Yeah. so that’s the main issue I’m having with telling a long-form narrative 
idk how I’m gonna pace it. SirMisters Gain of Life kind of ignores this by capping the weight stages but idk. On the one hand I want to keep the fetish heads engaged and not put too too much of a delay between stages but on the other hand I don’t want it to just cap out within the 1st 2hrs of gameplay and then just be looking at the same x number of sprites for the rest of the game.
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You could separate the weight stages into chapters/story progression, but you may have to remove a way for the player to manually check the weight, like choosing to get on a scale in the morning, so you don’t see that you’ve been 150 pounds for 20 days straight despite constant binging. Once the player reaches the unseen max weight in the chapter, the story can progress and the weight could be revealed in a weighing scene. The player would still influence how quickly that section’s max weight is reached, but if done too quickly they may miss out on optional side events. Although, that may be worked around by having a message in the option saying the story will progress. For a basic example: “Weigh self (This will progress the story)” This way, players can choose to move on without being weighed down by having to do every little thing.
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I would agree with weight being tied more to narrative. But the player is not the one that will be gaining. The other npcs in game will be.
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My bad. I found this topic from FaFeeder112’s 48 hr jam and didn’t really read the synopsis.
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The tags are normally a good indicator as well. Although it’s up to the OP to make sure they’re correct, it normally gives you a good idea about the game. Especially if something is marked with things like #protag-wg, #npc-wg, or lack there of.
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Dev Log: 01 - Yes we doin’ this guys and gals and all those in-between
So I’m going to try to upload a devlog at least once a week to keep everyone up to date on development between update rollouts. This one will be longer than typical as it will encompass everything that has elapsed so far. So without further adieu let’s begin.
- Development begins
- Intro added
- Temporary backgrounds and sprites were added to aid in visualisation during development. Some might make it through to the 1st demo. Hopefully not, they’re do-do.
- Added character object list to more easily set attributes and store data on each character such as weight, sprite stage, name, job, college course, happiness, skills etc
- Added money system, each character has their own balance.
- Added Sequence to choose starting stats, job, and college course.
- Added opening sequence and introduced main deuteragonist (Kia).
- Added 4 optional introductions to choose from during the opening sequence. Each one introduces an individual NPC, they can be revisited later but the associated stat bonus’ wont apply (Cassy, Sandra, Rebecca, Lisa)
- Added recurring plot devise character (Frank)
- Added framework for cooking mini-game.
- Added base framework for side activities.
- Added base framework for college activities
- Added inventory system.
- Overhauled money system. Removed balances for NPC characters. Likely to change later.
- Began converting placeholder backgrounds to real backgrounds.
- Added V1 “main loop” UI to control the character’s actions throughout the day.
- Added stats menu to view skill levels, attributes, balance etc
This is what has transpired by now. To do before Version 0.1 upload:
- Flesh out 4th intro, it’s a bit lacklustre.
- Build on the framework for side activities and college activities.
- Add 2 additional NPCs and 3 Vendor characters to flesh out the college storyline (NPCs) and side activities (vendors).
- Add framework for crafting mini-game.
- Continue Kia storyline
- Add bakery
- Add Park (and it’s various RNG events)
- Add framework to return to the 4 possible intro locations and add 1 section of post-intro content.
- Credit free-to-use background assets.
- Refine character sprites.
After the 2nd list of objectives is completed I will launch a demo. As you can see the to-do vs the did-do is quite a bit shorter so it shouldn’t be too much longer. On the grand scale of things, a few of these systems will need revision but for now, the framework that is in place should work well in terms of the character definitions and the inventory systems which are the 2 big systems in place at the moment. The 3rd big system is the whole caloric digestive thing but I need to do some research into how that works and how best to approximate it in terms of making it a feature that adds to the gameplay rather than detracts from it. It will probably be an optional system, as of in it can be disabled and food = fat.
Until next time (feel free to ask as many questions as you would like).
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Current bottleneck is my internet speed. I’m essentially living out of a hotel room stylized as a “ApartHotel” and as such everything is running on mobile hostspot. I’m trying to move assets from my desktop pc to my work laptop so i can work on this in college and at work and wherever else I may be with a few hrs to kill and of course my USB drive corrupted and I don’t have a usb to usb c cable
You could say it’s going well
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After 2 hrs of agony, 1.64gb of preem background images acquired. It shall be glorious
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What’s the reason for tracking individual NPC wallet funds? Is it for general side activities or personal food purchases for passive gain rate?
Knowing this is early days yet and it’s easy to chime in with ideas I don’t actually have to implement - I think one of the biggest adds for immersion is NPC reactivity- other characters commenting on the PC’s weight gain and actions as everything escalates. Tramp has a good deal of this, and Big Aspirations has some as well. Implementing for NPC gain might be harder but having some mechanism to modify existing encounters or actions as the NPC changes goes a long way in making it feel like there’s an actual world the character exists within imo. Waitresses/cashiers/fellow students making comments, adding in notes about furniture creaking etc. it helps break up the loop which otherwise risks becoming repetitive as you reach higher weight stages and have to cycle through it many times.
Sorry to hear about the internet situation. Hopefully there’s some path to improvement or at least more efficient mooching?
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The idea behind each NPC having a balance is it would be used as a sliding weight during activities. E.g. you go out drinking one night, depending on the wealth of the character, the wealth of the NPC and the ratio of their wealths would determine the quality of establishment you could reasonably go to. Stuff along those lines. Non-visual weight gain i.e. WG that happens behind the scenes will likely be minimized to prevent players from missing too much but will still be a factor. So if you don’t talk to a character for a few months they shouldn’t visibly gain weight but forget about a character for 6 months? They may have gained, lost, or maintained their weight depending on their individual thoughts about their weight and modifiers given by their vocation, hobbies, and general lifestyle.
With the reactivity, yes, this is one of the things I plan to do to increase immersion. While there is no PC WG there should definitely be interactions between NPC’s to the effect of their weight gain.
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Hey guys and gals. The spoilered images below are sneak peeks at the UI elements being introduced. These probably won’t be the final designs I’m just trying things out. Let me know what you think!
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There is also the fact that the way the AI art models work is by scraping the galleries of artists who likely didn’t consent or know that its happening to them, meaning not only is their work being stolen to be emulated but worse - some dorks are calling themselves artists using said generated art.
Personally, so long as it’s a passion project and not done for monetary gain I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with using AI art
Dev Log 02: - All quiet on the western front
This will be a small one, didn’t get much done in the last week much to my shake fist brain element
- Started work on the park
- Updated some of the backgrounds and started updating the early sprites to their final forms
- Started tangential work on the cooking minigame (will be working on it here and there, will not delay demo launch)
- Credits Added
- Added 1 of the 4 side activities (you may now drink to your hearts content and there’s a very short story component introduced if you manage to do the right thing and stuff ) See roundup at end.
Remaining before demo / v 0.1 launch:
- 4th intro completion
- build on framework for college activities
- finish other 3 side activities
- continue kia storyline
- add bakery
- finish park
- finish refining sprites and bgs
So small steps this week, been busy and stressed with the grand total of 72 euro that came in my pay cheque thanks to el fuckedo footo so yeah, fun fun.
The little nugget that you can “find” in the bar segment essentially requires you to find the 1 unique dialogue option, follow that process and eventually, if you don’t play spam clicker the game, you will unlock something. That’s all I’m saying.
Along with each update I plan to document these secrets and missable bits so the players that cant or dont want to find them can just look them up.
Recently saw somone get shot, skinned, eaten and regurgitated for giving a deadline and then missing it so there’s no eta as of now but tentatively before the end of 2024 for v0.1. Don’t @ me (please @ me, I’m lonely)
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I GOT AN @ EVERYONE IM NOT LONELY ANYMORE.
Ive mainly just beeb drained from sitting around all the time with the injury so my motivation for everything tanked. Should get a decent chunk done this week.
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Hey guys, gals, cyborgs and demons. I’m looking for an artist to do sprite work. The images I need are 128x128 pixels, they’re not fetish-related, they’re for inventory items. If you’re interested then pm me with samples and a quote.
Thanks! (Obviously paid)
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Scratch Notes:
Will be removed with the push of devlog 3 on monday but is useful to keep my head in order and keeps you guys informed at the same time! I’m intentionally trying to be a bit vague whilst putting enough that I know what I’m talking about.
- Inventory system improved, added functions to allow for the listing of items, added caloric values and portions per item for 24 ingredients and beverages, no completed dishes yet.
- Finished the bar activity for this version. Added framework for 2 bar related activities but for now only alcoholism is available.
- Began the Theater activity. Need to further the inventory system to allow item transfer between inventories to enable our 1st piece of fetish-related content. (it’s stuffing guys and not the Christmas kind)
- Added framework to tie into one of the planned bar activities.
- Got bored on my lunch break and contemplated taking a nap.
- Worked around inventory issue with a not-so-elegant solution but it works so why knock it?
- Finished 1st section of the Theater activity. It will probably seem quite simplistic when you play it but there’s a decent amount going on under the hood. This is also the 1st time the metabolism system comes into play but it’s far from implemented.
- Still bored on my lunch break, fulfillment eludes me…
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Another life sim in the making, let’s go! I wish you the best of luck in development!
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Dev Log 03: - Still quiet, but not as of yet Too quiet
Another small update, hours have been racking up at work with christmas coming up but there’s a few weeks after christmas and then after exams where I will hopefully be moving to my forever job and that should give me even less free time! But the works more in-line with what I want to do from an engineering perspective so yay I guess!
*Inventory System upgrade (again). Framework now in place to list contents of inventory so everything is now in place to build a gui for it.
- Finished the bar activity for now. There are 2 secondary activities related to the bar activity that haven’t been implemented yet and may not be for the V0.1 build but the framework is in place.
- Theater activity is now mostly finished. Started implementing a stuffing sequence to go along with it.
- Added framework to tie one of the theater activities to the bar activities (essentially invite person A to go to the bar and do stuff like play darts, pool, drinking contests, etc
- That’s it…
I use the term framework a lot and I use it to describe adding the foundational support for a feature or like a nut and a bolt the nut is in place but there’s no bolt to go into it.
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Some messing around in DAZ, I have so much respect for the time and effort people like thelustlord put into these renders. Holy shit is there a learning curve.
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