The big'ol post where sacb0y kind of has an idea of what he's making now
A reminder to
follow the trello to see progress as it happens, and some ideas/concepts as they happen. Above image is from the
Alright so as you guys know I've been uncertain as to the direction Our Apartment is going. This is not because I originally had no plan it's more that i'm approaching this game out of order from what i intended to do. So now the game has to be something different than i initially planned.
What was the original plan? The Couch was supposed to be a foundation in Sex Sim game play and Conversational dialogue with a lite AI attached for both. Our Apartment was supposed to build on that concept for with a 3D an expand it from a single conversation to many, and from a single scene and position to a "room" and more scenes. And then from there I intended to expand the concept further to a larger space. Initially being a game with "days" and functions somewhat like teaching feeling.
So jumping ahead of The Couch now, Our Apartment lacks foundations i intended to have for Dialogue, and character AI. Instead it seems like i'll be working in reverse, cause i refuse to leave The Couch incomplete, at least for a single story route. So I'll be making/testing some systems in Our Apartment and back porting it to The Couch to get that in a complete enough state where I don't feel bad moving on
But first above all I need to see what I can do with what I have. Which is going pretty well.
What is "Our Apartment"? Whats the plan sacb0y?
Alright so lets start with story. Our Apartment starts at the beginning of Naomi and the players relationship from when they meet, to a much later period ultimately spanning a Year or more. this has pretty much always been the plan. Now I don't exactly think the main story will follow every day, but there may be a "daily" aspect to the game. It may involve time skips of some sort it depends on whats feasible really
The Couch Takes place around that Year mark, and you can expect a return to that scenario eventually though it may get reconnected a bit tbh. The games current structure is with a scene selector, and it may stay that way for a while with the story content being marked as dates somewhat or just titles. That's why the next animation is called "Three Weeks". Other sex animations may fall into the "daily" category and not have much of a story focus until there's more structure.
At the moment the plan for this story is being made in a document format similar to what some patrons got for The Couch except it's likely going to be a much larger document over time. I'll make this document available higher tiers at some point, probably not this month though.
Writing for this will begin soon.
Gameplay and structure
So like I said the original plan was a "daily" structure similar to Teaching Feeling. And I still want to do that...I'll just have to probably scrap certain plans for the dialogue system and interaction for now. Part of the goal was having Naomi walk around to interact with stuff. So Instead of some AI/Dynamic like functions, it might just be a bit more conditional type setup and lacking the walking around stuff. And I think that type of dialogue system will be tried after the core sex sim stuff is working.
So i think the features will come out in this order, starting from what i currently have to what i will have.
- Normal VN Dialogue (Complete but needs animations)
- VN style Sex Scenes (Complete)
- Sex Sim Gameplay
- Daily Game Structure
- Sex Sim Dialogue System
Right now i can do a somewhat standard VN type dialogue, and standard VN type sex scenes. Which is good but not enough for what my original plan was.
Clearly based on the poll some people still want the sex sim gameplay, the odd part is it was often either or. Most people who voted for just VN type sex scenes didn't vote for Sex sim and vice versa, but the numbers for both are nearly equal. In the end, it's reason enough for me to try to bring that gameplay back from The Couch, but it would have to be remade from scratch.
Obviously this requires programming, and basically i plan to do some of it myself and commission other parts mainly for optimizing. I don't want to be left with an entire system i don't understand. EIREXE is reliable so far, but life happens as we've seen.
So I've learned to do a good deal with Bolt, and there's even tools to make AI state machines within that. Generally I intend to use EIREXE for specific scripts as needed mostly for modular stuff. Not exactly for entire systems requiring multiple scripts to work together. Same goes for MiNT (all these caps named programmers lol).
The daily game structure is the next big thing, and that's when the game will start functioning like a game rather than a scene viewer. You'll have a calendar view similar to Persona, and that will play a role in some ways to progression in the story. And along with the calendar will bring other UI changes as well.
For all this i'll outline in some documents in the future.
When things progress in earnest, we'll transition from build numbers to version numbers.
What about other characters?
Exact same concept and gameplay, different scenario. To give a bit of a hint, Alex's story is somewhat of a reverse concept, and Peislee I don't have an exact plan for but it takes place less in a central area and is more about different areas.
But rest assured Alex and Peislee will get their time, and Alex's model will begin soon. Keep in mind those are separate games though. I may decided to do it all in one game but i dunno if that would complicate things too much. Even if it's in the game project file. Some of this has to do with Patreons issues too.
What about customization?
That fits right in with everything else, all i intended to do and you've voted on for Outfits will come :D.
And the male avatar will still have the freedom mentioned earlier. No changes here.
This is awesome, whats going on this month tho?
Ah yeah let me be quick about all that. Lipsync demos, Voice acting for "Three Weeks" will be released, and possibly the full scene. Also voice and SFX for the modified missionary animation. Gotta get the system for that working properly. There may be dialogue for it, unsure, there will be moans and such tho. Dildo animation will be converted to VN dialogue style.
New Outfit items! But relatively simple ones, i'll do an update on this later but it relates to Socks mainly gonna have some fun with that. Should also do at least one new Male avatar item cause I only need to port some stuff over.
Plus some other changes depending on how things work out.
Conclusion
So I now have a pretty good idea of what i'm doing. This should turn out to be a much bigger project than The Couch but overall easier. And I hope you guys look forward to it once all the systems are in place and we can shift to a content focus. I'll announce plans for the next sex animation soon, I think i want it to be able to work along side the sex sim development (So you get a VN scene and i can test sex sim at the same time), so that may play a role...
Thanks again for reading and thanks for your continued support!
~Sacb0y
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