Whole Hog - Version 1.5.1 (Bugfix) Update (PC and Mac) Now on Patreon! Version 1.4.2 now linked here for free!

Ofcourse it will be pirated your game is amazing and its heading in a great direction too! As you know, I think this game shows alot of promise and I can’t wait to see all the tweaks in the next version, and see what you did with the feedback given here! Pirating does suck though but I doubt you’ll lose patreons over it. I might be naïve but I just hope that some of those pirates might end up becoming a patreon because they really enjoyed it and want to support it!

Just keep up the good work!

2 Likes

With the kind of path you have taken I sincerely doubt you are going to lose many patrons to piracy, if any.

You have chosen to be smart about it and have a positive attitude; making the game public and saying “I’m gonna finish the game no matter what, but the more support I can get the better the end result is gonna be” means that all those who support you do it because they want the game to look as good as possible, not because they want to get something that they are going to get one way or the other.

That’s very clever, considered it has been proven time and again that there’s no stopping piracy, no matter how hard you try. This kind of thinking is going to take you far

2 Likes

I just tend to be a bright side person (much to the dismay of the people in my life lol.)

The last updates were always intended to be released here for free. I just figured I should give the patrons first go at the newest version since they helped fund it. So the pirates are really stealing from them. I understand pirates not wanting to wait for the free release. I like instant gratification as much as the next person lol.

I want to make the game so I’m gonna make it. And I want to share it as long as people want it. That’s all there really is to it. But for it to be the best it can I need help, thus the patreon. The game was always going to come out for free eventually though.

To quote Sam Flynn from Tron: Legacy. “You can’t steal something that was designed to be free.”

Peace!
HH

1 Like

Just wanted to say i love the game can’t get it out of my head these last few days lol and am excited to see where the story goes also here’s a dumb meme i made for ya

8 Likes

OMG I love it!!! I think that’ll be my new laptop background lol!:rofl::laughing:

Progress is going well, I am on track for the release window. I should to make it to the finish line before the 20th. :crossed_fingers::crossed_fingers:

-HH

2 Likes

A positive of the exposure is that I can give a rundown of this game that I otherwise would’ve overlooked in the recent surge in daz asset games. I’ve been ignoring the majority since they seem to mostly learn the wrong message from the success of weighting game (which isn’t good due to the images, but the actual underlying game design and writing).

anyhow…

The Good:
Game loop seems to be well-established even at this early stage. It’s fairly clear what happens each day. This strength can be built upon by having a window for time of day (morning, noon, evening, night).

The Less Good:
There’s little to no feedback on the variables behind the scenes. There’s a lack of dialogue tires gated by her opinion changes on fat and weight that can be used to gauge dani’s state. She feels a bit shallow at present with almost all gameplay involving her being eating, talking about eating, convincing her to eat, etc but I suspect that will change with time as you work on extra dialogue.

The Buggy:
Buttons are really jank. You shouldn’t be able to prompt dialogue with Danielle during work hours unless via say phonecall or a discrete lunchbreak. Pressing that button before going home eventually leads to an unstoppable infinite loop and/or game freeze. As others noted, their position on screen isn’t ideal and covers more screen space than necessary.

There is also a related oddity if you press the skip button at work, it starts looping through repeated work days.

Suggested fix: hide buttons during scenes where they aren’t relevant. Replace conversation button with a phone button and separate screen. Make sure there’s a decision that fires at the end of the work day or send him home immediately to avoid the loop.

Other notes:
Looking over the game files in the background, I recommend looking at Dingotush’s ‘Tramp’ and his other comments regarding renpy development. The way that game is structured is pretty on point for what it is and easily built upon should he spend more dev time on it down the road. A single script file rapidly becomes unviable and it is ideal to be able to edit and add dialogue separately from game mechanics and variable math. His script files are logically arranged + formatted and also very moddable.

4 Likes

I need to try this game at some point. I’ve heard a few people say it’s similar to mine in places :slight_smile:

@cheddar I couldn’t agree more that one script file is a nightmare! I’ve come to the conclusion that many many small files are better than large ones. Makes it a lot easier to structure things (and debug them!). I’m planning to split all the many sections in my game into smaller, more manageable chunks for each scene rather than one loooooong script per scene.

1 Like

Those are some good notes!

I know right Danielle is about as deep as a puddle. But like you said, dialogue will be updated in future versions.

The buttons do suck. For this upcoming update I’ve removed the talk button completely until I can work out the kinks with it.

To be honest I’m not sure how to fix the infinite “skip” loop. I’ll have to look into that one. Same with the separation of coding files :sweat_smile:. I agree it is messy to navigate and mod. If I can figure out how to do it, I probably will.

Thanks for the suggestions!

  • HH

Hi!

I’m kinda freaking out because you are my idol on here!

Your game is fantastic! The dialogue, gameplay, images, everything is A+. I’d be toying with the idea of making a game, and eventually went for it. I wanted to do a “girlfriend” story set in the real world. The challenge has been to try an differentiate it from other games in the same setting. But there are only so many activities you can do in the real world, and only so many that Daz has assets for.

I’m glad to hear “The Weighting Game” is back in production! It’s seriously my favorite.

  • HH
2 Likes

The infinite skip loop actually appears everywhere (not just at work), on any screen in the game without black default ren’py buttons in the center of the screen skipping will result in the day ending, potentially if you skip long enough even multiple days ending multiple days of work, etc (other examples would be in the hallway outside your home, or in your own bedroom even).

Ideally IMO you’d use nothing but the default buttons, at least until you can figure out a way to avoid this flaw in custom buttons.

I really like that you made Danielle kind of a geek, with the nerdy references, I bet you can do alot more with that! Maybe even have a “Game night” as an activity for them to do, where the MC and Dani will be on the couch playing games! There’s a stereotype there and a cliché that it could help her gain weight due to mindless eating during gaming ofcourse.

My point is, even though so far everything seems to be about eating, I still see alot of potential in Dani’s character!

Well i played the demo and man IT is nicely done :heart_eyes::ok_hand:

I do hope to see this story/game continue further.

When the finances would let me i would certainly join the patreon. But december is going to be very Expensive month for me :sweat_smile::sob:

@namad Yeah, this update still has the janky buttons they are just all rearranged to be on the left hand side (except for the “home” button). The home button is in case there are any deadends, home should always be there so you should be able to return to the home. I’ve removed the talk button until I can implement that function better. Reconfiguring the buttons to a renpy menu button would take me some time. They may be the whole focus of one of the next updates.

@JustChris Thanks! I tried to make her likeable, but as I’ve replayed and bug tested I’ve noticed that she is not very fleshed out lol. I do like the idea of a game night! I will also probably add more chat scenes in the future, right now there are six scenes with three different variations. By which I mean she has three moods, happy about the gain, indifferent, and against. There are three versions of each random chat scene. I’ll probably add another 6 but these will be life related, just to give her more personality.

@vrehert Thanks! The game and story will continue, next update will hitting Patreon soon and the prior update (plus a few minor bugfixes) will be posted here for free. December always drains my bank account, it’s a pricey month! :v::vulcan_salute:

2 Likes

Good Morning/Evening/Whatever Time it is where you are!

I have added a mega link to the first post for version 1.1. It has a few tweaks to it, but no major overhauls from when it was put on Patreon. Just fixed the names and one or two coding things.

We are in the final stretch for 1.2! That’ll be hitting Patreon in just a few days, Monday at the latest. I know I won’t catch all the bugs, but I want to spend a little bit longer on it.

  • HH
5 Likes

Version 1.2!!
Here we go!

Version 1.2 is now posted on Patreon!

Towards the end of my deadline, but hey. I’m glad we got here. So updates:

  • In this version I moved all navigation buttons in the apartment to the left hand side of the screen, but you have access to all rooms from any room in the apartment. They are still pretty gaudy and take up a lot of space, but I’m working on that too.

  • Kim got an upgrade, I like her new model.

  • More dialogue has been added to the “first date” scene, explaining a bit about Danielle, and what she does for a living.

  • Dialogue has been added to the “stuffed at dinner” scenes to try and emphasize she does not like being pushed (yet).

  • Sprite size was increased so they take up more screen space and “fit” better with the backgrounds.

  • I added a menu option to the end of workday and end of day, this effectively stops the game from skipping on repeat. I’ll try to find a more elegant solution for the next update.

  • I added time blocks so there are two “afternoon” time slots and two “evening/night” time slots.

  • Of course the next weight stage and next reveal (I added special end scenes for the good ending and the bad ending this time.)

Things I want to work on for the next update:

  • Make the nav buttons prettier, I’m trying to find a visually distinctive way of doing this without pictographic representations, nothing against that but I don’t want to steal that idea from another game.

  • I want to add at least one activity, probably the gaming option that was suggested here.

  • I want to add “chat” options that have nothing to do with weight gain, but inform the character of Danielle more.

  • I want to add more to do at the office, to make it worthwhile, since there is no money in the game.

  • Of course the next stage and reveal.

Rather ambitious goals, but that’s my plan. I’ll pick a deadline for myself later, but if I were to hazard a guess now, I’d say end of Feb, beginning of March-ish. Still no shoes for Danielle for now, but the hunt continues.

Happy Holidays/Solstice/Festivus!

  • HH

PS. “So uncivilized” was worked into the game, but you’ll have to find it!

6 Likes

Hey liking the new update so far haven’t finished it yet but something I noticed is the extra timeslots don’t always work. Sometimes I only have two time slots per day total and sometimes the day ends after taking only one action or immediately after work. I really like the game and am excited to see more.

1 Like

Thanks for letting me know! I’ll have to take a look at that

Yeah this happen to me a few times. Sometimes you get off work and do one or two actions then the game makes you go to sleep. Then the “it’s getting late” line will make you sleep 2 or 3 times in a row as the scene for it plays back to back until (I assume) you’re back into the correct morning cycle for work.

@wholehog919 I love the new stuff, the fully rendered scenes are definitely great I just wish there were more of them. But weaving more of them in is welcome.

Shelly’s final stage did not load her image get the “image ‘assistant fat’ not found.”

The Home and Danielle/Enter buttons are visble in any of the Danielle at the MC apartment scenes and while it’s not a huge deal to have to hide them to see the image of Danielle some of the later fully rendered scenes have this huge interface button blocking Danielle’s face or part of the image at times. Seems like this should atleast but taken away here. But the interface buttons probably shouldn’t be loaded in places or scenes there not required. For instance having the Home button always displayed when sitting out in front of the MC’s apartment is a bit redundant.

Had a bug while inviting Danielle over to the MC’s apartment for dinner during her third stage and adding appetite stumulant that the stuffed scene did not play and in the middle of the dialouge the dinner ended with the background scene still being displayed. The game then asked if I wanted to invite Danielle over for dinner and replayed the scene. Also the part of the scene where Danielle enters the apartment during this had the text repeat twice before the dinner scene ended.

Giving Danielle a lean dinner resulted one time in her making a comment about the cheeseburgers being good after she was disappointed by the healthy boiled chicken.

I thought I remembered Cindy being seen again in 1.1 after she goes away on the business training. However, I did not see Cindy again during my entire play through has that changed? Or is there something else going on (it felt like I saw Shelly alot less in this version too but I did atleast see all of her stages). Am I mistaken about her appearing again in game after the inital meeting.

1 Like

Cindy has not reappeared after the intro (the plan is for her to make a big return!)

  • The buttons continue to be a pain. Removing them from the scenes and other unnecessary parts seems so obvious. I can’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me!

  • For the time block issues, is happening after any specific activities?

  • I’ll take a look at the meal coding, those should be easy enough to fix!

Thanks!

  • HH
1 Like

Talking to Danielle, going out in the afternoon and the morning have caused the issue. But I may have not noticed it going to the bar or inviting Danielle over for dinner since it’s not as jarring as come home from work and doing a single activity or two and then being forced to go to bed.

1 Like