Hi, I’m new to this forum, but I have looked over it in the past and have ordered some Peach Princess products before. I’ve purchased such games and Snow Drop and X-Change and I’ve been sort of disappointed by how short and fairly easy they were. I’ve heard that Tokimeki Check-in! is a longer game and I was wondering if this game is like that in respects to length and dificulty. I am just wondering if anyone on this forum knows because I stand by my previous choices but I would also like to purchase a game that lasts longer. Thanks
Tokimeki Check-In is quite a bit bigger than Snow Drop and X-Change. Also, Critical Point is a big game too. I’m not sure about Gibo though.
Kinda hate posting after Kumiko-san, usually left with very little more to add. But like she said, TCI mainly seems longer because of the way it’s setup. I mean when you get down to it, I think the number of decisions and time (both real time and game time) for each individual ending path in TCI and Snow Drop are about the same but with TCI, you’re hitting more endings and travelling along more varied pathways.
Hmm, if you’re looking for longer games with a little more replay value, you may want to look into picking up a simulator-type game. (Unfortunatley Little My Maid isn’t out yet) Because of the nature of those games, they tend to be longer than the more straightforward visual novel and adventure games. (Of course there are times when I’m playing Graduation II where I just want the school term to just be over…)
Thanks for the input everyone, I’m just curious about the length of some of these upcoming games because I personally found Snow Drop to be quite easy and straight forward and well as a couple of the others and I wanted to see if this one would be more challenging for me to solve.
Thanks again.
if you want a longer game experience, you might want to try Eve: Burst Error and its sequel, Adam: The double Factor from Himeya Soft…you can find them at jast usa’s page…they are much longer, took me about a week to get through Burst Error my first time, although they only have one ending and are pretty linear…but i thought they were great
quote:
Originally posted by Kumiko Kamiyama:
Little My Maid is not a sim game, by the way. It's a visual novel adventure - the sim part is very simple and simply shows the results of your actions as meters rather than numeric stats. It isn't a simulation like Dokusen or Graduation II, for example - it isn't quite that complex in the sim area.
Whoops, sorry. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img] Hmm, maybe I was thinking about Slave Bazaar? Can't remember. Darn it, I'm only into my mid-twenties and I'm already going senile... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img]
Thans for the general information and overview of Gibo and Little My Maid Kumiko. I’d like to play these new, and in some cases more challenging games you’ll offer soon. I think I’ll try out Little My Maid first because you sold me on its RPG characteristics (my favorite type of game ) and it seems to be a better deal. Who knows, I may buy both in good time, but as my first year in college draws near, I find my limited funds becoming diverged to other areas.
crawls out of a nearby classroom and starts clicking on the tagents
Well, they tried to discuss Utsushiki Hime once, but no one seemed to be interested (that was before I got here), so the thread has vanquished in the fogs of the past (you can still find it if you look for it). There have been some small hints of discussion of Kairaku and Utsushiki Hime here before, but as I pointed out, people haven’t seemed very interested.
I’ve mailed Dave E before and asked him a little about Kairaku and Utsushiki Hime, but he told me that he didn’t know very much about them since he just played them very briefly and instead concentrated his efforts on Dokusen.
Heh, well we discuss so many games and often times we discuss games I have no clue about that I’m always getting mixed up. I try and keep them all straight but there’s a fruit salad that keeps pretending it’s my mind and things tend to get lost in there…
Fruit salad, you say!?
Well be sure to not mix the fruits too much then
But of course, no one can remember everything that has been said on this board, that’s at least what I think.
Back the the subject, I’d like to see any (or all of them, if possible) of the three SIMS that Will can offer athe english market someday. Right now, it seems quite unlikely that it may happen, but… well, who knows? After all, no one can predict the future. But even if they don’t manage to get out at the english market, I strongly suspect that I may buy them still .
quote:
Little My Maid is not a sim game, by the way. It's a visual novel adventure - the sim part is very simple and simply shows the results of your actions as meters rather than numeric stats. ... The complexity of LMM is in the writing - it is closer to a genuine RPG with lots of decision points and the consequent varied paths as a result. Yes, there are only 11 endings... but there are a lot of different ways to reach those endings due to the very great number of decision making points. ... It has a lot of repetition sections in the actual script which adds to the complex nature - you might not think that the section you are reading is different from a section you already saw because the dialogue is so much the same, but due to making a different decision you would actually be in a totally different script area, even though the dialogue might be identical or very similar.
Actually, that sounds like poor game design to me. I'm reminded of Adam Cadre's comments in the I-0 source about all the sections of code he unnecessarily repeated in several different places. Not to mention the article about Deus Ex' OOP design...*ahem* Anyway, it seems like if it were more of a sim-type game, it would be easier to program and localize.
...Is that the difference between "sim" and "adventure", then? "Adventure" is like following a path to the end, while "sim" is keeping track of various statistics that change during play, and determining the outcome from the statistics?
quote:
Originally posted by Listen2Reason:
Actually, that sounds like poor game design to me. I'm reminded of Adam Cadre's comments in the I-0 source about all the sections of code he unnecessarily repeated in several different places. Not to mention the article about Deus Ex' OOP design...*ahem*
Not necessarily. Sometimes you want such things to occur even in an OOP design. I havn't read the article you mentioned but sometimes you duplicate error messages in different functions because of the type of difference in the function call or to actually aid portability of the code. (One of my professors went into a long and complex example of this and why it was a good thing but that was about 6 years ago and I can't remember the specifics.) And without knowing how it was written, the code of LMM may just not support a more OOP approach. (It could be written in FORTRAN for all I know.)
Hahahah I’d love to see someone program a bishoujo game in fortran But yeah depending on what language they programmed it in it either can be impossible to make it OO or extremely difficult. Of course if it’s the script we are talking about it probably is waaaaay easier if it was put in exactly as it was written on paper since then the programmer or the script writer wouldn’t have to crossreference things as much.
Well, Snow Drop and Critical Point’s scripts both have
characters in them, so it seems that they’re written in C or C++, which means that Little My Maid is also very likely written in the same language since they’re all made by Will.
quote:Perhaps... and perhaps not. "Good" clear perfectly structured coding only exist in school works. In professional codes, when you have time/team/etc. constraints, often easiness of coding is favored to "clear" and "structured" coding. Putting all similar sentences in one only part of the code creates pb. to:
Originally posted by Listen2Reason:
Actually, that sounds like poor game design to me.
- easily share code between developers (conflicting access to the source code, etc.)
- managing similar sentences (i.e. you have two sentences only varying by one word; create 2 strings or one with this word a parameter [%s for instance [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]]; the second solution is proper but what if, later, you realize you need another sentence similar to those two but varying by another word? You'll have to modify your unique string by making that new word into a parameter... and modify all the call to that string... etc.)
- managing sentences or paragraphs? If you manage paragraphs, you'll have one string for each different paragraph and the very probability of ending with not any text edit using with the same string (i.e. prob. will be high that all paragraph will differ). I f you manage sentences, what about correctly putting your CR/LF in the string? Perhaps by managing an automatic word-wrapping? Yeah, but then you'll have to carefully manage it, so that the displayed text is "good-looking" as well!
- etc.
quote:Perhaps. As a professional programmer, I'd say that I would believe you if, and only if, you were yourself working in the field and developing sim-type games...
Anyway, it seems like if it were more of a sim-type game, it would be easier to program and localize.
quote:AFAIK, you'll have to start from the Visual Novel. In a VN, you following a path by just reading the text and selecting your choices from the choices offered by the text (ex: Kanon). In an ADV, you're following a path but the interface leaves you the feeling you can do whatever you want/go wherever you want at "decision" points. For instance, in "Triangle Hearts" (unshameful plug [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img]), you can choose the location where you want to go, even if there wouldn't be anything/anyone there. Or in "Snow Drop", at "decision" points, you can choose "freely" where you want to go. In a SIM, each "normal" "time period" (usually a day or half-day), you can choose an activity which would influence "your" stats (your with "" because it's not necessarily yours; for instance, in case of slave-SIM, it's the stats of your slaves [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]). For instance, in TM, you choose your school activities; in Pia, your job activity, etc. And you may (or may not) have a "free" period in which you can choose other actions, to interact with the characters for instance (e.g. in TM, you can call and date on week-ends; in Pia, it's in the morning, you can go somewhere).
...Is that the difference between "sim" and "adventure", then? "Adventure" is like following a path to the end, while "sim" is keeping track of various statistics that change during play, and determining the outcome from the statistics?
I hope I was clear... ^^;;;;;
BTW, outcome _always_ depends on stats; it's just that those stats may be hidden... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img]
I realize this may be going outside the scope of the board, but I’ll get back to the topic by the end of the post, I promise. ^^;
The point of the Deus Ex article was simply: Code things so that the engine takes care of interactions for you. Example: What if you create a potted plant object, and forget to code interactions with all the weapons? You could have a bug, like, shoot at the plant and bullets bounce off! Instead, in Deus Ex, weapons create damage messages. So you only have to write an object to deal with damage messages, then you can blow it up with any weapon you want.
I remember Kumiko mentioning something about how huge a game LMM was, which made it difficult to translate. Wouldn’t it be easier to have rules that say “If the statistics and hidden values are this, then we go here” rather than an intricate game plan? It seems to me that in the first case, you (or a translator) can deal with scenes in a much more compartmentalized manner, without having to know where exactly they might occur.
All you guys with error codes and strings, that’s a much lower-level perspective than I was talking about. ^^; I was talking about more how the game is planned out. Of course, I was assuming “scenes” are more complicated than just paragraphs of text–maybe they aren’t, and the things I’m saying don’t matter…Also, maybe the paths are different enough that there’s no way to “generalize” them.
I also saw some posts where Kumiko was making distinctions between “Sim” and “AVG”, so I was trying to nail this down because I wasn’t sure of the difference. ^_^;
quote:
As a professional programmer, I’d say that I would believe you if, and only if, you were yourself working in the field and developing sim-type games…
Well, that’s the kind of job I’m applying for at the moment. Of course, I doubt I have enough experience to get one…
quote:
Originally posted by Listen2Reason:
All you guys with error codes and strings, that's a much lower-level perspective than I was talking about. ^_^;
Heh, well after all those years of study you end up thinking like that. I mean, I'm a system admin and I rarely do any heavy programming anymore, but my mind still goes over such stuff. I wish it didn't. Believe me, I wish it didn't... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img]
quote:
I also saw some posts where Kumiko was making distinctions between "Sim" and "AVG", so I was trying to nail this down because I wasn't sure of the difference. ^_^;
Don't worry, I'm still a little fuzzy about this myself. Especially when a games uses some of the elements of each. For instance, in general I tend to think of games with stats and meters as sims automatically so that's why I tend to keep thinking of LMM as a sim game. I'll probably still do that occassionally until I actually play the game itself. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img]
quote:
Originally posted by Nobody:
Kind of like the human lung. A human lung is fairly small, however, its total surface area is equal to half of a tennis court. Yet, even with all that area, the human body will still exhaust its supply of oxygenated blood cells in seven seconds if we stop breathing. Sorry, flashback to seventh-grade biology.
Um, interesting image there. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/wink.gif[/img] You can remember back to 7th grade? I have trouble remembering last week... [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/tongue.gif[/img]
quote:
Originally posted by Nobody:
The genital warts and syphilis images still give me nightmares. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/eek.gif[/img]
.... I'm speechless. Never saw anything like that in 7th grade [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/rolleyes.gif[/img]
Don’t remember much from sex-ed classes back that far. It couldn’t have been all that interesting. The “Human Sexual Behavior” slides in college were much more interesting…