Unity A Long Journey [v0.8.1] [Marvellous Lunatic]

Vasin · May 10, 2022

After leaving a review with a well deserved praise I have some ramblings about the game I felt like sharing.

First concerns the incest tag, I really hope it's going to be completely ignorable, I was very impressed with how the game handled that character introduction but just knowing that it can be set up that way made me wince a little bit.

Second has more to do with the inclusion of more potential LIs. And this is a general issue that is present with the game where you clearly have a central LI character and some side chars that are obviously secondary in nature. Good example of that would be "Melody" where you have centerpiece Melody character and some side chicks that are there to give you "choice" but don't really feel like they rival the impact of the main storyline. The difference however is in that game you can choose to pursue a friendship route with Melody, so chasing other prospects does not break character. Here, with the mastercrafted setup for MC and Selene, I have a hard time imagining a scenario that would split them up without devaluing prologue's emotional punch.

Hot take, but I'd rather prefer the game just stayed a kinetic novel, or at least a single LI game, but that is of course just my preference.

Lastly, and that mostly relates to the general setting (btw I really liked figuring out how the ship works, first I got irked a bit at the environments being samey, but then I realized "hey it's a modular spaceship it's supposed to look like that" and sure it's probably also to cut development time, but with this render quality nobody can really fault that. Train system as well is realistically complicated) of the game as well as the media it's inspired by - the ship design doesn't quite make a lot of sense.

I'd expect colony ships to generally fall in one of the two categories - generation ships and cryogenic ships. With the latter it would be reasonable to not wake up colonists until the very last moment and then just have the ship deploy the modules it carries into a colony so that the crew disembarks and settles on the planet, making all the faculties on the ship redundant and unnecessary. Whereas a generation ship does require them for the sake of people who would be living on the ship for basically their entire lives. The only plausible explanation I managed to think of is if there is some kind of limit on the suspension time and the destination is close enough to reach within that limit + 1 lifetime. I.e. for some reason you can't suspend people for longer than 50 years, therefore you'd have to do that and then take a long enough time to make all those lavish accommodations be required. Like, I'd expect people to just be able to spartan it for a year or so.

P.S. Also if the ship lands vertically it would make all the interiors in it sideways, assuming we're walking on the inside of the outer ring.

Marvellous Lunatic · May 10, 2022

Vasin said:
After leaving a review with a well deserved praise I have some ramblings about the game I felt like sharing.

First concerns the incest tag, I really hope it's going to be completely ignorable, I was very impressed with how the game handled that character introduction but just knowing that it can be set up that way made me wince a little bit.

Second has more to do with the inclusion of more potential LIs. And this is a general issue that is present with the game where you clearly have a central LI character and some side chars that are obviously secondary in nature. Good example of that would be "Melody" where you have centerpiece Melody character and some side chicks that are there to give you "choice" but don't really feel like they rival the impact of the main storyline. The difference however is in that game you can choose to pursue a friendship route with Melody, so chasing other prospects does not break character. Here, with the mastercrafted setup for MC and Selene, I have a hard time imagining a scenario that would split them up without devaluing prologue's emotional punch.

Hot take, but I'd rather prefer the game just stayed a kinetic novel, or at least a single LI game, but that is of course just my preference.

Lastly, and that mostly relates to the general setting (btw I really liked figuring out how the ship works, first I got irked a bit at the environments being samey, but then I realized "hey it's a modular spaceship it's supposed to look like that" and sure it's probably also to cut development time, but with this render quality nobody can really fault that. Train system as well is realistically complicated) of the game as well as the media it's inspired by - the ship design doesn't quite make a lot of sense.

I'd expect colony ships to generally fall in one of the two categories - generation ships and cryogenic ships. With the latter it would be reasonable to not wake up colonists until the very last moment and then just have the ship deploy the modules it carries into a colony so that the crew disembarks and settles on the planet, making all the faculties on the ship redundant and unnecessary. Whereas a generation ship does require them for the sake of people who would be living on the ship for basically their entire lives. The only plausible explanation I managed to think of is if there is some kind of limit on the suspension time and the destination is close enough to reach within that limit + 1 lifetime. I.e. for some reason you can't suspend people for longer than 50 years, therefore you'd have to do that and then take a long enough time to make all those lavish accommodations be required. Like, I'd expect people to just be able to spartan it for a year or so.

P.S. Also if the ship lands vertically it would make all the interiors in it sideways, assuming we're walking on the inside of the outer ring.

Thanks for your review and your critics. I really appreciate it. I think I can address a few points.

Incest will be avoidable. At the moment I write both scenarios, incest-path and 'friends'-path. Both are separate language files that currently are in the build by default. You can choose between 'English(Taboo)' and 'English'. So it isn't a simple name or relation replacement but actual different dialogues. So I write the dialogues keeping both scenarios in mind and both should feel natural. The relation field in the character config is kinda deprecated. When I started developing the game I thought I could cover all kind of relations with a bite more extensive character-relation-config, but I was simply wrong. The dialogues just wouldn't sound natural. So I scratched that idea for the relation config and pulled the relations in the dialogue.

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I don't want to give a away too much regarding LI's. But I think it's fair to say it will be a bit more dynamic, or at least can be more dynamic, than having 'only' Selene as primary LI. However, for the first act she will be. At the beginning of my writing I thought the first act or prologue would be shorter. But I liked how it developed and I just had more ideas that I wanted to include. So I extended the introduction and made it a whole own act / story.

Act 1 will be quite linear and like you said a kinetic style novel as it still should serve as an introduction. In act 2 I want to transition a bit more into a sandbox style / visual novel style (No grind). But I want to make more use of the explore-able environment and want to give the player the choice what to do next / which character-paths to follow.

About the ship design. My idea was to wake up the colonists a few months before arriving, so they could prepare for the new environment. To have classes about how to build a new settlement, how to setup a society and to be able to get more in-depth information on the planet as the scanners can gather more information when being close to the planet.

I have concepts for drop-ships / rescue-capsules for the landing process but I haven't modeled them yet. But they will be introduced. I just didn't have the time yet to create them.

Regarding similar environments. As they are modular they should look the same right, but I also want them to be a different to each other to make it easier to navigate. A few details here and there just to make them more distinguishable from another. However, as most of the environments are modeled by myself it takes quite a while to create them. And having different details for each location takes time. I absolutely want to do this, but atm I just prioritized creating the necessary content for the first act. As I create nearly everything on my own (environments, assets, engine, dialogue, music, ...) and have only help by osanaiko who edits my dialogues to sound more natural and gives dear advice's I have to cut corners here and there to move on. I have a really long to-do list. But my primary focus is finishing the first act for now.

Here, with the mastercrafted setup for MC and Selene, I have a hard time imagining a scenario that would split them up without devaluing prologue's emotional punch.

Well, I don't want to give away too much about the story. But I don't aim for a simple / straight on story. I want to add twists here and there to keep it interesting and having people speculate how the story will develop next. I hope I can manage that without missing obvious plot holes. This is what I'm most scared about, because I'm not an experienced writer, but I'm trying my best to make it convenient.

I hope I could address some of your points.

Vasin · May 11, 2022

Thanks for a detailed reply

But I think it's fair to say it will be a bit more dynamic, or at least can be more dynamic, than having 'only' Selene as primary LI

I am not complaining here. It's just the way I play these kinds of games is if there's a LI that is in any way singled out (being introduced first, playing an important role in the plot, etc) I can't make myself steer away from a perceived "main" plot. And it makes me internally conflicted about making all that development effort that went into making these side character go to waste.

A few details here and there just to make them more distinguishable from another. However, as most of the environments are modeled by myself it takes quite a while to create them. And having different details for each location takes time.

I was trying to say that having environments be almost exactly the same makes perfect sense, areas become distinct after people have lived in them at least for a bit. And most everyone on the ship is actually asleep. Having the feeling of being lost initially also is a nice immersive bit, but I see how it can be problematic from the gameplay perspective

As I create nearly everything on my own (environments, assets, engine, dialogue, music, ...)

I did not think I could be impressed even more. This is actually my main complaint - this game is so good, I don't know how it can be any better.

This is what I'm most scared about, because I'm not an experienced writer, but I'm trying my best to make it convenient.

I really couldn't tell. Writing quality is higher than some of the professionally written stories I've read. As for plot holes, there is an obvious

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But I'm sure it will be revealed alongside the reason as to why we are in the current situation.

I'm curious, what kind of rendering hardware are we looking at for this level of detail?

Hornyowl · May 11, 2022

give the player the choice...which character-paths to follow.

I hope its ok to add my 2 cents on this...this is usually an attempt by devs to have players engage in multiple playthroughs so as to cover all the different paths. I hope this is not the case here. After my initial apprehension concerning the engine, the game is quite riveting. However, forcing players into multiple playthroughs (a la Heavy Five) is not nice (to put it simply).

Marvellous Lunatic · May 11, 2022

Vasin said:
I am not complaining here. It's just the way I play these kinds of games is if there's a LI that is in any way singled out (being introduced first, playing an important role in the plot, etc) I can't make myself steer away from a perceived "main" plot. And it makes me internally conflicted about making all that development effort that went into making these side character go to waste.

I didn't take it as complaining, nor am I complaining. I understand you and just want to share my intentions.
Like I said, I don't want to give away too much about the story yet, but the effort for her won't go to waste.

Vasin said:
I was trying to say that having environments be almost exactly the same makes perfect sense, areas become distinct after people have lived in them at least for a bit. And most everyone on the ship is actually asleep. Having the feeling of being lost initially also is a nice immersive bit, but I see how it can be problematic from the gameplay perspective

That's exactly how I see it too.

Vasin said:
I did not think I could be impressed even more. This is actually my main complaint - this game is so good, I don't know how it can be any better.

Thanks. I really appreciate it.

Vasin said:
I really couldn't tell. Writing quality is higher than some of the professionally written stories I've read. As for plot holes, there is an obvious

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But I'm sure it will be revealed alongside the reason as to why we are in the current situation.

Regarding the crew. I thought it would be obvious that they are in cryo-sleep too. For the wake-up procedure I had a wake-up-timeline in mind, something like: Medical team => Crew => Staff => Squad-Attendants=> Colonists.
I'm not sure I mentioned how long the flight actually is in the game. The exact time wasn't important to me when I was writing it. It just should be very long, so > 50yrs. I think I had 64 or 96yrs written in my notes somewhere. If I haven't mentioned it in the game yet, I'll add it. Should make the story more consistent and than it probably comes more intuitive that the crew is in cryo-sleep too.

Vasin said:
I'm curious, what kind of rendering hardware are we looking at for this level of detail?

I'm rendering with Octane on 2 RTX 2070. As the prices for GPU's are dropping I'm considering upgrading, but I'm pretty struggling with this decision. My biggest problem is the vram mangement of octane or the octane render plugin for daz3d. I've frequent render engine crashes. Even if I reduce the detail of the environment and have only 2 characters with SubD level 3 can sometimes be enough to crash. So I wanted to upgrade from 8GB VRAM to 24.
However, the reason I'm struggling is the development of the octane render. On one hand I like the style and speed on the other hand the development of the daz3d plugin is pretty much abandoned. It doesn't get new features nor do terrible old 'simple' bugs getting fixed. However, I don't really want to switch style mid-way through development.
Also the octane team develops a new geometry streaming pipeline which they promise would get rid for the need of caching geometry and textures in the vram. Kinda like the Nanite pipeline of the Unreal Engine 5. However, this technology is just in development and I have no hopes that it will make it to the plugin.
As I don't want to wait until this technology arrives I'll probably get new GPU's down the line anyway.
Atm, I would rather switch to blender and keep rendering with an up-to-date octane plugin, but I hesitate to spend time setting up a workflow for this.

Hornyowl said:
I hope its ok to add my 2 cents on this...this is usually an attempt by devs to have players engage in multiple playthroughs so as to cover all the different paths. I hope this is not the case here. After my initial apprehension concerning the engine, the game is quite riveting. However, forcing players into multiple playthroughs (a la Heavy Five) is not nice (to put it simply).

I probably expressed myself a bit unfavorably there. I don't want to enforce multiple playthroughs. I don't like that either. I'd rather want the players to be able to bypass certain characters they may don't like or don't feel comfortable with. This is my intention at least. However, my main focus is and will be to keep the story consistent so I may need to add checkpoints with other characters as well, but sexual content should be optional.
I have quite a few story events and plots for the second act in mind, but the structure for the story at whole isn't fully developed yet. So I can't or rather don't want to promise anything regarding this.
I don't want to go in any sort of branching madness. It will most likely still be a linear story with some optional content left and right and a bit more freedom in which order you will do certain events.
But keep in mind, that's the way I want to do it right now. I can't promise I'll manage it and won't need any adjustments on my writing down the line.

I make mistakes and need to learn from them. Like my character-configuration. Neat idea, but overly complex and still not sophisticated enough to fulfill all it's intention. So, I try to learn from it and adapt.

Krull · May 11, 2022

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Vasin · May 11, 2022

Hornyowl said:
However, forcing players into multiple playthroughs (a la Heavy Five) is not nice (to put it simply).

How does it even make sense? Do devs hold guns to your head saying "Do a playthrough banging this chick now!" lmao. OMG they are making me play the game!

Marvellous Lunatic said:
Regarding the crew. I thought it would be obvious that they are in cryo-sleep too. For the wake-up procedure I had a wake-up-timeline in mind, something like: Medical team => Crew => Staff => Squad-Attendants=> Colonists.
I'm not sure I mentioned how long the flight actually is in the game. The exact time wasn't important to me when I was writing it. It just should be very long, so > 50yrs. I think I had 64 or 96yrs written in my notes somewhere. If I haven't mentioned it in the game yet, I'll add it. Should make the story more consistent and than it probably comes more intuitive that the crew is in cryo-sleep too.

Yeah but I intuitively assumed there must have been some sort of rotating overwatch shift system. However, on reflection I remembered that you actually mention that it's impossible to reenter cryosleep on the ship. Which would then make the "rotating" part impossible. It is a tremendous risk to rely on automated systems like that, especially since I doubt they did even half-length test runs on the ground, that would be a colossal waste of time.

Marvellous Lunatic · May 11, 2022

Vasin said:
How does it even make sense? Do devs hold guns to your head saying "Do a playthrough banging this chick now!" lmao. OMG they are making me play the game!

I don't think that's what he / she meant. If I play a game I want to see all the content and most favorable in one playthrough. I don't like to re-do things again slightly different to see all content. I like the linear / cinematic styles where you get everything done in one go and feel satisfied at the end or at the cliff-hanger.
The Supermassive games, like Until Dawn would be such examples where you have to replay over and over again to see everything. I understand the concept and like the cinematic style, but I don't want to put so much time in repeating stuff. It's just not my style. So I do understand her / his argument.

Vasin said:
Yeah but I intuitively assumed there must have been some sort of rotating overwatch shift system. However, on reflection I remembered that you actually mention that it's impossible to reenter cryosleep on the ship. Which would then make the "rotating" part impossible. It is a tremendous risk to rely on automated systems like that, especially since I doubt they did even half-length test runs on the ground, that would be a colossal waste of time.

Ah. I see. Yeah. I purposely scratched that off, just like in the movie 'Passengers'. The idea is to create more tension. If everything goes wrong they will fear to be alone for many years which creates some kind of terror.
And yes, automated systems are a risk. But I don't want to have a perfect ship / or project planing. Things will fail and have errors, just like in the real world and I need those mistakes, or rather make use of this mistakes to tell the story. For example the finding / usage of the password. Quite sketchy, but it served as a starting point for the whole story to unlock rooms and try to find ways / exploit errors to do something about there situation.

Vasin · May 11, 2022

Marvellous Lunatic said:
Ah. I see. Yeah. I purposely scratched that off, just like in the movie 'Passengers'. The idea is to create more tension. If everything goes wrong they will fear to be alone for many years which creates some kind of terror.
And yes, automated systems are a risk. But I don't want to have a perfect ship / or project planing. Things will fail and have errors, just like in the real world and I need those mistakes, or rather make use of this mistakes to tell the story. For example the finding / usage of the password. Quite sketchy, but it served as a starting point for the whole story to unlock rooms and try to find ways / exploit errors to do something about there situation.

I saw Passengers in a theatre a while back and for some reason thought they did have some crew awake, but then I remembered they do wake up Fishburne's character, don't they? There's another movie that I was reminded of while playing the game that although not a love story (I guess there is sort of a subplot there) but horror, which I highly recommend, called Pandorum, where crew rotation was a significant part of the plot. That's probably what confused me.

And I definitely agree, the premise is fine as is, I just thought it can be exposited better in one of the wake-up monologues or maybe a conversation with AI assistant so that it doesn't seem like a plot hole or contrivance, because it isn't.

Marvellous Lunatic · May 11, 2022

Vasin said:
I saw Passengers in a theatre a while back and for some reason thought they did have some crew awake, but then I remembered they do wake up Fishburne's character, don't they? There's another movie that I was reminded of while playing the game that although not a love story (I guess there is sort of a subplot there) but horror, which I highly recommend, called Pandorum, where crew rotation was a significant part of the plot. That's probably what confused me.

And I definitely agree, the premise is fine as is, I just thought it can be exposited better in one of the wake-up monologues or maybe a conversation with AI assistant so that it doesn't seem like a plot hole or contrivance, because it isn't.

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Yeah, Pandorum is a great movie as well. Quite a while since I watched it, funny enough, I always confused that movie with Event Horizon... Another Sci-Fi movie.

Yeah. You are right. I'll add that somewhere earlier in the game. Another thing for my to-do list

Ottoeight · May 11, 2022

Marvellous Lunatic said:
Regarding the crew. I thought it would be obvious that they are in cryo-sleep too. For the wake-up procedure I had a wake-up-timeline in mind, something like: Medical team => Crew => Staff => Squad-Attendants=> Colonists.
I'm not sure I mentioned how long the flight actually is in the game. The exact time wasn't important to me when I was writing it. It just should be very long, so > 50yrs. I think I had 64 or 96yrs written in my notes somewhere. If I haven't mentioned it in the game yet, I'll add it. Should make the story more consistent and than it probably comes more intuitive that the crew is in cryo-sleep too.

I hope we will know who the bearded dudes and the 2 girls are and the reason why they woke up our MC so early in the upcoming update.

Come on, I just wanna knowwww

Anyway , Ina (the AI) tells MC - right before meeting Selene - that the wake up protocol starts 6 months before the arrival on the planet, therefore no one should be awake right now. No one.
I think you clearly explained everything.

Marvellous Lunatic · May 11, 2022

Ottoeight said:
I hope we will know who the bearded dudes and the 2 girls are and the reason why they woke up our MC so early in the upcoming update.

Come on, I just wanna knowwww

Anyway , Ina (the AI) tells MC - right before meeting Selene - that the wake up protocol starts 6 months before the arrival on the planet, therefore no one should be awake right now. No one.
I think you clearly explained everything.

A few answers will be given, but not all

Had to check the dialoge myself again.

ai "The wake-up process has not yet commenced. The human staff are scheduled to return to occupy the Information Desk role in 64 years 168 days 23 hours and 16 minutes."
ai "The wake-up process is programmed to begin half a year before arrival. An earlier wake-up is not possible."

Well, as ai (Ina) talked about human staff, I think that would include the crew as well. Maybe I could be a bit more specific there.

Ottoeight · May 11, 2022

Marvellous Lunatic said:
Well, as ai (Ina) talked about human staff, I think that would include the crew as well. Maybe I could be a bit more specific there.

Nah. Don't worry. Everything is crystal clear.

Hornyowl · May 12, 2022

Vasin said:
How does it even make sense? Do devs hold guns to your head saying "Do a playthrough banging this chick now!" lmao. OMG they are making me play the game!

Click to expand...

I don't think that's what he / she meant. If I play a game I want to see all the content and most favorable in one playthrough. I don't like to re-do things again slightly different to see all content. I like the linear / cinematic styles where you get everything done in one go and feel satisfied at the end or at the cliff-hanger.
The Supermassive games, like Until Dawn would be such examples where you have to replay over and over again to see everything. I understand the concept and like the cinematic style, but I don't want to put so much time in repeating stuff. It's just not my style. So I do understand her / his argument.

Thank you. I think that's about right.

Vasin · May 12, 2022

Marvellous Lunatic said:
Well, as ai (Ina) talked about human staff, I think that would include the crew as well. Maybe I could be a bit more specific there.

Thanks for the quote refresher. I'm not going to press previous point further, but this did make me realize another thing, tangential to the previous one.

It is clearly evident, that despite AI's assurance that "Everyone is asleep" and that "Earlier wake-up is not possible" it is very much possible. Therefore we have a question - why wasn't the system programmed for this particular emergency? Even if the designers would assume that manual wakeup override was not achievable (which it clearly is), discounting random system failure is criminal level of negligence that is incomparable to sticking a password note under your table.

Therefore I must conclude that it was either done intentionally, or due to some technology quirk premature awakening would just not be biologically possible and just kill the person. Which is also very, very cruel. Or the AI could have been tampered with as well.

Ottoeight · May 12, 2022

Vasin said:
It is clearly evident, that despite AI's assurance that "Everyone is asleep" and that "Earlier wake-up is not possible" it is very much possible. Therefore we have a question - why wasn't the system programmed for this particular emergency? Even if the designers would assume that manual wakeup override was not achievable (which it clearly is), discounting random system failure is criminal level of negligence that is incomparable to sticking a password note under your table.

That's what MC himself tells Ina (the AI). He talks about it with Selene, too.

Vasin said:
Therefore I must conclude that it was either done intentionally, or due to some technology quirk premature awakening would just not be biologically possible and just kill the person. Which is also very, very cruel. Or the AI could have been tampered with as well.

Next update will tell the answer, I guess.

stunna · May 12, 2022

Is there an updated Mac version available?

Marvellous Lunatic · May 12, 2022

stunna said:
Is there an updated Mac version available?

Sadly no. I didn't had the time nor do I own a MAC to look into what the Issue is. I have a vague idea what the problem might be, but I lack the time to look into it. However, I'll have a look to get a build ready for Linux, MAC and Android. Either within this update or immediately after the next one is released.

desmosome · May 12, 2022

Marvellous Lunatic said:
When I started developing the game I thought I could cover all kind of relations with a bite more extensive character-relation-config, but I was simply wrong.

Finally a dev that understands this.

Marvellous Lunatic · May 16, 2022