Unreal Engine Breeders of the Nephelym [v0.761.6] [DerelictHelmsman]

[RubyZeronyka]

Fine by me. Enjoy your ten monster girls and six sex positions as long as you want.



Yeah, God forbid I use my limited time on this Earth to do stuff I like instead of shitty grinding in this forever-in-alpha grift of a game that doesn’t respect its players’ time.

Such as a game like Skyrim that offers part of what this games offers as unique with the pregnancy stuff but a trillion times more content in sex, their possibilities and not to mention that there are a massive amount of stuff you can do after the sex.

Some people seem to mot get the idea that is not just the idea of grinding or "Git Gud" what annoys the hell out of people not being able to stand it or whatever. But the idea of having lots of other games to spend your precious time on and wasting it on a game that feels so little rewarding in comparison. Like:

- Would I rather spend 10 IRL worth hours of gameplay in BotN trying to get a Jabberwock without cheats or building an entire familiy in more than one save in Skyrim? Skyrim goes.
- Would I rather grind for hours capturing and selling nephs to gain favor to learn one of the barely 10 sex positions in BotN or beat folks up while I can sex them up in Solas City where I can unlock up to a 100+ positions that can be used on both males and females/futas on any character? Solas City wins.
- Would I rather grind stay weeks to create the perfect homestead with the perfect looking neph family in BotN or spend the same amount in Wild Life creating in the sandbox the perfect Horny Jail scenario where I can have a similar looking repertoire of exotic looking characters? Horny Jail, I mean, Wild Life wins (Not to mention that the whole Lovense suport of BotN seems oddly coincidental with the fact that WL implemented it first).
- Even if I think of fully pregnancy/offspring purely based features, many things still feels odd, like if the two parents are thin you could end up getting a fat offspring and honestly it feels like the neph doesnt truly relate with the parents.

So some people before criticising others to not stand the BS games like this forces you to deal with, they need to remember that we are givinf a shitly lacking game like this a chance where others excell even on the same areas this game tries to cover so at least they should show a minimum of respect. But I guess they share the same mentality as certain genres like fighters do, make the games as hard as possible and keep the 3-4 dummies that play them as their playerbase until enough people leave it and forces the dev or dev team behind it having to shut it down.

And thats cause the save modification thing changed a lot for me allowing you to use on newer game versions old saves, but Im also a roleplayer who likes to play as different characters with different aproaches so in one way or another I have to start all over again, amd games like this are terrible at making that experience (Which btw is the suposedly intended one by Derelict) is just so damn hollow that people inevitably would point out their issues. But hey, if none can mention it then let it sink into oblivion then.

 

[Draupnir7]

You are playing a videogame. You don't even respect your time.
Also ruby, someone who can type out thousands of characters in a post and still result in meaningless drivel.

Heres an idea. If you don't like the game, go play something else.

The problem is, they want to like the game more than the game or even DH is letting them. Updates like spreading the sex positions out to each area are like slapping a person for enjoying a sandwich too much.
I remember being confused when that happened, because there was really no good reason for it. Even if I accepted progression-based positions, why not just put Pawsmati in a single location and lock purchase of positions behind having at least one neph from the zone where you get the position from now? Tracking her down in each new zone may not be difficult, but it's annoying, because I can remember when I didn't have to.
Player-discovered shortcuts really shouldn't be used to justify gameplay issues. Use 'em if you want while they're around, I myself merrily jumped off cliffs to cut travel time from town to home before the spiteful ankle-snapping and cliff scaffolding were added. And sure, I can savescum until the nephs I want pregnant are pregnant, and sure, I can just sleep away several days waiting for all the pregnancies to wrap up, and sure, I can sequence break here and there to avoid a gate or two.
But being able to do those things does not excuse the issues with gameplay that drove players to seek ways to avoid those issues. It fuckin' highlights them. What do the gates add? Why spread the positions out like that? Why does a newly-born neph take so much time in the beginning?
BotN has been around long enough that DH should know what he's doing or where he's going with it, but this many years out it still feels like he doesn't. And the grind has been increased several times without better or additional payoff. I want to play BotN, but every time I try a new version, it feels like BotN and DH don't want me to. Which sucks, because I don't want to just be horny, I can do that anywhere. I want to play a fucking monster breeding game, it's why I'm here in the fucking first place.
It's not up to me to respect my time. It's getting spent whether I want it to or not, I can't stay in bed for a whole day and cash it in later. It's up to the game developer to respect my time, my part is to meet them somewhere halfway and accept that part of the time is going to be burned engaging with their game and setting up a payoff, with a certain amount going towards enjoying that payoff. It's like that with every game, regardless of taste. And the time spent versus the time enjoyed for BotN seems to be favoring time spent more and more, and the time enjoyed isn't getting any shinier. If that doesn't bother you, good for you. But the amount of people dissatisfied with how things are going seems to keep growing, which says to me there's a problem somewhere, and I doubt very much that the audience is the main issue.

Even if some of them... like, what the fuck is Ruby trying to say? I CAN'T TELL HELP

 

[muschi26]

like, what the fuck is Ruby trying to say? I CAN'T TELL HELP

From what I can tell: for everything that BotN does, there is a game that does it better, and DH is a complacent milker that doesn’t care about his product or audience.

 

[Metalclaw]

does any one know how to breed the perfect demon for pride?

 

[b00marrows]

BotN has been around long enough that DH should know what he's doing

Arguable since while its been 5 years? it is still his first game and a solo project. Hes been Solo AFAIK since i stopped assisting him during the first year.

Tracking her down in each new zone may not be difficult, but it's annoying, because I can remember when I didn't have to.

That's exactly the point tho isn't it? You have had the games content already "spoiled" to you. Theres no exploration or wonder left to see.
The gates and position unlocking makes sense from a fresh perspective The only people who complain about it are ones who have had it changed on them during development.

A massive issue can be summed up in the fact a breeding game like BOTN is built form the long run, as in you dedicate time and effort into the progression mechanics. But the save file system doesn't allow that, nor does Unreal engine (i still believe that is the culprit for the save file versioning)
You also cant expect a save file to function in the long term in any developing game and time wasted debugging old saves is time wasted not developing the game.

where he's going with it

This is something I am worried about.

[going on a bit of a ramble here]

Early in development a lot of issues turned out to be the engine getting in the way. I had hoped that by now he would have developed more than he has. I left the adult gaming industry 4 years ago, got burned out trying to help too many devs.
He had and i left him with TONNS of stuff he wanted to do the few hours here and there i have managed to put into the new builds hasn't shown much of it.
I am also a bit worried about the recent attempt to update the engine failing. That's no small thing, unreal engine for as much as people praise it has massive black hole tier flaws like not even being able to ANIMATE in it.

[end of ramble for now]

I suspect pregnancy chance might be bugged right now, also trait transfering/upgrading might be too. This is after a few hours or pure breeding done today.
Do people even report bugs to derelict anymore?

 

[Draupnir7]

Theres no exploration or wonder left to see.

I found the bunnygirls through sheer curiosity. Make the map interesting, even if it's only at the points you're gonna put something, and people will poke around and explore. The issue at that point is making the exploration worth it, which I guess is the point of the blessed nephelym? Except you need to visit them to open the gates 'cause they've got the keys, so... I guess the only form of reward for exploring right now is sex positions.
Which is gonna be a bit of a sore topic to the people who have been around here for a while because they've been yoinked twice, once to put them in a store which was acceptable because what else are you gonna use the cumbux on, and once again to scatter the damn things like Dragon Balls.
Even from a fresh perspective, you just get a quick spike of 'oh, that's where you find those nephelym', or 'cool, I was looking forward to those!' if you're more excitable.

A massive issue can be summed up in the fact a breeding game like BOTN is built form the long run,

Hey, a long-term grind is one thing, and it's one I can deal with. Hell, I've defended grind before, when it's not... like this. But this is a grind where progress can be stalled due to sheer chance, and you won't even know if it has or not until the little shit pops out. I'm imagining trying one of those breeding tasks from the board right now and it's giving me a headache. Hell, given that you can run out of things to buy and you can easily level up by catching a spare neph or two to fuck experience out of, are those jobs even worth doing?

 

[thor223]

I have to say I feel extremely conflicted about this game. On one hand, I feel like I shouldn't judge it just based on exploring a tiny part of the town, on the other hand I feel like the dev does deserve some flak for making it possible to get stuck after talking to one of the first NPCs simply because the game is so god damn dark and I honestly failed to find a gamma setting so I literally can't find a way out of a building. Literally. I know it sounds stupid, and I agree that it is, I just wouldn't agree the stupidity is 100% on me. If your game has a very small problem with very simple solution that is missing because you didn't think about implementing a feature that is pretty much standard nowadays, you deserve the criticism. I'm not gonna post a review, though, it does feel unfair to rate a game without experiencing almost any of the content, but come on.

 

[b00marrows]

I found the bunnygirls through sheer curiosity.

I did too, It was really nice bumping into them down the river. I remember when the river was basically meaningless and there was nothing down there. It was a good idea to put a Neph breed and a mini event down there. Plus im biased i like em small and thicc and the bunnys are right up there.

Three things I expected Dere to have completed by now are Items, Transformation and Shortcuts/special locations.
Items being consumables, be they for simple EXP, stat growth, special effects like increased milk production for X time or even tying into the transformation mechanics.
Transformation being consumables that affect the player visually and MAYBE mechanically.
Shortcuts/special locations where going to be a reason to befriend or transform into a neph, to use their ability to explore more get to places not accessible normally. Like a metroidvania almost.

Another things is Farm management. You can see an early mechanic of this by visiting the house, the prompt says "Manage Ranch" Seems. But i remember a massive issue with progressing this was Unreals terrible UI functionality...

sheer chance

Thats a big problem with chance tho isnt it? tho i suspect more may be at play than being unlucky.
The functionality of stats is becoming more questionable to me, last time i properly played neither stats or traits even existed.
Now my player looks like this:

I expect their offspring to be pretty good, but its too much of a mixed bag. And i think pregnancy is bugged. I can have 1500 Fertility and still breed 20 times in a row and somehow fail all of them, the chances of that should be 0. (Thinking on that example, i think that 20 in a row fail was from incest so maybe incest is the cause?)

Does anyone even know if stats or traits WORK yet? has it been confirmed?

 

[RubyZeronyka]

From what I can tell: for everything that BotN does, there is a game that does it better, and DH is a complacent milker that doesn’t care about his product or audience.

Exactly this to summarize it a lot lol

As some people have pointed out, I really want to love this game. Hell, I even worked on some of the translations to make the game become more popular because at the time I did I strongly believed the game had potential and more people should know about it, I used to recommend it a lot and wanted people to get the same feel I got while playing in English but by playing in Portuguese, Spanish, or even French or Japanese if I was fluent enough. However....

When sex positions that were available from start are now progression locked, when save wipes started to happen far too frequently, when areas began to be locked behind super grindy quest processes, when criticism or even sugestions of adding QoL stuff like save imports were taken hostilely (Or that I started to notice clearly its unreceptiveness) and seen that for every nice addition there is 4-5 BSy mecanics youll have to deal with yes or yes you began watching how other games do things and you begin to wonder why are you playing BotN instead of something else that seem to show a much greater love for their fanbase like some of the games I mentioned.

However after you have been so emotionally invested in a game or project to the point of even actively contributing to make it better or more welcoming for more audiences and with time realising that you either play it by getting pissed to the core on how shitty the development of it is turning or you drop it with a feel that you waste your time, energy and hopes on a game you used to love but now is more toxic than entertainimg. So its not as easy as to say "go play something else then". Cause even if I managed to get in say Skyrim absolutely everything that BotN offers but obviously much better overall, I still would feel I wasted a lot in investing in BotN while I should have spend that time creating stuff for that game and even becoming a modder who would be able to even have some people supporting me finantially. Not that Im after that but it is a plausible possibility I wasted for investing my time with BotN.

And my friends, doing translations can be a painful headache to deal with since you have to translate line by line of the ENTIRE game. And I did it with love back then cause I believed in it, but it feels like I wasted a lot for it.

 

[technomage]

That's what makes the game more realistic.
Playing in a fully controlled environment would be rather boring, isn't it?

Realistic?!? Hmm, please enlighten me to where in the real world you can get consensually raped repeatedly by random strangers who then just walk away with cum dripping down their naked bodies, or where on earth you can find so many futa's in one place.

Anyone who is severely OCD will tell you that a fully controlled environment is not boring, but, in fact, a requirement!
Given that we try to play this game to get the best mobs ever, I am sure most of us have a bit of OCD to begin with.

 

[technomage]

Exactly this to summarize it a lot lol

As some people have pointed out, I really want to love this game. Hell, I even worked on some of the translations to make the game become more popular because at the time I did I strongly believed the game had potential and more people should know about it, I used to recommend it a lot and wanted people to get the same feel I got while playing in English but by playing in Portuguese, Spanish, or even French or Japanese if I was fluent enough. However....

So YOU were the reason that the dialogs were completely meaningless! Ask one of the canned questions, and get something completely different from what you asked about.

 

[RubyZeronyka]

So YOU were the reason that the dialogs were completely meaningless! Ask one of the canned questions, and get something completely different from what you asked about.

I did the Spanish ones since a little bit before Pawsmatti was introduced. I tried to keep her Rhymy style for a while but she was by far the bitchiest to properly translate. One of the biggest complains that the translations teams had was that we needed the game to have most of the quotes that addresses to player to be split into masculine and feminine since in many ways dialogues in English can have gender neutral specifications but in others like Portuguese or Spanish they become incredibly odd if not properly gendered. I worked on the translations until more or less the first gate (The one of Kybele) was properly impplemented, then I began to lose interest with the project, at least to keep working on it and left the server, as well as the translations team. So anything post version I think 0738 (Back when the game process was still called Radiant), in the Spanish language was the overhaul of someone else, if not directly machine translated, which I believe is how it actually was made and why is so odd feeling.

So not sure in which messy state the Spanish version is today but at least before the gates progression BS it was properly done. And you just need to compare the Pawsmatti lines to see why.

 

[technomage]

I did the Spanish ones since a little bit before Pawsmatti was introduced. I tried to keep her Rhymy style for a while but she was by far the bitchiest to properly translate. One of the biggest complains that the translations teams had was that we needed the game to have most of the quotes that addresses to player to be split into masculine and feminine since in many ways dialogues in English can have gender neutral specifications but in others like Portuguese or Spanish they become incredibly odd if not properly gendered. I worked on the translations until more or less the first gate (The one of Kybele) was properly impplemented, then I began to lose interest with the project, at least to keep working on it and left the server, as well as the translations team. So anything post version I think 0738 (Back when the game process was still called Radiant), in the Spanish language was the overhaul of someone else, if not directly machine translated, which I believe is how it actually was made and why is so odd feeling.

So not sure in which messy state the Spanish version is today but at least before the gates progression BS it was properly done. And you just need to compare the Pawsmatti lines to see why.

No worries, I was just poking fun at the god awful dialog back when most of it was placeholder... Some of those lines would have made more sense just being the lorem ipsem quotes -- and that was for the English! Being a bit of a language junky myself, I know the hell when dealing with verb/noun gender-specific conjugations.

 

[RubyZeronyka]

No worries, I was just poking fun at the god awful dialog back when most of it was placeholder... Some of those lines would have made more sense just being the lorem ipsem quotes -- and that was for the English! Being a bit of a language junky myself, I know the hell when dealing with verb/noun gender-specific conjugations.

Specially when you have to keep all that with rhymes and a poetic way of speaking like Pawsmatti. Gosh she was a pain to properly translate without breaking her personality vibe. Tho tbh, is not like certain characters like Amber were much easier to translate as well while keeping the same original vibe.

Tho gotta say, a lot of the dialogues are funny as fuck when translated into Spanish XD

 

[Draupnir7]

Transformation being consumables that affect the player visually and MAYBE mechanically.
Shortcuts/special locations where going to be a reason to befriend or transform into a neph, to use their ability to explore more get to places not accessible normally. Like a metroidvania almost.

Another things is Farm management.

It would be nice to have more stuff to spend cumbux on, but we're not likely to see these, are we? Especially not given the quotes below, but... how would these be put in painlessly? For DH or the player?
The neph abilities alone would mean a redo of the whole damn map just so they wouldn't be a pointless gimmick, and then relocation of some races (and the addition of others) out to those newly-remote racially-accessible areas to make it worth it... the bare minimum would be adding a shortcut to those areas only usable by that race, but then it's right back to being a gimmick because base movement is so sluggish and the coochie portals exist.

Unreals terrible UI functionality

flaws like not even being able to ANIMATE in it.

This is making me think that nobody's ever gonna see the BotN that we want to see, unless he swaps engines. And even trying to upgrade the engine was an apparent ass-ache.

I feel like, somewhere between this game and KoboldKare, the ideal breeding game development cycle resides.

 

[b00marrows]

It would be nice to have more stuff to spend cumbux on, but we're not likely to see these, are we? Especially not given the quotes below, but... how would these be put in painlessly? For DH or the player?
The neph abilities alone would mean a redo of the whole damn map just so they wouldn't be a pointless gimmick, and then relocation of some races (and the addition of others) out to those newly-remote racially-accessible areas to make it worth it... the bare minimum would be adding a shortcut to those areas only usable by that race, but then it's right back to being a gimmick because base movement is so sluggish and the coochie portals exist.



This is making me think that nobody's ever gonna see the BotN that we want to see, unless he swaps engines. And even trying to upgrade the engine was an apparent ass-ache.

I feel like, somewhere between this game and KoboldKare, the ideal breeding game development cycle resides.

Part of the learning curve of game dev... or creation in general is that you may never quite make what you wanted to.
BOTN originally was aimed to be a long steady progressed game that added more and more as time went on. I feel the early choice of using Unreal Engine is the biggest mistake and has hampered every single step Dere has taken.
We may never see what me and Dere talked about during the conception phases in BOTN, no clue about the future tho.

To make the issue even more prevelent, Look at the absolute ridiculousness of VAM(Virt-a-mate) as a reason why Unity would have been a better choice. Physics (even soft body) and Animation alone being 2 large issues with Unreal both much easier and better in unity.

Maybe at some point in the future ill get back in contact with Dere, who knows what might happen.

But seriously does anyone know if stats or even Traits are actually functional? Yet?

 

[Draupnir7]

Part of the learning curve of game dev... or creation in general is that you may never quite make what you wanted to.
BOTN originally was aimed to be a long steady progressed game that added more and more as time went on. I feel the early choice of using Unreal Engine is the biggest mistake and has hampered every single step Dere has taken.
We may never see what me and Dere talked about during the conception phases in BOTN, no clue about the future tho.

To make the issue even more prevelent, Look at the absolute ridiculousness of VAM(Virt-a-mate) as a reason why Unity would have been a better choice. Physics (even soft body) and Animation alone being 2 large issues with Unreal both much easier and better in unity.

Maybe at some point in the future ill get back in contact with Dere, who knows what might happen.

But seriously does anyone know if stats or even Traits are actually functional? Yet?

I knew I forgot to add something. From what I've seen, the traits do work, the most apparent example being the trait that lowers lust cost during breeding. It's just that passing them on can be a pain. As for stats, no idea, but that's because beyond capturing nephs I have no idea what they're for, so I tend to not pay attention.

 

[b00marrows]

the most apparent example being the trait that lowers lust cost during breeding.

You sure about that tho? because a stat does that too.

Stats have tooltips:
Str = Increased lust.


Dex = Reduced lust cost.


Will = Increased excitement


Allure = Increased max XP??? the fuck?

Fertility = Reduced summoning time... Huh so it doesn't even say it increases pregnancy chance...

Wow.

The easiest examples of traits working is morphs (breast, butt size and body types)
But otherwise... is there really any way to test the other ones?

---

Note for anoyone forwarding bugs, potential bug is it appears breeding with the breeder means traits cant be transferred at anything over level 1.
Any Neph produced by the player has all traits reduced to level 1:

Edit:
Or maybe that's just a bug in general?

 

[Dirgha]

Realistic?!? Hmm, please enlighten me to where in the real world you can get consensually raped repeatedly by random strangers who then just walk away with cum dripping down their naked bodies

Yes that's exactly what I meant, it's realistic in its own very special way, within its own world of promiscuity and debauchery.

By the way, have you checked whether the "aggro rate" changes or not when you switch your clothes on and off?

 

[technomage]

Yes that's exactly what I meant, it's realistic in its own very special way, within its own world of promiscuity and debauchery.

By the way, have you checked whether the "aggro rate" changes or not when you switch your clothes on and off?

it is supposed to lower aggro when you have clothes, but seems as I am one of those followers of debauchery, I usually cheat the clothes off permanently.