Dating Ariane FAQ
How did you come up with this?
I was involved in the AI Beast game, the first "virtual reality" game, and was thinking of creating something similar (but smaller), but did not have the time. Then I thought of doing a desktop avatar character like this one or this one or this one or this one or this one, only not as erotic and more useful, but did not have the money.
Then I was working on a project for someone else, a web "picture book" with text and pictures where you click next to turn a page, and came up with an idea: How about a web based "choose your own adventure picture book"? Then the little bit I did on the first two projects got merged together into something no where near as ambitious that I did have the time and money to do.
How big is this game?
There are over 580 pictures, and over 800 html pages.
I do not think I have seen that many pictures, have I missed something?
Probably, there are areas of this game no one ever goes to. Here is a list of locations: House (living room, kitchen/dining, bedroom, bathroom) Backyard (Pool, hot tub, stargazing bench, barbecue), Drive (gas/convenience store, cabaret, lookout point, lake, amusement park), Downtown (restaurant, museum, night club, lingerie shop, dress shop, home furnishings store)
Why do some of the pictures look so cheesy?
From the get go, I decided that trying to create great works of art for each picture would be way too time consuming. And unfortunately, anything bigger than 800x500 jpgs would take up way too much web space. So in creating the pictures, "fast" and "cheap" became the mantras.
I have taken shortcuts wherever possible. I could have ray trace renderings, and I have tools for more realistic hair and skin, but decided that if I use them in one picture, I would have to use them in all pictures. The "low rez" look means I can get away with using game screenshots as backgrounds (that and the fact that this is purely a non-commercial enterprise).
What did you use to make the pictures?
The model is Victoria 3 from DAZ 3D, the renderer is Poser 5 from Curious Labs, the apartment is Poser Luxury Apartment I found at Renderosity, also the Hot Tub. Backyard and stores backgrounds are screenshots from Sims 2, and all the street scene backdrops are from Need for Speed Underground 2.
What has changed?
The original concept was to make a maze, with a lot of dead ends. Here is the original script, but don't try and follow it, it is completely wrong now. The "patio bench" make out location has been dropped (silly ending), the spaghetti dinner has been dropped (redundant) and the theater has been dropped (dumb idea).
Version 1 consisted only of the house and backyard. Version 2 added downtown and the restaurant. Version 3 added some locations you'll have to find yourself, but also includes major changes to the story flow. Hard endings have been dropped in some cases to be replaced with story loops. Finally, Version 4 simplified some of the rules of the game, making some parts harder and some parts easier. There are some new scenarios, and some locations that were bugged (home furnishings store) or tacky (the lingerie store) or unrealistic (the whiskey bottle) have radically changed.
Any hints for the new version?
In version 2, I added a tag that disables nudity if you do something wrong. In version 3, I reversed it, so now you have to do something right to enable nudity. In version 4, the biggest rule change is that she will only change clothes twice, this severely limits choices in any particular game, and leads to a faster ending. On the other hand, there are hard endings (getting kicked out) and soft endings (sleeping over) that may show up in similar scenarios depending on previous actions.
Will there be a version 5?
Probably not. I may sneak in a new scenario from time to time, and I will squash bugs as I find them, and may add a new ending here or there. But, for the most part I do not have anything new to add.
Are you back from the Vacation?
Yes, This website became too popular from mid January to mid March. In a span of two months, I had 2,860,785 dates. I have been kissed 1,107,743 times, and have drank 723,600 adult beverages.
I have had 1,727,474 meals. I have taken my top off 336,171 times and my boobs have been fondled 307,394 times. I have gotten naked 211,065 times, 26,516 times in public places, 5,445 with an audience watching. Had sex 63,398 times, been massaged to orgasm 22,776 times, and went down 6,711 times. Only 22,581 slept over night with me in my bed. They are the real special ones, the one in a million guys... or more accurately, the 7893.29 in a million guys.
This ate a lot of bandwidth and slowed down page loads to the point where the game grew unplayable. My strategy for resolving this is to make the game available to download and play offline, while making some changes to the game itself to reduce page requests.
Is the live version the same as the download version?
99% Yes, the differences: 1) no age check, 2) this page isn't on download version
― gr8080, Thursday, 17 January 2008 03:46 (sixteen years ago) link