Interface rebuild, check.

I'm not 100% happy with the look, but it works. I have a few more important tasks left for the world editor and then I'll finally be able to put together a game with this system (I hope).

It's been almost a year since I first downloaded Twine started working on Next Door Girl April. Looking back on the year I'm generally happy with what I've been able to do. I've learned a bunch about making games by building a text system in Unity. Aside from technical knowledge, I picked up a lot of good experience with writing and design from Next Door Girl April and Midnight Room. I remember being really miserable about life when I wrote NDGA, but I definitely feel happier as a person right now.  Maybe there is something beneficial about writing absurd text based games. I hope that by this time next year I'll have done something really amazing.

Trojan Horse on Hiatus!

After much thought, I've decided to put Midnight Room on hiatus for now. For those who were interested in the story/game I do apologize, but please know that this is a tough choice to make. My reasons are many and all over the place, but at the end of the day if I were going to work on the game I would be working on it right now and not thinking about working on it. Midnight Room has crossed the line from 'fun to work on' to 'work to work on’. Working without fun or pay is kind of volunteering, but in this case it's volunteering without the satisfaction of helping anyone.

Midnight Room 1 - 024 .. er 025

Changed a few things in chapter 4; updated how emails are displayed and fixed a few passages that I had excluded somehow. Also I made a change to the way the game will be saved in local storage.

I was having some issues with saves in Firefox but they were solved by moving volume 2 to the same location on my local drive as volume 1. The change I made means that saves from version 023 won't work in volume 2. There have been about 40 downloads of 023 so this won't effect many people. For those whom it will effect, I've heard nothing in terms of feedback so ... well ... shrug.

[update] Also stopped the prompt display from showing every back button hit

Download: The Midnight Room 1 - 025

 

The Midnight Room - Volume 1

I've decided to release the first part of The Midnight Room. I've had no testers and I am not entirely sure that saving between Volumes of the game will work properly with all the popular browsers, but I've decided to throw the game into the universe and see what happens.

Download The Midnight Room - Volume 1 - 023 Here!

Midnight Room Dev Update

Hello, thought I'd make an update post about my current project The Midnight Room. I'll keep this post spoiler free, but I will discuss some of the technical stuff about the game. My primary goal is to improve the way I made Next Door Girl April. There were a lot of lessons learned making that game, and hopefully I will be able to make better games because of it.

NDGA stat system

The first thing I thought about improving, was the stat system in NDGA. So stats, or stat, in NDGA was really simple to manage for players and me developing the game. With just one thing to keep track of, there wasn't much difficulty in playing the game. Every choice that you made had a single effect on this stat, raise it, lower it or do nothing to it. The problem with this is it was just too easy, especially since I didn't prevent using the back button to change your mind. In order to add challenge, I put in a few tricks that rewarded following up on 'bad' choices with higher gains than you would have gotten had you made 'good' choices. The tricks worked, but they were only bandages to cover up a structural problem. So for Midnight Room, I knew I would need more stats.

MR stat system

One option is to just break down sex appeal into different stats, like attraction, physical attractiveness, mood, etc. The problem is some of those things are difficult to change with player choices, or just mundane like taking a shower. The addition of taking a shower in NDGA v 035 was kind of a joke, and I don't think it added anything to the overall experience of playing the game. What follows is my new approach, so don't continue reading if you'd rather wait to see it in the game.

New project

After a lot of work on Next Door Girl April, I have decided to put it on hold.
I honestly thought I could rebuild the story in 3d, but it turns out my assumptions were wrong.
It just wasn't fun to play and building it felt more like a chore than I'd like.
The core of the issue is finding out what the game should actually be.
Displaying all of the text of the original story along side of characters acting it out is just strange.
Removing the descriptive part of the text and leaving only the dialogue felt very empty.
Having the models just act out various sex scenes isn't really a game at all, but more of a simulation.
It is incredibly easy to criticize sex scenes in video games, until you are actually the one trying to create one yourself.