In game layout

[railgun]

IRC talk, came out with some few ideas that we would like included into the game:

- a day counter on the screen in a corner somewhere
- pausing could show the current location, the title of the bgm, maybe even a map of the local area?
- about 10 open save slots, with unlimited saves where you can save over previous save files.
- when confronted with making a choice, we disable the save function, so people can't save at these moments. They can save before getting to the choice, but best not to hint them, keeping players having to save wisely.
- when you die, or hit a bad end, which we would like to have at least 100, a character, mostly bro-kun, will give you a one liner tip that may relate with your most recent end

[awayawyle]

The idea of making saves difficult to come by makes the game less convenient without adding any real functionality. It's one of those things where the atmospheric benefit is marginal (if there at all) and it just would make the game more difficult to navigate for multiple play-throughs. Remember that this is a VN, not a full game. It would just force the users to load their last save and skip through a bunch of text, which is a needless hassle.

I like the idea of Bro being the hint-source, as well as the idea of having a day counter. Maps would be easy to implement with RenPy's menu features and could also make for a pretty cool background for the info-screen, as long as we had artists willing to draw up a bunch of them for us.

[mcdoogle]

Feb 9, 2012 21:26:49 GMT -5 awayawyle said:

The idea of making saves difficult to come by makes the game less convenient without adding any real functionality. It's one of those things where the atmospheric benefit is marginal (if there at all) and it just would make the game more difficult to navigate for multiple play-throughs. Remember that this is a VN, not a full game. It would just force the users to load their last save and skip through a bunch of text, which is a needless hassle.

I like the idea of Bro being the hint-source, as well as the idea of having a day counter. Maps would be easy to implement with RenPy's menu features and could also make for a pretty cool background for the info-screen, as long as we had artists willing to draw up a bunch of them for us.

I am inclined to agree with this. I see what you're going for with the whole "save wisely because saves are scarce" idea, but it doesn't add that much while taking much away. Limiting the save slots is fine, but don't disable the save function during decisions. If anything, they will have to pick the decisions they can save at since the saves are so few in number.