The Cast

[Lonestar51]

Yes right, some bows are bigger than others. But the form of the bow indicates a certain type of bow, the recurve. And for this bow the size is right.

[P_Tigras]

Every single recurve I've seen -while undrawn- has been -end to end- longer than the arm of the person holding it. This one isn't. Long bows, which tended to be as long as the wielder is tall, are considerably longer yet of course. Nevertheless, nobody said that the bow needed to be the same height she is. That doesn't change the fact that we're seeing a larger than average sword and a smaller than average recurve bow.

[jack1974]

Well of course I'm not going into technical details, but the sword is meant to be a two handed sword (he's not wielding it properly).

[P_Tigras]

Well of course I'm not going into technical details, but the sword is meant to be a two handed sword (he's not wielding it properly).

Krimm's got a big two-hander as well. Compared to those swords, that bow looks like a toy. Not that I have an issue with two handed swords, I was just responding to a previous statement regarding the bow.

[deathknight1728]

Don't take this the wrong way, but what are the determining factors as to which romance the character gets based on orientation? I usually base my romance choice on character rather than on orientation. When in PStronghold I found that Joshua didn't really have many good choices for romance. However when playing again with Lisa Nelson, I found that her romance options were better and I liked the characters.

My main question is do you base the character's romance orientation with main character on a pre-defined idea that you have or do you just say-this character will be hetero, etc. I find it interesting

[jack1974]

For this specific game I based the choices also on some requests of people in forums: non typical pin-up female but more athletic (Krimm), male with beard (Riley) though I am not sure if was requested only by yaoi fans or not (but I plan to have more beard straight characters as well in future games) and so on.
For other games like Loren sequels, I basically spent 1 month (with Aleema's help) trying to balance all the romances. Seriously, it never thought it would take so much time but that's because there are lots of romances in it.
Of course, in many cases, is just that I like a particular character design so is based on my tastes only. For Planet Stronghold 1, I had first the artist draw all the characters and then decided after I saw them.

[DunKalar]

i doubt that it is a good approach to design the romances before you design the story. the npc have to fit into your tale and world so you gotta stramline them first, the romancing should imho be implemented afterwards. you can then "tune" the npc a bit to better fit into a certain role (e.g. gxg).

[jack1974]

Well in my experience, when you develop games commercially, with limited budget and time, working over internet with people all around the globe, you rarely have time to do a "good approach".
For example, I risked to lose the artist after the first Loren game because he was supposed to work for a comic in Japan. So for some months I had the more urgent problem of "who the hell could draw Loren 2 art now!?". I don't know what happened, but he changed his mind But as soon as he did that, I had him started with the romances IMMEDIATELY. Because I knew that it could happen again anytime.
Not saying that planning carefully a game is bad: but that you can do it ONLY if you know that each person involved in it will always be present/reliable. Otherwise you are risking everything and I don't like to gamble!

[ValHallen]

I am not sure if was requested only by yaoi fans or not

im not a yaoi fan, but I requested beard!
Still waiting for the bearded PC.

[Lonestar51]

Not saying that planning carefully a game is bad: but that you can do it ONLY if you know that each person involved in it will always be present/reliable. Otherwise you are risking everything and I don't like to gamble!

The word you are looking for is "project management". Which is a lot of "what should be done before what", but also a lot of "what can risk the project and what can be done to reduce the risk". And of course making sure everything is in place when you release the game.