IF you understand the reference in the title, give yourself a pat on the back.. unless you are a certain type of person or an old english person, you are unlikely to understand it with out checking online. Anyway, I wish to spend a few moments talking about some bits and pieces in this game and series which have been debates I’ve had mostly with myself over what is the best course and action and kinda why i choose what i did, even if i might have doubts some bits are not the best options. First of all, The game series is meant to be a fairly short games which may take only a couple of hours to complete. I have no problem with that. Personally, i LOVE huge in-depth story games. Really do. BUT, here we meet a problem. What is this game meant to be.. Ultimately, it’s a hard mix.
The Prime focus is hard for me to truly define. Are they meant to be hardcore puzzle games? no.. they have a number of problems for me.. While I’m not too bad at solving them, thinking of them is another matter and then i need to work out and tailor them to the target audience. Too hard and people will mostly give up. Too easy isn’t not as much a problem but people can get bored too much. So i need to know the target audience. Also, may i note that alot of puzzle games have more then one person working on them of course. anyway.. So.. lets just skip to the point.. while not every game may be like it (but most likely will be) the main point is porn. well.. depending on your tastes, i often prefer Erotica. Porn is just mindless images without much set up or story or anything. Erotica is the whole thing where you need/want a story, narrative, a REASON for some things. This is a story game about Porn so Erotica is a perfect fit.
So.. the main focus is porn. Back in the old days of the 60s and 70s (and to some amount now) there were games like X-man (well, that was 1983 but never mind). Was there any plot to the thing? not really. It was designed as ‘we know pornography is something that sells, and there is no porn made for this console/type so lets give it to them and it will sell no matter what’.. i guess I’m being a little unfair to some of the programmers and designers but.. that’s basically it.. You have a simple maze of a game as the levels. Well hung guy must get from Point A of blocky maze to Point B here he meets a woman. Not only is there this simple maze but there are obstacles! Evil Teeth, Scissors and Crabs!… well, to tell the truth i can’t quite understand the scissors but oh well. the maze is badly designed but never mind.. then it’s the ‘meat’ of the matter. the Porn.. and how bad it is.. you get to wiggle the joystick back and forward to show you having sex with the girl.. but you need to mm.. erm.. increase her pleasure to a point without going too high.. it’s also dull and blocky even for the time..
I like to think games have advanced beyond that and now have a story and some real through into the game play (Harem from 1982 was better but still… erm.. bad).. Just like how porn films have evolved over time from the stupid “Hello, I’m the plumber..”, “Oh dear, my cloths have just fallen off.. that means i must have sex” stories to more advance stuff like Alice in Wonderland: an X-rated musical fantasy in 1976 (which the lesser hardcore version is much better). So right.. i ramble alot.. where was i? The game is primary porn. But needs a story to it and it’s a game so some form of gameplay. But to stop turning off ‘porn’ fans, you don’t want to go for a full out hardcore story game, you need to reward or at least give access to, the porn at regular intervals.
One thing I used, and helped a fair bit, was Andrew Goulding (a game designer who worked with people like Ron Gilbert)’s article ‘State of the Point-and-click art’ which he posted on Gamasutra back.. oh, 7 years ago now.. While this game is a bit.. odd for a point and click adventure, it’s still fine in that field, though i prefer to avoid just calling it that..
Dialogue is good. Tells story alot. BUT too much is bad.. For a story gamer loving games where you could sit for a good half hour with just story before anything happened (in the way of game play) would be happy doing that with a visual novel, another game style this can be compared with, for casual gamers and porn fans, this is WAY too heavy.. some of my original story came out in SOO much text, i wondered why i just didn’t write a text adventure game.. even a graphical adventure game (the term i prefer for this but still not right) has alot more text but still much less then i was planning and writing. Too dull, too long for target audience. So I needed to cut it. I’ll quote from of Mr Goulding here:
“A fact learned through countless hours of user testing is that the average casual player doesn’t read. Well, that’s not entirely fair — they do read, but with little patience, and generally only the first and last lines of dialogue.”
So most of the text was reduce. I also added a highlighting system so people could focus on key words.. this is an old computer game idea which was often done to allow non-natural language people to understand. Played the first ‘Legend of Zelda: a Hyrule Fantasy’ game? The opening text wasn’t changed outside of Japan really. Notice a colour system highlighting key words.. Link is Green, Triforce stuff was Blue (newer versions remove this for the triforce text and make Zelda Blue), and stuff related to other key characters and points were Red. Designed to give you key ideas of Who you are, what you are looking for and what you must do. I’m still tweaking some dialogue in game and if people give me feedback and suggestions et, it can become better and better.. but anyway..
Knowing the target audience was causal gamers is a key feature. I’m aiming at that group. Ones that like a bit of fun and porn. If you don’t want the porn, don’t look here. If you don’t want the game, don’t look here either. The game side should be light but more so then ones which were pretty much not there.
This leads to the puzzles. There are really two kinds of puzzle.. Mini-game puzzles and story based. Alot of Point and click adventure games don’t do many if any mini-game puzzles. They are more about ‘find where you need to go, figure out what to say to who and what item to use where’. There is SOME of that in this game but i tried to give more in the way of hints to the player.. Also leads to another Mr Goulding quote:
“casual players just want to know what they have to do and how to do it, so they can get on with doing it. Traditionally in adventure games, part of the puzzle is figuring out what you’re supposed to be doing.”
Yep, so i put in a bit to help. I was going to go more of the way by having character diary so when you do something, if you check the diary, you will be able to read there take on what has happened and what to do.. like a recap too.. but it was just dull and boring and pointless. Mini-game side i tried to have some not amazingly easy but pretty damn easy classics.. ones which ANY puzzle game player will automatically know (and often solve in no time) but which could still give something to some people.. Slide Puzzles, Jigsaw Puzzles, etc. These aren’t hard and are fairly stable classics so shouldn’t need alot of explaining. But then you need to reward the player. So most of these puzzles lead to porn. I’ve been adding visual reward which is just flavour (sounds, lights etc). Dumb but they are expected and make the player feel good.
One thing that sometimes (and in fact, quite often) annoys me in some games are background people that do bugger all. While this does add some life to the scenes, i like it if you have some degree of reason for this person. Some story. I’ve seen alot of games where you are looking for an item on the floor and there are tons of possible items but you can’t click on them. Can’t get the character to look at them and think “Mm.. I’m looking for something like a small rope.. maybe this strong cable will do the job” unless the programmer/designers have decided that THAT particle piece of cable is the right one. I’ve played games where SOME of the background characters you can atleast get a description of, but others are just background.. and there is no reason you can’t get a description of them. Also, i don’t like it where you see most of the population looks the same. I really understand WHY that is done, but it can be annoying (more so when some minor story characters are just generic designs too… again, i was playing something the other day and wondered.. why is the captain of my regiment doing in this town sitting in a pub.. Oh wait, same sprite, different guy.. despite another part of the game making comments on the re-use of some sprites as saying the characters are related).
So i try to add some story, some REASON for these people being here.. alot of it doesn’t always come across in the game but it’s there. But you can only do this SOO much before you just run out of ideas and things..
See what i mean about rambling.. I’m all over the place here.. Sum up.. Small story based Porn game for casual players and porn fans.
That’s what this is. I see games much worse, i see games much better. oh well, fair enough. But i still think “Mm.. does this bit need more story? make it longer? how can i logically put some porn here” etc.. I won’t deny that so far, Act 2 is a bit.. tricky.. being set in a area with limited people kinda limits the porn side.. But Act 2 does introduce combat, which was always set to be part of the game (this is the first one after all.. i want to introduce people to things a bit at a time.. also to test the waters).
I’m a little disappointed with feedback.. I know most people are likely to say “I don’t like this so I’m not gonna bother” but is spending 5 minutes, if that, too much to ask?.. Maybe.. Oh well. Due to various factors some out of my control and some in it, this has taken a bit longer then expected to get this far but things are still going okay..
This post is probably not very clear.. If anyone has any ideas, feedback, want me to clear stuff up etc, they don’t need to join here to say.. I have:
* an FurAffinity account at : furaffinity.net/user/artisttempy
* a Sofurry account at: artisttempy.sofurry.com
* Or why not e-mail me at artisttempy-ask@yahoo.com
If you want to say something, ask something, give suggestions etc, I’m always willing to listen. I don’t like comments like “You suck and everything you do is crap”, but if you want to say “I think you suck and your work is crap because …” and list some reasons, that’s fair enough. Its much more constructive.
IF you understand the reference in the title, give yourself a pat on the back.. unless you are a certain type of person or an old english person, you are unlikely to understand it with out checking online. Anyway, I wish to spend a few moments talking about some bits and pieces in this game and series which have been debates I’ve had mostly with myself over what is the best course and action and kinda why i choose what i did, even if i might have doubts some bits are not the best options. First of all, The game series is meant to be a fairly short games which may take only a couple of hours to complete. I have no problem with that. Personally, i LOVE huge in-depth story games. Really do. BUT, here we meet a problem. What is this game meant to be.. Ultimately, it’s a hard mix.
The Prime focus is hard for me to truly define. Are they meant to be hardcore puzzle games? no.. they have a number of problems for me.. While I’m not too bad at solving them, thinking of them is another matter and then i need to work out and tailor them to the target audience. Too hard and people will mostly give up. Too easy isn’t not as much a problem but people can get bored too much. So i need to know the target audience. Also, may i note that alot of puzzle games have more then one person working on them of course. anyway.. So.. lets just skip to the point.. while not every game may be like it (but most likely will be) the main point is porn. well.. depending on your tastes, i often prefer Erotica. Porn is just mindless images without much set up or story or anything. Erotica is the whole thing where you need/want a story, narrative, a REASON for some things. This is a story game about Porn so Erotica is a perfect fit.
So.. the main focus is porn. Back in the old days of the 60s and 70s (and to some amount now) there were games like X-man (well, that was 1983 but never mind). Was there any plot to the thing? not really. It was designed as ‘we know pornography is something that sells, and there is no porn made for this console/type so lets give it to them and it will sell no matter what’.. i guess I’m being a little unfair to some of the programmers and designers but.. that’s basically it.. You have a simple maze of a game as the levels. Well hung guy must get from Point A of blocky maze to Point B here he meets a woman. Not only is there this simple maze but there are obstacles! Evil Teeth, Scissors and Crabs!… well, to tell the truth i can’t quite understand the scissors but oh well. the maze is badly designed but never mind.. then it’s the ‘meat’ of the matter. the Porn.. and how bad it is.. you get to wiggle the joystick back and forward to show you having sex with the girl.. but you need to mm.. erm.. increase her pleasure to a point without going too high.. it’s also dull and blocky even for the time..
I like to think games have advanced beyond that and now have a story and some real through into the game play (Harem from 1982 was better but still… erm.. bad).. Just like how porn films have evolved over time from the stupid “Hello, I’m the plumber..”, “Oh dear, my cloths have just fallen off.. that means i must have sex” stories to more advance stuff like Alice in Wonderland: an X-rated musical fantasy in 1976 (which the lesser hardcore version is much better). So right.. i ramble alot.. where was i? The game is primary porn. But needs a story to it and it’s a game so some form of gameplay. But to stop turning off ‘porn’ fans, you don’t want to go for a full out hardcore story game, you need to reward or at least give access to, the porn at regular intervals.
One thing I used, and helped a fair bit, was Andrew Goulding (a game designer who worked with people like Ron Gilbert)’s article ‘State of the Point-and-click art’ which he posted on Gamasutra back.. oh, 7 years ago now.. While this game is a bit.. odd for a point and click adventure, it’s still fine in that field, though i prefer to avoid just calling it that..
Dialogue is good. Tells story alot. BUT too much is bad.. For a story gamer loving games where you could sit for a good half hour with just story before anything happened (in the way of game play) would be happy doing that with a visual novel, another game style this can be compared with, for casual gamers and porn fans, this is WAY too heavy.. some of my original story came out in SOO much text, i wondered why i just didn’t write a text adventure game.. even a graphical adventure game (the term i prefer for this but still not right) has alot more text but still much less then i was planning and writing. Too dull, too long for target audience. So I needed to cut it. I’ll quote from of Mr Goulding here:
“A fact learned through countless hours of user testing is that the average casual player doesn’t read. Well, that’s not entirely fair — they do read, but with little patience, and generally only the first and last lines of dialogue.”
So most of the text was reduce. I also added a highlighting system so people could focus on key words.. this is an old computer game idea which was often done to allow non-natural language people to understand. Played the first ‘Legend of Zelda: a Hyrule Fantasy’ game? The opening text wasn’t changed outside of Japan really. Notice a colour system highlighting key words.. Link is Green, Triforce stuff was Blue (newer versions remove this for the triforce text and make Zelda Blue), and stuff related to other key characters and points were Red. Designed to give you key ideas of Who you are, what you are looking for and what you must do. I’m still tweaking some dialogue in game and if people give me feedback and suggestions et, it can become better and better.. but anyway..
Knowing the target audience was causal gamers is a key feature. I’m aiming at that group. Ones that like a bit of fun and porn. If you don’t want the porn, don’t look here. If you don’t want the game, don’t look here either. The game side should be light but more so then ones which were pretty much not there.
This leads to the puzzles. There are really two kinds of puzzle.. Mini-game puzzles and story based. Alot of Point and click adventure games don’t do many if any mini-game puzzles. They are more about ‘find where you need to go, figure out what to say to who and what item to use where’. There is SOME of that in this game but i tried to give more in the way of hints to the player.. Also leads to another Mr Goulding quote:
“casual players just want to know what they have to do and how to do it, so they can get on with doing it. Traditionally in adventure games, part of the puzzle is figuring out what you’re supposed to be doing.”
Yep, so i put in a bit to help. I was going to go more of the way by having character diary so when you do something, if you check the diary, you will be able to read there take on what has happened and what to do.. like a recap too.. but it was just dull and boring and pointless. Mini-game side i tried to have some not amazingly easy but pretty damn easy classics.. ones which ANY puzzle game player will automatically know (and often solve in no time) but which could still give something to some people.. Slide Puzzles, Jigsaw Puzzles, etc. These aren’t hard and are fairly stable classics so shouldn’t need alot of explaining. But then you need to reward the player. So most of these puzzles lead to porn. I’ve been adding visual reward which is just flavour (sounds, lights etc). Dumb but they are expected and make the player feel good.
One thing that sometimes (and in fact, quite often) annoys me in some games are background people that do bugger all. While this does add some life to the scenes, i like it if you have some degree of reason for this person. Some story. I’ve seen alot of games where you are looking for an item on the floor and there are tons of possible items but you can’t click on them. Can’t get the character to look at them and think “Mm.. I’m looking for something like a small rope.. maybe this strong cable will do the job” unless the programmer/designers have decided that THAT particle piece of cable is the right one. I’ve played games where SOME of the background characters you can atleast get a description of, but others are just background.. and there is no reason you can’t get a description of them. Also, i don’t like it where you see most of the population looks the same. I really understand WHY that is done, but it can be annoying (more so when some minor story characters are just generic designs too… again, i was playing something the other day and wondered.. why is the captain of my regiment doing in this town sitting in a pub.. Oh wait, same sprite, different guy.. despite another part of the game making comments on the re-use of some sprites as saying the characters are related).
So i try to add some story, some REASON for these people being here.. alot of it doesn’t always come across in the game but it’s there. But you can only do this SOO much before you just run out of ideas and things..
See what i mean about rambling.. I’m all over the place here.. Sum up.. Small story based Porn game for casual players and porn fans.
That’s what this is. I see games much worse, i see games much better. oh well, fair enough. But i still think “Mm.. does this bit need more story? make it longer? how can i logically put some porn here” etc.. I won’t deny that so far, Act 2 is a bit.. tricky.. being set in a area with limited people kinda limits the porn side.. But Act 2 does introduce combat, which was always set to be part of the game (this is the first one after all.. i want to introduce people to things a bit at a time.. also to test the waters).
I’m a little disappointed with feedback.. I know most people are likely to say “I don’t like this so I’m not gonna bother” but is spending 5 minutes, if that, too much to ask?.. Maybe.. Oh well. Due to various factors some out of my control and some in it, this has taken a bit longer then expected to get this far but things are still going okay..
This post is probably not very clear.. If anyone has any ideas, feedback, want me to clear stuff up etc, they don’t need to join here to say.. I have:
* an FurAffinity account at : furaffinity.net/user/artisttempy
* a Sofurry account at: artisttempy.sofurry.com
* Or why not e-mail me at artisttempy-ask@yahoo.com
If you want to say something, ask something, give suggestions etc, I’m always willing to listen. I don’t like comments like “You suck and everything you do is crap”, but if you want to say “I think you suck and your work is crap because …” and list some reasons, that’s fair enough. Its much more constructive.