Re: Renfield
You don't need to follow 3 hours of tutorials just to have sex with a barmaid.
If you're making a game in which sex is a prominent feature then it's useful to consider the elapsed-time-before-sex metric and what it means for gameplay.
- AAA RPG style. Multiple hours. The player character may need to track down a character, earn their trust, establish a relationship, travel with them, etc... with romantic elements being gradually established. It's difficult to write content for an ongoing sexual relationship (which will tend to involve complications about families, finances, etc), so the writers tend to either freeze the characters into a permanent "infatuation" stage or just contrive to separate them (e.g. badguy kidnaps girlfriend, you must rescue her, then the game ends).
- Sex can serve as a long-term goal for the player, but it will be preceded by a lot of character development moments. These moments (and/or the game mechanics, such as swordplay or cover-based shooting) must be strong enough to sustain the player's interest.
- The "production value" of sex scenes is not especially important, and sexual contact will usually be implied rather than exposed. What's important is how the characters feel about it, how it shapes their subsequent interactions with each other, and what it teaches the player about the characters (example: Garrus in Mass Effect 3).
- H-RPG style. Ten minutes. A new character will be introduced and established; the character usually fits into a standard archetype (e.g. compassionate healer, tomboy thief). Character development is not expected in this genre, and all major NPCs are expected to be sexually available. The player simply follows the linear story, decides which NPC(s) to seduce, and chooses "Yes" when prompted.
- Sex scenes serve as a constant short-term incentive for the player. The actual game mechanics (eg. random encounters, menu-driven combat) tend to be antiquated and unfun, and the writing tends to rely on well-worn tropes.
- The content of sex scenes is very important: quality of artwork, fetishes presented, sub/dom/con nature of scenes, voiceover, etc... This is a crucial selling point for the game.
- Sex-related difficulty should be minimal. Players know that they may need to read a FAQ in order to find 100% of the scenes, but if they need a FAQ to reach 1% then they're going to be pissed off.
- Sex is the endgame. Once the player has unlocked all of the scenes, the game has minimal replay value.
- SLG style. The player decides. It may be possible to have a sex scene within the first minute of gameplay, but this decision will carry consequences (e.g. the player character just raped someone and now he's perceived as a monster and there's a bounty on his head). It's usually possible to establish relationships which allow sex-on-demand, but the actual endgame scenario ("winning") is defined in terms of game mechanics (e.g. building up a prosperous farm).
- SLGs focus on allowing and acknowledging player choice, and they work best when the same principle applies within the sex scenes.
- It's infeasible to develop custom artwork and VO for each possible variation, so player choices are usually reflected in text. For example: a scene that normally ends with "I love you <playerName>!" could instead end with "That's all you've got, wimp?" or "Thank you, master." -- with the special variants being activated through gameplay which occurs outside of the sex scenes.
- The game content needs to strike a balance between freedom and specificity. Extreme freedom would mean that you can fuck anybody, but every sex scene has the same content (except for <playerName> and <npcName>). Extreme specificity would mean that only one NPC is fuckable, but they have a 30-paragraph scene.
- The Oblivion sex stuff tends to opt for "freedom" - you can fuck anybody, but ten seconds later they'll be talking about mudcrabs. There's no meaning or consequence, so SLG players will be disappointed.
- As with H-RPGs, players will expect to find sex scenes of reasonable quality and variety. However, the SLG game mechanics ought to retain the player's interest, so the interval between sex scenes can be longer.
- Sex simulator. Seconds. The player launched the game because they want to see something fuck. If the game includes dialog, characterization, or persistent characters then these should be optional extras rather than core features.
- Control is a crucial selling point. The player should be allowed to adjust camera angles, speed/timing, and scene composition (e.g. hide the background, make the male character transparent, put the female character in a policewoman's uniform, etc).
- Verisimilitude is the second key ingredient. The art style and color palette should be consistent, models should be detailed, and lots of effort must be put into rigging and animation. Extensive testing is needed in order to squash any bugs (e.g. imperfect animation loops) which could impair the experience.
Key question: assume that a player has just installed a complete copy of Renfield (not a beta) and that they're primarily interested in sexual gratification. How long will they need to play, on average, before they encounter a sex scene? Would an experienced player be able to find sex content more quickly?
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The reason that I'm bringing all of this up is because I don't understand the design decisions behind your game. Renfield doesn't look like a sex simulator. The H-RPG framework doesn't really apply (because this is a sandbox game rather than a linear one). You don't have enough resources to make a AAA-style game with a heavy narrative focus.
The only category which seems appropriate is SLG, which passes an initial sanity-check: you do fantasy RPG stuff (e.g. explore a dungeon) and some of the outcomes will involve sex scenes (e.g. seduce the bandit leader and have sex with him; slay the bandit leader, rescue the captured princess, escort her home, and then sex her up; pay the bandit leader 100 gold to look the other way while you sex up the captured princess). Your choices will dictate your future opportunities to interact with various NPCs, and also determine who your character is as a person.
The easiest way to incorporate player choice is via text. I've seen some 2d RPGMaker games which focus heavily on text (that is - fullscreen paragraphs rather than one-sentence-at-a-time dialog boxes). But you can't incorporate that sort of narration into a 3d game without completely breaking the experience. Instead, you need to convey most of the information audiovisually.
Let's imagine that we already have a "sex with rescued princess" scene in the game, and now we want to create the "sex with captured princess" alternate scenario. We'll need to add some chains to the scene and rig them to her skeleton, swap out the animation (reverse cowgirl isn't appropriate for a rape scene), adjust her facial expression so that she appears frightened and confused, create a tattered clothing model (an alt texture could suffice if you're lazy), setup a dirty-looking cave area (or maybe a prison cell), reduce the lighting, record some new VO, etc...
And then you need to figure out how the characters (e.g. the princess' brother) will react when they find out that the player character raped the princess, and then you need to code in all of this new dialog (and maybe a new combat encounter with the prince and his bodyguards, and the prince should probably have a unique sword which can be looted, and ...)
This is an unreasonable workload for a 1-person dev team.
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Working in 3d (vs text or sprites) means that everything takes longer, so the natural tendency is to skimp on content. Unfortunately, less content means fewer opportunities for player choice, which is the main engagement factor in a SLG.
If I want challenging but fun combat, I'll play Dark Souls.
If I want a complex and responsive narrative in which I get to have sex with ladies if I play my cards right, I'll play Alpha Protocol.
If I want an uncomplicated romp in which my character is surrounded by attractive and fuckable NPCs, I'll play Artificial Academy.
If I'm willing to sink some time into creating a character and building relationships with NPCs, in order to unlock some very creative and extensive text-based sex scenes, I'll play Corruption of Champions.
If I just want to explore a fantasy world while remaining firmly in-character (no expository cutscene bullshit) I'll play Skyrim.
If I want to finish a quest and then be "rewarded" with an awkward 3d sex scene, I'll play The Witcher.
If I want to struggle with a terrible UI in order to have crazy adventures in a randomly-generated fantasy world, I'll play Dwarf Fortress.
If I want _______ , I'll play Renfield.
Fill in the blank. What makes this game special? Does it simply
combine a bunch of familiar elements (e.g. hack-n-slash combat, fantasy tropes, stat progression, loot system, dialog trees, and sex scenes) into something excellent? Does it use sex exclusively for tittilation, or is it expected to play a role in character development? Are the visuals supposed to tell the story on their own, or will they just serve as the backdrop for text paragraphs which describe the sexy action? Is the sexy content expected to sustain the player's interest, or is it just an embellishment on an otherwise-functional RPG experience?
Note: I tried playing the 2d classic Renfield (0.18) but it didn't provide much insight. I saw a single sex animation (with no context whatsoever), random battles against characters from The Romance of Three Kingdoms, and zero dialog.
WE, together, can create a better game than them.
Here's
an example of a recent project where several ULMF folks were working on a game. The basic game concept was well-proven, and there was plenty of content. The effort fell apart because the technical framework (e.g. development tools and the code structure) were not amenable to collaborative development. The only way for development to proceed was for one person to act as a coordinator (splicing improved code segments into the new "official" version); individual users couldn't benefit from new features and bugfixes unless they were willing to open up the game code and apply patches.
Elder Scrolls games may suffer from incompatibility and instability, but the tools are accessible (even to amateur creators who can't code) and it's possible to merge the work of a large team into a single usable product.
What kind of tools are you using to develop Renfield? How do you plan to solicit contributions from other people (e.g. code repository, public filehosts, email attachments)? How do you plan to merge and test the contributed content?
