show
So meanwhile, after stealing too much of everyone’s time with this long post, here’s a couple more images in spoilers:
Natalie and her friends at the all-night Diner on Wednesday:
spoiler: show
spoiler: show
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Wolfschadowe
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Re: Early development history
Monday, 2015-02-02
After some thought I've decided to (...) convert to an episodic release schedule. This is close to my original intent for the game. I want to tweak the back-end of the game a bit to make sure there is a good foundation with the game engine, and then make the release. Timeframe on that will be "soon".
Okay, okay, I hate it when people say soon too, but I want to make sure the foundation is solid so that there is a good experience for players and I'm not sure how long it will take. If the stars align, and we receive blessings from on-high, it could be 2 weeks. If all hell and chaos breaks out, it could be more than 2 months. Most likely it will be somewhere between the two, I would guess 4-6 weeks, but it's hard to say for sure. I'll update here when we determine a firm release date. The main consideration is that the game framework is set and finalized, and is modular enough that nothing will break as we add Episodes. The content itself is ready.
I'll give more information on how it will work soon, but sequentially every episode will expand the game. They won't be separate games that you would play one after the other. The first episode is essentially the current Demo. The second episode will be the Strip Club Start, meaning that the current link in the Demo to go to the strip club after work will become active.
Once that releases, (...) voting will take place there on what content Episode 3 will contain. Similarly, voting will take place to determine Episode 4, 5, and on.
New episodes will be released every 2-6 months, based on the size of the episode, which will be stated along with the voting as well as if the Episode is primarily composed of story content, erotic content or both. Erotic meaning that it's possible for at least one character to cum in the episode.
Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for their support, insight, feedback, and patience!
After some thought I've decided to (...) convert to an episodic release schedule. This is close to my original intent for the game. I want to tweak the back-end of the game a bit to make sure there is a good foundation with the game engine, and then make the release. Timeframe on that will be "soon".
Okay, okay, I hate it when people say soon too, but I want to make sure the foundation is solid so that there is a good experience for players and I'm not sure how long it will take. If the stars align, and we receive blessings from on-high, it could be 2 weeks. If all hell and chaos breaks out, it could be more than 2 months. Most likely it will be somewhere between the two, I would guess 4-6 weeks, but it's hard to say for sure. I'll update here when we determine a firm release date. The main consideration is that the game framework is set and finalized, and is modular enough that nothing will break as we add Episodes. The content itself is ready.
I'll give more information on how it will work soon, but sequentially every episode will expand the game. They won't be separate games that you would play one after the other. The first episode is essentially the current Demo. The second episode will be the Strip Club Start, meaning that the current link in the Demo to go to the strip club after work will become active.
Once that releases, (...) voting will take place there on what content Episode 3 will contain. Similarly, voting will take place to determine Episode 4, 5, and on.
New episodes will be released every 2-6 months, based on the size of the episode, which will be stated along with the voting as well as if the Episode is primarily composed of story content, erotic content or both. Erotic meaning that it's possible for at least one character to cum in the episode.
Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for their support, insight, feedback, and patience!
Re: Early development history
Monday, 2015-03-23
Brad's Erotic Week Season Episode 2 released.
kexter's note: This marks the end of the early development history for BEW, and concludes our trip down memory lane.
Brad's Erotic Week Season Episode 2 released.
kexter's note: This marks the end of the early development history for BEW, and concludes our trip down memory lane.
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