This is looking pretty good and I’m definitely excited for how the story progresses. One thing I want to ask is how will the future chapters work? Is it more of a pay per chapter or will it be a one time thing?
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You can get an ending where you both gain 10#.
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Yes I’ve seen all the ending combos. My point was that the same picture and ending happens with very little dialogue different. And you can basically ignore all food for the PC while stuffing Rachel and that ending, Rachel eating almost nothing, and the mutual gaining end screens are all really basically the same. The variations of choices within route don’t match up to what I would expect the end of chapter scenes to show. At the very least I figured If I prioritized Rachel’s gain over the PC she would look bigger or have more of an impacted then doing nothing with her.
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Ahh, fair.
It seems the PC is destined to put on at least 10 pounds regardless of choices.
I guess, then, the disconnect is really that only the “feedee” route seems to have you gain more than that? And not even by much of a margin in that one case.
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And outside of Ashleigh there isn’t really a difference or big difference for feeding with limited or reduced intake of food for the PC. They kinda all end up as just mutual gaining no matter how much the PC eats.
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Really like the game, excited to see where it goes!
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yeah i made a guide while i tried to get different endins and except for ashleigh feedin you all other endins are 10 pounds
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Then I guess that’s what I’d like to see, more variation in the weight progression. Less emphasis on you if you’re not actively eating, and more emphasis on anyone you’re trying to feed. And maybe subroutes (I know that’s asking a lot with branching complexity) taking specifics into account; eg if you choose to actively feed Ashleigh in return then she gains with you vs not.
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I kinda like the mutual gaining aspect, obviously the extent of it should depend on choices the end user makes within the game.
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100%. If I decide to eat or not eat something, that should result in two different sizes. Or at least impact some hidden variable that impacts things later on. Otherwise all you are seeing is different dialogues that feel somewhat disconnected from your choices.
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I mean, it’s perfectly fine that your character gains some weight as the canon has them predisposed to casual gluttony. I’d just like to see, for example, 5 pounds for a month of casual gluttony, 10 pounds for a month of intentional overindulgence, and 15-20 pounds for a month of being someone’s willing piglet.
So I’m fine with the 10 for Rachel, Ashleigh, or Alissa if you choose to feed them as their “fitness buddy”, but then some difference for you depending on whether you just “ate”, “overate”, or “got stuffed”.
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More variation of weight for the player character, that will definitely come into it in the chapters to come. I hadn’t really thought much about story paths where the player character doesn’t gain weight, this is a weight gain game after all. Looks like I might end up having to have more than 6 story paths 
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I’ve not worked that out yet. It would be nice to release chapters as they are completed, charging a little for each one. Ideally, I would have a discount on the next chapter for the people who bought the one before, but not sure if that’s possible. If I waited until it was finished, then that would take probably a year or more to do, and then nobody on here would be able to have any input into the game direction, which I think is important. Lots of stuff to think about.
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This i would like to point was certainly my biggest gripe especially with the first two choices for not having a bigger effect during week one since if your partner is ashleigh or alissa, i would think the MC progression would either be slower or faster depending on the choices depending how hard alissa is working the MC hard or Ashleigh & the MC being in a feeder, feedee relationship.
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Yeah so, uh, rachel has 0 branching paths atm.
Alissa has a decision point where you fork into one of two paths.
Ashleigh though also has two endings to chapter 1 but there are multiple choices that lead to the same result, aka, there are more than two ways to reach two outcomes. This means there’s no one choice to highlight as important because you get a chance to change your mind.
I don’t want to spoil it, but, these are facts, as I checked the code (I only found 4 routes before spoiling myself, was gonna come here and ask what the 5paths were, then said f it, I’ll just check myself.)
So if the game will mostly be alissa style choices? Then YES absolutely you need to highlight those to make the game more playable. But if the feature chapters/weeks/content/code will be more like ashleigh it does not make sense to highlight them because that would actually be misleading and make it harder for players. I assumed ashleigh must have a single critical choice after having played alissa’s route before ashleigh’s route, which led me to undo’ing my critical choice the first time I tried to get ashleigh’s other ending.
edit: This is really more a reply to jcc309 and others. I hit the reply button on the wrong thingie.
edit2: I didn’t want to double post but this is a new topic.
In chapter 1 you control the game for like 2-3days then 1month skips. So individual choices of what you eat shouldn’t really matter at all because you only control the character like 5-10% of the time. It might be nice to have more than two paths. However, I think 2 paths per chapter are fine, IF in future chapters there are more than 2 total paths. So if in month 1 the alissa route has two results. You could give month 2 a single important plot point, but that could mean 3or4 possible results for month2, because instead of just a or b it’d be a+1 or a+2 or b+1 or b+2.
I think you could give people what you want in this fashion. Having a literal variable that tracks items eaten doesn’t make a ton of sense in a fixed narrative that is not a sandbox game where you control your characters only 2-3 days out of every 30.
However by skipping 28 days a month you can give the weight gain a super realistic pace, without bogging the play down in the boredom that would entail.
Sidenote: The main character on the ashleigh route can choose to act like a pig, have it referenced the next day. Then the player can choose to confirm the main character is a feedee route OR flip flop the route to mutual despite having chosen feedee the previous day, which is imo, is good narrative freedom, more than the other girls/routes get by far (this doesn’t ignore the player’s choice as the player is still free to confirm their choice rather than altering it).
TLDR: dev has some cool new ideas.
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I agree that the total time passed compared to what the player controls is low and the few choices made there of what the player or other girls eat won’t have a big contribution to the overall weight. But it’s hugely misleading to have options in the game that would encourage or give the impression something is possible if it’s not.
For example as myself and others have said, you can turn down food as the PC ( or encourage girls other than the PC to eat more than the PC herself) on multiple routes and even before you select a gym buddy. If this has no real effect on the overall outcomes (minus Ashleigh) of weight of either the PC or other girls then a (non)choice like this shouldn’t be in the game as it is misleading to the player in my opinion.
I can totally understand it probably does fit the narrative to not have a girl who is a glutton not get into mutual gaining or feedee situations coupled with the limitations of not having a huge ballooning game scope of too many paths. So it’s probably best to not have options like this exist even though they might add some flavor or extra dialogue to situations.
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The choice to get snacks or stretch is “meh” I agree, but I think that a lot of the other choices work decently well in terms of how much content changes based on which choice you make, and like you mentioned there obviously cannot be infinitely many narrative routes like there can be in a sandbox game (but in the sandbox game the main content is still limited there’s just an added gameplay element that may or may not enhance the overall gameplay. In sandbox style games often the player is just trying to unlock the part where the narrative scenes advance.)
I’m seeing a lot of hope maybe and optimism just from the ashleigh but also alissa routes. The dev has already said that rachel’s route will get more diverse in future chapters so for the time being that’s good enough for me. I’d say on the issue of does this game change the story based on player choices? I’d rate this game above average. Simply having an items eaten variable doesn’t automatically improve the game, and in this game instead key scenes appear to get their own lags. Like burgers can be set to uh is it 0,1,2,3 or just 1,2,3? Which then changes the scene slightly. This works similarly to the cake scene which uses iirc choice1. Ashleigh’s route uses fed, although it does a bit oddly use fed on day1 and then fed again on day2. Which is why I’m calling it a chance for the player to confirm their route choice. Since the day 2 scene references the choice made in day1, then let’s you change your mind and then sets the flag accordingly.
But uh yeah, I do think ten chapters with 5 endings total at the very end could be a bit dull. I suppose also having 15 total routes would be unreasonable. So perhaps new variables do need to be introduced to track things like… On the feedee route maybe it’s not just about a flag for which route you’re on, and a flag for which version of each scene… but maybe a running total would be good? I’m not sure how referencing it would work though because. Well. If there’s only going to be say 6 total routes that’ll mean each chapter has 6 versions of much of the art.
But maybe eating that extra snack doesn’t need to alter the art. Leave that locked to the narrative route choices. But I guess extrafeedeesnacks could be a running tracker that is rarely referenced and has minor effect on the game. Essentially no effect on the narrative but it would allow the game to remember things well enough to rewrite a scene to say 5 lbs instead of 4 lbs in a far distant future scene/chapter? I guess that’s what people want? If that’s what people want it’s easily doable within the structure already available.
Well. There’s only one chapter in the game, so inventing a variable that works well across many chapters wasn’t needed.
One key detail now for daxe. The number1 reason ren’py VN’s are not save game compatible across releases is the adding of new variables. So it might be nice to load up the script file with a dozen extra variables you might never use, just in case.
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Yeah, scope creep is a huge problem (pun not intended). I’ve watched it murder several promising games here and elsewhere.
Short of having a stonking render box/farm and way too much free time, choice-based progression quickly becomes a serious problem so long as you’re using static images (like Tiggertoo is doing with The Weighting Game).
For example, with a single character in this game (other than Ashleigh), you have a minimum of 4 possible outcomes, not counting any interaction that may take place with the group/other characters within the group. (Ashleigh has 5 or 6.) With the interplay of multiple characters and/or group dynamics, you’re easily talking 20+ viable paths and outcomes. Even though there would be some potential weight overlap across the different paths, without a framework that would allow somewhat automated renders with morphing mechanics, you’d have to create and render probably thousands of images to handle all the potential weights you could be at any given time and on any given path. It’s simply bonkers.
That said, the scope goes way back down if you’re treating it like sprites on a separate background; then you just have to render specific models and poses at multiple weights depending on the possibilities of player choice, which probably range from “slow gain over time” to “omigod how?!”.
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Honestly, this first choice would ideally be used to set the mental tone of your character right up front, but again, scope creep.
Choosing to stretch would make you not be a casual glutton, but perhaps just a binge eater, or maybe you are a casual glutton, but you balance that gluttony with an active lifestyle (a very real thing). Choosing to get snacks, on the other hand… yeah, you’ve made your priorities known; you’re a pig by choice.
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I think the snacks choice is too early in the narrative for the player to comprehend the style of game and choices available, at that juncture you don’t know alissa or ashleigh exist.
The actual route choice points are more in depth choices. I think not every choice can be earthshattering. Also the meh snacks or stretch choice is referenced later once in a minor way, so it’s not like such things aren’t tracked at all.
edit:
I do think it could be interesting if early choices like say the snack choice, well, could work a bit like ashleigh’s choice. Reference it once later. During that later reference another choice occurs, this next choice allows the player to flipflop their previous choice. So only the choice made last in the chapter “matters.”
So you could choose something like feedee feedee feeder and then finish the month on the feeder route, BUT you’d get to see the feedee version of scene1 scene2 and the reference to the feedee route in scene3, then still be routed into game route and month progression feeder (just as an example.)
This would increase the importance of choices without adding any scope bloat as you’ve coined the term. It’s a nice term so I’ll use it now too.
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