“Scope” and “Scope Creep” are hardly new terms. They’ve been around in the business field for a while now, applying to anything that involves development and clients.
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I’ll just point out here that I generally don’t mind choices that are narrative only (as opposed to having some great impact on weight). I think there is a place for them, and it honestly makes the game feel a lot more alive than if you only had a very limited number of choices that all impacted the end result. Especially if these choices are referenced later on.
That said, if I’m picking a more gluttonous or lazy option, I will tend to assume that it is going to result in a higher weight. So just be aware that is what most users are likely assuming.
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Hello thanks for playing.
Rachel has 0 path choices in the first chapter, this is deliberate, you’ll see why in chapter two.
Number of paths is the difficult balancing act with making this visual novel, obviously I would want as many paths as possible but using Daz images makes this impossible due to the time It would take to set up and render all those images. It takes me roughly 20 minutes to set up and render one full image, chapter two is in progress and I’m currently at 700 images, so you can do the math on that, it’s a long time.
The way I see the choices of a few days effecting people over the month is like this… If you focus on making sure Alissa (for example) eats as much as possible in those few days. Then that’s what you will do for the weeks that you don’t see, thus the effect is shown later, if that makes sense.
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Hello, thanks for playing. I take your point about having decisions that have no effect on the narrative direction of story paths. But I don’t believe that what you call a “nonchoice” shouldn’t be in the novel, these smaller choices are more about what scenes you see as you play through the novel, which means you can play through multiple times and not have to see all the same images again. As the chapters progress, then hopefully the number of choices that feel pointless will be less. I’m learning as I go…
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You made the mistake of looking at the code, if you can call it that. 
Variables wise, it’s probably a mess, at the moment I’ve been saving the outcome of certain decisions sometimes for a particular reason and sometimes not. It’s all pretty random at the moment. Your last point about loading up extra variables is really helpful so thank you for that. I’ll need to do that definitely so that saves can be carried over. And in the annoying event that they cannot, it shouldn’t take very long to skip your way through the first chapter again, it’s not exactly long.
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Hello, thanks for playing and taking the time to comment. You’ve hit the nail on the head with the scope creep thing, if there’s one negative of revealing this project is that it’s made me realise just how much work this is going to be. I think what makes my project particularly prone to this issue is the fact that every image is unique, there’s no gameplay loop where you see the same scenes multiple times (such as The Weighting Game). That’s why this is a novel not a game, I want to have options and different paths, but it’s got to be kept realistic. I’m one person with a full-time job and some free time, so this might take a while lol.
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That is an amazing idea, would be really cool. A binary choice that early on instantly doubles the number of images though, so we’ll have to stick to the real reason that choice is there. I was teaching myself renpy and that was my test choice. 
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Hello. Put simply your last point is what will happen, whichever character you choose to feed more out of yourself and the “Fitness Buddy” you have chosen, will gain more than the other one.
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I’m all for choices that don’t affect the narrative but get you scenes being in the game that was not what my issue or point was within the specific comment I had made. I actually like the idea and think it is good to have things like that. It still feels like those choices matter to me as they have a clear impact on the game even if it may not influence overall weight.
The specific thing I was referring to is choices that exist in game but are in my opinion misleading to the player or really just have the allusion of choice. I would say a common thing that happens in games like this is there are a few types of choices.
A don’t indulge, indulge, and overindulge choices for example. One would expect varying degrees of effect to someone’s waistline depending on the choice. Pushing food on Rachel with minimal or no food intake for the PC has been addressed in the fact as you’ve stated that there is a reason for the lack of path variation that will be explained in chapter two. I guess I had felt like certain choices were more in the don’t indulge choice category compared to anything else. Like within Alissa or Ashleigh’s paths, but I can respect the way you are thinking about.
I was thinking this type of expectation to when the character “turns down” food, but I think your intention in scenes is to always paint a picture that the character is indulging no matter the circumstance, which is not how it felt to me in certain scenes where you choose to not overindulge.
Like the Alissa choice for the refrigerator, I had thought turning it down might enable me to convince Alissa to overindulge. But it just kind of kicks you to a, no you can’t control yourself moment. Which I think makes perfect sense when the character might be in a later chapter and you’ve made too many overindulge choices, but it felt like a “nonchoice” then. The issue was/is more compounded for me with Rachel’s path being considered. As the way choices went and things were written I had assumed there would be that type of non-weight, some weight, more weight type of consequences for the choices within the chapter. And the fact that Rachel’s didn’t seem to have any real effect with some of the other issues in routes, made some things seem like there were choices that I felt misleading to the player. Now that it’s more of a wait and see why in chapter two situation it’s something that I’m sure will feel less like this for me as time goes on.
I can understand were your perspective on how the choices and story will interact when you have given a bit of insight into it, but I will admit that was not obvious to me when playing. With all that said, I look forward to seeing how chapter two plays out. Thanks for answering any questions or comments.
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I think this reply here is probably the best way of thinking about it. Certain choices impact dialogue and scenes differently without impacting the final weight stage or any hidden variables. That’s okay! But when you make every single choice to not indulge, it feels weird to have the character still gain weight. Or to have giant indulgences not be any different than normal storylines. I think that’s the big takeaway here.
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Another thing people do to avoid the issue is to make future chapters separate files, using many script files instead of one. That way chapter 2’s script file will be identical when chapter 3 is released, the player will load the final section of chapter 2, then skip once or twice and enter chapter 3 which will be a new file and can have new variables.
So yeah, lots of files, or dummy variables in a single file.
Yup, I completely get that and specifically noted it by mentioning scope creep again = P
So I take it you are doing full scene renders like Tiggertoo is with TWG?
Really enjoyed the Ashleigh path in particular. Nice work!
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Hello guys, just wanted to let you know this project isn’t dead. I’ve completed Chapter two and are part way through Chapter three now. Progress is slow, but I don’t have much free time.
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Little sneak peak of a render I just finished, this is part of a scene from Chapter Three. Current image count stands at 835!
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Looks awesome! I’ve been seeing this game pop up on recommended in itch.io recently and was looking forward to seeing your patreon open up.
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so does that mean you will release all chapters at once (instead of one by one)?
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My bad, forgot about da rules. Excited to hear that it’s still going though, chapter one was top notch!
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