1 and 3. Answering question one involves answering question three. With that being said. So far, yes, intercourse is player optional. In the future, probably.
The reason has to do with question 3. One of my core design goals is to present a journey where the player decides the emotional and psychological response from Ali. From a version of Ali that's doing it just for the money, to a version of Ali that's genuinely into it.
What you won't see is Ali presented with situations where she's forced into sex work. The core question my story asks is, "Why would a woman like Ali willingly enter sex work if she didn't need to?"
My goal is to allow the player to answer that question. I just facilitate the options.
But, back to question 1. Can a game about entering sex work be done while making intercourse optional? I think the answer is yes. The real question is, do I as a writer have what it takes to make that path interesting? I'll certainly try, but if everything I write on that path comes out as junk, then it won't be in the game.
2. F/F content will be in the game. Will there be a full lesbian relationship in the game? I don't know. As with the above, I'm going to attempt to write it, but if I can't pay respect to that dynamic, then no.
I'm actually piggy-backing off of the layered image logic. But I wanted to be able to put conditionals in the script with different reactions or dialogue choices depending on what's being worn.
One issue I still haven't solved is preventing a new background image from hiding the layered image. For now, my workaround is to make the background the "base" layer with the character on top, but at some point I'll have to resolve that issue.
My prologue is more interactive fiction than visual novel. But I want future episodes to incorporate more than one character on the screen at a time, and for that I'll have figure out what I'm doing wrong with backgrounds.
In any cause ,your tutorial was invaluable to me getting layered images set up. I didn't even know they existed in Ren'py until your tutorial popped up in a google search.
Thanks for the offer! I’ve been working in the engine for about six months or so now, and I’ve become decently familiar with the scripting syntax. But layered image syntax is still giving me a headache.
Anyway, I opted to make a python function for this instead as I also want to keep track of what clothing slots are being worn, and write it on a single line of code.
Long story short, I’m using a dictionary and for loop to assemble the show statement dynamically with the transition, while also flipping True/False onto each clothing change.
An example use looks like this now:
$ change_clothes(top=True, top_name=“Tshirt_1”)
Which is much easier for my peanut brain to handle.
