Others Completed Artificial Academy 2 [MiniPPX v8] [Illusion]

[tiikerihai]

Changing sexual orientation of characters is the easiest thing you can do in the editor... A couple of clicks is all it takes.

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Though that changes the card itself, not your save file. Which means if you already have the character in your class you'd need to transfer them out and then back in for the change to take effect or use some other tool (AA2QTEdit) to change orientation in place if you for some reason don't want to transfer the character out of your class.

 

[JustAl]

Changing sexual orientation of characters is the easiest thing you can do in the editor... A couple of clicks is all it takes.
[...]
Though that changes the card itself, not your save file. [...] you'd need to transfer [the character] out and then back in for the change to take effect or use some other tool (AA2QTEdit) to change orientation in place if you for some reason don't want to transfer the character out of your class.

Yup. I also recommend making a save backup folder and saving your finalized (at the time) class roster before you do any actual gameplay from that point. You may notice something off about a character and removing characters to replace them comes with some caveats like personal items going missing / being orphaned when a character is removed, and a character relationship environment that doesn't look fun to you after a bunch of relationships already form and the incoming character is left out. So if you keep a first-eve backup you can redeploy the same roster with little effort after making your minor changes, resaving the roster, and backing it up again.

As for class name just randomly look up Japanese last names and make every new class the "historically famous school in Japan(?) of {last name here}".

 

[Monosomething]

So... another batch of questions (since im apparently clueless):

Influence: i know what these do, however is there any gain or loss of LLDH from those? Or are they just "mood swingers"?
The entire lecture and gossip tabs... same question - do these do anything?

Chat is fairly well explained on the wiki... but Invite isnt - if i fail at any of these, do the other characters gain hate/dislike?

Same question for Contact interactions. Do these give out any points on success/failure? Wiki is completely silent about these, apart from mentioning mood swings. Groping some titties or stealing a kiss from a NPC is fun, until you hear "Hands off!" and someone calls the police (lmao). Ive read theres a "some other time" response that supposedly doesnt incur penalties, but the penalties arent mentioned...


Finally... i took a look what the games folder contains. Found the character editor and some stats, but thats not what i want to ask.
Its about Qtedit - how do i tell which "seats" are assigned to whom?

Thanks in advance for your patience.

 

[Tsugumi]

Monosomething

I can only chime in on two things:

1. About seats: if you mean the "Play Data" tab - seats are numbered 0 to 24, and if you look at QtEdit class roster (after loading a save) you will see everyone numbered 1 to 25. In a nutshell, the order is the same: "seat 0" is "student 1" in that list, "seat 16" would be "student 17" and so on. If there are empty seats in-between - that is accounted for, as well: for example, if the student spot underneath the teacher is empty (that is spot 10**, by the way) - there will be no student 11 in the QtEdit list.

2. Gossip AKA rumours is a way to manipulate opinions of NPCs on other NPCs. Spreading good rumours about somebody makes that person be more liked, and vice versa. Naturally, NPCs sometimes gossip about PC between themselves, too - no immunity for you there. You probably have seen NPCs talk to you about someone and say something like "I hear <character> is a dangerous person" - say hello to a bad rumour. Then again, this is, in fact,

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in the wiki. And since "mood change tendency" for gossip interactions is a blank "none", that means succeeding or failing said interactions has no effect on the mood of whoever you gossip with.


**The numbering order itself adheres to the Japanese writing system: top to bottom, right to left. That translates to top right corner student seat being 0, bottom right corner - 4, the spot to the left of seat 0 is seat 5, bottom spot in the same column 9, etc. And spot 10 is second in its column because the teacher spot "pushes it down", and the teacher spot holds the last number - 24. So, spot below the teacher spot is student seat 10, the bottom spot in that column is 13, and so on. Confusing to describe, but

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once you visualize it.

 

[JustAl]

Thanks Tsugumi, I wanted to know more about seat number ordering and you conveniently described it -- I didn't know why the Teacher was in seat 10.

 

[Tsugumi]

Ironically, my curious mind keeps wondering from time to time why the teacher is in 24, to begin with. Or, rather, why does the count start with 0, in the first place - was it a "why not" decision, a programming aspect, etc. -, and on top of that why was the teacher, being "in charge of the class", so to speak (top + center spot signifying a leader position), not attached to 0, instead.

 

[JustAl]

Ironically, my curious mind keeps wondering from time to time why the teacher is in 24, to begin with. Or, rather, why does the count start with 0, in the first place - was it a "why not" decision, a programming aspect, etc. -, and on top of that why was the teacher, being "in charge of the class", so to speak (top + center spot signifying a leader position), not attached to 0, instead.

Basic game dev situation -- every incrementable in most environments start at index zero. Then they figured rather than trying to organize UI to put the teacher at the top of the roster at index 0 and format the screen to show student desks below, they just organize a simple grid and throw the teacher in the top-middle where his desk is reasonably closest. I'm curious as to how their program is organized internally though, since Japanese devs are so accustomed to working with English-speaking engines like Unity that I didn't expect their student grid would be aligned the Japanese literature way instead of the English spreadsheet way. The AAU modders would know more.

 

[tiikerihai]

AA2 uses an inhouse Illusion engine from the mid 2000s that received some updates to make gfx look better. It's 100% Japanese moon software in every which way.

 

[Bawunga]

Just theorycraftng, but would there be any way to have a mod (like a personality module I guess) that reacts to seat number in the same way as teacher so that one could have other faculty positions like principle, janitor, nurse etc?

Man I wish there would be an AA3.

 

[sptkc]

Just theorycraftng, but would there be any way to have a mod (like a personality module I guess) that reacts to seat number in the same way as teacher so that one could have other faculty positions like principle, janitor, nurse etc?

Man I wish there would be an AA3.

Should be possible since there is a way to check seat number in modules. Though considering modules are still character specific, you still need to give it to the corresponding character(s).

 

[JustAl]

Should be possible since there is a way to check seat number in modules. Though considering modules are still character specific, you still need to give it to the corresponding character(s).

The short story of it is it's not feasible. The long story is more complex.

I have seen someone make general modules that affect the entire class roster, but they tend to work on card Init or period change. In short, for characters to have continued socialization difference to a seat in live time you'd either change every card you use to adopt those triggers through a module or you'd load one character card who will then persistently check all interactions across the entire roster then all the time then change their actions and responses.

You'll never be able to make the game recognize them as the genuine Teacher, you'll just be manually checking a seat index all the time then changing results to make them feel like a Teacher. There are more viable options. You just need to ask yourself "Why do I want to have a 2nd character like a Teacher?"

The Class Prez role exists which could reasonably wear a suit instead of a uniform and even judges the Teacher enough to kick them out of the school. The Club Leader, Tutor, and Trainer modules have effects on getting a student to boost skills almost like a Teacher. The Banchou, Cultist, and Adaptable modules have some form of affiliation aspect. Mix-and-match. Figure out what you want so you can aim towards something easier than pinging the game a bunch of complicated actions in an attempt to bypass hardcoding.

I wish the game was more modern but it's really good for its era. Runs efficiently, student population is large enough for a small enough map that it always feels busy, the minimal voiced chatter in the game barely but competently covers all actions you can choose to interact with characters. I think you can find something fun to try.

 

[Stewsy]

So I tried following the guide for editing to make characters futa but the texture just doesn't load for some reason. Should i be making the changes in i different area than what the how to says or what is shown in the images?

 

[JustAl]

So I tried following the guide for editing to make characters futa but the texture just doesn't load for some reason. Should i be making the changes in i different area than what the how to says or what is shown in the images?

I've not tried before, but I did notice

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(flat-chest small penis characters who count as girls and use girl personalities). Reread your futa guide again, check out this traps guide, and see if you can find a pattern for how to do this correctly.

 

[kirisakii]

Sorry first post has to be like this, been playing AA2 on and off with various versions and install methods over the years, so I'll preface this with yes I've followed the guide and tried all I could find in over 100 pages of this thread, the github, the modern guide.
Yes I've installed all the prerequisites, included in modern download and others and I cannot figure this out.

Recently got a new pc, it's win10. My old setup copied from my old pc doesn't work here either (was an older mini that worked on my last win10 machine)


This happens before the launcher appears, seems a couple people have had this around page 90~100 or so but I saw no fix I hadn't tried, re-tried, whatever.
Tried entirely fresh, tried updating AAU from git, nothing.

So trying again myself, anyone? My kingdom for a working AA2 on my new PC.

 

[JustAl]

Sorry first post has to be like this, been playing AA2 on and off with various versions and install methods over the years, so I'll preface this with yes I've followed the guide and tried all I could find in over 100 pages of this thread, the github, the modern guide.
Yes I've installed all the prerequisites, included in modern download and others and I cannot figure this out.

Recently got a new pc, it's win10. My old setup copied from my old pc doesn't work here either (was an older mini that worked on my last win10 machine)
View attachment 3021874

This happens before the launcher appears, seems a couple people have had this around page 90~100 or so but I saw no fix I hadn't tried, re-tried, whatever.
Tried entirely fresh, tried updating AAU from git, nothing.

So trying again myself, anyone? My kingdom for a working AA2 on my new PC.

Well, I'm no expert -- I only started this game within a month's time from now -- but I'll try to walk you through since my AA2 on a Windows 11 PC works great with no need to enable the Windows 10 fixes mentioned in the guide.

First, we must acknowledge your AA2 may not be he newest version uploaded based on AAU. If your game doesn't run after the next step you're rebuilding AA2.

The guide specifies you should only try the Windows 10 fixes if you are already having problems, so try that.
If that doesn't work, you can redownload AA2 using the miniPPex version. Ideally your mods will come in ppx format not pp or pp2 format. The current version of AAU is functionally different than years-old versions of AA2, so if Windows 10 is making it impossible to play then upgrading your game install is the way to go.

Note that Windows 12 is coming next year. Be prepared to upgrade again soon since Windows 10 is End-Of-Life. While Windows 11 it not amazing it will get support some years into Windows 12 release. Be prepared to revisit AAU-AA2 in a year or 2 as the new OS builds up.

 

[Tsugumi]

kirisakii The bitch of the problem is that, if we take you at your word, and you have, in fact, completed all the steps properly, then the complexity would likely require access to your system to figure out, let alone solve...and that is not the level of access one should give to anyone over a porn game, unless their mental capabilities are at the level of people shown in black-&-white infomercial intros.

1. based on experience, including my own when I switched from Mini to MiniPPX: are you sure you installed ".NET Core Runtime" and not ".NET Framework"? Unlike Framework, Core is not a core (pun not intended...maybe) component, and is thus absent from "fresh" systems.

2. full path to the game - is it short, like, "D:/Games/AA2", and not a long one? For example, people believe running "portable" applications from the desktop is okay, not knowing that the path to Desktop is not only longer than they think, but it also is likely to cause issues with access permissions due to the folder being a system folder as far as OS in concerned. To re-phrase: short path, not a system folder.

Honestly, depending on how savvy you are with computers, and how comfortable you feel poking around the system, what I would do if I were in your shoes is fire up Event Viewer, go to Windows Logs -> Application, then make AA2Play.exe crash, and check the log for whatever information it can give. That might give at least a general idea of where to look: access permissions, graphical driver issues, missing files, etc.

 

[JustAl]

Good points Tsugumi. I always forget the importance of short system paths for games with deep directories like games made by Illusion -- I borked up my first Honey Select 2 install like that. Also had trouble installing mods to games that were deeply nested in directories like that. I learned my lesson and have few directories with short folder names for my games.

Also yes, installing games in my Windows 11 build when it was then new led to many problems with missing prerequisites. kirisakii, if you want a mindlessly easy way to a working AA2 follow the new user guide and build from scratch--there may be a prerequisite missing, something installed incorrectly (conflicting components from a choose-one-only install scenario), or a core mod that's unstable in newer Windows versions than Win7 but got fixed later.

 

[tiikerihai]

0xc000007b is a component error, a component required for running the program is not there or broken. It can be anything ranging from not having the component installed at all to having viruses that break the component. The first thing you need working are the requirements of AA2 and AAU which are 32bit C++ redist and directx9c. After that you need other stuff in your system to actually work too: drivers, system components, etc and that's beyond the scope of AA2. I already told some other guy in this thread to use DISM and SFC, you do the same thing provided installing directx and c++ redist fails. If you don't know what those are, you can use google.

After both the required components are installed and DISM and SFC are used, it should work. If not, well you have a problem.

 

[kirisakii]

Yeah I can confidently say I've done a nontrivial amount more than the average my-game-is-bork posts, including DISM but I'll do some more playing around and see what turns up. Started on this some hours back by this point.

Will report back after sleep and work, thanks for the responses.
Ah to clarify to those who responded -- and just to be completely clear but also not be that guy; above average level, literate internet user with a hobbyist softdev background but by no means an expert or professional. Prefer to save you all repeating the same things I've read the last like 2 years of this thread and adding bloat, you know? Now I sound kind of arrogant though.

 

[tiikerihai]

Well ultimately the problem with your problem is that in a way you're seeking help from the wrong place. Your system is borked and any generic "how to make AA2 run" type of advice would be unhelpful. You need advice specifically tailored to your system to figure out what is causing the issue and how to fix it. Or a Windows reinstall.

I checked discord since I know I've seen people with this issue before to see if there was anything particular of notice, but I can't really find any success stories at all. I think there was 1 person I helped that managed to get it to work. From my understanding they reinstalled windows, but they were Korean so the language barrier makes it a guess at best.