General Update 15/09/2024

Well, well, well. If it isn't the consequence of my own action. Leaving every assessments til the very end and suffocating myself with endless torture of text reading. Once again, it has been proven that my writing ability is limited to creative writing. Regardless, I'm back for now. The remaining few weeks of my studies will be the toughest I have ever experienced but at least now, I can take a break from all and distract myself with a little story writing.

Progress is the same. I didn't touch anything during the past week. I did think of a lot of ideas, though. Seems like a lot of the written part needs to be re-structured to maintain the flow of the story.

But anywhere, I do want to take this opportunity to talk about some other stuff.

Weekly Topic:

This time, I want to talk about some Game Mechanics.

A lot of developers would incorporate some extra mechanics to their visual novel to make it a lot more engaging. Some of the examples are free roaming, relationship meter, mini games, branching story line, multiple endings, point system, money system, phone system, so on and so on. So the question is... which one should I adopt in my game?

First thing, we need to look at the game I'm trying to make. All I want for my first project is to be a linear story telling VN with a little choices that unlock scenes and stuff. I don't want to over-complicate things for myself and put too much time outside of developing the story. But of course, things may or may not get a bit dry in the future, with just images, dialogues and occasional choices. So here are some mechanics that I have considered adding into the game.

Point system (Relationship). I have mentioned that some choices will affect relationships. Things like unlocking scenes and enabling dialogues. I'm considering making a point system for each love interest and this will do 2 things: if the points are higher/lower than a certain amount, it will either enable/disable some love interest content; and if your points are high/lower/equal to the amount, it will change how these love interests interact with you. So I guess we can categorise this into tiers. Love > Favourable > Neutral > Dislike. I won't show the amount of points you currently have, I think that keeps it spicy. But who knows? Maybe one day I'll put in a cheat code for players to see just that.

Phone system. I love phones in Visual Novels. Messaging, gallery, social media, mini-games... just icing on the cake. So, what will I add to the phone if I were to make a phone system? Now, messaging will be a must, preferably with backlog; Contact info, just to act as a character info screen; Gallery, maybe some in-game pictures or special render; Gambling mini-game, I would love to add a completely unrelated money system just to let people gamble for money they can't use.

Quick time events. This is just something I'm considering about, nothing for certain. First of all, to correctly implement a QTE action is completely out of my knowledge. Second of all, I know many people who don't like QTE, especially in a Visual Novel because... why? And I partially agree. QTE in Visual Novel is a bit weird. So, my only argument is... it'd be cool though.

Anyway, I can't think of anything else for now, but this will be something I want to keep in mind. I want this game to be a giant learning opportunity, to rack up my experience and to see what people like and don't like. But that's enough for now. Sorry again, I've dragged this update out for a while, and it will probably happen again. Like I said, this is only a side project, but a side project that I'm invested in and would love to see it go off.

Thank you, to all of my supporters, members and friends. Stay tune for the next update. Catch!