Java Cultivation Spiral [Release 1c] [CSdev]

[SuperSkippy]

This is actually accurate! I've only made text games up to this point. Probably a good thing I'm getting some practice here, since when I finished this UI, I thought to myself "Hey, this looks pretty good!" Suggestions for how it could be improved are welcome.

Here are some annoyances that I have with the interface:

• Most often, I'd like to keep most activities the same while changing only one or two when I notice a problem or have something new unlocked. Currently this means I have to go through each activity in the day and confirm each other selection, which seems unnecessary.
• The different equipment menus and information screens are behind buttons that cycle through them rather than being always accessible.
• The only way to view progress on a goal is by clicking on that action.

My thoughts on the UI:

• Selection boxes for each daily activity, enabling direct selection of activities where a change is desired rather than having to input choices into every time slot. This can be part of the "Actions" overlay, integrated into the display.
• Single-click "Next Day" button rather than having to confirm every activity one-by-one.
• Separate menus for "Routine", "Stats", "Actions", each screen containing buttons to access the other two. Stats screen can have buttons to click into "Achievements" and a new button "Goals" that takes the player to a screen with known goals and their associated progress.
• Maybe also a screen that shows the specific actions that raise a particular stat or relationship?

Here's an overview of a (complete, polished) game that accomplishes many of the same things you're doing:

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I'll definitely crank up the speed of the story scene auto-advance in the next release.

I plan on adding a new Default Action Choice option to the next release: "Looply" or something. Basically, by default, it'll have you do the same actions and routine as you did on that day in the previous loop. As long as your upgrade levels are no lower than they were last loop, this should only ever break for actions which become unavailable after you complete the associated goal (like looking for Tanaka).

I'm up for adding other options too, though. I don't want the game to be painful to play. In Daily mode, the game should already be defaulting to last weekend's action when yesterday's action isn't allowed, so let me know if it isn't doing that, or if there's some other rule that you think would make sense to add to the game.

This also seems like a reasonable improvement.

Other potential Auto >>> settings:
Repeat actions until stamina is full/empty
Repeat actions until the next goal is accomplished

This is an interesting idea. The weekly schedule is one of the first parts I made while figuring out how the UI should work, so it probably would be worthwhile to go back and see if I can cram any more info in there now that I have a better handle on how to make things responsive to mouseovers and clicking.

This is meant to make things friendlier to keyboard hotkey users. Instead of scrolling through a big list of 16 actions (needing up to 8 keypresses to cycle around to the action you want), it could theoretically make things easier to organize them into a 4x4 setup (no more than 2 keypresses to swap to the right place, then 2 more to swap to the right action in that place).

In practice, maybe the prevalence of one-action locations makes that make less sense. But if a place has only one action, then it's still one click to select it, just like if the actions were all listed together, right?

Ideally you want something that's accessible to both. The primary actions that players take are deciding what goes where in the schedule--so every place they see that schedule should be a place they can click to change what happens there. There's no reason to make players go to a different menu to select/change something that they can see on their screen. If I'm looking at the weekly schedule, I should be able to see that Tuesday's "Sleep In" won't restore stamina and be able to adjust that action right there without having to wait for it to be Tuesday or to go back to the Actions screen.

My plan here is to have the "top row" upgrades make each attribute level more powerful, while the "bottom row" upgrades are things which give you a bonus regardless of attribute levels. But in practice, I suppose that Adrenaline functions more like a top row upgrade, since it only provides a bonus when you're using actions that cost Health, and it isn't yet practical to start running into those until later in the loop.

The next upgrade unlock will be another bottom row one.

The upgrades screen could use a lot of cleaning up currently.



A lot more of this screen could be used to display the buttons that players can click on, rather than needing a soft autoscroll to reveal the rest of "Instinct" and the "Intelligence" button.

[/QUOTE]

are there any upgrades to buy between life aside from drive and athletics? i mean more goal progress or more max stamina is nice but they can't get me to my goals anywhere near fast enough
ah feats are where you hid the new upgrades, that'll do it

any suggestions about the battle-tested and research assistant feats though? I can only assume battle is from jackal, though the only way I can find her is buying her through duMont's story, and the only idea I have on research is basically capping hashimoto's story, but I only unlocked that part of her story in the last 10 or so days, how am I supposed to get there faster?

Battle-tested I think comes from Standing Guard for Jackal's friends in Skid Row at noon. Hire her once and she'll also agree to train you for free in the Afternoon. Once you've Trained with her enough for her to trust you with some equipment, she'll get you in touch with some friends, and you get Battle-tested when you've accomplished their goal.

Research Assistant is unlocked through Jackal as well. Keep training with her after she's given you some equipment. Next goal you'll notice something different about her, and she'll tell you about another location you can go to at Midnight. Then do that one every chance you can until another option opens up there. Do that one until its goal completes and you can do endurance testing.

As for how to open stuff up faster?

Focus
Do crimes

 

[CrowClaw667]

After hyperfocusing the last two days on this I can say I can leave a review here!

I'm honestly enjoying it, even though its a bit raw I love the potential here and the characters are charming. The gameplay loop took a bit to click but it did and after my Fugue I dreamt of spreadsheets and stats.

The early ramp-up is a little too weak even with upgrades yeah and many things take a looot of time that it almost doesnt feel worth it.

The tool tips at beginning of each day are useful...after a couple loops when you actually understand them. So maybe in the future an aside having all those tips may help greatly with the onboarding process.

I do like the different reactions to your equipment and stance-etc between loops being highlighted. It really helps as you keep clicking through stuff.

On Loop 8 and got most achievements out of the way so now I just gotta actually manage to save Tanaka since I found her trail too late on my last attempt and got stoneblocked by not knowing Australian.

Though Battle-Scarred body doesnt quite feel worth it with the debuff to Relationship gain gotta say. Since Relationships just, wildly increase gains in general.

Do eagerly await what next updates come up in the future! there's so much POTENTIAL.

 

[Shasou]

Gave the game an honest go, spent quite some time playing it and i feel ready enough to give my honest feedback:

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[Laura2022]

Know any femprotag games with similar themes?

No for most of these, I just RP with a local LLM since I can specify scenario, characters, and parameters for the "story."
Quite a few games have a combat system where if you lose you get fucked, literally - just look for those rpg maker games. Not a fan of that game engine, but maybe you'll find it ok.

 

[James The Mighty]

honestly not sure how much good the confidence perk for making friends with tanaka is, I basically always spend the first 30 days training focus with yumeno. at least the achievement wasn't too hard to get. the frugality perk cutting finance costs on things is a HUGE help for any finance grinding. speaking of finance stuff, what's more effective, bar tending or working with dumont?

 

[bloodybutunbowed]

honestly not sure how much good the confidence perk for making friends with tanaka is, I basically always spend the first 30 days training focus with yumeno. at least the achievement wasn't too hard to get. the frugality perk cutting finance costs on things is a HUGE help for any finance grinding. speaking of finance stuff, what's more effective, bar tending or working with dumont?

It opens up bum-rushing "generous" (especially once you've got the finance perk so once you've got it it takes like one work every few days to maintain it)

 

[James The Mighty]

maybe I'm just playing wrong but intelligence perk seems pretty useless, by the time I even unlock academics I'm down to the last 20-15 days of the loop!
as for investigator, what's your solution to filling it up?

 

[SuperSkippy]

maybe I'm just playing wrong but intelligence perk seems pretty useless, by the time I even unlock academics I'm down to the last 20-15 days of the loop!
as for investigator, what's your solution to filling it up?

Yeah I didn't use Academics/Intelligence very much on the run where I found Tanaka.

My own reliable way to fill up Investigator relies on having the "cancer juice". If you have that, you can be below 20 Stamina in the morning (so you can use Self-Destructive Stance along with Larceny Kit), rest/sleep up to enough health to work with Jackal by Evening, and you'll be able to knock out a few thousand progress on Gather Clues each evening with Jackal on Skid Row. Adrenaline definitely helps with that because the health cost of that action is quite high.

CSdev While we're all throwing out early suggestions and bug fixes, I noticed a couple of things today.

• The tooltip for Charisma doesn't seem to update after purchasing Magnetism, or completing the popularity goals from Tanaka's friend group.
• There's a lot of left over space in the action results menu. It'd be nice to view how those progress/experience/relationship numbers are calculated through a hover tooltip or through clicking to expand. Something like this maybe? (Putting Stamina in parentheses allows for a Stance to be added to the calculation there). It'll also make it much easier to find when/if something isn't calculating correctly.

 

[uselessBastard]

maybe my standards are extremely low but the UI doesnt seem that bad.
Like maybe slightly worse than Your Chronicle and just as good as Incremental Adventures.

 

[Huntierier]

Posting some general feedback and Ideas that I have below:

Feedback on Events:
As this is an idle game, you're going to be replaying sections fairly often. Whenever you repeat an event, you have to go through the entire event again. It would be nice if instead of that and so long as there aren't any new bits of text to be seen, there was instead a summary that only takes up one or a few pages.

Feedback on Menu UI:
The Buttons above the Actions Buttons should be their own buttons, rather than one that cycles.

Or something like this to save space:


Feedback on Action planning:
When selecting which timeslot you want to edit, Pressing the timeslot names should bring you to its setting. If you decide to do this you could then make the "Set Action" button always the resolve day button.

For more advanced action planning, the Planner page should be turned into a tool dedicated to editing the entire week. Other bits of the UI, such as the relationship bars and the attribute bars should either be shrunk or removed. to make room for other settings. As a way to integrate the "default action choice" setting into the game more, in the planner page you could add a "follow your planner" button and only use the planner when its activated.

The Planner Page could function similarly to an excel spreadsheet. You click to select a timeslot, click the action that you want to set, then click on the days that you want to use it on.


The Game in general is also fairly laggy for a text based game. Switching between actions to perform takes like half a second, so it would nice to see that improved.

I apologize in advance if it comes across as presumptuous on my part to post this, but I think this game is really cool and I'd love to see it improve.

 

[uselessBastard]

Some gameplay/similar suggestions. Btw for the UI I completely agree with Hunterier.

Skills(Specifically something I like is something being able to specialize into certain things within skills. Maybe at every 5th level you get a bonus like choosing to boost the base effect or expanding it. For example maybe focuss second option could be something like for things where the goal is already completed/it never had one it boosts skill gain by half as much as it would with goals.)

more start withs(Mainly academics and waterworks)

Stamina discount(like maybe for each purchase of the upgrade you get 0.05% stamina usage decrease)

Other resetting bonuses(too lazy to add like 2 more lol. Time multiplier, essentially gives you extra days before the major events and Skip Intro, skip the first like day and get to select what you want to select till you have everything lol.)

Traits(Something else I like in in games like this is traits. They could effect skill gain and even give you certain skills early.)