Development Update #26 - Let's talk protagonists.

Disclaimer: I will talk and name some released games to use as an example here. Some of them are paid, others are fan reimagination of the originals, some are the original release of a game. I want you to understand I'm not condemning any of those games and I invite you to buy them and play them to have your own conclusions about it. All the information I'm saying here is just to help me to prove a point of why things are the way they are in my game, and why I did that. So please, enjoy this Development Update.

Hello guys, today I'm bringing you a different type of Development Update. Sometimes we can't only talk about code, images and gallery functions, don't worry I'm working every time I can, and the gallery isn't as easy as I wanted it to be. However, today I want to talk about the story of the game.

Let's divide this into sections:

The story, Characters, and Protagonist.

The story of Just Friends:

The Story of Just Friends is already "done", at least in a small layout, I have on Scrivener. This means I already know about personal information of the characters, their motivations and what they are who they are. This stuff will be added on the PLOT parts of the story, the plot is arranged to happen between the 2nd and 3rd acts of a Day, and it should work without making you realize it's there. There won't be abrupt cuts between the second act to the plot, so if you skip the plot because of the lack of points, you won't notice that. 

I do plan to make the PLOT routes necessary to access the true ending of the game with that Character. 

And talking about ending, I plan to have 4 basic endings, one is bad, the other three is good, and later when I add the PLOT segments, I'll add the true ending for the story with each character. This means, if you want to know just a little bit of their relationship after the events of the game, you will need to perfect a route.

To access a good ending you won't need to make a "Pure Platinum" run (Yes, I am quoting Bayonetta), this means you can start the first day with a Dog, the second with a Tiger and continue with the dog. What matters for the "good" ending is: You will need to have 51% of the total points with that character. This means you can only see one good ending per playthrough but it also means you won't need to have a tutorial on how to do it. 

On the final day of vacation,  the player won't have a chance to go anywhere, instead, he will find the character he has enough affinity. This will trigger the final day and scene with that character. If you don't have enough points with any character you will trigger the "bad" ending, which means you'll spend the last day alone, and you will end the game without friends. (Yeah quite like me in real life, so that's my original ending?)

The Characters of Just Friends:

For now, there are three characters planned on the game. 

First, we have Wagner, the Oficial Character of the talented lead artist of this game, Wagner Mutt. I had a free card to work with his character as long as I didn't make him a creep, so every single bit of himself inside the game is an original idea made by myself. Remember guys this game is a work of fiction, nothing here reflects the real life of Wagner nor his real personality.  The reason he's in the game is since he's a public figure we thought people would like a chance to date his character. That does not mean at all if you ever meet him in person he will be like he is in the game, so please, if you love or hate his personality here, do never think this is the real person, ok? 

The same can be said about Karnal. I'm pretty damn sure you guys already noticed that one of the monthly Patrons who are always on every single Thank you message for months now has the same name of the beefy tiger you can date on the game.

Karnal is a close friend of mine who let me use his character as a playable character for this game. We already talked about it, the issues this could rise in the future and he's okay with it. He wants the game to be a success, and I know a ton of people would love to have a bite of his character, so yeah, he's here too. Karnal too gave me free will to work with his character as long as he "doesn't fuck anyone weird", and I don't think the player is weird. I'm not planning to make a Morenatsu protagonist who can be twisted if the player wants. That being said, just like Wagner, Karnal's character's story and personality don't match the real person nor life, so please if you love or hate him in the game doesn't bring that to real life. If you ever met Karnal in person, don't expect him to be the same he is in the game.

Both Karnal, and Wagner has their problems and work in real life, one of them has family problems, the other has job issues, and another one has problems connecting to people. Such as the player. So, please wait for the real PLOT points to be explored on the PLOT segments of the game in the future.

The third character is a Bunny, his name is Alex and he's a cute little one. I'm planning him to be the only switch character (this needs to be discussed, but it's a thing I want to do). With him, if you ever have the chance to do lewd stuff with it, you will be able to choose what you want. 

I'm inclined to add a fourth and fifth character as a Patron reward and three or four cameos as NPC's in the hotel, so those roles where you are talking to staff will have a face and it may be yours.

But that's a thing for the future, not only I need more patrons because art costs money, I need to create the tier in a fairway. But yeah, with the number of locations of the game I can add at least five routes to the game, so it's a thing we can think. The rules for both Main and NPC characters will be added to their tiers. 

Those tiers will have a limit to them, and they will have a "Paycheck" system. I already talked about it in another Dev update long ago, but the system will be the same. IF you pay enough, the slot will be permanently closed and you can go back to be a normal Patron, your slot as a character will be set, we will exchange contacts, and we will discuss the story. But there will be some rules. I want to make a good game, not to be stuck with tons of restrictions, so be aware of that. 

The protagonist of Just Friends.

Aiden is a faceless human in the story. His design is made to look like a "doll" without face but with personality and traits. Besides that, he's a "Blank" character you can reflect yourself on. You will be able to identify with his ordeals and you will be able to project yourself inside him if you want. That's the reason I've chosen to make the protagonist a blank human. Being a "Blank" character doesn't mean he doesn't have content. He is still a person, he has family, he has a name and he has his reasons to get closer to the characters he likes. By being a blank character I want to say he's a character without a face. His eyes will never be shown on the game, even in cutscenes, and you can see the same happening with the Original Morenatsu or Nekojishi. This happens so the player CAN project himself or his character on the protagonist. Yeah, I know sometimes it looks better if he was a furry, or if the game had a "create your character section", but both these approaches kinda excludes some people. First because even if we add a character creator, it will never have enough features to describe your fursona,  this is not a daddy simulator. It's easier to create a human, but when you can add more species and details to a character there's always the chance someone feels excluded.  That's why the safest and easiest way out of this is to make a relatable protagonist who is a human but doesn't have a face (Did you ever noticed, if you remove the eyes of a character and make a shadow over his forehead and eyes, he will look like he's hiding his true identity? Sort like a mask. That's the concept here. If he doesn't have an identity beside his backstory, he can be turned into someone you like, someone you can relate to, or even yourself) which means he has an opening to be turned into anyone you like. Even yourself.

It's basic psychology actually: Its easier to project your image and to feel like it can be your story, not his if the character you're playing as doesn't have a face or like I like to say: He's a blank slate. You can make him yours, even if he has a story of his own, the choices you do are your own and that reflects who he is in the end game. That's why Liao in nekojishi is the only character who never appears in a portrait and when you can see him in the cutscenes his face lacks his eyes. But the artist always does it in a way it doesn't look creepy, but just like he's missing that feature because he's a shell for the player to connect to. 

I can make some examples here of games who tries to add a non-human protagonist in a furry visual novel, Amorous is one of them and as far as I've played it, it always misses something to make the character seems mine, and Morenatsu Revisited, a "fan remake" of the classic Morenatsu game who was canceled because people kept pirating the game and bringing it to this side of the world even if the devs didn't want that for obvious reasons (Japanese people have some weird issues with kids inside their games, this can be a problem here) and even the Lagoon Lounge (Who had to suffer an adaptation on the Steam version because on the original you can have sex with a 15 years old kid). 

All three of the examples set a protagonist with a definitive species. One of them tries a lot to make everyone accepted, but as far as I've played (they may have fixed it by adding a TON of new body parts and choices) the game always left someone outside of it. It's hard to project yourself as a bird if you're a freaking dragon! The other decided it was impossible to add a story and personality for the protagonist because the original game took too seriously the "blank slate" metaphor I've said before and made the protagonist had no story nor personality until you answer the stuff and construct him, and they wanted to avoid that by making it an artic fox instead of a faceless human wich will exclude almost half of the furries who play it and are not an artic fox themselves (and again a faceless human character can be done with a story and background and a personality, Nekojishi did this), and the last decided to add a Wolf as a protagonist, making a simple game with three entries all of them which you can have an harém of buff man for yourself without much story and again, making you as the player being unable to connect with the protagonist, because he is a promiscuous weird wolf instead of a promiscuous (weird only if you want to choose that) human. 

I'm not condemning those games at all, I'm here saying what I've felt for them when I played them. I still loved the story they're writing on Nekojishi Revisited, and I can't connect with the protagonist because of the changes but I can appreciate a good story. I did enjoy to some extent the story of Amorous even if it's not the best story I've ever played and I did enjoy the time with Lagoon Lounge, especially because I was able to study it's gallery features and add inside my game. Those are good games and I know you will like them if you play them, but I want to make a game who can be enjoyed by anyone who plays it.

And to do that, both the Original Morenatsu and Nekojishi did a good job on that. Even if sometimes I don't like the personality of the protagonist on those games late game, I can project myself in most of the situations that happen because they don't have a true identity. That's the reason people use masks on parties they don't want to be recognized. Because if you can hide your eyes, you don't have an identity and that means anyone and give that last bit of life to the character. That's the point of Aiden here.

He has a job, he has a boss, he doesn't have many friends nor time to live outside his work and he's tired. He's trying everything he can to have a good time where he is now, and he does want to make good memories, maybe some friends if possible. But sometimes you as a player can ditch the characters if you don't want to see them, right? This also will be able to do on the third day for Karnal, one of the F answers will make you go away from him, and on the entirety of the game, even if you can't see you did a bad choice, sometimes you will be able to do whatever you want without that character. That's the freedom who makes you as a player to live your life in the game the way YOU want. 

I want you to understand that, it doesn't matter you don't have the choice to put your name in the game you can live that character. He may have another name than you would choose but that doesn't mean it can't be you. One of the manifestations of the many persons or masks you wear each day to talk with other people (Yeah, I'm quoting Persona now).

So, I've said why the character is a human, I gave you guys some examples of why I wanted him as a human, I even said some name of games who already exists and I want to say it again: I don't hate nor condemn any of the games I used as references to why I won't add a Fursona Maker on the game or I will choose the species of the character. I just wanted to give you guys games you can go on and check those games and understand what I felt playing them. And if you can connect with those characters, better! It means your empathy level is so high you can put yourself into any form and shape, not only those who mentally or physically you see yourself at.

Now the story for the Protagonist is more complex than any other character. I will divide his story into three parts for now (and that can be changed later or even expanded if needed), and to see every single part of him you will need to make every PLOT part of any character. This is done to make you as a player connect more with him as well as the other characters in the game!

But that's it for today. There's not much more I can tell about the Player story because this would be a spoiler!

Just rest assured I have all the important points noted down and I have all the backups are done on my dropbox and my closed git-hub repository so I won't lose the project data nor the story data of the game. 

Now I will add some information about the gallery:

It's HARD.

It would be so much better to be able to, you know, use Ren'py for this kind of stuff. But I decided to sacrifice those daily enhancements of Ren'py to be able to make the game as dynamic as possible. I'm happy with the outcome, but it's not done. I'm still doing research because Godot does have documentation on how stuff works but it doesn't have a single example of how it should be done to work, so yeah... Sometimes I need to be creative, and sometimes I just cry the rest of the day.

But for now, please wait a little longer for more content! Thanks for your time and for sticking with me, no matter what tier you are now or was before!

See you guys later!