Hmm but I think you didn't play all his scenes, because if you're at >92 of relationship you WILL get his ending (as I posted elsewhere, I don't want to penalize player for getting so close so on the final event I increase it to 100 if is >92 anyway).



Not to say that you're wrong, but I think perhaps you didn't manage to find all Hugh scenes. Since each of them gives +5 (and some +10) if you complete his full path you should then be able to get to 100 using the random events.



Follow my reasoning: in other dating sims I've played/made, you can raise the relationship only by doing the right sequence of events - in this case I thought to make it easier because beside the right sequence that gives you a good amount of relationship (if you pick right answer you get 50-70 relationship points) you can also raise it with the random ones.



Anyway it's not a problem for me to make an easy play mode, where you have much higher success at the random events or perhaps I could remove at all the requirements for each scene.

Example: each scene requires you to be in a particular spot at the right time, AND have a min. relationship value:
[code] ##LAWRENCE romance path
if totaldays>9 and g_wday<5 and v_lawrence==0 and HeroF[5]>15: #pretty girl scene, lawrence=1
$m_shop=2;v_lawrence=1
if totaldays>25 and g_wday<5 and v_lawrence==1 and HeroF[5]>30: #wrong ingredient, lawrence=2
$m_shop=3;v_lawrence=2[/code]
if I remove the relationship check (or lowers it considerably) means that you can get all the events when totaldays have passed, so perhaps this solution could already work.



edit: or perhaps a better solution is to make the game longer, ending it one week/10 days later

You may be right, of course. I mean, you know how it's coded. I might have missed events, but if I did I don't see how I could have triggered them. I mean, I saw him EVERY day. Anyway, I will do a long, very detailed post about dating sim systems, what I feel works, how they work, and most importantly, how I felt about every single little aspect of the game. It will just take me a while. An hour or two, I guess. I have to collect my thoughts, too, you know. So I don't want to promise it tonight, but it's coming. I just want repeat what I said about difficulty. I don't think the game is necessarily too hard, it just seems that the randomness is more important than what I do.

I also am not sure if from the player point of view, you'd prefer to win easily at first attempt or not? I am not sure, since I prefer easy games, but maybe others prefer some "challenge". I think really the best is to do like I did with Planet Stronghold and have several difficulty levels.

Looking forward to your post about dating sim system/gameplay I played many, but most of them were EVN (not the original coming from Japan) so I'm not an expert!

No, no, I definitely prefer some challenge, I would just like that challenge not to be randomness. I mean, in a Japanese dating sim, you would be very hard pressed to win the first time you play; it's virtually impossible. Anyway, I'm going to spoil my massive posts if I get into these things now.

I like this game, but which guy like which stat again? I know the guy at the ice cream place likes culture

I like this game, but which guy like which stat again? I know the guy at the ice cream place likes culture

Heh, heh. I actually ran into the same problem. I forgot who liked what, too, and then was pretty surprised I couldn't replay the tutorial in any way.

Anyway, I worked it out as:



Lawrence: Culture

Hugh: Creative

Aaron: Romance

Eddy: Discipline

You can press F1 to see the tutorial again, but a quicker way is just to go in the gallery screen, if you hover the mouse on the hearts to see the endings you see which skill is associated to each guy. But what Orusaka posted is correct anyway

Okay, time to get started on my monster post. I think I will try to break it down a little, but here goes. We'll just see how far I get before I'm fatigued.



Premise:

My first point of discussion will be premise. The way I see it, the dating sim genre has two general premises.



1: Over summer break, usually doing part-time work.

2: Over the course of a 3 year High School career.



An example of the former would be "Welcome to Pia Carrot", and an example of the latter would be the "Tokimeki Memorial" series.

I will be drawing the examples I use from the former and Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 1st Love (Yeah, the Japanese are great with names...).

I have chosen to use these as you can actually play them in English, which is a plus.



The reason I bring up the two general premises is simply that they necessarily bring with them slightly different game play.

As we can see, Remember Me fits snugly into category 1. So, keeping that in mind, let's move on to the next section.



Stats:

Okay, so I'll try to go through how stats are generally implemented, and how they work, then go on to explain how I felt about Remember Me's implementation.

There is established system of stats, neither a set number of them. A usual number is 6. Both of the games I will compare to have 6.

Now, they vary wildly from game to game, and also whether the game is boys dating girls, or the other way around.



Okay, so let's have a look at the stats for those two games and Remember Me, before I go on to discussing how things work.



Welcome to Pia Carrot (boy dating girls):

- Style

- Kindness

- Guts

- Academics

- Communication

- Notoriety



Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 1st Love (girl dating boys):

- Intelligence

- Art

- Fashion

- Fitness

- Social

- Charm



Remember Me:

- Culture

- Creative

- Romance

- Discipline



In addition, all three games have systems for money and stress, but since those are not relevant to the love interests, I won't get into those here.

As you can see, even though they're called different things, they mostly overlap. Style, Fashion and Creative are essentially the same stat.

The stats themselves are not really all that interesting, though, it's all in how you gain them and how you need to raise them to win.



First, let's discuss how stats relate to love interests. Basically, in all dating sims, in addition to building the "like" stat of your love interest,

you also have to raise the appropriate stats or you won't win. Remember Me also has this system in order to get the Special Ending.

However, where I feel it gets a bit easy, is that each love interest is tied to only one stat, and that you are told right off which stat that is.

Usually, you would never be told which stats to raise, and finding that out pretty much is the game. Also, your love interests are generally tied

to more than one stat. Usually, all of them. You may have to get two of the high, but make sure you don't gain too many points in something

they don't like as well.



As an example, let's examine the winning criteria for one of the love interests in Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 1st Love:

Study: Very high

Art: Very high

Fashion: Average

Sports: Very low

Social: Very high

Charm: Low



Naturally, you don't get to know any of this, and the game is figuring this combination out. I could give an example from Pia Carrot, too, but it would only make the same point.

However, I understand that you're making games for a more casual audience than the major game developers in Japan, so this simplification isn't my biggest complaint.



My biggest complaint, as I've touched on earlier, is how you gain stats. Well, I mean, the system is the same in all games at its core. You choose between various activities, and they raise a particular stat. The reason I feel Remember Me fails so badly at this point, is that the stats you gain are random. Meaning, you can't really plan your game out. You could do something that's supposed to give you culture, and then get Discipline instead. Add to this the fact that the factor of random success, and you have a nightmare situation, where you can lose even with the best of planning, as I Illustrated with my Hugh play through.



Okay, I think that's it for this post. I have more to discuss, and much more in depth, too, but this will have to do for right now. I'll have to play it once or twice more to really get a feel for balance before I comment on that. I can say, however, that it seems a little too hard to raise Creative. It's the secondary stat on a few activities, but not really that main stat of anything, which means that if you write a poem, for instance, you have about 1/4 or so chance of getting a creative boost. On my Hugh play through I did absolutely no activities that didn't have the possibility of raising Creative, yet I still only got to 87 (and as I said 98 like, but bad ending).

Thanks for the post, I understand now what you mean. Two stats each guy makes sense.

I am thinking what I could do right now for my game... I mean changing it too much perhaps is a bad idea, but I think I would be able to use two-stat system even in my case, removing the failures completely for the game (at least for the stats raising). I mean the failure would mean only get less points and have morale penality, but you would still increase the stat anyway.



I could have those associations:

Aaron: Romance & Culture (since he likes reading books)

Hugh: Creativity & Discipline (since he wants to be fashion designer, so creativity but also hard working)

Eddy: Discipline & Romance (since he is hard working but never had any real love, so you teach him to be romantic)

Lawrence: Culture & Creativity (since he likes to write poems)



I guess if each activity would be 100% successful, would be possible to raise two stats to 99 over the course of the game. This would mean that I have to re-test it, but if the gameplay would be better perhaps is worth it... mumble mumble...

Okay, I think that's it for this post. I have more to discuss, and much more in depth, too, but this will have to do for right now. I'll have to play it once or twice more to really get a feel for balance before I comment on that. I can say, however, that it seems a little too hard to raise Creative. It's the secondary stat on a few activities, but not really that main stat of anything, which means that if you write a poem, for instance, you have about 1/4 or so chance of getting a creative boost. On my Hugh play through I did absolutely no activities that didn't have the possibility of raising Creative, yet I still only got to 87 (and as I said 98 like, but bad ending).

Big spoiler follows:

Show Spoiler

If you go during weekends (Saturday/Sunday) at the mall and attend the painter course you can get 2-3 points of creativity (25%), 1-2 points (25%) or fail (50%). Since there are about 3 months means you can go there 12 x 2 = 24 times and if you're lucky get 48 points just from that

Another BIG creativity boost is the restaurant. Hugh plot is easy if you know the steps to do, like save enough money to get the elegant dress - then you can go eat at the Expensive Restaurant and get big creativity boost (I know it is a bit weird but well, cooking is creative!! ) even if you have to pay lot of money.

I don't know yet if I'm going to revolution everything for this game - for sure for future one will use your suggestion. For this one I think that what really matter is discovering the right activity to do to reach your goal, and most of them are a bit "hidden" (only in certain days of the week). Even if when you enter a new location for first time it gets explained.



Another idea (still thinking how to make the game less frustrating without having to change it completely):

I don't know if this has been done before in a dating sim: in practice you'd get a starting bonus on the next playthrough based on your previous attempt.

Let's say you try to pursue Hugh but you miss him because you have Hugh relationship 80 and Creativity 50. On the next playthrough you'd get a message that asks you if you want to get a bonus, and you'll start the game with +8 Hugh relationship and +5 creativity and so on. This means that if you fail by a little your efforts aren't totally wasted :D and it's not like cheating since the bonus is still based on your previous game performance...

Show Spoiler

Actually, I went for the writing course. I felt that more consistently gave me +2 Creative than the Mall. I did not know about the restaurant, though.

Yeah, I don't necessarily think you should change everything. There are many considerations. I'm going to get into some more things in my next "longer" post, about scheduling and such, and that will touch on some other things. More importantly, though, I think your audience is what you need to keep in mind more. Or in other words, I'm not your average buyer. I've played quite a few dating sims, you know. Also, I'm not a woman. I think, probably, for the casual gamer, the game should probably more easy. I think a lot of the things are going to frustrate casual gamers. I think your idea of an easy mode was a good one. I think there is a good portion of your players who would probably like to just play it, and basically win no matter what they do. So as long as an easy mode is designed with "everyone-can-win" in mind, I think that would good.



Anyway, as I said, I'll be back with thought on Scheduling, and as long as we're speaking Otome games, I'll throw in some nifty things that might make it appeal even more to girl gamers. This Tokimeki Girl's Side I played just last month really had some neat ideas for Otome games.

Yes that's true... you're not my average customer at all (take it in a good way haha). The easy mode is probably the wisest move I can do for this game without having to revolution everything. Looking forward about your other otome ideas. I'm not a girl either but I like to write the storyboard for romance stories

Yeah, hopefully I can get around to that later today, but it will take some time to write.

Anyway, as far as an easy mode, I would suggest you don't call it the easy mode.

It's the wrong angle for the casual crowd. You don't want to tell them they're not good enough to win the game.

I think maybe instead make the way you have it now the hard mode, or introduce it as an extra challenge.

I think that puts a much better spin on the difficulty issue than an easy mode, even though in practice it's exactly the same.

Yes exactly! Going to add that now to the game

You know what? you're right, there aren't many creativity boost activities in the "basic" ones, so I've added creativity to the Practice Writing one (because it also makes sense). So now you have Writing = culture and creativity and Poem = romance and creativity.

I've also added the easy/normal mode with 30% bonus to good results and I'd say now is perfect going to upload this new version and see the feedback from the more casual players.

Before typing up my next large post, I decided to go back and replay Hugh. Haha, this time virtually everything I do fails, which is too funny. Doesn't look like I'll be winning him this time either.

Show Spoiler

Anyway, regarding your tip of getting the fancy dress and eating at the luxurious restaurant... Are you sure that's a good idea to raise creativity? I've eaten there 5 times now, failed once, got no creative twice, and 1 and 2 the other times. Seems like a waste of $50 bucks to me as far as raising Creative goes.

Not that I like to double or triple post, but I have a bug to report. Unfortunately, it's vague. It seems that very randomly your stat increases don't get added to your total. I've noticed it on all three of my play-throughs, but until now I just though I imagined it. Just to make sure, I started taking notes, and now I know I'm not insane. Unfortunately, no pattern that I can find. Completely random.



Sorry I can't be of more help, but I guess good luck with finding that bug. Maybe if you have a debug version, so you can see what happens in the code. Have you never noticed the bug? If we assume that all cases I've noticed have been real and not imagined, it must have happened 6-7 times over 3 games. I just had two Creative stolen from me. I'm going to be so almost-angry if I lose because of those two.

Okay, I would use the edit button, but separate topics, and well let's face it, not many posters anyway.

Show Spoiler

I actually found this hidden Hugh event that I reckoned kept me from winning him the first time around. Little problem though. There is a logic problem. I saw him at the mall on a Saturday, then the very next move I went to the park and he was there. I think you might have meant for this event to be a Sunday event. Either way, he's supposed to be working, and was working like seconds before, so how could he be at the park? Anyhow, turns on this event triggers yet another event, where he asks to take me out. Now this is happening the 6th of September, a Saturday, and it's already evening by the time I see him at the mall. We agree to meet in the evening, and I think, well this is going to mess up somehow. And I was right, immediately afterwards, it's now noon, the same day. In other words time turned back, and there's a green arrow over the restaurant. Anyway, turns out what you said was right on. Hugh is very easy with those two events I was missing.

edit:

Okay, edit button this time.

Show Spoiler

I started an Eddy play through, and so far it's going horribly, for one simple reason. Doing a gym exercise and talking to Eddy both take two turns, and so you cannot do both in the same day, since the gym is closed at night, and the hospital, too. In other words, if you want to pursue Eddy, you cannot use the gym, when the gym is only meaningful if you're going after Eddy. This strikes me as rather odd.

Not that I like to double or triple post, but I have a bug to report. Unfortunately, it's vague. It seems that very randomly your stat increases don't get added to your total. I've noticed it on all three of my play-throughs, but until now I just though I imagined it. Just to make sure, I started taking notes, and now I know I'm not insane. Unfortunately, no pattern that I can find. Completely random.



Sorry I can't be of more help, but I guess good luck with finding that bug. Maybe if you have a debug version, so you can see what happens in the code. Have you never noticed the bug? If we assume that all cases I've noticed have been real and not imagined, it must have happened 6-7 times over 3 games. I just had two Creative stolen from me. I'm going to be so almost-angry if I lose because of those two.

What!!! damn I never noticed it... I need to investigate then

About your other posts: yes that Hugh event was supposed to happen during Saturday! forgot to change it, going to do it now (was about to upload version 1.1 with much easier playing mode).

About Eddy,

Show Spoiler

is true what you say, when I tested it I was doing the action "update my blog" to raise discipline, then when I got access to his house I could talk to him during evening.

Anyway you're right that is too much, I shortened all the Eddy talk action so you have time to do discipline properly now!



Going to upload version 1.1 as soon as I spot the missing stat bug...