Post by Zuri in Straight!? comments

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Heya Aaryn,

Thank you for your equally lengthy reply! I don't know, how I found it. I played three other games before, but yours was the only one that made me literally addicted. Funny that this is not the only time, I was looking for nsfw stuff and ended up with something not primarily nsfw that I absolutely love ^^

Yeah, I absolutely see your point. Maybe I should add that I'm a web application developer, so I know what coding is like. However, despite looking into game development a couple of times, I always had loads of respect for those who choose that field of software development since the focus is pretty much on details that happen in a split second or influence almost every other detail during the progress of playing the game.

What I called "decisions" could be roughly divided into two or three sub categories: On one hand, we have the "influential decisions" that would make stuff quite complicated as you said, but then we have more like "conversation topics" that don't matter, and the player can just decide the order in which they take place or skip them. I don't say, that a game should be cluttered with decisions, I sometimes get bored when I have to click over and over again without being challenged with making decisions every now and then—I hope, that makes sense. Or to put it a little different: If it feels more like a continuous movie, maybe the dialogue should proceed without me having to click all the time :D Especially the inner monologues at night, where the background is all black could be over the whole screen to have fewer pieces to click through.

3. Yeah, I like your meta jokes very much. It's good to have that kind of humor as a creator 👍🏻 Thanks for sharing a few technical details with me. I am constantly curious how this or that was implemented.

4. Actually, I haven't talked to you yet, but it sounds like it would be great fun, and I'd be a fool if I miss out on a chance to. However, I neither
have Discord nor Patreon—turns out, I'm a fool after all.

Aaryn1 year ago(+1)(-1)

haha, no worries on the Discord or Patreon. I'll be uploading the update over here 3 weeks after I release it on Patreon. The Patreon donations just help with all the expenses and stuff so they get first dibs.

And yep, I agree with you on the decisions and stuff. So one thing you may not have considered (and honestly I still can't get over this part even after a few years now). But one problem with putting large reading sections on the screen at the same time deals with non-English speaking readers. I honestly still don't know how non-English readers can get through my writing with all the generational slang but thousands do. But there's been loads of people that will copy this game into Google translate line by line. You simply can't do that when you make it into a movie or animated sequence. There's one sequence that has words on it in the game and I didn't do any more than that because I didn't wanna leave the non-English speakers out. I assume that copying that into translate would be just as complicated if I loaded a wall of text as a slide (kinda like I did my giant damn thank you page).

Another weird writing quirk I apparently had with this project is that I frequently say that I "lost control of the characters." At some point, this story began writing itself and I found myself, even as the writer, not really having choices on what they did. That sorta got passed down to the reader as well. I figured if I didn't get a say in this outcome anymore, than neither is the reader. We're in it together and for some reason, I kinda like that. The fact that I couldn't control outcomes made me more anxious as nervous as a reader. The tense scenes seemed more tense because i couldn't go back and choose something better to rescue them. I kinda like that

Zuri1 year ago(+1)(-1)

Donating works from over here as well ^^ And honestly, the game is worth every cent, possibly more. And you really deserve that for the effort you put into all of this.

As a non-native speaker, I can tell that I have seen "worse"- Your writing didn't bother me and I don't recall any hard to read parts. People might wanna switch from Google Translate to Deepl.com. That one uses neural language processing (fascinating topic tbh) and translations feel quite natural. Have you considered making the game multi-language by letting the community input translations? But that might be a lot of extra work. I just thought, if they already kinda did that for themselves, they might wanna share it with others this way. Yeah, I imagined my solution looking kinda like your thank you page indeed.

Here's another thought, I just had on this: Maybe, some people want to skip optional monologues. How do you feel about adding something like a "page x of y" (maybe more like "(x/y)") on the bottom?

I absolutely what you mean about that aspect of writing. This is sometimes just wild. It often times feels like the story already exists out there (Plato might have called that "World of Forms"—sorry for getting philosophical ^^) and it somewhat just flows through you, your arm, your hand, your fingers and your pen onto the piece of paper or the keyboard onto the screen. Another thing I do while plotting for a story, I wait for an idea to ripe. Sometimes, the way, I wanted that one subplot to play out, just doesn't feel right to one of my characters. In that case, I wait longer until the character comes up with a slight alteration that keeps the general idea intact while making it coherent for the character to decide or act a certain way toward a specific goal.

Zuri1 year ago (3 edits) (-1)

Ash being meta?

I'm pretty sure, Ash wouldn't have played the game :D Don't tell me, you didn't have him say that on purpose :P

I just finished v0.20.5, and you absolutely killed it with the "Never have I ever" bar scene. I was laughing my ass off and with every line of dialogue I thought, you couldn't top that, but boy was I wrong! I said it before, and I say it even more now: There was sex in there, and it was good, but it was nothing compared to characters, story, emotions and humor. I could finish the character's sentences—that's how well you introduced us to each of them. In the spirit of 'honest day' I have to admit that I couldn't help but join them playing 'Never have I ever'—it was just too much fun—well, I know, it is ridiculous. I actually don't remember the last time I laughed THAT much. You should really consider, continuing to use your talent—I'd so love to see more of that, and I'd miss it, if I couldn't. Your frienda must enjoy playing drinking games with you so much! And you were right about the language thing: I actually had to look stuff up 😅—not much, but still.

Aaryn1 year ago(+1)(-1)

haha, yep. I like to make fun of myself sometimes-- especially some of the natural weaknesses of the game or things that were developmental problems. There's also a line in the game somewhere about them feeling like they're the only people in the school sometimes because my original rig couldn't handle more than like 3 people in a frame before it would overheat.

And glad you liked the bar "Never have I ever" scene. it's goofy and fun but also and easy to way tap into some theory and backstory with the characters

Zuri1 year ago(-1)

The milky nebular is beautiful

Dr Oetker actually made a fish finger pizza after someone suggested that combination on Twitter

Zack even finally got classmates 👍🏻

Even if you hadn't incorporated Mikhail's beard into the conversation, I'd still think, it'd be a great visual storytelling device

Even when he's gone, Ashley never stops to amaze me. That plant porn story is hilarious!

Even though, people might enjoyed an anal sex scene, what we got instead, was so much more authentic and human—thank you for constantly incorporating these important topics in a very sensitive way. And this emphasizes once more that the game, despite being tagged as nswf, is more than that, much more.

When Mikhail talks about the word "friend", I wondered if you call anyone an acquaintance except for when you want to offend them. I have the feeling that we Germans differentiate more than you do in the US.

The ending is interesting: When Zack arrived at the train station, I wondered what could possibly follow because he'll just drive home. But you weren't finished, granted. I still hadn't figured out what was lying ahead and even though, the metaphor about the woman with the suitcase was well-chosen, you didn't catch my attention there. But then, I thought, well, of course, he has to make the call to his parents, and you finally give us that happy ending. You proved me wrong once again. Your revelation that Zack tells this story actually came a bit bumpy. But when Bradon is revealed to sit right opposite of Zack, and they talk, I couldn't stop these tears from falling.

Your illustration of the moments they shared is neck and neck with your milky nebular frame

It's funny, that I thought, Zack should just go with Bradon when that topic first came up. But of course, even though, his parents didn't answer the phone, he needed that moment for himself before he could go with his now-boyfriend and so did Bradon with his epiphany

I can't thank you enough for this outstanding piece of (he)art you've shared with us. I enjoyed this roller coaster ride like not many others. I sincerely hope that we have not seen the last of you.

Aaryn1 year ago(+1)(-1)

glad you enjoyed it all <3

itch.io

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