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

[turtlbrdr]

• Those who can make digital art. I wish to add some kid of visual aspect to car trip, specifically giving the girls faces and bodies to reflect those in the game. As I posted earlier in this thread, this would involve a small mountain of images to do, but it should be possible to do. The images would be handled in much the same way as a dress up game, but only the final visual aspect would displayed by after the computer "plays it"

Does 3dcustom girl art count? I've seen a lot of people use it, a VERY SMALL portion of which use it for wetting stuff (I.E. Creates the girl in-game and then adds the "pee" in Photoshop). I tried my hand at it myself:

Pros: No real heavy duty 3d modeling experience needed.   

Cons: ALL of the material including the stuff needed to import custom mods (Pee, poop, wet panties ect.) Is in Japanese and is not really all that easy to get to without being fluent.

Also I don't have Photoshop.   

[/list]

Sorry for taking a while to reply.

I don't think that 3DC will work. Another reason the image system would use a "dress up" configuration would be that, when a 3rd party developer creates a clothing item the will only have to create a small new image file for the item, this would be overlaid with one the girl in the section that it's made for. (A skirt would only require an image of that skirt in a 2D environment, it would them be overlaid at the "height" level of skirts)

I would love for some kind of 3D system (and I must admit thoughts about taking this to a Source release for the amount of lighting and character control that would be allowed. Then again, I've seen facial customization with the Gamebryo engine, however I'm not sure of their release status (open, closed, freeware, buy-the-kit, pay royalty...).), but too allow easier customization for 3rd parties, and less work at this point for myself, I'm going to keep it in 2d, unless something dramatic happens to change my mind.

However, all suggestions are welcome. Unfortunately, another reason why I have to ask other people for their help with images is because I have no experience editing images as well.

[none]

Ah! I think your looking for something along along the lines of the "Paper Doll" effect. I recall a yaoi cross dressing game where your err...date started off with male clothing and you essentially made him into a trap by click dragging clothing. You could do the same with female charters and wet and dry clothing.   

[turtlbrdr]

Ah! I think your looking for something along along the lines of the "Paper Doll" effect. I recall a yaoi cross dressing game where your err...date started off with male clothing and you essentially made him into a trap by click dragging clothing. You could do the same with female charters and wet and dry clothing.

Maybe it would be best if I explained how it would work?

Essentially the "picture" of the girl would have several layers comprised of the the image of the girl herself and an image for each clothing item; The image on each layer of clothing would overlap items on a lower level and be overlapped by items on a higher level.

The girl herself, a nude body would be the lowest level, anything put onto the girl would overlap the nude body hiding it. underwear would be assigned to a level just higher than that, and would hide the nude body while being overlapped by any clothing over that.

There wouldn't be any dragging on the player's perspective. When the item of clothing is selected from the inventory, it will remove the item in the clothing slot (the actual clothing slot used, different from layers) The game will then put the clothing item where it needs to go both sticking it in the visibility layer it needs to be in and placing the image of the item at the proper location to have it appear to be on the girl.

You have queued  me off on the concept of wet, dry, and dirty looks to the clothing as well. I'll have to think about how to implement this as well. It will probably be that each of the items that can be effected by wetting and soiling will each have to have four images of them. One for dry, one for wet, one for soiled, and one for both wet and soiled. The choice of image could be easily ascertained from there by a couple of bits worth of flags.  The only mark I have for this is that it will increase the workload for those developing the same clothing items that will be affected.

I hope this clarifies things a bit.

[none]

Yes turtlbrdr! That's exactly what I meant were on the same page good buddy!

Also damn my late night posting you specifically said "Dress up" and I sleep drunkenly starting rambling.

Literal_Faceplam.rar

[turtlbrdr]

Yes turtlbrdr! That's exactly what I meant were on the same page good buddy!

Also damn my late night posting you specifically said "Dress up" and I sleep drunkenly starting rambling.

Literal_Faceplam.rar

I just wanted to clarify, sometimes I have problems explaining ideas to people

[turtlbrdr]

I've just done some research on the 3D game engines I stated before.

The Gamebryo engine is the one I mentioned before however, the development tools and engine are apparently sold on license. So it might cost me a great deal to get started, and it might not even work with what I want to do. Plus it would likely cost me for each copy of the game that I distribute, which means I'd have to sell it to not go into a hole. Not to mention they may not even issue a license for this kind of project. However, I've seen facial adjusting in the Gamebryo engine (Oblivion, Fallout, etc.), so I know that would work. Another thing to note is that, if any of you have played any of the aforementioned games you will know this t be, the sheer amount of addons and crap that are produced for the games made from Gamebryo engine, it has inherent add-on support and it must be easy to do base on the number of them.

The Source engine however, I know is open-source mostly. The actual workings are proprietary, however, the development tools and the distribution of the content for the game is not. This I know because I have dabbled into it. However, I haven't seen facial adjusting for it; though seeing some of the projects at the Black Mesa page gives me an idea http://wiki.blackmesasource.com/Face_Creation_System. If this team can "randomize" the faces from a base model and texture, then it could be possible to give a user control over the adjustments via a slider bar (or something of the like). There are also many addons here, mainly for Garry's mod, a game I could take a lesson from in this, the Lua programming for Garry's mod is easy to use; and, if I remember right, is easily implemented into the core of the game.

Our next stop maybe space...tell me what you think!

[none]

I've just done some research on the 3D game engines I stated before.

The Gamebryo engine is the one I mentioned before however, the development tools and engine are apparently sold on license. So it might cost me a great deal to get started, and it might not even work with what I want to do. Plus it would likely cost me for each copy of the game that I distribute, which means I'd have to sell it to not go into a hole. Not to mention they may not even issue a license for this kind of project. However, I've seen facial adjusting in the Gamebryo engine (Oblivion, Fallout, etc.), so I know that would work. Another thing to note is that, if any of you have played any of the aforementioned games you will know this t be, the sheer amount of addons and crap that are produced for the games made from Gamebryo engine, it has inherent add-on support and it must be easy to do base on the number of them.

The Source engine however, I know is open-source mostly. The actual workings are proprietary, however, the development tools and the distribution of the content for the game is not. This I know because I have dabbled into it. However, I haven't seen facial adjusting for it; though seeing some of the projects at the Black Mesa page gives me an idea http://wiki.blackmesasource.com/Face_Creation_System. If this team can "randomize" the faces from a base model and texture, then it could be possible to give a user control over the adjustments via a slider bar (or something of the like). There are also many addons here, mainly for Garry's mod, a game I could take a lesson from in this, the Lua programming for Garry's mod is easy to use; and, if I remember right, is easily implemented into the core of the game.

Our next stop maybe space...tell me what you think!

Whoa whoa whoa! There's gotta be free and useful game design software out there. Especially one that doesn't need to be reviewed for a license! (I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone say that they are sexually open minded and then freak out when Pee is brought into the equation. Or God forbid poop.) Meh. There are a few free 3d game creation tools out there I'd keep an eye on them.

[Ranpalan]

I strongly advise against using anything commercial for the first game:  it costs a lot, and while you work alone, there's only so much you can get out of it, anyway.  My advice for a 3D engine would be Unity3D -- I'm sceptical of starting a 3D project without having a team, but if you really want to, it seems to be the way to go these days.

[turtlbrdr]

I strongly advise against using anything commercial for the first game:  it costs a lot, and while you work alone, there's only so much you can get out of it, anyway.  My advice for a 3D engine would be Unity3D -- I'm sceptical of starting a 3D project without having a team, but if you really want to, it seems to be the way to go these days.

Right, I'm getting a little ahead of myself right now for future plans. Right now I'm conflicted on whether or not to continue on the development of Car Trip 1 or going directly to making the 2nd source.

Honestly, Right now I'm leaning towards scrapping the "demo" and going towards the second one, my knowledge of VB has increased dramatically over the past few months and the source for the "demo" is one that was written and found on several months of me not knowing what the hell I was doing at times.

I shall place a poll on this if I can...

[turtlbrdr]

Moving into the full version for today (still waiting on poll results though). I have complete the flowchart concerning the install link list.

The install link list keeps track of the file links for every item installed in the game. On the startup of the program the engine will run through each link and check to make sure each file still exists. If it doesn't then the engine must take steps to remove the content stored in the game files to reflect the change in the files. This always involve deleting the tags inside the engine for the file (including the link stored in the link list), but depending on the item/mod installed  it must do other things to remove the traces of the content from the rest of the game. This could involve up to invalidating the trip portion of the save file.

I've attached a truncated copy of the flowchart, this only includes the flowchart for items, but ones that aren't clothing

[Ranpalan]

Will version 2 be a complete rewrite?  I'm sorry if I missed it, but why would you want a complete rewrite before you've published anything?

Do you happen to have any kind of specs written for the two games, so that we can compare and make a more informed decision on which one we'd prefer?  Also, what is the expected development time of the full version, and how much time is still necessary for the demo?

[turtlbrdr]

Will version 2 be a complete rewrite?  I'm sorry if I missed it, but why would you want a complete rewrite before you've published anything?

Do you happen to have any kind of specs written for the two games, so that we can compare and make a more informed decision on which one we'd prefer?  Also, what is the expected development time of the full version, and how much time is still necessary for the demo?

The full version (CT2) will be an almost complete rewrite of the Car Trip 1 (Demo version) engine.

To put the differences simply:

• the car trip 1 engine
  
  
  • has everything included directly into the engine. items are inside the engine along side the pages with the actual game engine.
  • has no modularity
  • furthermore the code is becoming increasingly hard to code into the engine, especially when I think of a new item or feature to add to the game. For example, when I add a new item, I not only have to change it's entry in the shop's code, but also the inventory's. Then I have to make sure that the code surrounding the item is correct and adjusted for it's inclusion.
• The Car Trip 2 engine
  
  
  • the code is made to be inherently modular
  • will allow extra items, maps, and girls to be installed/traded
  • once the installer page is completed, I'll be able to add items on the fly without having to worry about whether or not I have to adjust surrounding code and whatnot, it will all be handled automatically once the item file is made, which obviously helps to prevent errors in the code.

Basically, CT1 was started when I didn't know jack about VB, the code is simple, and while it is (seemingly) stable for the parts I've run, I know have much better knowledge of using the language and can not only improve the parts that were written in the original, but add a number of improvements to the mix as well.

As far as specs are concerned, I figure you mean computer specs? Any modern computer should be able to run the code efficiently, and to help towards this purpose I'll be testing it on my netbook. Any windows computer that has been built or had the OS updated anytime within the past five years already has the binaries and packages to run a Visual Basic program.

The amount of time to complete each...I'd say the Demo has a couple of months behind it, while the full version is look down a year long process. Of course, these are both dependant on my school and (hopefully) my work schedule.

I hope this clarifies things a little bit

[Ranpalan]

Actually, I meant a functional (and preferably a separate technical spec).  See this for details.

I don't think scrapping the code and starting anew is a good idea.  Are you sure the code cannot be refactored piece by piece, moving functionality out to be more and more modular, but never breaking the build (figuratively speaking, as this is VB) for long?

[turtlbrdr]

Actually, I meant a functional (and preferably a separate technical spec).  See this for details.

I don't think scrapping the code and starting anew is a good idea.  Are you sure the code cannot be refactored piece by piece, moving functionality out to be more and more modular, but never breaking the build (figuratively speaking, as this is VB) for long?

Ah, I see what you mean now. I actually have a habit of doing that for most of the programs I make, but I didn't for car trip.

Everything beyond here is in reference to the Car Trip 1 engine. Any questions that anyone has while I go through this are welcome to ask.

The Engine:
The engine for Car Trip (which I've nickname the "event engine") is based around "events" (real original, I know). These event's tell the engine what needs to be said to the user and what stat needs to be modified. This is a major part of the engine that will be needed to changed in preparation for the Car Trip 2 engine, in order to allow people to add their own events.

When you click the travel button on the main game page the engine advances you 15 miles (15 minutes), then goes through the list of events to decide which one should occur this period. Right now the events are layered so that they some will have priority over others (girl peeing herself>girl complaining about hunger). This is what needs to changed in the engine for Car Trip 2, finding a way to add events to the engine and yet still give the priority to the events that need it.

The Map:
The map in Car Trip 1 is integrated into the programming, another change I wish to make in the 2 engine. The map is used to determine when the user can shop or are above a river. When the user comes into a town, they may shop, and the shop button because usable on the main game page. And when the user is over the river, the girl may ask the user to pull over so she can wash in the river, should her cleanliness motive be low enough.

New Girl/Game:
When the user starts a new game they must create a new girl to play the game with, this is accomplished through the New Game screen (The pictures of this screen are all attached at the bottom of the screen). Upon entry all of the option are randomized so that one could play with a random girl if that's what they want or if they don't want to have to create a new girl themselves. In the examples I've provided, everything was randomly generated except the pubic hair check on the fourth page; in this case, if the box is not checked the girl will not have pubic hair and the options to select the colors will be invisible.

The new game screen offers may selections of customization for the girl, not a single one of which is overlooked in the programming. This screen will help to outline the rest of the spec.

Hunger, Stomach, and Variables of them:

The first items past the girl's name are her favorite foods and drinks. In Car Trip, there are multiple food and drink items that the girl can consume. These will affect one of two stomach variables. Food will effect the solid foods stomach, while drinks will effect the liquids stomach;there are also some foods and drinks that will affect the opposite stomach value, normally to a very small amount (food like an apple, which has a bit of water in it). Both of these variables are added up to get a master stomach value which, at it's maximum, cannot exceed a value that is less than both the liquid and solids stomach combined.

The purpose of two stomach values is so that it kinda seems like that's the case in real life (not realistically do we have two stomachs, but each one of seems to have a tolerance for drink and food that can argued are mostly separate from each other), and it allows the values to be separated into their respective outlets. The liquid stomach will 'trickle' into the bladder, filling it more than the normal resting rate would alone. The same thing is the case with the solids stomach and the bowels.

The equation for the stomach trickles is rather complicated, and is based on a table based upon the percentage of the total of each stomach filled. Somehow, however, I did manage to make roughly presentable as a realistic simulation, so it should feel rather natural to the user.

There are two other variable groups that affect the stomach and, more specifically, their trickle values. The Diuretic and Laxative counters (four each), are used to add additional realism to the trickle effect. The Diu/Lax counters are two variables used to keep track of the effect of the diuretic or laxative, and the amount of time remaining that the effect will be in effect. Some foods and some drinks will incur a Diu/Lax effect when consumed (Like green tea, which has caffeine in it); however, there are also Diuretic, Laxative, Anti-Diuretic, and Costive medicines that are stronger than any food or drink's effect and will last longer as well.

Shyness:
The word 'shyness' actual represents two values in Car Trip, the first one effectively represents the girl's personality and the user can pick from a shy girl, an outgoing one, and one that is in-between those. This is a feature that will probably taken out in Car Trip 2, if only to replace it with an actual personality system that will allow a number of extra personalities to be added to the game.

The second use of 'shyness' refers to the relationship stat for the game. In all technical speaking, the shyness value is really a contra-value to relationship. That is a high shyness value represents a girl that is unfriendly to the user, while a low value represents a girl who is well acquainted with the user.



(This is all the time I have for now, I will right more to this post later, depending when I get off my classes)

[Ranpalan]

Yay, stuff to comment on!

Suggestions and questions, in no particular order:

• Could you get a (git|svn|hg|etc) repository and show us some code?  If you're going to keep working on this for months more, people will lose interest.  Unless you intend to sell this, of course, I don't see how it could hurt.
• Will you allow disabling the bowels (or bladder, for that matter)?
• I think you overestimate how much people will want to write their own events.  It's probably a good idea to design them elegantly (how are they done now?), but is it really a priority?
• Why is priority of events a problem?  Is the system more complicated than just a number for the priority?
• How are items stored when not in play?  How easy is it to modify items? (I think people will want this.)
• How easy is it to modify the dialogue and descriptions, and again, where are they stored?
• Where is the second relationship stat?  I couldn't find it in the screenshots.  Or is it internal?  I wouldn't name both `shyness' or have them depend on one value, in any case.

I think that's all for now, thank you for your patience. ^^;