Java Corrupted Saviors [Release 54] [CSDev]

[SuperSkippy]

I wonder what % of players even make it up to the strategic advantage part of the game... I feel like the majority don't get past Loop 1 at the moment, or they get to Loop 2, see the Forsaken training and give up.

Going through your posts, and Kalloi 's guides, I wonder if a basic guide on CS 'strategy' would be worthwhile. We have good tactical guides - Loop 1, Forsaken training etc, but there's no guide which combines the two together that encourage players to think with Loops 5, 10+ in mind.

I still feel like the majority of interested players give up loop 1 because they don't understand that multipliers combine to make exponential growth. Frankly, that's not an easy concept to grasp. The Guide/Goals system does a somewhat passable job, but it's never going to kick in very far if someone plays in a very natural logical way that is wrong because of how multipliers work. For example:

They see info about getting someone to 200 DISG (a possible initial goal, for 1EE downtimes). They are able to do this by hammering on Slime, the button that increases DISG, by trial and error. 1st goal complete. They figure that increasing DISG is the way that these 1EE downtimes are generated, so when the other two chosen come in, they start hammering on DISG vs them as well, not realizing or understanding that for the other 2 chosen it's not a Core Vulnerability. So they notice that Slime deals less damage to the other two. Maybe they try one of the other buttons, or maybe they don't. But they're still making progress on the next goal "buy 10EE worth of upgrades". Maybe they're still hammering on Slime and this takes a while, but they eventually get to the next goal, "Send out a Commander worth 5EE". At this point, they may have tried out Surround and saw that it deals a little bit of damage to the numbers at the bottom, but they haven't really learned what those are for. Or maybe they still think hammering on Slime is the way to make things go up because that's the only real direction they've had for how to increase tings. They've bought Psychic Reading, so they see the bars, but they don't understand what the bars mean.

Basically, this:

Morality:   FEAR    --|--    HATE <= Significant Vulnerability: Use Grind and Pummel until 10k dmg
Innocence:  DISG  ----|      PLEA <= Core Vulnerability: Reach Lv 2 PLEA
Confidence: PAIN      |----  INJU <= Minor Vulnerability: Use Caress and Pummel until 10k dmg
Dignity:    SHAM    --|---   EXPO <= Significant Vulnerability: Use Grind and Humiliate until 10k dmg

only makes sense to someone with an idea of what to look for. The hypothetical player has no clue how to use this information. Anyway, they get the necessary upgrades and 5EE to spare. They probably waste some EE on 1EE commanders whenever they've got an EE left after buying upgrades, and don't make much progress. They wonder what these commanders are for. They still think that increasing DISG is the way to get more EE, so they keep trying what they've seen work once--hammering Slime. Anyway, they summon a 5EE commander, pick a girl and get started with a whole new game. Now they see a tooltip, "Bring Moppet to at least 1000 EXPO damage", and they have no idea how to do this as they've barely played with the buttons that happen when Chosen are surrounded. They do hover over the new-ish buttons, and see that Humiliate increases EXPO, so they try that. They're rewarded with "EXPO Up!" Cool, they try one of the other buttons. Maybe the order to click them is right to left, so they try Pummel->Caress->Grind. OK, now the capture is done, but Moppet's only at 200 or so EXPO. Let's capture her again. Better raise EXPO since that's my goal! Then maybe they try a new order of actions, maybe they don't. It's possible for this to end up over 1000 EXPO but not guaranteed. But either way, there's nowhere to go from here. If they get this goal, they see:

GOAL COMPLETE
EXPO damage multiplies the HATE, PLEA, INJU, and even EXPO damage taken by other Chosen. It's often a good idea to put some EXPO on one Chosen at the start of battle, then focus the rest of your efforts on a different Chosen.

NEXT GOAL:
Bring Stalwart to at least 10,000 INJU damage and use Sodomize."

But they've used both of their captures, their 5EE Commander is gone without doing much other than accomplishing a guide goal, Extermination is complete or nearly so, and Moppet's got 3 openings but is up to 5 defense.

At this point they probably quit. They might uninstall or they might look at the .txt included and start reading. From their reading, they understand that HATE doubles damage to Circumstances, and Pummel triples damage to Circumstances, and if they re-read they'll understand what Circumstances are and that INJU is one of them, but they're probably thinking that even if they do 6x the damage they were doing before, there's no way to get 10k.

F95zone players are used to click button, see boobies and this game--is quite a bit more than that. Those of us reading the thread this far understand that it's something unique, but I feel that without in-game guidance that is somewhat more explicit than what we have now, the average titty enjoyer is not going to expend the mental effort necessary to succeed in this game. Whether or not that's something worth putting effort into in this phase of the alpha is up to CSdev .

Anyway, that's my thinking.

 

[jaw_bone]

Anyway, that's my thinking.

They're all good thinkings. Reading through that, I can recognise several obstacles to my learnings in the game. For example:

But they've used both of their captures, their 5EE Commander is gone without doing much other than accomplishing a guide goal, Extermination is complete or nearly so, and Moppet's got 3 openings but is up to 5 defense.

This was me for the longest time. When I couldn't get +2 EE per Chosen to happen, I looked at the Commanders, plus the cost of upgrades, and just couldn't see how I'd ever get the Chosen even up to T2.

F95zone players are used to click button, see boobies and this game--is quite a bit more than that.

This is a big part of it. While the portrait packs help with a bit of instant gratification, I do stick by my Dwarf Fortress comparison - gotta struggle and learn to get to the real meat of the game.

I've been thinking about how to explain this game visually, without screenshots from the game. I had some ideas, which I may write up when I have time (I know enough to explain Loop 1 on a basic level), but unsure on the format.

All I can think of right now is using memes. For example, talking about what happens when you break vulnerabilities in a certain order:

Rivalries:


Friendships:

 

[SuperSkippy]

They're all good thinkings. Reading through that, I can recognise several obstacles to my learnings in the game. For example:




This was me for the longest time. When I couldn't get +2 EE per Chosen to happen, I looked at the Commanders, plus the cost of upgrades, and just couldn't see how I'd ever get the Chosen even up to T2.



This is a big part of it. While the portrait packs help with a bit of instant gratification, I do stick by my Dwarf Fortress comparison - gotta struggle and learn to get to the real meat of the game.

I've been thinking about how to explain this game visually, without screenshots from the game. I had some ideas, which I may write up when I have time (I know enough to explain Loop 1 on a basic level), but unsure on the format.

All I can think of right now is using memes. For example, talking about what happens when you break vulnerabilities in a certain order:

Rivalries:
View attachment 3085275

Friendships:
View attachment 3085277

My suggestion, made sometime last month, is that there needs to be an integrated tutorial walking people through all steps of Loop 1, highlighting important information, telling what buttons to press and why, and pointing to important information on the screen and how to interpret it. It needs to be in the game, as a button on the main menu, listed as "First Time?" or "First Game" or something similar. I've offered to write the text that goes in and annotate a playthrough vs a Chosen team designed to show off important features if CSdev will then implement that text/tutorial in the game, but I'm not going to do it for shits and giggles or to add to the growing battery of .txt files that we are asking new players to read first. Currently all we have is the recording system which is not full-featured enough in my opinion to do this effectively. Later it can be expanded to a strategic view and oriented towards a long-term Forsaken strategy, perhaps through loop 5.

 

[McHuman]

I decided to restart my Loop 2 with the knowledge gained from here. It was worth it... first distortion! Was a tricky one too, cause one of the others really wanted to do a T3 Innocence break, which I think would've wrecked the Aversion distortion if it had fired. Lots of retrying haha.

View attachment 3085164

Depends on if Moppet is the one with Innocence as a Minor vulnerability and the Chosen with the T3 Innocence Break had it as their Core. If that was the case and you had used the Distortion Plan button in the info page for Moppet to select Aversion, then when you got the notification for the potential T3 Break for that other Chosen it would've said that triggering it will interfere with a Distortion Plan and in the little table that shows Vulnerabilities and Breaks it would color the "[/]" for the T3 Innocence Break as Red instead of the normal white.

 

[Celerarity]

Most of the things people are asking for in an integrated tutorial could just as well be provided by a video walkthrough with some commentary, just saying.

 

[darius25]

i am a tad bit confused how to make them give birth as it will say they are impregnated but seeming no matter how many days go by nothing happens

 

[Celerarity]

The pregnancy takes longer than 50 days. If they escape they are frozen in a government facility to prevent the pregnancy from progressing, if they are killed it dies with them, and if they turn forsaken I think it terminates? Not 100% sure on the last one.

 

[McHuman]

i am a tad bit confused how to make them give birth as it will say they are impregnated but seeming no matter how many days go by nothing happens

Impregnated Chosen cannot give birth as a Chosen to my knowledge currently. The only way for them to give birth is for them to become a Forsaken, at which point they will give birth to a weak demon that skitters off somewhere. Like the game heavily emphasizes in the T4 MOR Break message and several post-Break vignettes and trauma resolution scenes (and as Celerity said), if the Chosen escapes the final battle alive the government/military will turn on the Chosen and freeze them to prevent the birth (as while a Forsaken impregnated by a demon gives birth to an inconsequential demon, a Chosen carrying a demon's child gives birth to something currently unknown but implied to be much more dangerous).

The pregnancy takes longer than 50 days. If they escape they are frozen in a government facility to prevent the pregnancy from progressing, if they are killed it dies with them, and if they turn forsaken I think it terminates? Not 100% sure on the last one.

Forsaken do give birth, but becoming a Forsaken weakens the child resulting in them giving birth to an inconsequential demon in a short note in the post-final battle messages.

 

[MoarDakka123]

Nahh, they can give birth to Chosen too. IIRC it needs to be another Forsaken or a Demon Lord body that has a human dick (specifically not an ovipositor), though animal dicks might work too, but I don't know about that one.

I'm pretty sure the Insemination Defiler is explicitly a very non-human body, so offspring from that one always result in a demon being born.

 

[McHuman]

Nahh, they can give birth to Chosen too. IIRC it needs to be another Forsaken or a Demon Lord body that has a human dick (specifically not an ovipositor), though animal dicks might work too, but I don't know about that one.

I'm pretty sure the Insemination Defiler is explicitly a very non-human body, so offspring from that one always result in a demon being born.

Yes if a Forsaken gets another Forsaken pregnant (not sure if the Demon Lord can do it though, but haven't tested it either) the resulting child is a Chosen sent off to another city to become a Chosen to fight later... which personally makes no sense logically to me but I suppose it's necessary for balance reasons, would be pretty broken if you could farm Forsaken through making them impregnate each other. This only applies for Forsaken getting pregnant though, if a Chosen is impregnated by a Forsaken the child is still a demon.

 

[jaw_bone]

Depends on if Moppet is the one with Innocence as a Minor vulnerability and the Chosen with the T3 Innocence Break had it as their Core. If that was the case and you had used the Distortion Plan button in the info page for Moppet to select Aversion, then when you got the notification for the potential T3 Break for that other Chosen it would've said that triggering it will interfere with a Distortion Plan and in the little table that shows Vulnerabilities and Breaks it would color the "[/]" for the T3 Innocence Break as Red instead of the normal white.

Moppet had it as her Core, Shroud had it as her minor. I thought that if Shroud's T3 broke before Moppet's, that would've broken all of Moppet's Innocence vulnerabilities and ruined the plan, since Moppet hadn't even had her T1 Innocence broken if I recall correctly (I did have the Aversion plan set up).

Most of the things people are asking for in an integrated tutorial could just as well be provided by a video walkthrough with some commentary, just saying.

Sure, this is also a good idea, although I personally wouldn't watch this, because I learn nothing from videos haha. I also don't know if I'd want to listen to someone verbally talking about this game...

 

[jaw_bone]

My suggestion, made sometime last month, is that there needs to be an integrated tutorial walking people through all steps of Loop 1, highlighting important information, telling what buttons to press and why, and pointing to important information on the screen and how to interpret it. It needs to be in the game, as a button on the main menu, listed as "First Time?" or "First Game" or something similar. I've offered to write the text that goes in and annotate a playthrough vs a Chosen team designed to show off important features if CSdev will then implement that text/tutorial in the game, but I'm not going to do it for shits and giggles or to add to the growing battery of .txt files that we are asking new players to read first. Currently all we have is the recording system which is not full-featured enough in my opinion to do this effectively. Later it can be expanded to a strategic view and oriented towards a long-term Forsaken strategy, perhaps through loop 5.

Nah I think we have plenty of guides (with the exception of a broader strategy guide that I mentioned earlier). No more txt files haha.

The game needs more visual representations of:

1) Potential options, and
2) Potential consequences

How that is achieved, I don't know, because I don't know enough about programming to determine the difficulty of implementing things. But something which helps in some games I've played with bone-crushing depth (Songs of Syx for example) is colour-coded arrows which show what your action is about to do, a preview of sorts.

So for example, you hover over Slime, and it does this, if the Chosen has PLEA as a minor:



Two arrows for significant, three for core.

This could also work for surrounds and circumstance damage, where Grind would show the gain to HATE, but also the corresponding gains to traumas and how much the player should expect.

However I don't know if hovering tooltips/previews are possible within the engine. And I don't know if CSdev would want to implement a whole new "preview" step for each attack, as that would add an extra button press to combat...

 

[McHuman]

Moppet had it as her Core, Shroud had it as her minor. I thought that if Shroud's T3 broke before Moppet's, that would've broken all of Moppet's Innocence vulnerabilities and ruined the plan, since Moppet hadn't even had her T1 Innocence broken if I recall correctly (I did have the Aversion plan set up).

No, only the Core will attack the Minor, not the other way around. Cause the whole reason the attack happens is because they're desperate to regain some semblance of control after having something so important of them almost completely tarnished. A Chosen doesn't hold their Minor/Significant Vulnerabilities nearly that close, so while the T3 Break is still devastating to them, it's not fracturing a Core part of who they are that they cant reconcile.

Also just to let you know, when a Distortion has been successfully triggered those scenes will change to not ruin the Distortion as the Distorted Chosen will be protected in a Distortion appropriate way. However you can still ruin the Distortion yourself, by performing Defiler actions that would trigger the T2 Break of the distorted vulnerabilities, this is especially important if you're using Commanders with Defilers to set up orgies when you have Chosen on Distortion paths with no overlapping breaks (no I definitely don't speak from the experience of putting myself in the awkward position of not being able to set up orgies because of that in a loop 1 once).

 

[jaw_bone]

No, only the Core will attack the Minor, not the other way around. Cause the whole reason the attack happens is because they're desperate to regain some semblance of control after having something so important of them almost completely tarnished. A Chosen doesn't hold their Minor/Significant Vulnerabilities nearly that close, so while the T3 Break is still devastating to them, it's not fracturing a Core part of who they are that they cant reconcile.

Also just to let you know, when a Distortion has been successfully triggered those scenes will change to not ruin the Distortion as the Distorted Chosen will be protected in a Distortion appropriate way. However you can still ruin the Distortion yourself, by performing Defiler actions that would trigger the T2 Break of the distorted vulnerabilities, this is especially important if you're using Commanders with Defilers to set up orgies when you have Chosen on Distortion paths with no overlapping breaks (no I definitely don't speak from the experience of putting myself in the awkward position of not being able to set up orgies because of that in a loop 1 once).

That makes perfect sense, when you explain it that way. Thank you yet again!

 

[jaw_bone]

Started Loop 3. I like pain, so I'm going with the Superior Chosen. Is there a way I can tell in the description who the Superior is?



Edit: Ah. I think I found her.



Thank you for making it obvious lol

 

[SuperSkippy]

Most of the things people are asking for in an integrated tutorial could just as well be provided by a video walkthrough with some commentary, just saying.

Respectfully, I don't think a video is the way to approach this. This is a text-centered game. You kind of have two approaches to a "How to Play" video.

1) In any reasonably-paced playthrough, people are kind of flying through it. So the effect would be that someone is talking while a bunch of text is flying by, with pauses at the important bits to explain. This allows you to, with tight pacing, get to commanders, multipliers, and t1 breaks, maybe even a t2 break if you extend it a bit past 15 minutes, but the effect will be "this person isn't reading any of the text in this text game" with a side of "How can I tell what text is important and what text isn't?"

2) Or, someone would be crawling through the game, leaving plenty of time to read all the text (or reading it aloud to the viewer), and in 20-30 minutes they'll finish the first battle, which gives the player some of the information (here's how the first surround works, then defense goes up and future surrounds are harder), but they still lack the key step of how to build up a large multiplier. Stay tuned for part 2 where a second Chosen joins the battle? After 2 hours they'll get to the part where they summon a demon commander that can actually do some damage? Is anyone going to stick around for that?

Of course, if you've got a different idea that doesn't fit either of these formats, there's nothing stopping you from making one.

Nah I think we have plenty of guides (with the exception of a broader strategy guide that I mentioned earlier). No more txt files haha.

The game needs more visual representations of:

1) Potential options, and
2) Potential consequences

How that is achieved, I don't know, because I don't know enough about programming to determine the difficulty of implementing things. But something which helps in some games I've played with bone-crushing depth (Songs of Syx for example) is colour-coded arrows which show what your action is about to do, a preview of sorts.

So for example, you hover over Slime, and it does this, if the Chosen has PLEA as a minor:

View attachment 3087653

Two arrows for significant, three for core.

This could also work for surrounds and circumstance damage, where Grind would show the gain to HATE, but also the corresponding gains to traumas and how much the player should expect.

However I don't know if hovering tooltips/previews are possible within the engine. And I don't know if CSdev would want to implement a whole new "preview" step for each attack, as that would add an extra button press to combat...

This could work as a toggleable option, but how do you tell people, "This is how you build up a x12 multiplier so you can break T1?" in a game where the Chosen personalities are randomized? Also, I don't know Java super-well, but there'd be a lot to implementing this, because it's a change to text that's already been output. Currently CS is set up to output text and move on--this changes text that's already been output which can result in a lot of programming overhead. Changing the buttons, though--that'd be much more easily doable.

 

[jaw_bone]

This could work as a toggleable option, but how do you tell people, "This is how you build up a x12 multiplier so you can break T1?" in a game where the Chosen personalities are randomized? Also, I don't know Java super-well, but there'd be a lot to implementing this, because it's a change to text that's already been output. Currently CS is set up to output text and move on--this changes text that's already been output which can result in a lot of programming overhead. Changing the buttons, though--that'd be much more easily doable.

Exactly, I think it's probably too late to implement this without a significant code base re-write, which I'd never suggest.

Honestly, I think this needs a web-based solution. An interactive webpage which acts as a companion that guides the player through the loop. The player inputs the following:

- Vulns of the Chosen on the loop
- Angst at the end of Day 1 (to account for the 1-100 scale of damage)
- What Item is selected
- What relationships they want to pursue with the Chosen (rivals, nothing, friends)

The guide should be able to do the resulting math and not only suggest a path to follow, but could also do that hovering tooltip functionality that attempts to solve the hardest problem with the game: "Why should I do this action?" in a visual way.

The big con to this is... you may as well just make the game all over again in HTML 5 or Javascript lol.

The only other solution I can think of is something like Dwarf Therapist for Dwarf Fortress, which is another executable program which reads the memory allocations for the base game and uses the info to spit out helpful data. Again, same problem, may as well re-make the game.

 

[Celerarity]

Respectfully, I don't think a video is the way to approach this. This is a text-centered game. You kind of have two approaches to a "How to Play" video.

1) In any reasonably-paced playthrough, people are kind of flying through it. So the effect would be that someone is talking while a bunch of text is flying by, with pauses at the important bits to explain. This allows you to, with tight pacing, get to commanders, multipliers, and t1 breaks, maybe even a t2 break if you extend it a bit past 15 minutes, but the effect will be "this person isn't reading any of the text in this text game" with a side of "How can I tell what text is important and what text isn't?"

The answer to how you can tell what text is important is, the person making the video will tell you. That's the entire point of a video guide - to explain relevant concepts with accompanying examples. You don't watch a guide because you want to see the maker slowly pick through every bit of text, you watch it so you can listen to them and learn the things that aren't already immediately obvious to anyone who opens up the game and looks at it. Because the player can do that last part themselves.

A basic explanation of how to target weaknesses, what trama and circumstance damage does, commanders and surrounds, and what decisions to keep in mind as you are walked through the first loop are all that's needed. Once you get the basics of how to actually play everything else should click.

You could easily make a 15 minute video with the first five minutes being 'what is this game' and 'how to start your first fights', the next five being 'what are commanders and T2 breaks', and the final bit covering 'how to work T3 breaks and win the final battle'. You don't need an essay for any of this; it's just introducing the basic concepts and the logic behind them.

Also trying to write an entire program to compensate for the permutations of random chosen is dumb. The game is deterministic. Just make a walkthrough for one chosen team (using a video, text, or the in-game comments) and export them for people to try themselves if they want to follow along.

 

[jaw_bone]

Also trying to write an entire program to compensate for the permutations of random chosen is dumb. The game is deterministic. Just make a walkthrough for one chosen team (using a video, text, or the in-game comments) and export them for people to try themselves if they want to follow along.

I don't think it's "dumb", I think it's "difficult". The issue with your approach is that some people may not want to learn like that. It's easy to blindly follow a walkthrough, but if that walkthrough doesn't do a good job of explaining the reasoning behind the choices being made, then all you've done is led the horse to water. The horse still has no idea how to drink.

There is no one singular answer to this, and everyone will have their preferences. Videos are not a silver bullet, nor is a companion app or program. Nothing wrong with multiple solutions, if someone is willing to put in the time and effort!

 

[Celerarity]

Just as long as that someone isn't you, I take it?

It's dumb because it adds so much effort trying to algorithmically predict the best move for a game that is fundamentally deterministic, and thus does not require at-run evaluation. It's easy to say 'someone else should do all this work' and leave it at that, but that doesn't often lead to progress. If you want to move from ideas to seeing actual execution you have to start thinking about what's practical and what isn't.