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The Pink Penguin1 year ago

First let me start by thanking you for your diligent work. Such detailed observations made it easy for me to fix the first 3 issues. The new version is available to download already, both on itch and Patreon.

For point 4, I'll need to investigate much more. It might be an underlying problem with the version of Narrat used and upgrading to the most recent of Narrat is not in the plans right (it would require weeks if not months of work do to many breaking changes and customization that needed to be built into Narrat, time currently spent on Ascension II).

As for point 5, what I could do is provide a semi-manual way for players to make saves at Edgar's apartment / cabin. I originally opted not to do that, as I wanted the game to be less of a scrub save type of game, but  if the players want it, I can put a few hours in implementing it.

Lastly, are you on my Patreon? If yes, please send me a direct message, there's a possibility I'd like to discuss with you.

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InsaneMonster1 year ago

Not really, I don't have a Patreon account.

I think with how the way Narrat manages saving and loading there's very little chance to avoid save scrubbing unless the game is linear through and through. I've modded the apartment choices to include a save command and configured the save slots to 30 instead of the default 10 though most players would not need more than 20 I'd reckon. The logic worked during playtesting though I've not verified the save state enough to identify issues. 

Some follow up to yesterday's issue and other newly discovered ones:

  1. I've re-read Era's scripts and most likely identified the cause of the issue. Since the option to check how Era is doing is determined by a variable counting how many Era scenes have been unlocked, resetting this variable to remove the option once clicked also resets the Era scene counts. Because the save point only comes in after this reset happened, player must complete the quest on that instance or Era will be locked out for hire permanently as if player failed the quest challenges. This will also affect all save files due to Narrat's behaviour as well, meaning any previous save that already unlocked one of Glory House/Dungeon/Amazon Guild will no longer work.
  2. Unless this is an intended feature, girls working in buildings with Intelligent as primary stat will not gain any skill proficiency as the stat is not part of the core case list when evaluating customer satisfaction.
  3. Just to confirm if the stat portrait of each girl can only be viewed during evaluation and skill upgrade. If this is intended then its fine, but its and idea to throw around to have a gallery view of these portraits for those that would potentially miss them if they maxed out skills while working, ie. an option that loads the images recollection-style. Not necessarily required, but another release as a mod for example.

Think there are other little issues like the investigation options at Rose's house, but pretty minor and not necessarily game changing both in VN and SLG wise so I'll leave them out.

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The Pink Penguin1 year ago

Again thank you so much. This is a great help. I've made the correction for 1 and 2. As for 3, that is as intended. A mod might make sense, or if there is enough demand I'll put the time into it to add that feature.

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InsaneMonster1 year ago

I've tested out one clean run aimed at collecting all achievements and debugging along the way on 1.03. This will be the final list of the issues discovered as I really don't feel like running the length of the game again now that it's considered a full release. Some will be generalized if the fix requires a rework or review, others are more straightforward.

  1. The save mod I previously tested hasn't returned any issues so far, or at the very least the code worked relatively similar to the other save prompts. I simply added a save choice option in the apartment daily function that will run a save using the current day number as the name, then loop the function again like how you did for the hunting lodge code input error handling. It works fine as a bandaid or feature, I must say that the option to manually save (or save scrubbing) rose greatly in value as the game progresses specifically due to Narrat's limitations in handling references and save behavior. In this one clean run alone I've met with at least 6 game-breaking instances due to this reason that require loading a previous manual save, not including other instances that require modding to fix. 
  2. Oldtown apartment cost 20 coins instead of 40 mentioned by Era.
  3. The dialogue between Sarah and Zephyrne might no longer be relevant due to how the triggers for Sarah worked. Sarah is almost certain to complete her visits in less than 40 days, most likely not enough for a player to accumulate wealth to purchase 8 buildings in that timestamp. 
  4. Oratory option gives Athletic experience instead during the Sultry Nights acrobat harassment prologue.
  5. During the Dark Alley event, Edgar rolls Cunning instead of Perception when figuring out Nasya's condition.
  6. The intelligent skill gain fix is not effective, girls are still not gaining experience in buildings with intelligent primary stat. I am not entirely sure how Narrat deals with code compiling in src, public and dist differently, but the one difference I noticed when trying to build an in-game gallery viewer is the changes made in src folder won't reflect in the game at all unlike those made in dist where the changes will kick in after a game restart. 
  7. Hunting lodge - Syndra: the failed roll for anal scenes will result in a black screen. This doesn't seem to be a code issue, as the issue still persisted after a file rename on both image files and code sequences. Might have to check on the image files themselves for this one, specifically anal2 and analCum2.
  8. Hunting lodge - Brizrahne and Shae: Both have part of the scenes playing sounds with no stops. For Brizrahne this occurred in the success roll for anal scene, whereas for Shae this occurred in success foll for cunnilingus scene, both in naked and lingerie form.
  9. Ending achievement cannot "unlock" in the achievement store due to Narrat's save behavior. I suspect you will have to loop the game to the beginning or create a save option at the end of the game for it to be stored. 

Now for the generalized fix, because of Narrat's limitation in handling references in variables when saving, I'd say majority of the game triggers are under risk if players picked a wrong option and thought loading a previous save will bail them out. In several instances I have found that this is not the case - a mistake made in a choice might have permanent results that even a save will not help, resulting in game-breaking situations or worse, affects other unusual game behavior that is difficult to troubleshoot. Some instances that I can think of:

  1. Rose investigation progress - skipping all 3 options while investigating Rose's house and only choose "There was nothing left for Edgar to search." somehow still spawns the thief store, tailor store and docks location while the city hall remains locked out.
  2. Dialogue conversation triggers cannot be reversed once made, not even loading any auto/manual save. This is true for majority of the progress-listed conversations ie. hunting lodge girls, Zephyrne, first encounters etc.
  3. Especially with first encounters, not being able to reset variables in these encounters properly means that any branching or consequential events afterwards cannot be recovered without loading a save that forces the first encounter again. This usually means a new game for many cases.

 That's pretty much it I guess.

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The Pink Penguin1 year ago

Thanks InsaneMonster. I'll see which I can fix with limited effort time over the next month. I'm focusing my efforts mainly on the second game, but knowing these bugs are in my game irk me to no end. So I'll likely still spend some time to fix many of them.

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