So, I know I've mentioned the love shack a number of times now, but I haven't really talked about what exactly the love shack is. The short version is that it's a way to get to know your Maids better. You can either talk to them outside and sit by the fire, or talk to them inside and... do exactly what you think you'd do given what the associated trophy is.
For the long version, the love shack slowly became something much, much, much larger than originally intended. What started as a neat thing to find if you decided to go poking around at the edges of the maps became an opportunity to raise Maids' affection scores. From there, I kept floundering on how exactly to implement the "affection grind" mechanic in a way that wouldn't be a boring grind.
That eventually led me to what the love shack is now becoming. The love shack has already been reworked in the dev build so that you can't invite anyone until after it's finished (once you have the trophy), and scenes have been split up into two types.
Outside, sitting by the fire will start a conversation. Each Maid will have a unique "introductory" conversation, and a number of other conversations that will trigger at random each time you sit down to enjoy the fire. It's likely that, at launch, the only available conversations will be the original and an alternate version of it that will repeat. As the game updates more and I find more time to write more conversations, the available conversations will expand. Some of these conversations will be choice driven, meaning that if you get the same conversation multiple times, you can make a different choice, which will lead to a completely different set of dialogue. Once the first round of these is implemented, that will mean a 50% chance of getting the alternate original conversation, and a 50% chance of getting your choice of 4 different conversations, for a total of 5 different dialogue scenes. Those odds will change as more get added, and you get an affection increase regardless of the choices made, so chances are you'll hit a wall on increasing affection before you'll run out of dialogue.
Inside, you'll have the normal "Service" option, but the scene itself won't be normal. Eventually, anyway. At launch, these scenes will just be a normal scene focused on what the girl wants. What the scene will be will depend on what the girl likes (which should also let me add a little extra variety). Once that Maid's affection score passes certain thresholds, the scene will evolve to become a little bit more than what it started as. This won't work the exact same way for every Maid (don't expect Ella to ask you to break out the whips and chains), but if nothing else, it should be a little bit different from what I've done elsewhere so far.
The main obstacle to having all of this done sooner has been time. With the upcoming remaster and my current focus on reaching an "end state" for the VX Ace version of the game, the love shack is the last thing that's really left, as it's the last piece of promised content that isn't in the game yet. While there are definitely other things I could give some additional attention to - that's what the remaster is for. So most of v0.9.2 is going to be new renders (at roughly 8 renders per scene, and 2 scenes each for 18 characters, I've got a bit of work ahead of me). The good news is that these scenes are coming along at a reasonable pace, so I should have a release date for you in three weeks, give or take.
And one last note for the remaster - polls are opening up on my Patreon! If you're interested in getting involved and helping guide development for the remaster, please consider supporting me on Patreon. The first poll is already up, the second poll goes up Friday, and there are already two more planned with more likely to come. If you have an opinion on what you'd like to see changed or improved during the remaster, I'd be thrilled to hear from you.
No comments:
Post a Comment