Hey Hunter Sugar,
thanks for the detailed feedback. I've just made 0.22.3 public, so hopefully it will help with some bugs(I think I fixed heels in that one). Have you read walkthough? It may help with finding triggers. Speaking about milk potion bug, hmm, It's kind of new for me, never heard about that problem, can you tell me know exact option name in menu that dissapeared? this way I can easiliy track it down and check what's going on. If you are talking about breast expanstion potion, you should hook it up yourself by the way.(after using mind swap potion on gollum).
Glad you liked the game, I'm happy someone called it Akabur-flavoured, great honor lol, witch trainer really influenced me a lot.
You are also welcome to join games Discord server, it's pretty active and people there sometimes give better advice than I'am
Viewing post in 0.21.0 Is here! 0.20.3 is now public... comments
I eventually got to the part with the body swap potion and it cleared that up.
Actually playing through 22.3 right now. Having generally a good time. I glanced through one walkthrough but it was a bit confusing. For one I think the “single full playthrough” structure is a bit detrimental when you just want to check something specific to double check your triggers. And, I guess perhaps more importantly, that walkthrough was for 22 so I started running into things that didn’t make sense and abandoned it.
Regarding the heels, still shows as -1/9 in the text option and Sauron says “she’s not ready yet”. But I still have some stuff to go through.
I feel like right now there is a ton to love but two main issues. One is this of being still unsure as to how consistent the whole signposting is. The journal is helpful here and, imo, really the way to go about the whole thing, but it is still a bit all over the place. For example, I’m staring at a quest listing the next step as “Give rat wine to Gollum” but I’ve been through that, I’ve got both expansion potions hooked up to the pipes.
For these in-progress projects this is always central, because you’re not sure which threads have more to pull. I’m 3/5 posters and I’m here thinking the final 2 are likely in areas I can’t access yet… but I THOUGHT I’d been everywhere 21.3 had available so… is this really incomplete? It’s confusing as the player (even if she wouldn’t wear the armor anyway at the stage I’m in). Thankless work in some ways but, still important
Second is that, and I’m kinda sorry to put it like this, but the slop brings this game down a lot of the time. Cards on the table, I’m a hater and gave this game a go even then as the whole thing looked interesting, and it IS. But as much as you’ve done a good curation there’s weirdness everywhere. Looking out the window, Sauron’s comment made me think I had to actually pinpoint the brothel in there to unlock going there but trying to correlate the layout to the game area proved pointless quickly and paying attention to all of the buildings bleeding into one another and with mismatched parts was a bit of a bummer. Galadriel and the queen have inconsistent art styles in scenes, everything animated is just extremely cursed…. the benches in the castle are… interesting… There’s a mix of things that are obvious and things that come up once you look a bit closer. I don’t know if you use LLMs as well for writing and code but 22 had some weirdness here and seeing the stuff in the art really makes one second guess the rest.
Sending Galadriel collecting mushrooms got the game pretty confused about what time of day it is. The text implies she’ll go and you can do other stuff in the day but if you transition a couple screens it’s suddenly night… except when it isn’t (office was bright with night actions). There was also some joking about Sauron making innuendos about the mushroom but… he doesn’t so it’s just all a bit strange.
Some strangeness too in the aftermath of the poster tasks. Miles repeats exactly the same dialogue on the second time. His options also show as “Level 2/4” as opposed to the usual “(2/4)” so it’s a conspicuous inconsistency. And speaking of the progress markers for these quests, a lot of the ones I’ve run into with 22 have weird and wrong numbers, something I hadn’t experienced before. For example,the Lazy Dan one started as 2/9 before I even touched it and I THINK it’s done despite me definitely not have gone through whole 7 steps there (more like 3, I believe).
And this is the kind of thing that I mean by dragging the game down. And I want to make it clear that while I am, actually, a very strong hater of the bs they call “AI” these days, I’m not hating on the project or on you for using it… This game very much IS my jam, I would love to see it succeed and, again, I love a lot that you’ve put into it.
I generally don’t join Discords voluntarily but I’ll be following and cheering on from the comment sections over here at least =)
All the best and looking forward to how things go
Hey again, Hunter Sugar,
Let’s go step by step here too.
Yeah, I’m aware the game needs more notes. I guess the main issue is that my time is limited, so I basically have two choices:
- Pause the game development and add notes/hints for older quests (less fun for me, less content for the players).
- Continue as is and rely on people figuring things out, reading the WT and changelogs, and asking the community on Discord.
I prefer path 2 for now (because the game needs more content, in my opinion). At some point, when the game is finished (or at least Galadriel’s branch), I plan to refactor and add more hints and notes.
About AI let’s split the question into three parts:
- Visuals – My initial motivation for using it was that I really suck at drawing(you can decompile the game and look for 'room' images folder to see what i mean) and didn’t have the money to hire an artist. So my choice wasn’t “make a game with AI visuals vs. make a game with hand-drawn art.” It was “make a game with AI visuals vs. make no game at all.” After I started making some buck, I made a post on my SubscribeStar (https://subscribestar.adult/posts/2258038)that I'am looking for non-ai artists, even contacted some myself(ended up not finding anyone). So yeah, I'am generally open to spending some money on reworking stuff to non-ai visuals. Maybe not everything, because it will destroy my wallet, but at least sth.
- Text – Texts are hand written, but translation is automatics. no money/time → used AI. Now that I’m earning something, I have one proofreader, so I’m working on it.
- Code – I write Ren’Py code myself and sometimes buy templates on itch.io. I use LLMs for mini-games occasionally, but 90–95% of the code is written by me.
To sum it up: I do what I can with the limited resources I have to squeeze the maximum value for the players. And I know it’s not perfect!
Again, after the game is finished(at least the core), I plan to do a big refactor and clean it up better:)
Thanks for taking time and writing this,
Mega
Refactoring and polishing vs adding new content is always a tough decision for projects like this. I think it’s very understandable to want to focus on content as it IS hard to enter into a rabbit hole where you’re forever reworking the same thing. Still think the quest log/guidance is a big one but can’t fault you for wanting to focus on new stuff.
Ultimately these type of comments are all suggestions and I think it’s important from us, the people making them, to make them with this understanding. We want to try and be helpful but really whoever’s actually making the thing are the people who need to make the decisions and live with the consequences, so that’s where our part ends =)
And with the whole AI, I am personally a very strong hater, maybe if I’d looked more closely I’d not even have tried the game to begin with. But I did try my best not to direct all that vitriolic energy at you. The reasons behind it, I absolutely understand, I’m a coder who can’t draw myself, this stuff is DAUNTING.
I hope this haven’t come across as a personal attack or anything in the vicinity, and if it did I’m sorry, it wasn’t the intention.
The point with the code and whatnot is really a sort of “paranoia”. Once you know there’s this stuff involved, you start second guessing everything and that in itself is a bit sad, imo. I mentioned and stand by it that there is a ton to love in this game and I believe that this is because of your own effort and care. False positives when you’re on the lookout for slop are a thing and they’re sad.
Excited about the proofreader, even just a little polishing in some key areas is going to go a long way.
Despite everything I am, in fact, still interested to see how this moves forward.
All the best