Unreal Engine Breeders of the Nephelym [v0.761.4] [DerelictHelmsman]

[FruitSmoothie]

You are correct, I choose to work alone. Hiring people is not some magical switch you can flip to make your game get done faster. It comes with a ton of drama, excuses, and low quality work. Rather than develop the game, I would spend most of my time babysitting a team of subpar individuals looking to milk as much out of me as they possibly can. And that's the typical scenario, it could end up worse like Breeding Season.

You seem to have something against solo developers specifically. Perhaps others are what you claim, but it's invalid to slap those labels on all of us. Speaking for myself, and from the heart, I expect no one to bow to any aspect of me, or my philosophies. The Steam example was used only to show that I'm not all about the damn money. If that were the case, things would be very different.

Wow that underlined bit sounds familiar. Sounds like the usual Patreon business model.

And I don't have a problem with solo developers specifically. I do have a problem with solo developers that want to be praised for being solo developers though. Reminds me of the people who choose to have children, and then expect special privileges and to be praised for raising children even though it was their choice. If you wanna go solo, that's fine, just don't expect a parade, at least not until you're done. During development people will wish you'd hire more people, and that's a justifiable opinion.

Anyways I'm getting sleepy and I'll be too cranky to respond properly anymore, I'll have to chill till tomorrow, lol.

 

[TheInternetIsForThis]

In terms of constructive criticism, I can tell you outright why most people are complaining about a lack of gameplay:

This game lacks a core feedback loop. There is no notable reward or even change for most of the things you do. The introductory NPC never returns to town, you never develop relationships with other NPCs, and the only reward for bringing home new nephelym is the ability to ogle them, milk them, and breed them, all of which are limited scope situations that rapidly become tedious.

In terms of potential fixes, that's mostly up to you. For relationships, you already have a dialogue system in place, so it would just need a data tracking back end and character writing that feels at least vaguely meaningful. In terms of impact for work, this is potentially one of the simplest things you could do. It could be made more complex with a schedule system, wandering, etc., but that's not strictly necessary to give the player cause to interact with the NPCs more. Rewarding the player who manages a relationship could involve things like discounts at shops, new animations (which are certainly a lot of work, I'm aware), and possibly even showing up on your farm/outright living with you eventually.

Regarding the nephelym you bring home to the farm, that's a thorny issue of its own. Improvements to that lack of reward could involve allowing some to wander the farm, potentially at the player's discretion, and allowing for more interactions between the player and their nephelym. I'd suggest allowing them to help at the farm, but the game's lore doesn't allow for that as it is.

Something a great many players have complained about, repeatedly, is the lack of varied body models and animations. The lack of models is a misguided complaint - it would potentially be more efficient to operate on a bethesda-styled system where you have varied (and more finely controlled) morphs of the same base model (a la CBBE and related bodies for Skyrim/FO4, with trait-based morphs dynamically applied on top as the game already does) sharing the same skeleton. Their complaint largely boils down to the current base model not being utilized to its full potential.

Obviously, creating new feral morphs requires a great deal of modeling work, and depending on how you do it, some animation work as well. That makes any new feral morph a longer term project that will impact further development elsewhere.

Animations are, unfortunately, an unfixable issue. Or, more accurately: the fix is complex and mostly boils down to creating different animations tuned to different scale combinations. There is no reasonable way to make a one-size-fits-all animation for this game, and so the best you can hope for is, as you've been doing, slowly adding variations and sub-variations depending on differences in scale. This obviously takes time and effort, and like adding new ferals, would result in an "empty" feeling update where players complain you aren't doing anything.

Overall, you're kind of in a terrible spot. Anything you do at this point will result in complaints, because updating and addressing some complaints leave other players feeling left out. As a developer, I'd personally be spending my time working on smoothing out the current content prior to implementing anything new, but it is not my place to dictate where you spend your development time.

 

[Caerna]

However this idea that I am lazy, and a scammer is baseless.

In every thread for popular games there are people, who claim that devs are lazy and scammers, rarely it's true. Just ignore them.

As for harsh critique, it feels like you are a seriously lost on what to do next.

Some time ago I did some brain storming, just to think what can be done about BotN to make it more gamey, here: https://f95zone.to/threads/breeders...a-derelicthelmsman.2483/page-234#post-3300055

And there is some discussion after that.

p.s. Fall damage...why...?

 

[aderpofni]

An enormous amount of bitching and moaning about it not being a real game, and then an even larger amount of bitching when I start turning it into one.

I do read this forum, seeking out negative critique that I don't get on Patreon on Discord because believe it or not I care about feedback. However, what no one understands is how difficult it is for a developer to please everyone.

...

I'm glad to see you read the forum here Derelict, you've made a great game. I don't think anyone can accuse you of being lazy with the massive amount of work that has gone in to BotN, but I do agree that the development is suffering right now.

I was a Patreon of yours for a little over half a year, but decided to stop supporting at the end of May because I felt like there was no direction to development. Features were being added here and there, but I never saw any real plan to address the lack of core gameplay loop.

Then decisions like locking animations behind the new currency and implementing fall damage were also bad for gameplay. In a game where the only thing to do is sex everything, implementing mechanics that prevent you from accessing the only gameplay for no reward is not a good idea. I actually like the idea of being able to learn new positions from an NPC, even building a quest structure around them. But that needs to be a fully fleshed out game mechanic, and right now it's just an arbitrary barrier.

And why bother with fall damage? There are no enemies to run away from, or survival aspects that require you take care of your character, it doesn't fit in the game as it is. All it does is make navigating certain parts of the map more annoying (such as town down to your farm).

It sounds like you've hit the real limit of game development at this scale, which is man hours. It doesn't matter how good or efficient a developer you are, work takes time, and there are only so many hours a day you can contribute. The only way BotN can fully realize it's potential at this point is with a team of developers. If you really don't want to involve anyone else, I would recommend severely limiting the scope of what you work on, and picking specific features to fully develop before moving to something else.

Anyway, you've made a great game. Better than 99% of any other developers by yourself, and I wish you good luck continuing it's development.

 

[DerelictHelmsman]

Thank you for the constructive feedback.

This game lacks a core feedback loop. There is no notable reward or even change for most of the things you do. The introductory NPC never returns to town, you never develop relationships with other NPCs, and the only reward for bringing home new nephelym is the ability to ogle them, milk them, and breed them, all of which are limited scope situations that rapidly become tedious.

In terms of potential fixes, that's mostly up to you. For relationships, you already have a dialogue system in place, so it would just need a data tracking back end and character writing that feels at least vaguely meaningful. In terms of impact for work, this is potentially one of the simplest things you could do. It could be made more complex with a schedule system, wandering, etc., but that's not strictly necessary to give the player cause to interact with the NPCs more. Rewarding the player who manages a relationship could involve things like discounts at shops, new animations (which are certainly a lot of work, I'm aware), and possibly even showing up on your farm/outright living with you eventually.

This is the exact thing I am working on for 0.738. Slowly I have been laying the groundwork for this with buying sex positions, which is one attempt to reward the player for breeding the best Nephelym. It's far from finished, but that's the goal.

Falene will move in the next build, after conditions are met. None of the backend for that existed in 0.737, so that's why the current build is taking extra time. NPCs now store their state, and will react to recently having had sex with the player. In addition, the entire world can be affected by this state now.

My current focus for the next many builds is game progression. I want each area to be unlocked by fulfilling conditions around the world, fall damage was necessary to prevent access to areas like Moaning Crag far ahead of when it would be open.

Something a great many players have complained about, repeatedly, is the lack of varied body models and animations. The lack of models is a misguided complaint - it would potentially be more efficient to operate on a bethesda-styled system where you have varied (and more finely controlled) morphs of the same base model (a la CBBE and related bodies for Skyrim/FO4, with trait-based morphs dynamically applied on top as the game already does) sharing the same skeleton. Their complaint largely boils down to the current base model not being utilized to its full potential.

I understand this complaint. The artist side of me hates the shared mesh system, but it is the best solution. Especially for a breeding game, where the benefits of sharing a mesh and animations are enormous.

Morphs driving a single mesh is how it works now. In fact, CBBE BodySlide was a huge inspiration for my character creator. This is cool because it allows players to customize the shapes as they see fit, though it does introduce animation clipping for more extreme body shapes.

As for harsh critique, it feels like you are a seriously lost on what to do next.

Well, I know what I want to do for the game. I am lost on trying to figure out what my players want. As mentioned before it's impossible to please everyone, but it appears there are two camps. One that wants more gameplay, and another that only wants me to focus on the sex sandbox.

I was a Patreon of yours for a little over half a year, but decided to stop supporting at the end of May because I felt like there was no direction to development. Features were being added here and there, but I never saw any real plan to address the lack of core gameplay loop.

My development strategy is many small frequent builds, all working toward a larger goal. Only recently did I start focusing on gameplay outside of breeding though.

Then decisions like locking animations behind the new currency and implementing fall damage were also bad for gameplay. In a game where the only thing to do is sex everything, implementing mechanics that prevent you from accessing the only gameplay for no reward is not a good idea. I actually like the idea of being able to learn new positions from an NPC, even building a quest structure around them. But that needs to be a fully fleshed out game mechanic, and right now it's just an arbitrary barrier.

And why bother with fall damage? There are no enemies to run away from, or survival aspects that require you take care of your character, it doesn't fit in the game as it is. All it does is make navigating certain parts of the map more annoying (such as town down to your farm).

Fall damage is necessary to prevent access to areas until they are unlocked. It will make sense when the content is implemented to unlock each area, which I am working on now. It would be pointless to block off Pleasure Pastures if you could just jump down the cliff to get there.

 

[aderpofni]

...

Fall damage is necessary to prevent access to areas until they are unlocked. It will make sense when the content is implemented to unlock each area, which I am working on now. It would be pointless to block off Pleasure Pastures if you could just jump down the cliff to get there.

Thank you for your replies. I'm glad to see you have a plan for what all these features are building towards. I like the idea of adding more meaning to exploring / unlocking the world, but would again caution on how you implement it. If pleasure pastures is suddenly walled off without a compelling new gameplay reason to unlock it (not just farming some resource or paying to open it) then it will feel like more of the existing game is being cut than anything new is being added.

I will keep an eye out for the next update and seriously consider restarting my support then.

 

[tomcody111]

Thank you for the constructive feedback.

This is the exact thing I am working on for 0.738. Slowly I have been laying the groundwork for this with buying sex positions, which is one attempt to reward the player for breeding the best Nephelym. It's far from finished, but that's the goal.

Hey Dev,

Cool to see you on the forum. First and foremost I want to say thanks for the game. I was heartbroken with what happened with breeding season and your game filled the gap so to speak. I've never been a patron, but i'd be glad to buy the game or make a one time donation if you do indeed not charge for the final version.
Most of us here like to bitch and moan but few and far in between would discount what an great job you do. We bitch because we care because what you have made is awesome, especially for just an Alpha. There are always those who will want more and nitpick and throw shade. Just ignore them.

Your models, textures and animations are all excellent. Love all the different races you've added. I disagree with the fact that people think there isn't enough body variation. Clipping drives me crazy so the shared skeleton that I assume you use for each size variant is a great idea. Once you've added more to the core mechanics of the game to increase the overall experience i think it will be even more amazing.

A few suggestions that I would make after reading what has already been written are to invest even more in the Currency mechanic to reinforce the work and reward system. Earning shineys to buy sex animations was a good call, and if you are to continue that with unlocking areas or maybe even unlocking special skins or the ability to breed certain subtypes, then it will give players goal to work towards instead of just being given everything. Using the loyalty meter to have the nephilim produce more/better products and progeny would be another layer to add. WIth the blessed ones you could use repeated dialog events to raise their loyalty and unlock special features or items they can give you as well as maybe a lovers animation. Also the ability to purchase more barn capacity and an upgrade to be able to sort by colors or traits would be great.

Finally two observations i've made while playing. There is a weird protrusion in your mesh between the vagina and the anus on most models from a rogue vertice or maybe the weight system. Also in the lustwood the lag issues have been greatly reduced, however i noticed that there is a pool of water underneath the terrain that has nothing to do with the river? Could that be using some resources and is it there for a reason?

Much respect, thanks again for the game and keep working on it.

 

[tomcody111]

Looks like derelict has remove community created skins (i don't know for why reason) from nevest version, because I too noticed that lots of the skins disappeared. Here is archive with all presets, which exist in old versions and recently added. Move folder to "AppData\Local\Radiant\Saved" with replacing files, and enjoy.

And useful tip: you can combine skins between different races. Using this method I created about 10-15 new skins for different races

Dude, you fuckin rock. Char presents work great, offspring don't seem to inherit some though. Maybe i'll mess around with the color tags to see if that fixes it. How does that even work between races? Are the unwraps for the textures the same or did you have to edit them to make it work properly?

 

[BeholdTheWizzard]

You are correct, I choose to work alone. Hiring people is not some magical switch you can flip to make your game get done faster. It comes with a ton of drama, excuses, and low quality work. Rather than develop the game, I would spend most of my time babysitting a team of subpar individuals looking to milk as much out of me as they possibly can. And that's the typical scenario, it could end up worse like Breeding Season.

No offense, but this makes it sound like there's no one competent and that anyone you hire will try to scam you and require babysitting. How can you have such a negative opinion, and then onder why poeple have a negative opinnion about patreon devs (or you in particular).
If you are convinced any helper will scam you and be incompetent, then people can easily belive the same about you.


And yes, the gameplay is shallow. I don't consider unlocking sex positions a good mechanic, more like grind. It's not like the position add or change anything mechanically.
Make stats/traits have actual impact. Make breeding actually matter - inheritance of body parts, looks, colors. Then we can talk.

 

[Caerna]

Well, I know what I want to do for the game. I am lost on trying to figure out what my players want.

Should it matter that much? Develop your game as you want and then gather feedback and adjust, release to release. It was obvious, the moment when you moved to community "wants", but away from steady gameplay development. Now it feels like you're getting back on track.

IMO, you are a bit too early in development to take community suggestions THIS seriously.

As mentioned before it's impossible to please everyone, but it appears there are two camps. One that wants more gameplay, and another that only wants me to focus on the sex sandbox.

Always like that, good lewd games will always be plagued by fapers who want galleries without gameplay, and good sex sims will always be boring if you aren't into spending hours of your life building that perfect scene only to realise that it's morning already and you are too tired to be horny.

Sex is incredibly boring to be a centerpiece of design in a proper game, it should be a tool, high quality, but just a tool, one of several, develop tools first, poses and other "RGB Lighting" comes after.

p.s. How about paid "Supporter DLC" on steam or something like that? Maybe like Hunt and Snare devs do, release from Patreon comes to steam a week or two later, with additional fixes if needed. Not a fan of Patreon, but buying lewd games on steam regularly. And it's just handy to have updates automatically delivered.

I know "donate if you like it or not, I don't give a shit", but ending up with more money is better than with less, especially if people are willing to.

 

[FruitSmoothie]

No offense, but this makes it sound like there's no one competent and that anyone you hire will try to scam you and require babysitting. How can you have such a negative opinion, and then onder why poeple have a negative opinnion about patreon devs (or you in particular).
If you are convinced any helper will scam you and be incompetent, then people can easily belive the same about you.

Was gunna say something similar to this the other day but figured I'd said enough and should sleep first, thanks for bringing this up. My message probably wouldn't have been as polite by that point : p

 

[jazield]

No one should feel attacked or insulted by anything I wrote. I am not here to fight with anyone. My posts are not meant to be harsh, and they are only for me to get a better understanding of why many have felt to need to go so far as to label me lazy, incapable, and a scammer.

I meant it when I said I come here to read alternative opinions. I thrive off of negative criticism, and it's welcome just as much as praise. It's the not the bitching and moaning itself, but the contradiction of demanding gameplay and then hating builds that add it. You can imagine how frustrating that is to read.

No one has ever been banned on my Discord for negative feedback, and never will. That's entirely made up.

You are correct, I choose to work alone. Hiring people is not some magical switch you can flip to make your game get done faster. It comes with a ton of drama, excuses, and low quality work. Rather than develop the game, I would spend most of my time babysitting a team of subpar individuals looking to milk as much out of me as they possibly can. And that's the typical scenario, it could end up worse like Breeding Season.

You seem to have something against solo developers specifically. Perhaps others are what you claim, but it's invalid to slap those labels on all of us. Speaking for myself, and from the heart, I expect no one to bow to any aspect of me, or my philosophies. The Steam example was used only to show that I'm not all about the damn money. If that were the case, things would be very different.

Are there things I could do better? Absolutely. Have mistakes been made? You know it. However this idea that I am lazy, and a scammer is baseless.

What I read here screams of not knowing a damn thing about game development. You don't just download things off of the marketplace and tick a few boxes in the editor, it's full blown software engineering. It takes time, a lot of time.

I really like your work and I congratulate you I do not complain or anything I only support you even in patreon but with another name do not take the toxic and insulting comments I just wanted to congratulate you on your work even though I only have an opinion of the hybrids it should look more like Lizard man or gargolas or that my opinion but still relax and do not take your work very difficult since it is not good to stress for people who do not deserve your work and I do not speak English well in case you see bad words I use the translator

 

[anoniemus]

Hey derelict i just want to say that i love the game been awhile since i played but from what i remember it was great and i also want to say after reading the posts here that your doing a great job and that you should just do the best you can.

 

[Ed360]

No offense, but this makes it sound like there's no one competent and that anyone you hire will try to scam you and require babysitting. How can you have such a negative opinion, and then onder why poeple have a negative opinnion about patreon devs (or you in particular).
If you are convinced any helper will scam you and be incompetent, then people can easily belive the same about you.

I couldn't have written it better, Mr Dev you allege that you are at a point where changing something in the code is a nuisance why not just focus on that and hire an artist but well I will stop insisting in this point because you are stubborn in this regard. The next would be from what I read you are trying to please almost everyone with their suggestions(pleasing everyone is impossible to start) so so you include features that sometimes do not coincide with what has already been established or start with something leave it unfinished and put another new feature which is irrelevant with the previous one for example (i wrote this before) when the surprise sex came out the next update for me was the most logical was the FxF sex surprise because 1 why is the point in just seeing the futa/female or male/female and not the fxf. 2 I think I enter the minority category in this part where i play as male and dont play with futas so I only see the sex surprise over there in the areas where there is only male. Finally you need to focus on what you want in the game and involve your patrons if they like what you are doing and not the other way around. We will see how the game develops and good luck

 

[TheVrles]

Keep getting a CreateDXGIFactory2 error, anyone know how to fix it?

 

[cilin241]

CreateDXGIFactory2 me to error i play all modern game PC all work fine C.O.D - W.O.T - Fortnite end more

 

[tomcody111]

Fix For DXGI error

This is the file from the dev to fix the problem. I still get the error after I copied this but the game runs now.

 

[PButts]

I wasnt planning on actually posting with this account, as I would have much rather sent a PM to you, but since that requires at least 3 posts I figured I'd give my input on this anyway.

Well, I know what I want to do for the game. I am lost on trying to figure out what my players want. As mentioned before it's impossible to please everyone, but it appears there are two camps. One that wants more gameplay, and another that only wants me to focus on the sex sandbox.

Although there's a clear division with the majority of input you're getting, have you considered trying to integrate sandbox-like options into the core gameplay more, rather than keep them relatively separate? I'm aware of how difficult this could end up being but it might help work as a middle ground to see what side weighs more. The goal would ultimately be balancing both aspects in the end anyway, but it could lead to additional creative opportunities with how you utilize the sandbox in the gameplay itself. Keep in mind I'm just here because I enjoy playing in-dev games to give myself bug tracking practice so I don't get rusty, as my job is QA so any practice is good practice.

My wording on this is probably strange, but an example I can suggest is allowing a method to modify NPCs to the players liking, or to meet some quest specific requirements through a temporary or permanent method. Player sided content is covered quite well, but NPCs on the other hand aren't as flexible
A way you could approach this is with magic potions (or some other thing that's more interesting). You could implement a system that allows you to give these to NPCs to affect them in various ways like making them taller, shorter, have a bigger ass, have smaller tits with both minor and radical amounts of modifications.
This would allow players to have some form of flexibility with what they want in terms of sandbox material since you can alter the other characters (or maybe your own on the fly) to however you desire, while also providing a gameplay mechanic that could be expanded into adding quests where you can only access some zone if your character meets some requirements.
At this point you could branch off into how youd want to go about this, where maybe theres an NPC that wants a potion to get bigger tits, or wants to have wings or something and if you do this you're rewarded with unique positions that can be used later on like a double vaginal threeway or something, which can then be used for capturing multiple creatures in the wild, but makes the encounter tougher to beat.
This could be further expanded into the breeding aspect/monsters to breed to both allow the player to modify whatever creatures theyve captured to however they want them, while also allowing the doors to be open to other mechanics like it. Or hell, maybe doing some specific quests could grant your player some outfits the NPCs wear or something.
The main reason for suggesting all this is while talking to an NPC to customize everything on the player helps, a more on the fly solution might be good for NPCs or captured creatures should the player want something different. It can get pretty tedious in the sandbox, so a solution to speed things up with enchantments may help for gameplay and pacing specifically as well as the overall player freedom for customization.

Again I'm not trying to push you to do anything, but rather get offer some direction on creativity to appease both sides of the feedback you're getting. Doing what I suggested is a gargantuan task, and would take a very long time to get right let alone setup to even get started so I'm by no means saying do it for that very reason. I just do QA, and part of my job is give constructive feedback to improve things if possible though I mainly just make sure things work. Your game has most of the groundwork there to go any direction you please, I just know that these things also take a lot of time and planning. Do what you feel is right, since there's multiple solutions to this issue, and any of them can be beneficial. Anyone can also openly disagree or agree with any point of this post as well.

Whatever the case, good work my dude and above all do what you wanna do most. Just be sure that feedback you receive doesn't get to your head. Just try to think creatively on how to please both sides, I'm sure you can get the idea.

Also I got interested with underwater aspect of this and found a spot with a small hole at the bottom of the underwater terrain that leads nowhere and seems really out of place from the rest of the terrain geometry, and wanted to ask what it's about. It's near the glowing seaweed but out in the distance by an alcove. Also I ended up swimming for like 3 hours under the map. You can do a hell of a lot of travel in the water so I'd suggest adding in some boundaries for inland terrain to prevent swimming under the map.

 

[BeholdTheWizzard]

A way to marry both exist. It's called tying sex into gameplay.
I shall again point towards Slave Matrix as a good example.

Potions to alter your monstergilrs? I don't really see the need except for some really hard to get things - you should be able to get the monstergirl you want by breeding. Except as long as the system is as bare bones and nothing more than a clone factory, it is pointless.

 

[PButts]

Potions to alter your monstergilrs? I don't really see the need except for some really hard to get things - you should be able to get the monstergirl you want by breeding. Except as long as the system is as bare bones and nothing more than a clone factory, it is pointless.

It's an example with minimal effort behind it. There's plenty of other ways to do it, and better at that. I'm much more interested in focusing on blending the feedback he's gotten into a usable set of options.
The player perspective is significantly different and as you can tell, varied, based on interests of that specific player. I for one would't want your suggestion from a gameplay standpoint as if breeding to get more options is the way to do it, what if the outcome is not what you desired? Now you have an entire rng minigame with the breeding which generally brings things to a slog. Yes you can breed then release, but that's really tedious and annoying at some point when you can just modify as you desire with existing characters instead.
The key is to be constructive with feedback and suggestions in order to be able to have options for the dev to go off of. This very disagreement between me and you is the very issue most developers face 24/7. Deciding how to move forward is always subject to discussion and dispute.