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:
##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
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.
deb4373 wrote: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:
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
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...
Orusaka wrote:
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:
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...
or perhaps I could remove at all the requirements for each scene.
I played many, but most of them were EVN (not the original coming from Japan) so I'm not an expert!
) even if you have to pay lot of money.