FLOWERTHIEF'S PROFILE

Although this discussion has hijacked the OP's topic, it is so much nicer seeing it here on the forum than in my project thread!

author=Illustrious
I don't see the need for regular downloads of what someone got done in the last week. IMO just complete your game or demo, upload it when you believe its finished and wont require a ton of further updates. If you need updates that often, your game probably was not ready for release in the first place. Just because your last release was not up to snuff doesn't mean someone else should be bumped off the front page because you neglected to do it right. Yes there are bugfixes and improvements.. but try to do all that in one go or over more time at least.

That's a sound philosophy for most of the development cycle for most games. However, once you're in beta-testing, things change.

For the first year that I worked on my project (I'm the author of Heartache 101) I hardly told anyone about it. I didn't want to release even a demo all that time. I only made a project page here after I had a beta to show for my efforts. At that point I could no longer keep working in a cave; the game needed feedback in order to improve. You get feedback, you make changes, you release again, you get more feedback, you make more changes, you release again, and on and on for as long as necessary and as frequently as necessary. That's a testing cycle that I believe any serious game must go through. (I tried to conduct testing in private at first by clicking the "testers only" box for my download, but somehow non-testers were still able to download it; public seems to be the only option)

The first time someone complained about the game's presence on the front page it took me by surprise because I've never seen a community where frequently updating one's product with bug fixes and improvements wasn't recognized as a good thing. And unless I've misunderstood things, RMN exists in part for that purpose--to assist authors with the testing cycle. The site has been extremely helpful in that regard. It is the very thing that what makes it so valuable imo. RMN is providing what I wasn't able to get elsewhere. I first tried to look for beta-testers at the Lemmasoft forums (a freelance visual novel community) and got a few people saying they would playtest it, but nobody actually playtested it. The project almost died right there from presumed lack of interest. Believe me, it can be real hard to find testers for a game of this type. There are literally no communities on the internet dedicated specifically to people who like datings sims with any level of activity worth mentioning that I know of (and I have looked and looked).

If I've misunderstood what RMN is about and should have waited until the game was complete before posting it, I apologize. Although in that case, lack of adequate testing may have doomed the game to never be complete.

Those are some good ideas. I think this just might work.
Another thing that occurred to me is that there's no reason that the alternate mode even has to take place in the same time frame. It could be that the protagonist heard the legend about some guy having a competition with some girl (Miki) the previous school year and now it's become some kind of tradition.

And I still can't believe the game got 2000+ downloads in one day. That just can't be right! I'm certain it was around 800 the day before, and there wasn't an update or anything that day. Game stats aren't supposed to triple that fast. Either the number is incorret or perhaps the game is getting prime time coverage in some corner of the internet I don't know about. Either way, it seems to have been a temporary boost or else the stat would be like 5000 today.

author=Marrend
I assume the next release will be a while, as the work-around for this bug isn't all that bad?

Anyway, there's a few things I want to do to Masako before updating her for the billionth time.

I wasn't intending to release again soon, but I probably shouldn't wait too long as this is a bug that those writing custom story content are likely to encounter. It happens in story test any time a conditional branch fails, and it does crash the game.

And thank you Masako for being such a good test subject for the customization features. Hopefully future users writing story content won't have to go through all the revisions with their characters that Masako has.

Still got an error after running xnafx31_redist.msi. Readme says I should update my .NET framework. I've not done this before. How do I find out what .NET framework I have, or if I even have it at all?

Yeah that's a bug in the game. Thank you for reporting it, will be fixed in the next release. Fortunately, the bug only happens in story test mode, so players seeing your story in-game shouldn't have this problem. (But a workaround for getting it to play in story test mode is to add the following text to the end of your records file: *masako/masako_story.txt#14@3 )

Back to the question of how to implement GxB... Changing the bedroom graphic, changing pronouns, changing the font color for the protagonist, changing "Girls met" to "Boys met", adjusting some of the script for events like meeting Hiro or the Chocoloate Lady, changing the option to ask her type of guy to the option to ask his type of girl, etc is all doable, I think. What I wonder about are the things that are not easily changed because they are fundamental to the game system. Would it seem strange for a girl to be doing all the asking out on dates? (And then when the boy does ask you out he wants you to taste his cooking) Would it be strange to be giving boys beads and flowers as gifts? Would it be strange for a girl to be getting into fights in bathrooms while doing janitorial work?

GxB could be done in such a way that it peacefully co-exists with Marrend's and anyone else's custom content. In a GxB mode, Clean mode would always be on, so I wouldn't be making stories or characters for it myself. Just a bare-bones prologue and such.

What would the premise be though? Maybe the protagonist is a classmate of Miki's and overhears that she's having a 101-day contest with her childhood friend and decides to set a goal for herself along the same lines?