"Car Trip SA" My version of None and Faust's original

[turtlbrdr]

As some people may now (if you browse the forums regularly), none posted a version of the game "Car Trip" to the board a while back. In that post he gave three versions, a working version, a updated (although broken) version, and the source for the broken version. I was one of the people who took none up on his offer to allow me to download the source and develop the game myself. Going forward with this I opened this topic so that a discussion could happen over my version and none's page would be clogged up by people looking for answers to questions to two completely different sources. This topic will also serve as the release spot for the game when I am done with it.

Game:
My version will be a complete remake and expansion separate from none's original version. Meaning you won't need none's version, nor will anything from my version work with his (intentionally). My version takes the same premise as none's, you are driving on a car trip (however for a significantly larger amount of time than none's), with a girl(only one at this point, but I intend to make a version with more once I have the single-girl version working correctly). However, I intend to add a large number of features, including(but not limited to):

• Different bladder and bowel sizes (makes the girls less linear with their pee and poop habits¹)
• Many different appearance options that show up during the game
• Many different "hidden" stats that make life more interesting (Cleanliness and health, in example)
• Item system that allows manipulation of the girls needs
• Huge Dialog Base

¹The user will be able to chose to disable most of the scat themes in the game.

Release:
December 24 or 25th seems a likely date to keep in mind.

Platform:
Car Trip is being programmed in Visual Basic. This likely means that almost all computers running windows should have no problem running it, except if your computer is older and running very old versions of windows. Unfortunately, I will be unable to provide any support to users using Mac OS' or Linux; I am not familiar with either operating system nor any "emulator" that would help.

Furthermore, as I mention in some of my posts, I may be looking into building Car Trip for your Windows 7 phones. Unfortunately, I would also be incapable of support that version to full effect, I have a phone running Windows Mobile 6.5. The only reason I would be able to do this is because the programming languages and environment are similar.

I may also make a Lite version for the Ti-83/84+se line of calculators (as far as I know, it would be the first turn-based eroge for a calculator...food for thought).

Testing:
I might need one person to test the speed of my game at the baseline of computers right now. So I'm looking for someone running a computer with a Pentium 4 or equivalent and running Windows Vista 64 bit or Windows 7. My computer runs the game (what I have made of it right now) very well, but I'm also running an i7 on my laptop, so my processor is anything but normal.

If anyone has any ideas for my game, please post you suggestions in this topic. There are a lot of things that I haven't described here (because there are a lot of details in the game and many of them right now are too tedious to mention, or I'm still tweaking aspects), but I will take nearly any suggestions.

Updates:
11/10/2010, 17:30 - 0% complete

• Restarted my update list
• At this point I don't know how much I have data wise

11/11/2010, 16:03 - 7% complete

• The Item descriptions and most item's effects were lost, which cuts down on the significance of the items retained in my notebook (1%)
• A vital thing retained is my piecewise function dictating the bladder and bowel fill rates, I shat myself with happiness (6%)
• Started working on the actual program.

11/17/2010, 16:56 - 9% complete

• Options menu is done (0.5%)
• Username menu is complete and implemented fully (0.5%)
• User settings table has been completed, more or less (1%)
• Next project on my list the new game setup menu

11/18/2010, 7:09 - 15% complete

• Randomly generated trip "schedule" has been recovered a deciphered (5%)
• Shop page started (1%)
• Thought about cheese (0%)

11/18/2010, 20:47 - 19% complete

• 1/2 of the shop page complete. (4%)

11/24/2010, 12:57 - 23% complete

• Shop page is complete items are being displayed and able to be bought with absolute perfection. (4%)
• Will strive for at least 25% for today
• Happy thanksgiving everyone

11/25/2010, 22:06 - 26% complete

• Most of the new game page has been lain out, after a complete concept re-design. (2%)
• I have tested a backup to text file system, this will allow users to migrate their game's settings when/if I release new/revised versions of Car Trip (Right now none are planned, but it is a likely eventuality). (1%)

11/28/2010, 23:34 - 34% complete

• Completely completed the new game screen. And via the infantile backup system I am able to confirm that it is working properly.
• My next project will finally be the main game screen, and again the game engine flow. So because of that, expect that it may be about a week before my next update.

12/7/10, 7:42 - 35% complete

• Got distracted for a few days because of the snow where I live, plus college final exams are coming up
• Working on the inventory system, it is slow going because each of the 51 items requires about 46 lines of Boolean code. (It may seem long, but the computer will fly right over most of this at run-time)
• Engine planning is coming along...

12/9/10, 20:17 - 37% complete

• Completed the basic design of the main game page
• Main game engine design is coming
• I realized the amount of text (both in programming lines and story) I dug myself into with this project
• I had one of those "The is no motherf*****g way I'm going to finish this in time" moments

[Mizukine]

Wholeheartedly look forward to it. Just don't stop production when you inevitably get off on your own work.

[Faust]

Faust volunteers himself for testing and helping in any way he can.
^^
Faust isn't sure what his computer is...but he wants to try it anyways.

Just let Faust know if you need anything, and Faust will do what little he can.

Faust is eagerly looking forward to your advancements. ^^

[Ambrose]

great man! *screams in anticipation* seems like you have managed to notice what the original game was lacking to a degree, hopefully it will be as good as the original or better :)

[turtlbrdr]

Faust volunteers himself for testing and helping in any way he can.
^^
Faust isn't sure what his computer is...but he wants to try it anyways.

Just let Faust know if you need anything, and Faust will do what little he can.

Faust is eagerly looking forward to your advancements. ^^

Do you happen to remember when you got your computer, did you special order it, or have you made any improvements? 

great man! *screams in anticipation* seems like you have managed to notice what the original game was lacking to a degree, hopefully it will be as good as the original or better :)

"...to a degree..."? Is there something you'd like you see in the game? There are many aspects of the game that I didn't cover in the forum here (mainly a lot of the internal workings that are still being modified and tweaked), but if you have any suggestions please feel free to share them. :)

[Faust]

Faust just got his computer off his parents.
It played the original "Car Trip" just fine, but Faust doesn't know a lot about Computers.

Faust just hopes it works when it's done at least. ^^

[turtlbrdr]

Faust just got his computer off his parents.
It played the original "Car Trip" just fine, but Faust doesn't know a lot about Computers.

Faust just hopes it works when it's done at least. ^^

It should be fine for what I'm looking for. I guess I'm just so used to programming calculators that max out at 15Mhz. I keep forgetting that most computers are 1.5GHz, about 1000 times that. I'm just getting paranoid.

[none]

Also If I could give share a little bit of my experience on my defunct car trip project. Try to decide on whether or not your going to use multiple girls or not early on. I "changed horses mid-stream"  and it really hamstrung the project as it affected so many parts of the game. And also if you wanna go multi-girl use arrays since they greatly reduce the number of variables  you will end up sloshing through.

Good luck! Looking forward to Nov. 2!

[durachio]

Awsome, what does the "SA" stand for though?

[turtlbrdr]

Awsome, what does the "SA" stand for though?

It's just an abbreviation for my computer's name. I just added them to distinguish it from the original version.

[oramisho]

Not using a pentium 4,(running an AMD dual core instead) but i am on windows 7 64 bit if you need testing.

and yeah what none said, especially if you want 2 girls to be able to interact with each other.

[Mizukine]

Still wonderfully expectant for this project. The more you shove into it, the better it will be.

[Dynamic]

Sweet, another game to look forward to.

I haven't read the whole description yet as I am a bit pressed for time, but if you want a tester I have a few computers with varying specs I can try to run it on.

Right now I have...

Desktop running Athlon X3 at 2.9 GHz, 3 Gigs of DDR3 1600 MHz RAM, and 9800 GT, Windows 7 Pro x64

Laptop with Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4 GHz with 2 gigs of DDR2 800 and 9600M GT Windows 7 Pro 32 bit

Netbook with Atom N270 1.6 GHz and Intel graphics XP Home N-lited to be fast as possible

And another laptop from around 2002 running XP Home with a Pentium 4 desktop processor at 2.4 GHz and I think 1 gig of RAM, with Radeon Mobility 9000 with 64 Mb.  I haven't started this one up for a while, but I'm pretty sure she still works.

I also got a bunch of Linux live installs if that helps


Good luck!

[Ranpalan]

As far as I know, this game is in VB, so Linux is out of the question. However, if there is a way to play it (except in wine, of course), I'll gladly give it a try. Nice to see that the scat elements will be removeable.

[Dynamic]

One wonders if this is in VB.  It makes sense that it would be, given that he stated from the get-go that this was an extension to none's work.

Speaking of which, I just started re-learning C# for a job I'm applying for.  Believe it or not, I've never used VB.  I started with C++.