SDL Game Ahoy!

It is time to talk about the new SDL game I've been working on it. I'll break it down with just the facts, Dragnet style.

Name: Charmquest.
Genre: Fantasy RPG Dating Sim
Crimes: Being insufferably cute and nerdy as hell.

That's right, folks! My next SDL game is going to be of the dating sim variety. And this isn't just going to be an engine for dating sims, like Verily was for top down RPGs. No, this is going to be a fully loaded, fully playable game.

Its (planned) features are going to be including but not necessarily limited to:
*: Many different locations!
*: Three different gals to hit on and harass, each with a different personality!
*: Three different difficulty levels!
*: RPG style stats and character progression!
*: A combat system (type of which is undetermined, but likely turn based and Japanese)!
*: Items!
*: Witty dialogue!
*: NPCS with schedules!

I've chosen to do a dating sim because I wanted to make something that I figured wouldn't take too long to develope, and frankly/somewhat shamefully, I just plain enjoy the genre.

For those of you who aren't still virgins and have never played a dating sim or know how they really work, it goes like this:

Basically, you have a character with a couple of different stats that correspond to specific things. Intelligence governs how much money you can make on a job, strength determines your hitpoints and maybe your damage output, etc...

Every in-game day you have a set number of turns to do stuff (work for money, train, whatever), and you only have so many days before it is game over. To win you have to woo one of the ladies enough before you run out of days.

How does the wooing work? There are a number of ways of going about doing this, but the core idea is more or less the same. That is, by talking to the chicks you learn a little something about their personality (likes/dislikes, that sort of stuff), and later on down the line you will have to make decisions using a little deductive reasoning based on what you learned from talking to them, and your success during these little puzzles will determine how much more they like you.

So basically, the game is a turn based RPG with some puzzle elements thrown in when it comes to engaging with the gals and managing your time.

More fun than it sounds, I promise.

So anyways, I'm really coming along with the game.

Some technical talk that may or may not bore you:

I've broken the game down into different Zones. Each Zone has a sort of inventory of things I'm calling Entities. Entities are things that get drawn into the scene and can be anything from an item, to an NPC, to a sign that says "click here to go to the kitchen". The zones themselves are loaded into a Zone Manager that figures out which Zone I want to be in and loads it dynamically. I feel this solution is efficient and elegant, and I'm quite proud.

Anyway, the assets for this game are going to be a real bitch. A dating sim isn't necessarily art asset heavy (as almost everything is just a still picture), but one requirement is that you pretty much have to have hot chicks to hit on. I can't draw anything resembling any kind of chick, let alone a hot chick. I don't exactly have a solution for this, but I'm thinking that maybe I can get a bunch of anime hot chick reference images, and sort of trace out my own leggy-ladies from those. Maybe. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, though.

As for Quake Thursday: It is on this week for sure. Blame last week on Fable 3. Also, expect updates for this SDL game every Tuesday from now on.