No worries! This game seems a lot more involved than the standard "click to read the comic" VNs and that, I feel, really shows some of the dissonance in the supported default libraries. A whole bunch of "Just because it builds, doesn't mean it will work properly/good."
And I'd much rather have the "the testing showed it was ass so we scrapped it" than the "here's the build... what do you mean you can't see the CG's because it crashes when you click on the mcguffin!?"
(I am guessing that last sentence is meant to be "It was better for us NOT to do a linux build for this project") Alas, it was the former situation. Oh well. Thanks for the reply/explanation, and cheers.
Greetings, I prefer linux for most of my VN/Semi-smutty gaming and it looks like this is built in a flexible engine that can do linux builds.
Is it a matter of "We tried and it broke horribly [or had terrible performance] and there wasn't enough Linux users and they probably have another device" or "We thought about it but nobody had any Linux machines to test on".
If it's the latter, I'll be happy to try a linux-build demo, test to see if there are any issues, and then buy an itch download and show the receipt to get a linux port of the full game and test that too.
1. The games I got icks-from are MASSIVELY popular and a couple of them came from a group of authors hosting a little Furry VN publishing conglomerate, and only only some of the games had the icky moment while others didn't (or haven't yet)... and the one time I piped up to go "Yo, anyone else think that last part was ham-handed and fucked up?" to one of the updates for a game post-ick... I got, like 10 "NO, fuck off, weirdo!" responses and as an Old Gay it set off my "okay, everyone in this room doesn't like me, I'm gonna leave and pretend I never met them because I Very Much Feel like if they think about me again they'll make the time to find out where I live (digitally or IRL) and bother me."
2. My icks are not your icks. What might squick me out might be transcendentally good to you or someone else. The best thing I can suggest is if you come across a game that MIGHT give you an ick... (in my case it has "horror/torment/pshycological" all throughout the content warnings)... see if you can find spoilers or a plot summary and if they aren't available for the latest update, wait patiently. Also, if it's some small dev and a kinda unknown game so no-one is really talking about it... back burner it and only play when you are having a good day and if things start to head in a "wait a minute" direction, do a lil' self check-in and have that "I might need to put this down for a good long while because I don't feel like having my mood ruined right now" discussion with yourself.
A lot of horror furry VN's (particularly 'my wuff' horror VNs) suffer from "The writer(s) is(are) not skilled enough to properly ease people into and then out of some truly psychological terror-inducing stuff... so they'll just physically imprison the sympathetic character(s) and then write torture porn for a chapter or two, sometimes making the reader feel icky and soaking that whole segment of the story in a 'did the author(s) just write this to offload their need for therapy onto the reader?' ichor.
I've found I am PARTICULARLY sensitive to the "oop, this chapter was torture porn!" phenomenon in Furry VNs, as I often go to the comments after reading those updates to see if anyone else had wished the warnings were a bit clearer or there was an interrupt and the option to skip (similar to what's occasionally done for dubcon or paraphilia in VNs that have those segments) and only seeing a bunch of "yay, loved the new update" comments and then skulk away because I don't want to be the one to poop in the punch bowl and ruin everyone else's good time with a "so no-one else thought that part was kinda ham handed and fucked up?" comment.
So I was happy that this update put me through an emotional wringer and had some absolutely stomach-dropping terrifying moments... but it managed to not set off my icks like the usual "whelp, I guess it's time for the random BDSM scene where the writer(s) just forgot to mention that some of these characters flag black and crimson..." chapters I've run across. It gives me hope for the whole genre. So thanks for the good writing.
(I grieve for the missed opportunity to respond with "You need to find a copy of the old version", thus making for a long thread of intense naval-gazing back-and-forth that ends with "I found the old version" "Congratulations")
I mean, here's one of the writers justifying why they just HAD to bring back Brian the Rapist Methbear... a really gross polarizing character who seems to exist solely to be shockingly EEeeeEEEeevil but in ways that are super murky about whether The Great Evil Thing lurking nearby makes him that way or just made it easier for his already inherent evil to break through any charades of decency.
I go back to my original point: If the Dead Dove: Do Not Eat were to be introduced to Itch.IO: This is the game to introduce it.
If anything to start nipping the following comment threads in the bud:
"I have a criticism because this game made me feel icky and I wasn't ready for it, and other games tagged 'horror' or 'psychological horror' didn't affect me this badly and I enjoyed them more" (-17) ---- "Well it didn't affect ME that badly so your criticism and feelings are invalid and I am going to be pedantic and nitpicky about it (+5)"
I politely submit a formal request to add the "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat!" Tag to Arches (and Echo, and maybe The Smoke Room depending on how dark it's gonna get in endgame).
I had downloaded Arches and was following along, enjoying the art and the writing if not the terrible choices the characters kept making (Terrible in a 'Oh! You stupid bastard; of course you would do that and it's only going to make things worse!' way not a 'The character is only doing this because the writers are telling them to...' way)... but then it started getting back into some of the grittiest and most uncomfortable concepts of Echo... and I realized I didn't have the ability to go read route-guides and plot synopses to gently spoil myself and gird my psychological loins against nasty surprises like I did with Echo... and then Arches started getting more horrifying than Echo and I had a 'I am not enjoying this' epiphany and just shut down the game, uninstalled it, and deleted my review figuring I could come back when the game was complete and the route guides and synopses were available to peruse so I could be better prepared if I chose to read the rest.
But in the meantime, yeah... Dead Dove: Do Not Eat!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More info on "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat!"
In Archive Of Our Own (AO3), there is a tag that can be assigned called "Dead Dove: Do Not Eat!" Based on a joke in the show Arrested Development*, the tag has become a catch-all for "No, Really, the dark/disturbing/upsetting themes in the story are *very* dark/disturbing/upsetting, graphic, central to the plot, and relatively unavoidable and irredeemable. Please do not blow past the warnings, open it, read it, and feel dimmed/disturbed/upset, then come and complain in the comments about how dark/disturbing/upsetting the writing was and cast aspersions upon the writers and anyone who was more prepared than you. You were literally warned."
*A character finds a bag with 'Dead Dove: Do Not Eat!' written on it in the fridge... The character pulls the bag out of the fridge, opens it, looks inside... looks away shocked and disgusted... then, after a few beats, says "Well, I don't know what I expected."
Potential spoiler for beginning of By Your Hands... .
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People often forget that Rabbits have teeth. REALLY sharp ones.
But I don't think the rabbit girl did it. I think it was her brother, Brickson ShedHouse, Future love interest who has anger management problems and keeps bouncing in and out of sexy furry VN prison.
I didn't pick up immediately that BYH was supposed to be a ridiculously stereotypical Furry VN ("Hello, I am Bottom Bottom'sworth and here I am, my first day at Big Bara Tiddy University. I can't wait to see my childhood friends Topper McPecs and Pitcher LeBulge... but I'm worried because Pitcher has become friends with my Nemesis TsunTsun and his cronies Chesty and PhatUss"...) because, well, I am used to seeing a LOT of furry VN's start that way.
But with that explanation, HAAAAAHAHAHAHA. Well done and bravo.
That being said, I definitely see the dilemma of "Oh crap, what if By Your Hands brings the cold hard money and fans and turns Barachoda Bloom into a side project..." and to that... I say... exploit the hell out of it; Especially since you are already taking an 'executive producer' role on By Your Hands: "Hey, I'll outline and produce a Liam/Wyatt three way Bonus scene if you hit the funding stretch goal of [ridiculously high monthly income level that would allow you to hire a REALLY good team of smut-smiths for pinch-hitting some absolutely filthy CGs and horny prose]"
PC version needs a bit of permissions tweaking to get it running on Linux. [install directory]/GloryHounds.sh needs o+x applied to make it executable Several things in [install directory]/lib/py2-linux-x86_64/ need to have o+x enabled or the game will crash with "Permission denied" errors
The number of notes with things like "Character name" (Table of sexy actions and the ones that worked best/okay/not-at-all) all over my desk, and now screen snips of the dicktionary all over my computer make me feel kinda dirty but in a fun way.
