Igromania 1999 March/18_03_1999.iso/DLH.exe/0998.DLM/grad/GRADHINT.TXT

Text File | 1998-07-27 | 25KB | 332 lines

Attributes

Stamina is a measure of how much energy a girl has. Her maximum stamina is determined by her strength. If stamina drops too
low, this can cause exhaustion and eventually sickness. Most activities cause stamina to drop. If a girl decides to visit the park
on the weekend, then her stamina will return to the maximum. You can also raise stamina to the maximum by ordering a girl to
take a day of rest on the weekend, or by buying her dinner.

Strength determines the maximum value of stamina. A weekend gymnastics class will raise strength by two points. Myna starts
the game with her strength dangerously low and you'll need to keep nagging her until she builds it up to 60 or so. Misa can also
use a little encouragement here.

Kindness, Popularity, and Friendliness are three different names for the same thing; the game uses them interchangably.
Friendliness increases when you don't put much pressure on the girls and let them do what they want. Basically, the ways to
increase friendliness are: Teach class in a lenient style; take a friendly attitude when you meet the girls on the weekend; praise
them in guidance sessions; give them gifts; and buy them dinner. If friendliness drops too low, there is a chance that students will
become distrustful and run away.

Respect goes up when you pressure your students to excel. The ways to increase it are: Teach class in a strict style; take a
strict attitude when you meet the girls on the weekend; give them severe warnings in guidance sessions; give them music boxes;
and buy them dinner at expensive restaurants. If respect drops too low, there is a chance that students will become distrustful
and eventually run away. In general, friendship and respect should be kept high, but it's dangerous to let them both get above 90
at the same time. (See the "Ecstasy" section, below...)

Elegance is a measure of refinement. Low elegance can cause rebelliousness, but elegance is easy to raise, and the girls will
usually build it up on their own with no prompting. However, if a student's elegance gets too high, then she'll become "stuck-up".
Once it gets up around 80 points, you should discourage further development. Elegance is raised by flower arrangment classes,
and by going to church. (Yes, in the game you can order one of your students to stay away from church. I'm not sure if teachers
in Japan really have this much power; but I do know what would happen if an American teacher tried it.)

Charm determines how much a student is liked by her classmates. This is important because of the "Focus Student" teaching
option. Students learn more if they're good friends with the focus student...so, if the focus student has high charm, everyone else
in class will learn more. Sari and Misa both start the game with very low charm, so you'll need to encourage them to develop it.
Charm is increased by aerobics and cooking classes. You can get an extra charm boost if you arrange your schedule so that
you meet the student during one of these classes, and take a friendly attitude with her. Another way to boost charm is to give a
bouquet of flowers as a gift. I usually try to raise charm until it's up above 60. If charm rises too high, then a student may start
going out on dates on the weekends. This can lead to two problems: It prevents her from doing her normal weekend activities,
and it can cause her to become heartbroken.

Studiousness reflects the girls' study habits. If studiousness is low, then students are likely to cut class. However, if a girl's
studiousness gets too high, then she'll get stressed-out. Studiousness is raised by weekend tutoring, and you can get an extra
boost if you arrange your schedule so that you meet the student during her session, and then take a strict attitude. Giving away
dictionaries also increases studiousness. You should try to keep this attribute up around 75 for Sari, Cyndi, and Rica. Misa and
Myna should be less studious, especially in the early stages of the game when you need to steer them into other activities.

English, History, and Math are the test scores in those three subjects. Obviously, they're increased in the classroom, and
during weekend tutoring sessions. If all of your students finish the year with combined scores in the high 1500's, then you're
doing fairly well.

Valuation is sort of an oddity. It's mostly based around the special events that occur...it gets a big boost after the school play
and the culture day festivities, and you can also pick up a few points if you do well with field day or exams. It drops by 20
points whenever a girl is caught in a violation. I'm not sure exactly what effect it has on gameplay, and there's very little you can
do to influence it.

Emotional Crises

At various points during the game, students can have emotional crises that impair their performance. Some crises happen at
random, while others are the result of attributes getting too high or too low.

If you don't do anything for 2 or 3 weeks, then the problem will eventually resolve itself. You can speed up the process by
setting up a weekend appointment with the affected student and doing "Counseling". This will instantly cure all problems (except
exhaustion, sickness, and running away).

If the problem is attribute-related, then counseling will also adjust the relevant attribute by 20 points. For example, if a student is
stressed, then counseling will subtract 20 from her studiousness.

The complete list of crises follows:

Exhaustion occurs when you let stamina fall too low. An exhausted student can still learn, but at a reduced rate. If a student
starts the week exhausted, then you should use a lenient teaching style to avoid wearing her out further. If you have several
students near exhaustion, then you might consider assigning free study and hope that some of them have enough sense to rest.
Once the weekend arrives, check to see if the exhausted student has scheduled a trip to the park. If she has, then that will cure
her exhaustion. Otherwise, you should order her to take a day of rest or buy her dinner.

Sickness is the result of untreated exhaustion. The student will be absent for a few days, but eventually return to school with her
stamina back at the maximum. There is no way to speed recovery.

Stress occurs when studiousness rises too high. A stressed student won't learn anything in class.

Stuck-upness can occur if elegance rises too high. A stuck-up student won't learn anything in class...in fact, she'll start
forgetting material she already knows. She'll she'll also lose friendliness, respect, and charm, and become less-liked by the other
students. (That is, you'll see fewer "smiley faces" in the friendship level charts.)

Moodiness shows up more or less at random. (I think it shows up less often when charm is high, but I'm not positive about
this.) It causes the same losses as stuck-upness.

Fighting is the result of untreated moodiness. It's basically the same as moodiness, but with more intense symptoms.

Rebelliousness is the result of low elegance. This is a very rare condition because elegance has a natural tendency to rise. Sari
can become rebellious if you neglect her for the first few weeks of the game, but the other students aren't at risk at all. (In fact,
it's quite a challenge to get the other students into this state. You'll need to repeatedly praise their elegance, keep them away
from church and flower classes, and not interfere if they decide to go out dancing or partying on the weekends.)

Heartbreak is associated with high charm. This is a fairly rare problem. It causes a drop in studiousness and in test scores. A
heartbroken girl is at risk of running away.

Distrust is caused by low respect or friendliness. It causes drops in friendliness, respect, studiousness, and test scores. If the
problem is ignored, the student may run away.

Running Away is the result of untreated heartbreak or distrust. The student will be absent from class. You can attempt to find
her by searching on the weekend, but this may fail. If not found, the student will return on her own after a few weeks.

In Love, In Love w/Professor, and Flirting apparently exist, but I haven't seen them in the game yet. (I stumbled across them
while I was exploring the different files on the disk...look at KJ_MOJI.BMP and KJ_COM.BMP in the /GRAD directory
on your CD.) More information as it develops...

              Ecstasy is what I call the state that students can go into when friendliness and respect are both very high.
              You won't be directly informed that a student is ecstatic, but you'll notice some changes in the graphics and
              dialogue. For example, Misa does this cute little blush. An ecstatic student learns an extra point of material
              every day. Students don't stay continously ecstatic, but slip in and out every two or three days for as long as
              their attributes stay high enough. (I'm wondering if this might really be the "flirting" or the "in love with
              professor" state from the last paragraph? If it is, it doesn't show up on the Student Info screen like it should...)
              Note that there is a cost to letting students become ecstatic: A combination of high friendliness and high
              respect can cause the student to become too dependent on you. If the statistics aren't lowered by the end of
              the year, then this will count against you in your evaluation. I'm not sure of the exact cutoff, but I think you'll
              be okay as long as one of the two is below 90.

               Unhappiness is another state that doesn't show up on the student info screen. When a student enters this
               state, she'll switch over to the graphic associated with "moodiness" when class is in session...but she won't
               be reported as moody, and counseling sessions won't cure her. An unhappy student will learn two fewer
               points worth of material a day. I'm not sure exactly what causes unhappiness, but it appears to be linked to
               the student not learning anything...so Misa and Myna are at risk in the opening weeks of the game. I'm also
               not sure how to force a student to stop being unhappy; I've had them linger in this state for months at a time.
               Finally, the student's happiness at the end of the game may be related to how many weeks she was unhappy
               in class; I'm still investigating this.

Gameplay

The classroom menu

The first thing you'll notice is the 10-point report card. It's really not all that useful, because you grade on the curve. Once the
slower students have caught up with the rest of the class, you'll just have a mass of 7's and 8's. The important information is on
the "Student Info" page.

Go to the student info page, and decide which subject you want to teach. (Probably the one with the lowest overall scores.)
Also note which three students need the most help in that subject.

Select that as your focus subject, and then adjust the seating so that the three weakest students are in the front row. (Students in
the back row will learn two points-per-day less). Stressed students should always go in the back row since they can't learn
anything anyway.

Next, check your students' stamina. If everyone is up above 25 or so, then they'll be able to handle a weak of strict teaching.
Otherwise, you should probably teach leniently. Free study lets students choose their own activities; it essentially gives them five
days of "weekend" activities. If the students actually come to class, they'll learn pretty quickly...but if their studiousness is low,
then they'll skip class and the week will be wasted.

Teaching style also has an effect on your students' friendliness and respect. A lenient style increases friendliness and lowers
respect, a strict style increases respect and lower friendliness. Free study doesn't change anything on its own, but you'll see
gains or losses depending on what activities the students chose.

After selecting a subject and a teaching style, you can select a focus student. This should normally be the slowest student in the
class. But if this student has very low charm, you can sometimes get better results by focussing on a more popular girl instead;
the line at the bottom of the report card will show you the estimated rates of improvement.

Finally, check to see if the students in the back row will be learning anything. Students can become unhappy if they go more
than two weeks without learning anything, so you might want to change the seating arrangement to prevent problems.

The Weekend Menu - Student Plans

At the weekend menu, you have the option of changing the weekend activities for one of the girls. Since you can only make one
set of changes, you need to set priorities. For some useful charts that show how different activities affect attributes, go to this
page.

The first thing to look for is exhaustion. If one of the students is low on stamina or exhausted, make sure she's not going to a
party. If she's going to the park then her stamina will be restored, but otherwise you should order her to rest. (Unless you plan
to buy her dinner.)

Next, are anyone's attributes too low? If studiousness is low, then assign some tutoring in whichever subject is weakest.
Strength can be built up by assigning gym class, and charm can be built up by assigning aerobics. (You can also build up
elegance by assigning flower arrangement, but I've never seen a need to do this; the girls are pretty good at building up elegance
with no encouragement.)

On the other hand, are any attributes too high? If studiousness is up around 90, and the student has scheduled two days of
tutoring, then she's a case of burn-out waiting to happen. You should schedule her for gym, aerobics, or even a day of rest. If
elegance is too high, then discourage flower arrangement and church.

If no one has attribute problems, then check to see if anyone is going cruising, dancing, partying, or out to karaoke. These
activities all do significant damage to stamina, studiousness, and test scores, and have no benefits other than maybe a lousy
one-point gain in charm. Cancelling these activities is a good idea if there's nothing more pressing that needs to be done.

The Weekend Menu - Professor's Plans

Once you've changed a student's schedule, you should decide whether to spend the weekend in the classroom, office, or
suburbs. This will determine which end-of-weekend menu you get. In the classroom or office, you can set up a guidance
session, a counseling session, or give a student a gift. In the suburbs, you can search for violations, look for runaways, or invite a
student out for dinner.

You should also think about which students you'll meet at different destinations, since meeting students during the weekend is a
good way to boost friendship and respect.

If you take a laid-back attitude when you run into students, then friendliness will rise and studiousness will drop. This is useful
for preventing stress.

If you take a friendly attitude when you run into students, then friendliness will rise. In addition, if the student is at aerobics or
cooking class, she'll gain twice as much charm as she would otherwise.

If you take a strict attitude, then respect will rise. If the student is in a situation where studiousness or elegance will rise, then
they'll also gain twice as much of these attributes as they would otherwise. If they're in a situation where either of these would
fall, then the loss will be cut in half. (So if a girl has high elegance to begin with, and you take a strict attitude with her in flower
class or church, you run the risk of getting her "stuck-up". Similarly, a strict attitude during a tutoring session is very helpful when
studiousness is low, but it can lead to stress if studiousness is already high.)

End of Weekend Menu - Classroom/Office

If you spent the weekend in the classroom or your office, then when the weekend is over, you can meet with one of the
students.

The "Guidance" option is used to encourage girls to change their attributes. If you praise one of her attributes, friendliness will go
up, and that attribute will go down. This can be used to prevent stress and stuck-upness.

If you severely warn her about an attribute, then respect will go up and friendliness will go down. On the next weekend, she'll
schedule two activities that will help build the attribute in question. Don't use this option unless the student has enough stamina to
get through two weeks with no rest.

The third option is "casually warn". I'm not sure exactly what this does. It doesn't affect friendliness or respect, and it doesn't
guarantee that the student will try to build up the attribute on the next weekend. It probably makes the student "more likely" to
build up the attribute in the future.

The "Counseling" option is used to resolve emotional crises. It immediatly erases all abnormal conditions except for exhaustion.
(Also, if a student is sick or has run away, then you obviously can't schedule a counseling session.)

The "Gift" option allows you to pay to increase attributes. All gifts increase friendliness. A dictionary also builds studiousness;
flowers build charm; and a music box builds respect.

End of Weekend Menu - Suburbs

If spend the weekend in the suburbs, you'll get a different menu.

You can search for illicit activities. If you find one, then you get a menu of three dialogue choices. Depending on how you
respond, friendliness and respect may go up or down by up to 5 points. My experience is that it's best to take a lenient sort of
attitude. Lecturing them about violating school policy or questioning their judgement usually hurts you. Simply ignoring the
violation seems to give you better results.

Note that the three dialogue options are actually selected at random from a longer list. It's possible that the "best" option won't
be available to you.

I'm not entirely sure of the significance of this. If you don't search for violations on your own, then it seems like the violation will
eventually be discovered by the PTA or somebody and then cause a huge scandal. If this happens, you'll lose 10 points of
friendliness, 20 points of respect, and 20 points of valuation. (It's also possible that a successful search will only stop the
violation if you take a strict kind of attitude...I still need to check this.) I'm not sure how frequently you should search. Searches
usually seem like a waste of time to me, since it's not too hard to fix lost friendliness and respect...but there's nothing you can do
about lost valuation. I'm not sure exactly what valuation is used for, so I don't know how big a problem this is.

The next option allows you to search for runaways. Obviously, you can only do this if you have runaway students. If the search
suceeds, then the student will be back in class on Monday.

The final option is to buy dinner for a student. This always raises stamina to the maximum, and increases friendliness. It also
effects respect, charm, elegance, studiousness, and test scores as shown on the tables page. In general, cheap meals reduce
them, and expensive meals raise them. Note that expensive meals use up a pretty good chunk of your disposable income; you
shouldn't plan on buying more than two or three a year.

Special Events

The School Play/Culture Day

These events increase the valuation score. For the best results, you should put the most popular girl in class in charge of the
project. This insures that the other students will spend a lot of time helping out.

Each girl gets a number of valuation points depending on the total amount of work everyone put in; this usually winds up being
around 10-15 points. The girl in charge gets double points as a bonus.

It doesn't make any difference which project you pick; you'll get different cut scenes, but the results are the same.

Note that there are ten variations on each cut scene: Five variations where enough work was put in to make the project
successful, and five where everyone stands around and complains about the low budget. You can hear all the sound clips by
going to the /grad/voice directory and playing the E0*.wav, S0*.wav, _e0*.wav, and _s0*.wav files.

Field Day

On field day, your class competes in the traditional Japanese school game of "kibasen". In this game, three players carry a fourth
on their shoulders, making a structure called a "kiba" (chariot). The goal is to break apart your opponent's chariot. Normally,
you'd also be able to win by grabbing the rival charioteer's cap...but that's not an option here; at Seika, the game is always
played for blood.

Winning this event also increases your students' valuation score, but not very dramatically. If your class wins the first round, they
only get a five-point bonus; winning higher rounds gives additional two-point bonuses.

The combat skills depend on various attributes. Hit Points is current stamina. Attack power is Elegance, or 99-Elegance,
whichever is greater. It controls how much damage you inflict in combat. (I guess very high elegance translates into finesse,
while very low elegance translates into good gutter fighting skills.) Defense ability is Strength; if it's high, you'll take less damage
when hit. The last attribute is EN which I guess stands for Energy, and I can't figure out how it's derived. If it's high, then you'll
tend to hit your opponent more frequently.

Once you've selected a student to enter the contest, you'll get see a sequence where she battles her opponent from another
class. The fight looks like an arcade game, but as far as I can tell, it plays out automatically and there's nothing you can do to
affect it.

It's possible to win the whole contest, but it's not easy...you'll need to beat Class A, which seems to consist entirely of girls who
look just like Mari from "Project A-Ko". If you really want to win, you'll need to slack off on studying and devote your
weekends to getting Cyndi and Rica pumped into shape. But it's really not worth it for such a small bonus.

When I play, I just try to win the first round. Cyndi can usually handle it with no problem, as long as you make her rest the day
before the meet so that she has maximum stamina..

Midterms/Finals

Exams affect valuation and studiousness. A score of 30 or below will cause them both to drop; scores of 70 and up make them
rise. The harder the exam, the more of an effect it has. Exams are given four times a year.

I like to play it safe here. I start with the 10th grade exam, then give the 11th grade exam twice, and then finish off with the 12th
grade exam.

Vacations

Vacations can turn into disasters if you don't know how to handle them.

At the "student's plans" menu, you might be tempted to bring everyone in for tutoring. But if you steal your students' vacation
time, their friendliness will plummet, and so will their studiousness. If you do this too many times, then when vacation is over,
you'll be stuck with a bunch of girls who have no interest in studying, and who all hate you.

Or you could bring them in for extra-curricular activies. But that's even worse. Their friendliness will still drop...and they'll take
that stupid flower arrangment class over and over again, push their elegance through the roof, and get stuck-up.

The only thing you can do is to give them free time and hope they make productive use of it. The trick here is to stack the deck,
and get them to voluntarily choose to study. To do this, try to keep everyone's studiousness up above 70 or so, so they'll come
in a few times a week for tutoring.

You need to start preparing a few weeks before vacation starts. Identify the problem students and get them to boost their
studiousness as much as you can. Even after vacation starts, you have access to the normal weekend menu, and you can use
that to fix problems as they develop.

As an added bonus, letting the students have free time increases their friendliness. If you take a uniformly strict attitude on the
weekends to boost studiousness, then respect will also go up, and you'll be enormously popular when classes resume.

At the "professor's plans" menu, it really doesn't matter which option you pick. It only controls which set of vacation pictures
you get to look at. The grid shows which girls you ran into...so, if you spend the week in the classroom, then the grid will tell
you who decided to come in for tutoring. (This isn't vital information; you can deduce it by looking at the end-of-week report.)

Finally, the "search" menu at the end of the week gives you one of the cutscenes described in the "Weekend Menu - Suburbs"
section. They play out the same way; you pick one of the three options, and get an appropriate change to friendliness and
respect.