Principal Photography Begins

So after a bunch of prep work (that I still have not finished), I decided to start the long but fun task of making pictures for the sequel, and thought I’d share the first two.  One of the pictures I changed in the 7.1 date was the picture of driving up to the restaurant downtown.  There is now a bar behind the restaurant with big windows so that people in the restaurant can see into the bar and vice versa.  Scene 2 of the sequel starts in that bar.  (Scene 1 is talking to Ariane on the telephone, and I have no clue yet how to make that visually interesting).

Anyways, as you can tell from the picture above, Ariane has a slightly different look.   Not only does she have a new outfit (I was getting tired of the red top black pants and basic black dress) but a new haircut.  The hair I used in the first game (Kyoko Hair MK3) was a freebie available online at the time. The style is all over the web, so I upgraded.  Ariane is still based on Victoria 3, but the other 3 models behind her are Victoria 4 based.

The other major change is evident if you click on the picture above and see the full sized version.  The first game pictures had 800 x 500 resolution, the new one is 1280 x 720.  In other words, I’m going from standard-def to high-def, requiring better renders and more attention to details.  This means longer render times, in fact I wrote this post while waiting for a picture to render.

I’m trying really hard to avoid spoilers, so I am strictly talking about production. I guess I can let it slip that the 3 women in the background each have a role in the plot, as does the baseball game on TV.  The baseball game is tricky to write about in the script, as I never say what city the game is set in, and therefore I also can’t mention the name of the local team, or who they are playing.  This also avoids any trademark issues with major league baseball.

This second image is a major accomplishment.  Based on the angle of the picture, I knew I would be looking at the windows into the restaurant.  To make things more difficult, it was established in the first game that the restaurant itself is surrounded by windows looking out onto the busy downtown shopping district. And to make things even more difficult, the reason why you are in the bar in the first place is because every table in the restaurant is full, which means I had to fill every visible seat.  There is also now a 5th person in the bar as well, you can see the back of some guys head talking to the blonde girl you may recognize as the owner of the strip club.

The only way I could do a complicated picture like this was in pieces.  I did the foreground with five people, and the windows were just blank.  I then created the background from the set I created for the first game.  Matching up the camera angles so that they look like the same set was a little tricky.  I found a way to create a bunch of “extras” which is what you see walking on the sidewalk in the far background.

I hope these extras are useful enough to fill a “crowded movie theater” as that is the next scene I have to work on.  Like I said previously, I am doing this production the same way Hollywood produces movies.  I did not write the script with visual logistics in mind, and figured I’d worry about that later, so now I have to worry about it.  Of course in Hollywood, the script changes when the production gets complicated.  Maybe if the “crowded movie theater” is too difficult to do, maybe it will become a theater that is too dark to see anyone.

I think I will stop there before I give away the plot.

The 3D Movie FAD is Already Over

Only about 3 years ago the mantra in Hollywood  was that newly perfected 3D technology would change the way we watch movies forever.  Early experiments in RealD 3D began first with 3D animated Polar Express and live action Journey to the Center of the Earth, but it was James Cameron’s Avatar that really brought the technology to the collective forefront.  Well more than half of the theater box office for one of the most successful movies ever were spent on 3D tickets.

And then Hollywood did something amazingly stupid: They seriously jacked up the prices for 3D presentations of movies.  At the same time they started using crappy technology to convert 2D movies to 3D.  The double whammy caused 3D ticket sales to drop significantly.  Now we have on average 2 new 3D movies a month, and the gimmick generates less than a quarter of movie tickets.

Meanwhile, 3D enabled TVs are not selling very well.  Panasonic blames Hollywood’s lack of quality 3D movies, but I believe it is the huge cost of both TVs and glasses combined with the fact that 3D viewing is just not conducive to a living room viewing environment.   With the new “passive” 3D TVs that allow you to watch with movie theater glasses, you have to watch sitting up, not lying on the couch.  Even worse is the “without glasses” TVs which only work if you are sitting up AND directly in front of the TV.  Better to go with the expensive “Active” glasses version if you ask me.

The last two weekends saw the release of the biggest budgeted 3D movies since Avatar: Transfomers: Dark of the Moon, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.  Most theaters had both 2D and 3D screenings of both movies.  Which did nearly 70% of theater goers see?  You guessed it — the 2D versions!

I just saw HPTDH2 in 3D IMAX, and while it was cool to see the movie on a really big screen, the 3D was far from perfect.  The polarized lenses on the glasses did not completely black out the other eye, which led to unwanted fuzziness, especially on whatever you were not looking directly at, and with a huge screen, I was not looking directly at a lot.   The problem comes from the fact that theaters are dark, and you are wearing sunglasses.  RealD 3D uses a combination of polarized lenses and yellow purple coloring to make the best separation possible, but it results in a dark screen  IMAX 3D only uses polarization, but to avoid a dark screen the lenses are as light as possible, this makes the screen brighter but fuzzier as the separation between eyes is not as good.

Ironically, 3D televisions with synched flickering produce much better separation and are perfectly bright, but the glasses (at $100 to $200 a piece) are out of the price range of theaters, and most home viewers as well.   The whole point of Hollywood pushing 3D in the first place was to get more people into theaters instead of watching at home, so there is not a lot of interest in catering to the home market.

In the course of making a big special effects movie in 3D, sometimes the 3D has to be manually adjusted.  While watching Harry Potter in 3D, I could tell which scenes were filmed in 3D and which were worked on in post production (the big IMAX screen is extremely telling).  In the latter case people looked like cardboard cutouts inflated like balloons to give them depth.  Then there are the added effects to make use of 3D.  In every Harry Potter movie until this one, when someone was killed they were hit by a green light and then they keeled over.  In this one they exploded in 1000 pieces, because it looks good in 3D.  They should have stuck with the old method just for continuity sake.  The best way to see a movie is in IMAX in good old 2D.   I have only seen three other films in recent years in 3D, the last was Pixar’s Up! which was two years ago.  My latest experience will not get me to do so more often, in fact I plan to avoid 3D in the future unless something really special comes around.

Hollywood already has plans for 3D releases for the rest of this year and next.  It is too late to stop most of them, but some are already being scrapped as the added cost is not justifiable except on big blockbusters.  3D movies do better with international markets than in the US, so until that trend ends, expect 3D movies to continue, but do not expect more and more 3D screens in your local cineplex.  The projection equipment is expensive, and theater owners are not likely to buy more projectors if they can’t make their money back.  2D will continue to reign supreme for the foreseeable future.

Dating Sim 7.1 Bridge to the Sequel

7.0 worked out pretty good, fewest bugs ever!  Because I fixed those bugs, and added practically no new content, this one ought to be even fewer, or hopefully none.  The primary focus of the 7.1 release is to set up the sequel, but since the sequel has at least a good year before release, there should be no rush to get this out.  Primarily, I have made some of the pictures, especially the strip club, convenience store, and amusement park, a bit prettier, and decided not to wait a long time to release them.

Casting

So the making of the sequel seems to follow exactly like the production of a movie.  I’m still in pre-production (script, set design, storyboards, etc.) and started the chore of casting the sequel.  There are approximately 7 new female roles and 3 new male roles, plus a bunch of bit parts.  There were originally a bunch more, but I consolidated some of the smaller roles so I would not have to cast as many models.

One of the consolidated roles is the strip club manager/ pretty blonde at the bar/ acquaintance of Rebecca.  In order to make the consolidation work, the strip club manager in the first date must play the role in the second.  The problem is that Stephanie 1, the model who plays the strip club manager in the Dating Simulator, can’t act.  She is good in the bit part I have her play in the first date, but in the expanded role of the second date she just can’t hack it.  Even gave her a screen test as seen on the left, but it takes too much post-production  work to make her look good.  I need someone who can give me what I want right up front.  (Do I sound like an evil director or what?)

So I recast the role with newcomer Bijou.  I told her that if I gave her the role, she would have to go blonde, and she agreed.  So after a bleaching session, I had her pose for the same magazine cover, and she looked awesome, and she got the role.

I then did a re-shoot of some of the strip club scenes thus editing out the old actress.

Meanwhile, another casting concern came up.  The sequel calls for a “famous supermodel” and it was decided that since we were doing some reshoots for the first date anyways, that maybe we could establish a supermodel in some background print media.  That means we have to cast the role early then.  Considering her popularity we figured Lana would be best, but she does not come cheap, so we had to adjust the budget to give her what she wanted.  She came in for a morning, did some bikini and lingerie modeling for us, then left by lunch time.  We are excited to work with her again when principle photography starts on the sequel.

So, Which Date Are You Doing A Sequel Of?

Since beginning to put together a sequel, there has been this nagging question:  There are literally thousands of possible dates you can have in the Dating Simulator, which one is the official “date” on which the sequel will be based?  This is a problem, not only because of the sheer number of dates, but also because of the Sequel Rule: “All sequel’s must be written in a way so that anyone who has not seen the prior one will still be able to enjoy the new one.”  In other words, I have to create the sequel as if the player does not know about the first game.  This is especially true because the sequel has a different format to the game that is likely to appeal to many who did not like the format of the first.

Therefore, the official “first date” must be a generic boring date.  I should only need to introduce Ariane as a “girl you have dated before” and just go with it.  If some of the crazy insane things that might have happened on the first date were introduced in the sequel to new players, it would probably scare many away.  And yet this is a very unfair scenario to fans of the first Dating Simulator, and that is why I will be introducing a way to port first date scenarios to the sequel.  The code is in version 7.1, but is presently disabled until the sequel actually gets close to completion.

Basically, at the end of every complete date, you are given up to five hexadecimal digits which define your first date experience.  You  will then have the opportunity to type that number at the beginning of the sequel and the sequel will be catered to that first date.  Five hexadecimal digits, means 20 binary states.  For you non-math geeks, there are 20 yes or no questions about the date you just had, and based on the answers to those questions, an approximate tale of the date emerges.  To see this in action run the 7.1 date sim in “debug mode” (start the game by clicking on default2.htm)  As you play the date, you will see an item called experience change in value. If you click on this value, it will display a summary of your date so far. Warning: clicking on the experience value will immediately end the date.

Notice as you play out a date with Ariane that you can do quite a lot on the date without even changing the experience value.  If you stay at Ariane’s place, and Ariane never gets drunk or naked, and you end the date without screwing up, then that will be a date experience score of 0, and defines a generic default date in the sequel.  Almost as common, or maybe more so, is a date experience score of 1, which is the same as a 0 date, except it ended badly.

Now to make a really accurate summary of a date I would need at least 40 yes or no questions, and that would mean a 10 digit date experience to type in, and a really complicated sequel.  By limiting it to 20, I’m making it easy for everybody.  The 20 items I picked are either memorable events, like the photo shoot, the strip club, or sleeping on the boat.  Or, they are events likely to occur again in the sequel, like going to the restaurant, going to the night club, or meeting Rebecca.  Events in the first category will trigger detours in the sequel, like if you did the photoshoot with a disposable camera, Ariane will have had the pictures developed handing you the stack to look at.  Events in the second category will change how the game introduces things, like Ariane invites you to meet her at the restaurant.  If you went previously, she will say “meet me at the restaurant we went to last time”, if not, she will give you directions how to get there.  Similarly, if you see Rebecca in the sequel and you met her before, she will be called by name, if not she will be called “that skinny blonde retail clerk” until she finally introduces herself.

The plan is to not only have side paths for imported good dates with Ariane, but also imported bad dates.  There will be at least one path in the sequel that can only be reached if Ariane already hates you.  And don’t think that a really good first date will automatically result in a really good second date.  I solved that scenario by setting the second date more than a week after the first date.  That way Ariane will be pissed that you slept with her and then never called her again.

Well hope that gets everyone excited for the sequel.  Now time to start really working on it, and hopefully finish it within a year.