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Saturday, April 21, 2012

The Why Of Dating

Why does dating suck? Well, let me tell you.

First of all, there's a lot of options for dating. A lot. I haven't added them up, but the total variations are 50+. Which is good for you, because it means that you don't have to get bored with doing the same date over and over again, but bad for me, because I have to actually write all that stuff.

And copy/paste, while it's available for some stuff, isn't really feasible for all the stuff that happens in dates. Even similar stuff, like shopping for clothes and shopping for underwear, has different interactions. And then there's all the variations in the actual dating action itself. Let's look at clothes shopping with Genevieve as an example.

You get to the mall. That's the first constant. What she does when you meet up, however, depends on what your relationship with her is. If you're just friends (i.e. you're not romantically involved), it's a simple greeting. If you're more than friends, she gives you a kiss hello (variation #1). You then head to the clothing store and browse the clothes. At this point, there's a 40% chance of Genevieve asking you which of three dresses would look better on her (variation #2), and the results of the choice you make in two cases depends on your relationship with her (variations #3, #4, and #5). If that doesn't happen, there's a 40% chance of her giving you a dress and asking you to try it on, to which you have 4 possible responses (variation #6). If that doesn't happen, then it's just a normal shopping trip.

After the trip is over, the two of you head back to the mall entrance and prepare to go home. If you're romantically involved with Genevieve and quite far along in terms of seducing her, then you automatically kiss her goodbye (or rather, she kisses you goodbye), otherwise, you have the option of kissing her goodbye (variation #7, and the only one I can actually copy/paste), and her reaction depends on your friendship (rejected, accepted but surprised, accepted). And then she heads home.

That's one dating option. In the shopping category, there's four possible activities, and only one of them has less variation than clothes. In the case of underwear, there's about half a dozen more variations (mostly because you can get an impromptu sex scene, which had variations for straight lesbian sex, small futa and large futa sex).

So it takes a while to get it all put in.

I've been cutting down the dating options (yes, there used to be more) in order to maintain my sanity. You can no longer go to the museum at all, which is fine, because none of the characters I have planned actually liked it anyway, and makeup shopping was dumb anyway. There were way too many options for restaurants for lunch and dinner dates (dinner in particular had eight variations, which I have cut down to a reasonably more manageable five). So hopefully it'll be less work on me in the future. But I still have to code all this stuff. And it takes a while.

9 comments:

  1. You can do what you did with the jobs, do a bit of it at a time, instead of all the options and variations at once. You can just focus on one type of date for this update.

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  2. I am hoping being a futa will have a large impact on most sex scenes

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  3. as always its pure gold, appreciate the effort you put into this and eagerly awating the next update.

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  4. Well shit. That's complicated. As if coding isn't bad enough you also have to write what they say. Good luck, sir!

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  5. I must say that all the possible options do sound great from a player perspective. but painful from the programmers view. Hopefully you can find some sort of happy medium =)

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  6. You should know that the effort and time you are investing into this, is not going unnoticed.

    Personally I believe this is a really interesting game (regardless of the sexual elements ,actually). I find it addictive. The branching paths and "grinding" to raise your stats make it more akin of an actual RPG than a choose-your-own-adventure).
    I i'm eagerly awaiting your next update, but honestly I'm not going to moan if you delay. It's your game really, and we don't have any valid excuse to put pressure on you.

    Some day you and Fenoxo will pass down in internet history as the deviant heroes you are.

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  7. Will jobs have any affect on Dating? Some people might not be willing to date a stripper or think dating a office girl is too boring, etc? Also, people tend to ask what the other person's job is when dating.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, but not necessarily in the way that you think. Strippers won't have too much trouble with Genevieve, as she's open-minded, but hookers...well, Genevieve is the monogamous type. If she finds out that her lover is sleeping with someone else for any reason, it won't end well.

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    2. Hey, Anon, I'm curious. Do you incorporate suggestions to Cursed? If so is there a place to gather them?

      If nothing else, I want to see what other people have in their minds.

      (Btw You should start a thread over at /d/. I pretty much learned of Fenoxo there, and of you through his suggestions.I believe it would ramp up the popularity of your game).

      Regardless, have a nice day and keep being awesome.

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