Developer Ramblings and Questions

[Wolfschadowe]

As I'm rebuilding the game, I have been thinking about the structure of episodes. In the old version of the game, Episodes were time based by scene and included all relevant paths, for the most part. This had a benefit of showing a broad expanse of the game, but I think it may have also felt non-progressive in the story and may have also limited replay-ability as new episodes were released. There were benefits to this method, and also drawbacks. (Note: There are no spoilers in this post. I'm just collapsing lists in spoiler tags)

Looking forward to the reboot, there are a few other options to consider, and I would appreciate feedback and opinions on them, bur first some info on game structure to help explain the options:

The game story has a timeline with Day/time slots. We have 7 days in the story:

spoiler: show

1. Wednesday
2. Thursday
3. Friday
4. Saturday
5. Sunday
6. Monday
7. Tuesday

Each day has nine time slots which are basically:

spoiler: show

1. Early Morning
2. Morning
3. Mid-day
4. Afternoon
5. Late Afternoon
6. Evening
7. Night
8. Late night
9. Midnight

This lets us code scenes using a Day/Time slot reference, so D1T2 would be D1 = Wednesday, T2 = Morning, D1T2 = Wednesday Morning.
The time slots are loose approximations and are not stuck to specific times. A good rule of thumb would be to think of the time slots where Morning is about when normal workdays start. Mid-Day is usually spent at work with going to lunch somewhere in the middle. Afternoon is getting off work. Late afternoon is that time between getting off work and dinner, and so on, but those are not requirements.

When we look at full scenes with start and stop times, we get this:

spoiler: show

1. D1T2Intro: D1T2-D1T2 - The Intro scene everyone skips
2. D1T3Office: D1T3-D1T4 - Working at the office on the first day.
3. D1T4Home: D1T4-D1T6 - Wandering around the house figuring out where to go.
4. D1T7Bar: D1T7-D1T8 - At the bar with Faith
5. D1T7StripClub: D1T7-D1T8 - At the Strip Club with Natalie
6. D1T9Diner: D1T9-D1T9 - At the diner with Natalie
7. D1T9Taxi: D1T9-D1T9 - In the cab with Natalie and Azumi
8. D2T1Home - D2T1-D2T1 - At home, either alone, or with Natalie and Azumi
9. D2T2Coffee - D2T2 - D2T2 - Following Sere again.
10. D2T3Office - D2T2 - D2T4 - At the office on the second day
11. D2T5Home - D2T5 - D2T5 - At home figuring out where to go, and potentially talking on the phone to Natalie/Azumi/Jasmine
12. D2T6EmilyApt - D2T6-D2T6 - Picking up Emily at her apartment
13. D2T6Campus - D2T6-D2T6 - Meeting Azumi on Campus

Now some scenes span a large amount of time with little content. This is where "boring stuff" that don't forward the story happens. Work gets done, bathrooms are used in a boring fashion, meals eaten, and so forth.
Some scenes can be broken up, like the second day at the office where we have morning stuff (Meet Jasmine, Emily arrives) and Mid-day stuff (Emily bathroom, Spotting sere, Emily interactions) and end-day stuff (Saying bye, asking Emily out, Making out) This scene is important because it's episodes were broken out by groups of paths and also time. There was the morning, then released the "Bar side" and then the "Club side" content.

So this leads to the question I have about how episodes should be formed in the future. Is there more interest to focus on people and paths, on time slots, or something else?

With the original method, I generally tried to advance all paths in a time slot before moving on to the next time slot. We got 7 episodes in and advanced to Thursday Evening. If we had focused on a single path, say the canon, Emily main path, then we would have likely advanced to mid-day Saturday, or even Sunday Evening with a very strict approach to the path. The down side would be a LOT of "Not available in this episode" links. The upside is that as we open other paths, replay interest in early scenes goes up as new content is unlocked. It also means longer delays between different character arcs developing.

I don't have it all worked out yet. This is just early thoughts and ramblings on the subject on my part.

Let me know your thoughts and ideas about structuring episodes for the reboot. Do we want to delve faster into the main story by slowing down the character arcs and relationships for the characters on alternate paths, advance all character stories together, something else?

[infiniteignorance]

First of all, I did not skip the intro.

And, secondly, if you're going to focus on canon paths then you have to be absolutely obvious about where people need to save.

I'm not sure I want to know where decisions affect the path. I kind of like trying everything to see what happens, like pressing the red button that everyone says not to push. I've never really been a fan of games that have "content not included" screens. Why even let people get there? I

like the way the game is progressing. I'd prefer none of the paths terminate until "Day 7" leaving us to figure out where we went wrong.

[Wolfschadowe]

I've never really been a fan of games that have "content not included" screens. Why even let people get there?

The purpose in BEW is to signal a save point, so that when a new episode comes out that save game could be loaded and that option would now be selectable. The alternative was to hide the content completely and leave everyone guessing about were added content started.

On the other hand, it's incredibly easy on my side to make it a game option to show those or hide them completely in the new engine....

Another thing I'm thinking about showing is a path indicator showing the name of the current path, and a choice indicator showing that a choice will have consequences, but I'm not totally sold on either one. In both cases, they may be configurable options.

I'd prefer none of the paths terminate until "Day 7"

Very few paths terminate before the end. If anything, they tend to "fail" into other, easier paths. A few exceptions are scattered around, like the game ending in the office on the first day if you are too aggressive with Emily. I think, in total, there are about 5 or 6 of those in the entire game, including the two from the first office scene.

[boulimanus]

I personally see replayability as available in both delivery method but with different side effects.

With the 'advancing all paths' method it is available straight away in regular fashion (i.e with every release). If one wants to see all path they can replay many times as they want to discover everything.
With the 'focused path' method the replayability only comes to play when there is a new path. So it takes longer to experience.

In addition I see the focused path coming with additional drawbacks:
- long wait to see your 'favourite' being progressed, may turn some people away from playing
- frustration of having to do old stuff again (feeling like a grind, hardly anyone likes a grind do they?)
- losing the feeling of a full complex story based game but instead separate unrelated stories

On the other hand 'all paths' problems are:
- feeling of small updates if you don't try all branches
- may be confusing for some
- need more planning and could be harder to develop (probably doesn't apply here though as I know you have full detailed timelines written up)

One of the strength I saw in this game was the richness of the story and the different characters, and the negative effects of the focused approach far outweighs those of the original method in my view.

[xsandman78]

I get the logic behind it but wouldn’t be keen on a single path focus, though the fact i’m Not a particular Emily fan is a factor in that.

[infiniteignorance]

I get the logic behind it but wouldn’t be keen on a single path focus, though the fact i’m Not a particular Emily fan is a factor in that.

What is it about Emily that you dislike? Are you not into blondes? Or is it something else? This is just a curiosity question. It's not intended to be judgmental.

[poke23]

In terms of replayability I like to focus on one path all the way through with savegames at stages throughout, so as new content gets added I can go back to the savegames. Unless someone who shall remain nameless decides to rewrite core parts of the engine and brick savegames midway through development.

It seems like this bridges the gap pretty well between content fatigue of having to play the same content over and over to get the 5 new lines of dialog or the one new scene during playtesting. I personally believe nothing should be behind a locked wall though, release the episodes with all the content available in that episode or don't release it at all.

That said I like the idea of a "You chose....poorly" Indiana Jones knight guiding you along a specific path if you're on it but it should be a user editable option

[dutch]

Strictly from a players point of view, with none of the skill to do any of this. i find it frustrating to make one misstep especially an Irrelevant one in the play stream and be locked out of certain options or areas of the game. The point is to play, have fun and enjoy the ride. not confound irritate and generally piss off the player. I could give an example but the spoiler police would arrest me. Perhaps more then one mistake should be allowed before a path is denied? Just a thought, but it's a game for fun, not a puzzle left by a Pharaoh to over come his curse and unlock his treasures.

Okay, blast away!

[Wolfschadowe]

I personally believe nothing should be behind a locked wall though

I'm not sure what you mean by a locked wall? Are you talking about the bonus scenes or something else? Apart from the bonus scenes, nothing should be behind a locked wall, unless you are talking about removing all the game elements and just make a story. The only time "content unavailable" notices should appear is for content that is not yet ready/released in the game and are planned for development in future episodes.

As for the bonus scenes, I might rethink those a bit, and that kind of leads into:

Perhaps more then one mistake should be allowed before a path is denied?

This is a good time to talk about the overall game difficulty. As I look through some of my early notes and compare those to the current state of the "game plan" I see that my early notes indicated that about 20% of the game would be "elite" content, meaning that it's intended for those who enjoy grinding, and yes, they are out there. The elite paths are intended to be "perfect run" style paths out there for the completion freaks out there.

Basically, the way it breaks down in the early plan is every main character, Including Brad, has ten specific story paths. Of those ten paths, there is one Elite path and one Corruption path which are "perfect run paths". Those paths are intended to be understandable after the full story is experienced on a majority of the eight other paths. The understanding comes by completing the eight "standard" paths which helps the Elite path to be understood, which then helps the corruption path to be understood. The key is that no misstep should feel Irrelevant and all should make sense. I've made a huge effort to avoid "irrelevant" choices. I can explain each one and why it's relevant to the character and story, but that may not be evident until more of the story is known. One of the downsides of the episodic release.

One problem that occurred is that the early game had a completely different system for Easy/Medium/Hard difficulty. It was a stupid design decision on my part, where content was unique to each difficulty level. So, playing on HARD, you would not be able to access some Medium and Easy content. You had to play the game on different difficulty levels to see the whole story. The original Proof of Concept game which is now known as Episode 1 was built this way, and ExLibris was vicious on me about it, and rightly so! (we miss you ExLibris!) This caused me to change out how I handled the paths to build difficulty variety into the game in a different way, and I'm not sure I got it right.

The ned result, as I look at my list of paths, 50% of them have turned into Elite paths. I didn't realize it was happening. It just crept up on me. I'm thinking now that the original plan of 20% with the single Elite and Corrupt paths should be the plan and I should rebalance as part of the redesign.

What is everyone's thoughts regarding the difficulty and elite paths redesign? Also, what are the thoughts on unlocking bonus content. It should be gated because they won't make sense without more story knowledge, and don't impact the game or story in any way. They are more there as second viewpoint commentaries to the main game.

[infiniteignorance]

What is everyone's thoughts regarding the difficulty and elite paths redesign? Also, what are the thoughts on unlocking bonus content. It should be gated because they won't make sense without more story knowledge, and don't impact the game or story in any way. They are more there as second viewpoint commentaries to the main game.

I will play as many paths as you can create. I do not want this game to be simple or simple-minded. There are, literally, thousands of games of that type out there. The other consideration is the more you develop each character's personality the easier it is to use the character in future games or elsewhere. By the time this game is over I want to know what each girl's period clots taste like. You can't overdevelop a character. And if it's hard to figure everything about a girl out, well, fuck me, that's just like reality.

[p22]

Regarding choice of between focused story, with little choice vs first or broad story that progresses very slowly, I think something in the middle can be done.

For example, if Emily main story is developed first, do not beeline completely to her main story, but trim other paths that are less relevant for her story, while still keeping some choices.

That would mean skipping Strip Club visit on the first day, but then adding all relevant choices from the Bar evening (like where to go next time, etc...)

[xsandman78]

One problem that occurred is that the early game had a completely different system for Easy/Medium/Hard difficulty. It was a stupid design decision on my part, where content was unique to each difficulty level. So, playing on HARD, you would not be able to access some Medium and Easy content. You had to play the game on different difficulty levels to see the whole story. The original Proof of Concept game which is now known as Episode 1 was built this way, and ExLibris was vicious on me about it, and rightly so! (we miss you ExLibris!) This caused me to change out how I handled the paths to build difficulty variety into the game in a different way, and I'm not sure I got it right.

The ned result, as I look at my list of paths, 50% of them have turned into Elite paths. I didn't realize it was happening. It just crept up on me. I'm thinking now that the original plan of 20% with the single Elite and Corrupt paths should be the plan and I should rebalance as part of the redesign.

What is everyone's thoughts regarding the difficulty and elite paths redesign? Also, what are the thoughts on unlocking bonus content. It should be gated because they won't make sense without more story knowledge, and don't impact the game or story in any way. They are more there as second viewpoint commentaries to the main game.

With difficulty, Early on i will say when i got frustrated i relied on the ceased 'aif sans mysteries' walkthroughs to help me navigate some of the elite stuff. The last update i just gave up on as i was less interested in non solo Natalie meaning i was not really that motivated to grind to find paths through on my own.
Ideally i think i'd like option of being able to turn diffulty down somewhat like a normal computer game but not be restricted in content because of that.

[lurking]

I agree with the previous posters. There are already too many boring games.

[Valerielychee]

This is a good time to talk about the overall game difficulty. As I look through some of my early notes and compare those to the current state of the "game plan" I see that my early notes indicated that about 20% of the game would be "elite" content, meaning that it's intended for those who enjoy grinding, and yes, they are out there. The elite paths are intended to be "perfect run" style paths out there for the completion freaks out there.

I enjoy grinding AND I am a completion freak

[Valerielychee]

What is everyone's thoughts regarding the difficulty and elite paths redesign? Also, what are the thoughts on unlocking bonus content. It should be gated because they won't make sense without more story knowledge, and don't impact the game or story in any way. They are more there as second viewpoint commentaries to the main game.

I didn't know of your original plan vs what it became, but your original plan seemed great and exciting: doing the simplest paths to understand how to achieve the elite paths... wow! I would love that.

And I love all the side things: the achievements (however, for replayability purposes, I would like: (i) for achievements containing several parts, the various parts to still be viewable once the achievement is obtained; and (ii) the possibility to erase the achievements - with a real import / export possibility as for the saves, because although the option exists, it doesn't work in my game), the bonus scenes, everything! I like having to work to obtain a result, and be rewarded for attaining said result. As others said: there is an ample choice out there for those who like simple games, so I would be grateful for them not to try and have a challenging and ambitious game (thus highly enjoyable for my taste) be simplified to fit their taste (unless of course this is really what you want to do Wolfshadow, as the game should first and foremost please you and correspond to your taste - I'm only second )