Intro Part 2 (Patreon)
Downloads
Content
Intro Part 2 is partially done. I've decided to split it into 2 days, which I still aim to finish before the year ends. So there will be a part 3.
Feedback while I'm still working on this would be good. Currently it's a bit disjointed as the segments that happen in the house area aren't done.
Again, almost no lewd content here, unless you count innuendo.
Some other changes:
-All NPC were getting drawn twice. The boost won't be as significant thought.
-Changed Yuri's appearance ("princess" from the intro). Named NPC looks aren't set in stone, but I am content at how they are right now.
-Text: Player name will appear on the left side as it did before.
-Text: Instead, important NPCs will have their text color coded to differentiate who's talking. Less significant NPCs will remain white shaded for now.
-Text: Minor pose adjustments will only happen to the person currently talking and when a new line starts, to further help differentiating who's talking.
-Fixed some clothes and arms clipping. I can't test everything for every body part size, so if you see a set of clothing obviously clipping let me know.
Current plan is to work on the dream areas after the intro's done.
New depth sorting method solves several previous issues(NPCs drawing over/behind walls). Trees are now usable, which lets me start developing the forest area and tweak locations that needed vegetation.
The lab area is still probably the most done one and the one I'll post next.
The meat world will probably be last. The tileset I intended to use heavily for it turned out to be very lackluster in practice.
Though given the scale I'm going for, it's probably a good idea to start making abstract minimalist areas instead. I guess that would be in spirit of Yumi Nikki.
Writing is probably my weakest point. If it isn't blatantly obvious, I'm going with a VN approach.
The direction can still be changed, so criticism is good.
Half the time I'm not sure whether the MC should have descriptive sentences or just implied ones, or maybe a silent protagonist altogether is better. Should the responses be exclusively choices, even if they're superficial? Should there be inner thoughts? How much personality do you prefer?
I don't know if I should make names, concepts and conversations more conventional for the setting or for the audience. i.e I've had honorifics present but after rereading it over and over I just couldn't handle the cringe and removed them. Yuri was meant to be more tsundere as well, but I've toned it down a fair amount.
If you don't want to provide feedback, it's probably better to wait for now. Everything is a bit disjointed at the moment.
Some other stuff I'm not sure about, and would like to hear your thoughts:
Clothing size restriction. The idea is a piece of clothing will be unusable within the range of, let's say, 2 points of body part size it was acquired at. This would prompt a reason to purchase and throw away clothing, trying out new ones and occasionally being stack with certain sets. There are currently 8 hip and 8 chest sizes.
Eyelashes. Some of the new eyes have them. I'm not sure whether it looks better or worse. At the very least on MC.
Should the house (from the demo) be redesigned? I feel like I've got better material to work with, but it'll take a good chunk of time. If it's serviceable I can leave it be. It will also be absolutely impossible to redesign later if not now.
I might as well talk about how I'm designing story content.
Once necessary conditions are met, either an optional event will become available or a mandatory one will trigger. You can take the intro as an example on how those will look like.
They will be split into either linear(i.e going clothes shopping with Akari) or continuous(i.e first time getting pregnant)
The former will prevent your character from resuming regular cycles until the event is finished.
The later will lock you out of other continuous story content(or incompatible linear segments) until the end conditions are met, but will allow cycles to continue as normal. Incompatible changes, actions and encounters will also be disabled until the story segment is resolved(with the previous example in mind, getting somehow "unpregnant" or giving birth prematurely, before the segment has progressed enough). The idea in this example is to establish what happens, how world reacts, and why it makes sense, before letting you do it again more casually.
As of right now I only have these sketched out in notepad and I need an actual game layered out before I could start coding them in, so humor me. Planned major events are: First time getting pregnant, changing back to male, mirror body swap
Heroine specific content is a distant future as far as I'm concerned.
Finally, I realize what kind of game I'm making. I aim to squeeze in a new animation every month or so, though isn't it nicer to have established characters for that?
Frankly speaking, if feedback is poor I'll focus on that for a while.
Also, very late Merry Christmas.