Leap Day Open Thread: Time

Earlier we had the Valentine's Day Open Thread. Leap Year gave me another idea for one (I doubt this will be able to continue to any future holidays).

How important is time in AIF?

Games (not just AIF) can be criticized for everything seeming to stand still while the player runs around and does everything he wishes. Most AIF is like this where the other characters stand still while the player controls the actions.

Some though give more of a sense of time passing while the player moves about. Other characters move, surroundings change, and the player doesn't have infinite time to peak under every object.

In my attempts at authoring games I can say adding in other factors that respond to time passing increase the design difficulty substantially. Instead of one moving piece you have many. So, is that extra headache worthwhile for authors? Does a sense of time passing make for a better AIF? What are some of the best ways that authors can create a sense of time passing around the player?

Or does none of this matter and when given a situation with limited time you just undo/save scum until you get the perfect combination?

Random News - 1 March Edition

The second in a (hopefully) regular series.

Today's piece of random news is to draw your attention to Night Games by Silver Bard Games, which has been around for a while but was recently added to Patreon.

Night Games is a Java game where the PC is a college student who is invited to an underground sexfighting competition. It's not really AIF in the traditional sense, being more of an RPG/dating sim hybrid.

Silver Bard Games website: http://www.silverbardgames.com/
Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/silverbardgames
Forum thread: https://fenoxo.com/forum/

Thank you to Octarine Flash for providing today's random piece of news!

If you have a piece of random AIF-related news that you'd like to share, please send it to editor.aifblog@gmail.com.

Valentine’s Day Open Thread: AIF and Love

Being it is Valentine’s Day I thought I would ask: what are your thoughts on love in AIF? By this I mean what impact does a believable intimate relationship between the player and a character(s) add to the game. AIF has sex, but do those sex scenes become better if the characters have developed a deeper relationship?

Feel free to give your opinion on the topic, but some suggested questions to answer:

Does a believable relationship add a lot to a game, a little, or is it unnecessary?

What are some things authors have done/can do to make great relationships in AIF?

What elements of AIF detract from believable relationships?

What is your favorite AIF relationship?

The Erins: 2015 - Results!

The results of the 2015 Erins can now be announced!

The top three places in each category are listed below, together with honourable mentions (listed alphabetically) for any else who got a significant number of votes.

NB. some feedback comments have been lightly edited.

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Game of the Year

(117 votes)

1st – Working Man by Ice

2nd- The Lost Hound by Palaverous

3rd – Let Me In by BBBen

Honourable mention: Teacher's Pet by Dr Realgood

Working Man

"It's complete, it's functional and has the right blend between storyline and puzzles. A very pleasing first effort."

"Lots of options, PC is male, game has pictures, technically works fine, hot sex scenes, well written, good story. This game was the only one in the list to have it all."

"The amount of content was pretty staggering for a first game, it was virtually bug-free, and it had great writing and interesting characters. Just a fantastic debut for Ice and hopefully he continues to develop AIF."

"The bad endings in Working Man were great. If only things turned out that way in real life..."

"It has a good storyline, multiple choices and the fact that it has pictures inserted is a big plus."

The Lost Hound

"I'm a fan of the more traditional text heavy AIF games (Newkid, A Bomire) so I enjoyed the excellent writing."

"Shows how one can create a great game even without images."

"The Lost Hound was a masterpiece, Palaverous is a new GoblinBoy"

"Though the fighting system seemed mostly a love it or hate it, the amount of content was great. The sexual encounters as well as the locations were all varied. It was also nice to see a bit of build-up / growth in the NPC Aura."

"The Lost Hound may not be perfect but it's the best text-based AIF game in a while. The story is bonkers but interesting, the characters and the world are varied and surprising, the game challenges (once it gets going - the combat thing is a bit annoying) are fun, it's technically very sound, the writing is great."

Let Me In

"BBBen's game "Let Me In" really deserves more recognition than it has received as being one of the truly original games in a good long while"

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Best New Author

(104 votes)

1st – Ice

2nd – Palaverous

3rd – Dr Realgood

Honourable mention: BeanBean

Ice

"He created the best game of the year, what else can I say?"

"Ice reminds me of my favorite AIF author, GoblinBoy, in how his game looks and plays, so that makes him a top choice for me. As such, I really, really look forward to any future games he does now."

"Ice took stories not at all new to AIF, but did a good job at presenting them in entertaining ways. The art was well done and the variations of what you could do added either a bit of replay or some retrying as you learned the consequences of your actions. A lot of fun!"

Palaverous

"Palaverous gets this vote, the writing was by far the best thus giving you the best mental image. Graphics are all well and good in a game, (I use them myself) but the art of writing in such a way that it provides a clear mental image has to be applauded. Palaverous did this exceptionally well."

"Palaverous did a great job with the number of things stuffed into the game by trying to give it some variation and seemed to have a lot of fun with it. The game held together nicely as a whole and a lot of effort was put into testing before release."

"The Lost Hound is an amazingly well realised first game... also, I should say, the only new-author one that I didn't find bugs or obvious design flaws in.  It doesn't feel like a first game, it references other games but doesn't feel like an imitation."

Dr Realgood

"I felt that the writing and artistic talent of Dr. Realgood was definitely promising. I just wish he gave the game more time and effort to flesh it out into a more fun and complete game"

"Dr Realgood showed some real promise. The game was a huge jump from his previous entry into the Minicomp. After dealing with reworking the artwork all over, it came out wonderfully - much better than his original vision - and made for a good time. The quiz left some with a bad taste in their mouth, but once beyond it most people seemed to enjoy what was there, their only complaint left that they wanted more!"

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Best Character

(58 votes; 4 invalid)

1st – Stephanie (Working Man)

2nd= - Sharon (Working Man)

2nd= - Twyla (Let Me In)

Honourable mention: Aura (The Lost Hound)

Stephanie

"Stephanie just comes off as a genuinely likable character, is written well, and also is very attractive-looking."

"She's believable with the right amount of innocence/naughty curiousness that makes her feel real. Her model is easy on the eyes as well."

Twyla

"Twyla is a bit of a one off, she is pretty, smart and thick as shit all at the same time. She is funny for one in such a small game, but I like her and that's that!!"

Aura

"It was nice to see somewhat gradual build-up and a touch of growth in Aura. It may not be the most complex character, but in AIF it was a nice change of pace and fit the story-like progression the game made vs. the usual (but still loads of fun!) "find an item so we can screw" setup."

"She was a sexy inaccessible character, which made the end goal something to really go for"

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Best Sex Scene

(54 votes; 7 invalid)

1st – PC/Stephanie (Working Man)

2nd – PC/Crystal/Tiffany (Working Man)

3rd – PC/Lisa (Teacher's Pet)

Honourable mention: PC/Sharon (Working Man)

PC/Stephanie

"I liked this one because of the build-up to it throughout the game. It requires you to "work" for it (no pun intended) by being nice to Stephanie throughout your encounters as well as some good ol' fashioned seduction, but it just felt really exciting leading up to it. The writing was great, and as a player I felt just as excited as the player character when Stephanie asks you to go all the way with her. Just an all-around really satisfying gameplay branch from beginning to end. The sex scene itself is also very interactive and detailed, but also realistic as well (considering you're taking someone's virginity it makes sense that you don't do any kinky stuff or anal)."

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The Badman Memorial Award

This year's winner is…. A.Ninny!

"Though I had another name or two in mind, it seems almost criminal that A. Ninny isn't already established in the list. Hopefully there are enough dwelling from the past that recognize the work put in (or hear about it from said dwellers), as I would hate for Ninny to be forgotten in time."

"He released really good games and contributed a lot to the community."

"He made a number of good games, including The Sex Artist (a personal favourite of mine) and won 4 Erins (and 10 second places) for them. However, it's what he did for the community that deserves recognition. Beta-testing (for which he won two Erins), organising the Minicomp in 2006 and 2007, and most impressively, editing Inside Erin for three years."

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Final Comments

Firstly, a big thank you to everyone who took the time to vote, and congratulations to this year's winners.

There were 118 votes cast this year, which is a little disappointing given that there were 147 votes last time. Any suggestions for increasing participation would be welcome.

As suggested last time, 'Best Character' and 'Best Sex Scene' were added as categories. With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better to have some kind of nomination process beforehand. The write-in vote attracted about half as many people, and their votes were spread over a large number of candidates (18 for Best Character, and 20 for Best Sex Scene).

Game Release: The Aftermath

I have just released my second game, a mini-sequel to The Lost Hound written in TADS. I'll keep this brief since I wrote a longer introduction elsewhere, which you can read along with the download link over here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/game-release-4329557

Enjoy!

AIF Game List update

Just to let everyone know, AIF Community Newsletter Games List has been updated from 354 games on July 3, 2013 to 394 games as of January 24, 2016. 41 games were added, one was deleted. Also, with the loss of the aifgames site, many of the links had to be rehabilitated, so hopefully links will be good for a while.

I took the liberty of changing the default sort to descending date so that the most recent games are near the top. Assuming you have javascript turned on, you can still click on the headers and re-sort by title, author, or even the various content classifications. If I inadvertently left an important AIF game off the list, let me know. I plan to do a touch-up to the list around Valentine's Day. Also, if any data point on this list needs addition or correction, you can email garyplume on standard yahoo domain with the title of the game and the updated info.

Things already on my to-do list for the Valentine's update:
Another Friday Part 2 link is broken http://www.aifcommunity.org/games/adrift/Version_5.0/AFP2_GAME.zip
Briar version 2 link is broken http://www.aifcommunity.org/games/inform/Briar.v2.zip
In Darkness pictorial version link is broken http://www.aifcommunity.org/games/tads/tads_2/In_Darkness1.1.zip
Leather Goddesses of Phobos link is broken http://www.aifcommunity.org/games/inform/Leather_Goddesses_of_Phobos.zip
Maybe disaggregate the minicomp games into discrete downloads

Gary Plume

2015 Erins - Now Live!

Voting for the 2015 Erins is now live!

The voting form can be found at http://goo.gl/forms/1zDx5K7tVC

You have until the close of 7 February 2016 (GMT) to cast your vote.

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This year there are five categories (although you don't have to vote in all of them if you don't want to).

Game of the Year

This is for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) game of 2015.

The winner will be determined by the instant-runoff voting system. You can vote for up to three games, in order of preference.

Best Character

This is for the 'best' (again, however you choose to define that) character to appear in an eligible game in 2015. In this case, 'character' includes both player characters and non-player characters.

Because of the number of possible choices, write-in voting is being used. Please identify your choice as clearly as possible, and only vote for one character.

Best Sex Scene

This is for the 'best' (again, however you choose to define that) sex scene to appear in an eligible game in 2015.

Because of the number of possible choices, write-in voting is being used. Please identify your choice as clearly as possible, and only vote for one sex scene.

Best New Author

This is for the 'best' (again, however you choose to define that) new author to appear in 2015. A new author is anyone who released their first game in 2015.

The winner will be determined by the instant-runoff voting system. You can vote for up to three authors, in order of preference.

The Badman Memorial Award (aka the Hall of Fame)

This is awarded to the person who has made the greatest contribution to AIF over the whole of their involvement with the AIF community, not just in 2015.

You can only be inducted into the Hall of Fame once, so votes for previous winners will be discounted. If more than one person receives a significant proportion of the vote, they will all be inducted.

Because of the number of possible choices, write-in voting is being used. Please identify your choice as clearly as possible, and only vote for one person.

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This year's nominees are:

Coffee Date by Lamont Sanford

Condomocium by Octarine Flash

Enticing Ella by BeanBean

Hail to the King by Minterlint

Let Me In by BBBen

Teacher's Pet by Dr Realgood

The Heir by Efon

The Lost Hound by Palaverous

Working Man by Ice

You've Got Mail by Brokenknight

The new authors are:

BeanBean

Efon

Ice

Octarine Flash

Palaverous

Dr Realgood

Note that during the pre-voting discussion there was some disagreement as to whether all the nominees should be considered AIF. If there is a game on the list that you personally don't think is AIF, don't vote for it.

What I've been doing lately (Pervert Action: Legacy progress)

I haven't been posting as much publicly as I used to about my game development progress for a couple of reasons, but mostly because I write a full blog post every week for my Patreon backers and so doing smaller updates elsewhere feels a little distracting. Also I couldn't think of a way to do it that didn't just take the form of shameless self-promotion. Anyway, in case you're interested in the larger changes that have been taking place and the general level of development of my current WIP, Pervert Action: Legacy, here's an update.

Random News - 19 January Edition

The first in a (hopefully) regular series

This week's piece of random news is that House Party by Eek Games entered beta a few days ago.

I found House Party to be notable for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's built with the Unity engine, so it actually looks like you'd imagine a 21st-century adult game to look (ie. a 3D environment with a first-person view). Secondly, unlike all the other graphical games I've seen on Patreon recently, the writing is actually halfway decent.

Of course, having only just entered beta, House Party is still pretty rough around the edges. The plot feels a bit random, and is completely linear (each problem can only be solved one way, even though other plausible solutions exist). The gameplay is mostly limited to finding objects and delivering them to other people. And, probably most importantly, there's very little content as of yet.

And that was the news for today.

If you have a piece of random AIF-related news that you'd like to share, please send it to editor.aifblog@gmail.com.

The Erins! - Discussion

In case you didn't already know, the Erins are annual fan-voted awards that honour the year's best AIF games and authors. They started in 2002, but went on hiatus after 2009 due to the downturn in the number of games being produced. They were brought back in slimmed down form last year. That experiment was successful, so here we go again!

In order to establish the Erins 2.0 as a going concern I thought it might be a good idea to establish some rules going forward (especially as the original rules seem to be missing in action). Note that the following is all provisional. Suggestions for improvements would be welcome.

Eligibility

For the purposes of this year's iteration of the Erins, entries must fulfil the following criteria:

1. They must be adult games where the player uses text-based gameplay to advance the narrative.

2. They must have been originally released as a full game during 2015.

3. They must have been published (ie. posting a link to the game) on the aifarchive Yahoo! group or AIF Central blog by the author, or with the author's permission.

Authors can choose to remove their game from consideration.

Where there is some uncertainty as to whether or not a game is eligible, a decision shall be made by the person(s) organising the Erins.

Categories

The categories are:

Game of the Year - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) game released in 2015; open to all entries

Best Character - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) character to appear in an AIF game in 2015

Best Sex Scene - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) sex scene to appear in an AIF game in 2015

Best New Author - for the 'best' (however you choose to define that) new author to release a game in 2015; open to any author who hasn't released a game previously

The Badman Memorial Award (aka Hall of Fame) - for the person (or persons) who have made the 'greatest' (however you choose to define that) contribution to AIF; open to anyone not already inducted in previous years

[As suggested last time, if more than one person gets a significant proportion of the Hall of Fame votes they will all be inducted.]

Nominees

On that basis, the nominees are:

Game of the Year

Coffee Date by Lamont Sanford
Condomocium by Octarine Flash

Enticing Ella by BeanBean

Hail to the King by Minterlint

Let Me In by BBBen

Teacher's Pet by Dr Realgood
The Heir by Efon

The Lost Hound by Palaverous

Working Man by Ice

You've Got Mail by Brokenknight

Best Character

Any character appearing in a game nominated for Game of the Year

Best Sex Scene

Any sex scene appearing in a game nominated for Game of the Year

Best New Author

BeanBean

Dr Realgood
Efon
Ice
Octarine Flash

Palaverous

Hall of Fame

Anyone, except the previous inductees: Badman, Choices, NewKid, Christopher Cole, Scarlet Herring, A.Bomire, BBBen, GoblinBoy, or Purple Dragon.

[If there are any eligible games I've missed, please let me know. Conversely, if you don't want your game to be included (for whatever reason) please let me know.]

Voting

The voting period provisionally starts on 24 January 2016 and finishes on the close of 7 February 2016 (all times GMT).

Voting for the Game of the Year and Best New Author awards will use the instant-runoff voting system. Voting for Best Character, Best Sex Scene and the Badman Memorial Award will be a write-in vote.

[In future I'd like to start the voting earlier so as to make sure the Erins don't distract from any games released in January or February.

Google Forms looks like it can handle preference voting, which several people asked for last time. However, it's kind of clunky and the votes will still have to be totalled manually (which is why you'll be restricted to three preferences), so if anyone has a more elegant alternative it would be eagerly accepted.]

Winning

The winner gets... to win!

[It would be nice if winners got some sort of customised award graphic, as in days of yore, but I simply don't have the artistic ability for that. If anyone with more talent could provide something suitable it would be very much appreciated.]