GWL game project

[Hayleypetharley]

Hey everyone
I'm looking to start development on a dating sim/visual novel based off a short wrestling inspired comic I did recently.
Here's a link to the first page, and the rest are in my HF gallery

http://www.hentai-foundry.com/pictures/user/HayleyPetHarley/450911/GWL-Page-1

The game will have animated sex scenes, multiple story options and a character progression system that affects relationships/storylines.

At least that's the ultimate goal ... I don't really have any experience making games, so I've been asking around trying to find the best place to start, a few people have suggested working with Flash, but I've heard that most browsers won't be compatible with the flash player soon, so others have also suggested I look into Game Maker or Construct 2.

Hopefully I can get some ideas on where to start, please don't hesitate to send me tips or suggestions, I probably need all the help I can get at this point, and I'd be super grateful for any advice.

In the meantime I'm going to be focusing on the art side of things, at least until I have a good enough framework to put together a prologue/teaser of the game.

I made a tumblr post with some quick sketches and mock up image of features I'd like to include, so I'll copy and paste the bulk of it below, but I'll be sure to update with something a little more solid and refined when I get the chance

GWL GAME

’m going to try to make a big dating sim, rpg, adventure game, visual novel thing xD I’m not really sure what the specific genre is called, but basically one of those games where you build your stats, talk to characters and eventually do the sexy sex with them, all whilst discovering plot events and scenarios :3

I know I ramble a lot so I threw together some quick sketches to better explain the game
.


The game follows on from the first GWL comic. After the Fighting Fuck Fest tarnished their reputation, nobody in the wrestling business wants to work with Hayley and Hachu… Together they must rebuild their relationships with promoters, fans and a host of other characters. Players take control of Hayley as she trains, fights and gets into all kinds of kinky shenanigans along the way.



Hayley will be able to visit multiple locations each day. She can train, work, explore the town, or seek out special calendar events that open new storylines. Perhaps visiting the gym on a certain day will give Hayley the chance to do some intimate training with a close friend. Or maybe the bar manager is looking for a dancing girl to cover for one of his regulars.

I’m hoping to implement a system where every action has a consequence, and depending on certain stats, the storyline will change to fit player choices



I really want stats and choices to matter, a lot of dating sims have generic skills that don’t add much to the experience. They usually just end up making you grind Strength or Intelligence to pass certain prompts. With this game I want Hayley’s stats to impact where the story goes. So if a player spends a lot of time making Hayley work out, then she might get more opportunities to work for hard hitting indy promoters who value wrestling skills over character. On the flip side, if she develops her charm, she could get a break with a televised wrestling promotion, cutting promos and meeting fans to build her popularity.

Her skills will also matter outside of the ring, certain characters will respond differently to Hayley depending on her stats, and there might be a few special options during event scenarios.



Another big part of the game will be choices and relationships, I want each character interaction to have weight and meaning, players will be rewarded for building relationships in the form of perks and story events. If Hayley becomes friendly with a promoter, it’ll unlock more wrestling gigs for her to work, or if she gets close with a fitness obsessed wrestler, it could unlock special training days that boost her strength EXP faster than normal.

I’d also like the relationship storylines to cross over. Hayley can’t just buddy up with everyone without conflict, the more people she meets, the more choices the player will have to make on who to spend time with and who to ignore.

Characters will also have a history with each other, so if Hayley becomes friends with one person, it could make another character angry.



And now for the meat of the game, animated sex scenes! Yeah I know these are just edits from the comic x3 but I’m still looking into which programs would be best to use for animating. A few people have suggested Flash or Toon Boom but I don’t want to start making anything until I’m absolutely sure it’ll be compatible with whatever software I use for the game.

If the events of GWL issue 1 taught us anything, it’s that Hayley really really likes sex, she likes it so much in fact that she’ll be able to use her naughty charm to deal with all kinds of exciting situations. Ultimately it’s up to the player to decide what kind of girl Hayley becomes, but I think we all know why the majority of us play dating sims and visual novels, so expect a lot of opportunities for Hayley to embrace her wild side x3

I think that’s about it for now, it’s still a really early concept and I just wanted to throw some ideas out there, but I really want to hit the ground running on this project. I’m probably going to start with a lot of the interface elements, and then once I have a frame work, I’ll start adding the narrative and character stuff.

Oh also here’s a little mock up screen I did for fun, yes shamelessly reusing the comic art again

[ANooB]

I'd go with Construct, since you want it to be a browser game. Game maker primarily exports to .exe and requires you pay a premium to export to HTML5. Plus, Construct is easier to use from what I've experienced. You'll notice a slight advantage with it's GUI as well; because your game is point n click and will need specific focus on the layout. Game maker's mapping tools are just plain primitive and outdated (ask Noox, we've had a hell of a time getting mapping down for his LEWD project). I guarantee you won't regret going with Construct 2.

I really like the visuals!! And the game looks like it'll be addicting from the screenshots.

[Totsboy]

What would be interesting also would be your charachter having a cap in some stats that would only be surpassed by moving on with the relationship with a specific npc, but then making it impossible to develop the relation with others, something similar to one of the persona games, personas from family X would only develop if you had a relationship with the charachter related to it

[Hayleypetharley]

Ohh thank you for the suggestions, I'm currently working on the art stuff whilst I learn more about game software and stuff x3

@ANooB
I've heard some good things about Construct, I'll give it a download and mess around :3 I've been fiddling with this visual novel creation software, but it's mostly just for dialog options and stuff, so it probably wouldn't be able to make a full on dating sim Dx Construct or Unity seem like the best bets so far

@Totsboy
Ohh that's a really good idea, it would encourage people to explore different relationships and take risks, maybe there could even be character specific items that unlock after reaching a certain relationship level or storyline x3

Here's a little update on the art side of things, I've been working on character models and backgrounds, going to do some animation stuff soon

[ANooB]

Well you definitely got the art skills down. Your style makes your characters very easy to exaggerate, so some extreme hentai and physical farse is possible. If you have questions when you get to development, let me know as I'm pretty resourceful with coding.

[Hayleypetharley]

@ANooB
There's definitely going to be a lot of farce xD I want to include a bunch of scenarios so that there's a little something for everyone :3

I have enough of the assets done to start on a demo, so I'm going to work on animating a few sex scenes and then put it all together x3

Here's some BG and mock up stuff in the meantime

[ANooB]

The background looks neat!!! This is gonna be good. Also, send me a message when you release the next Comic because those are good, too.
Sorry I spelled farce wrong up there, but you knew what I meant, lol.

[evildumdum]

Love the artwork, real high quality stuff.

[Hayleypetharley]

@ Evildumdum
Thank you so much :3

@ANoob
Thank you, I think the game is going to take over for the comic x3 I want to redo the story from the start and show how Hayley joined GWL and stuff

Update on what I'm working on, here's a really early wip of a titty fuck animation, I'm experimenting with shape tweening shadows, but I also plan to do some frame by frame stuff with other poses

[Totsboy]

this project is really promissing, and i checked your comic you did a very good job there ^^

[Wee]

If you are looking at the Visual Novel format, RenPy might be a good option as well, if you aren't too set on making this browser based.

https://www.renpy.org/

RenPy is free/open source.

Renpy looks like it would be well set up for what you are looking to do. You talked about building relationships levels and other stats, RenPy is set up to do exactly that. Plus, it looks like it's pretty easy to assign background scenes and overlay other art over those scenes, and swap out poses/animations as the dialogue options progress. It's pretty easy to fork dialogues too i.e. choose action a get scene a, choose action b get scene b.

Plus you can set up True/False/some integer statements to check if a previous scene has happened, or if a player has enough of a given stat/relationship level/completed some previous event before having a specific event you have planned will 'fire'.
Example (paraphrased): If 'Completes Ice Cream Date' = true, then you can go on 'Picnic Date' (else this option doesn't show up).

Renpy is set up as a self contained download, so your game would simpy be built into the RenPy framework. You download RenPy from the site, start up RenPy, then proceed to build your game. There are a few tutorials on the RenPy site, and a pretty good wiki to help get you started.

You can customize the look of RenPy pretty easily, if you feel the need, and indeed it asks you a few questions about that when you begin a new project (color scheme, etc.). More advanced users can move popup windows and such around, but you can put that off until later, once you've become more comfortable with the framework. Some options may be as simple as swapping out the background image for a popup window...

I don't know anything about the other option mentioned above (Construct) so I can't speak to it's usefulness. I'll leave it to others to talk about it's merits.

RenPy is free/open source, and has a pretty good community around it. When I look at the artwork you've been sharing, RenPy comes immediately to mind. Plus, it allows for saves/autosaves, which can be useful if this ends up being a longer game. It also has a 'back' feature if you aren't too worried about locking people into dialogue choices, which allows a few undos. I believe that you can disable that feature if you want to.

Nice artwork!

[Hayleypetharley]

@Totsboy
Thank you so much :3 the comic was really fun to work on, so I hope I can capture a similar tone with this game

@Wee
I downloaded RenPy a little while ago and it looks like a good choice for this type of game, I might use it for the demo just to be sure it has all the features I'll need in the future. I'm still kind of debating on using Unity or Construct2 though, but I know I should probably start simple to avoid getting overwhelmed Dx

Anyway here's a little animation update, I won't spam you guys with these from now on x3 but I wanted to show Hayley being a happy titfucker

[Hayleypetharley]

Hey been a little while since I've posted, but I've been hard at work on the game :3

I downloaded Unity and installed the Visual Novel Engine package from the asset store, admittedly it's been a little hard to learn and some errors have popped up along the way. I had to contact the maker of the VNE because of some technical issues, but he updated things really fast, so I'm hoping once I redownload it, things will run smoothly.

I've been keeping busy with the art side of things though, I added backgrounds and transitions to all the tittyfuck loops, and just recently started on a new doggystyle pose. I think I'm just going to keep focusing on the art stuff until all the animations are done.

Here's a little wip in the meantime :3

[herod.basil]

Which animation program did you end up using.
I found this free on called d ragon bone s. It's 2d bone/mesh animation. Pretty easy to use.

[RodneyPP]

Ren'Py is another nice tool to make sim dates

[Hayleypetharley]

@ herod.basil
I've been using flash for the animation stuff :3

@RodneyPP
I tried Renpy early on, and it has some really nice features, but I don't think there's a way to export the games for uploading to a browser Dx so I think I'm going to stick with Unity

Here's another little animation wip x3

[Totsboy]

Arts and animations looking amazing can't wait for the first version

[Nikag]

@ herod.basil
@RodneyPP
I tried Renpy early on, and it has some really nice features, but I don't think there's a way to export the games for uploading to a browser Dx so I think I'm going to stick with Unity

I don't think that Unity is a best option. Their WebGl game version is super-heavy, has some issues when browser need some plugins installed (yeah, like flash do), framework adds tons of things that you don't need for your game at all.
I were doing the research recently and I personally study Game Maker Studio now at my free time

You should try to make something super-short (like 3-4 scenes of comics) with Unity and see how it works for any of your friends.

[Hayleypetharley]

@Nikag

Admittedly I've been struggling a lot with Unity, even with the Visual Novel Engine package, I'm starting to feel like it might not be the best choice Dx

I've heard some mixed things about Game Maker Studio though, don't you have to pay to export to HTML5? If worst comes to worst and I totally hit a brick wall I can try and find someone who wants to collaborate hopefully x3

I'll keep looking into things and experimenting with different software, I'm still working on the art stuff in meantime, I finished another pose and did all the variant animations for it

[Nikag]

@Nikag

Admittedly I've been struggling a lot with Unity, even with the Visual Novel Engine package, I'm starting to feel like it might not be the best choice Dx

I've heard some mixed things about Game Maker Studio though, don't you have to pay to export to HTML5? If worst comes to worst and I totally hit a brick wall I can try and find someone who wants to collaborate hopefully x3

Well, this is what I felt with Unity myself - 'struggling'. It did not feel just learning or being inspired by new stuff I eager to implement.
And I don't think that 'overcoming' in coding is what artist needs actually. This is why I made my first game (well, 'making' is probably a better word) in simple adobe flash / as3.

In general desktop + html version will cost around 350$ for Game Maker. I haven't bought any myself yet, as I learn from free (allows export to desktop apps) version. This set of tutorials is made for RPG (a bit more complicated stuff), but it is pretty good to start with to understand GM simple coding, mechanics, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB2alpO ... s3qYlBNyTd

I haven't seen how html5 export works with 'my own eyes', but I plan to purchase the package and give it a try for my demo in the end of my learning, so will keep you updated. If that will work 'as expected' - then it definitely worth buying, just look at it like buying a tool / tablet.

And I don't really think that you actually need a coder as a partner for your project if you go with something simple as Game Maker for 'dating novel' type of game.