I don't think the top bar does decimals, but if you re-loaded to the previous day, I would bet it says 100.1 or something like that in the segment where it says your final stamina will be.
Yeah, that's probably the reason. Yes and no? Checked with my current run. It's something like 100/100, or 81.3/100. So max stamina will not show decimals and it's rounded down, but current stamina will show decimals as long as it's lower than the rounded down max stamina.
Edit: I looked at my past run's screenshot of 100/153. Which... I guess current stamina decimals just bug out of existence sometimes? But closing and launching the game again fixes it.
I did some testing. It seems to show stamina as rounded in the top bar to the nearest tenth for .1-.9, and will truncate rather than saying .0--it will show 100.04 as 100. But the lower bar indicates that it calculates to the 100th rather than just a tenth. So, if the code is <100.00, 100.04 will fail even if it shows 100.
I would suggest to the dev to fix this and similar things to be coded as <100.1, so it never displays as a thing that feels like it should work, that then fails.
I'll have to think about how to solve this. The game does indeed track each number to the hundredth. The precision displayed depends on how large the number is. When a number is part of a total (like Stamina, Health, and goal progress), the precision displayed depends on how large the total is. I think that this looks a lot better than doing something like displaying an 0.07% complete goal as 100.5/150k, but I also don't want it to be misleading.
I suppose I could always have the stance eligibility use the same logic as the bar display. So, as long as it displays as 100 (or 0.1k, but not 100.1), the stance would be usable. Strange as it is to have the threshold depend on your max Stamina's order of magnitude, I think it would always work to the player's advantage, outside of extreme edge cases like having millions of max Stamina and 100 being displayed as 0.00M making it so that tough stance doesn't work.
Not sure if this will be relevant to others, but just had a situation where the game froze and refused to open again afterwards; managed to resolve this by erasing currentSave.sav at the saves folder and then reloading from last loop end
If this happens to you again, it'd be helpful if you could send me the broken currentSave.sav file so I can figure out what went wrong and stop it from happening to future players.
Managed to get Savior on Loop 10, day 94, blind. Might've been able to shave a loop or two off of this one if I wasn't enamored by promise of DuMont H-scene in the change log or realized sooner that I should've tried for Savior instead of bashing my head against Hashimoto's Tower ark (doing it once gave me knowledge of an awesome Stand stance, but doing it 3 times was definitely overboard).
I've tasted the gifts of Academics, and I must say that I am now a true believer in Intelligence supremacy. Figured out a route that gets me started on Tower infiltration at day 60, played around with the route. And by "played around with the route" I mean I made a monster of a spreadsheet to track my progress. In desperation tired to unlock and level Dr. Heilig's relationship.
That's when I realized that, despite reaching the endurance testing, I never actually went through with it because I thought I needed to finish it (like for Battle Tested), instead trying to make more games with Yumeno at the time. Dev, if you are reading this, I would recommend adding a sign to the action itself, at least the first time around. Like "do this action once to get a new loop upgrade".
You aren't the first one to run into this. Even in my most recent playtest, I'd sometimes forget whether or not I had performed the action once in the current loop and I had to go check. A bolded note for an action which grants an achievement which hasn't been taken yet in the current loop is probably a good idea, so I'll make a note to add it.
Also, while I have your attention, I found a neat continuity error(?). Triggering Yumeno's "let's make games" conversation the day after Tanaka's kidnapping runs the "I don't have anything better to do" response to the proposition. I feel like there should be at least a little bit of uncertainty in the main character already.
Ha, this is quite the edge case. The game does try to generate appropriate text when the question of the protagonist's feelings toward Tanaka come up. In this case, it looks at (A) whether you bothered to walk her home, and (B) whether or not you bothered to participate in her fanclub's plan to scope out the nightclub for a badass private eye. But until the midnight slot of the day after the abduction, you don't actually have a chance to fulfill (B), so getting this scene with Yumeno before that becomes a problem. I'll make a note to add yet another variant to it.
Also, also, can we get more info for who's relationship affects the goal? I was under the impression that, because it is the goal that we do for Hashimoto, Tower infiltration will be affected by her relationship level and build my route accordingly. The only reason I realized it must be Heilig's is because I wrote the multiplier calculator in my spreadsheet and realized that Hashimoto's relationship doesn't contribute squawk. I would say color-code it, but you are already using color for "this goal is being drained".
So, mini-portraits? Or maybe stylized icons of first letters of their names? Like Hashimoto's definitely has to be a graffiti. Yumeno deserves something digital, maybe 8- or 16-bit. Tanaka's should definitely be a rose with well pronounced thorns. DuMort is probably just gold. Heilig I have no idea about, a scalpel maybe?
Heilig's relationship actually doesn't apply to that goal, either. There's a firm rule for whether or not a relationship applies to a goal's progress: If the action grants progress to a relationship, then that relationship applies its bonus to the action's goal. This also means that there are a couple of cases where a goal can benefit from different relationships depending on which action you use to advance it.
That said, the game also already associates a unique emoji with each relationship, so if people find it helpful, it'd be pretty easy to attach that to the bar.
Anyways, back on the epic retelling of things half the people in the thread are already familiar with. One time slot later and we have the new upgrade, right in time to neatly slot it into the build. As it turns out increasing your attribute gains by about +80% per level is much, much better than by +20%. I got so much into power leveling the Academics itself and Vitality to make it even easier to do 3 infiltrations in a row, that I almost forgot that I actually needed some Focus for actual goal progression.
Also, it is pretty sad (in a good way) to see Hashimoto misinterpret the results of the infiltration. Because it isn't a "you have 6% chance to drop dead on your 30th birthday", but the "condition will progress to the point that by 30 you have a 6% chance to already be in a coma". With a side of "it will only get worse from there". Though, to be fair, we are all still dying (well, "dying") on day 100, so it doesn't much matter...
Anyways, now I have a lot of Impatience and boy is great. Probably will make an "advance noob's guide for R1" some time soon after I grind enough to prevent the ambush. Probably won't go for a high score any time soon, though.
PS: Adrenalin (the second row upgrade that gives 0.1 per level per Health spent) is honestly underpowered (in the current possibility space of the game). It is absolutely useless early game. And by the time it comes into play it basically gives 2 to 3 points of "free" base stamina to the action. Given that something like Focused Stance gives 15, Self-Destructive gives 100, Vulnerable gives 50, and Generous gives 25, the last three just being more targeted, Adrenalin just doesn't do anything.
A level of Adrenalin is a rounding error. I often do actions with about 85% of the required Stamina cost, but still get more than enough progress because of Stances. Adrenalin also doesn't feel good as you don't actually see it take effect. If we'd go for a really high production value, I'd first show the results without Adrenalin, then make the entire interface tint red for a moment, play a "liquid falling into liquid" sound, and then animate the added impact of Arenalin. That'd feel very impactful even if it wasn't.
Though, I suspect you are worried that making Adrenalin too powerful will make it unbalanced. And yeah, 10x multiplier on Guard Duty is cool and all, and can easily become a problem, especially as you add more health costing things and higher health costs to go with them. But you are the dev and these are my 3 cents.
Adrenaline is definitely one of the casualties of the game's release structure being segmented like this. I hope it'll feel a lot more worthwhile in Release 2. Though, I see your point about also making it feel better by presenting it differently to the player. My main concern is just letting the action summary screen feel too cluttered.
PPS: Hashimoto's first H-scene image (male MC and FemHashimoto) is terrible. Her shoulders should be broader. And no, it is not the trick of perspective used. It is probably the only outright horrible AIrt I've found in this game, though I still have scenes 2 with Hashimoto and Yumeno, as well as Jackal's scene to see.
Being "major character #1" causes Hashimoto to get the short end of the stick in a lot of ways, since as I try to figure these things out, her content is what I use to teach myself. I'll have to make it up to her later.
I auto-ed loops for a while, got some upgrades, and now I'm doing a manual loop. Got charisma lvl 1 by day 35, but my brain isn't working so I checked the planner since I figured it would show what I did the previous loop, but it only shows the last 7 days of this loop. So... yeah. What's the point of the planner? View attachment 4937818
Edit: Found a bug. If you close the game in the middle of it auto-ing a scene (I did it because the game froze), then launch it again... the daily actions get set to the next day. If you're on loop 75 day 50, normally the preset would be loop 74 day 50, but this bug makes it loop 74 day 51. Which will screw up your loop if you don't notice and fix it. Closing and re-opening the game a second time will fix it.
The planner is sort of a relic from back when I planned for the days of the week to be more important than they ended up being. I agree that turning it into more of a browsable history of the loop (and maybe even other loops) would make more sense.
Regarding the bug you ran into, I suspect that it's connected to whatever crash you ran into during the scene, rather than due to closing during the scene itself (since the game never touches your save file during a scene). If you can remember anything else about the crash, I'd be grateful to hear it!
For now, Release 1h has gone public! The first post has been updated with links to the download, and here's the release text:
On the playable side of things, this release has a couple more goals involving Heilig, along with an adjustment to how the VIP Escort action works and a bit more to do in the Metropolis. But the main focus of the month's work was to lay out all the actions and goals for the upcoming Release 2. Everything past Tanaka's first opposed goal in the Metropolis is still blocked off due to the assets being unfinished, but in my own playtesting, I've confirmed that the Power and Mindfulness attributes are working the way they're supposed to, and I have a firm list of which goals will need to have assets made for them.
In addition to the little bit of new content, there are also some minor additions and improvements to the game's interface. Some code optimizations written by TheUnwiseSage have been added to the game, and now the menus (especially the Next Loop menu) no longer have as much noticeable lag as they did before. It's also now possible to directly choose which background theme color you want to use, regardless of which phase of the game you're in.
The Hall of Fame system has also finally been added. Cultivation Spiral is not intended to be a "grindy" game - once the final version is released, it's my intention that players should be able to play continuously from Loop 1 all the way to the final goal without noticing a huge spike of difficulty between Release 1's content and Release 2's content, or between Release 2's content and Release 3's content. But because of the time it takes to make each release, players who enjoy just playing the game to pass the time in between releases will end up with huge amounts of Meaning of Life, and they'll find that the next release is perhaps disappointingly easy.
In order to let players enjoy the game without turning the next release into an anticlimax, I encourage players to restart from Loop 1 and try to reunite with Tanaka in as few days as possible. And in order to turn that into an interesting challenge, I've implemented the Hall of Fame system. Presently, the Hall of Fame includes only one run, submitted by rioteer0, who cleared the game before the end of Loop 7. If you think you can do it faster, then why not give it a shot? By selecting the save in the Hall of Fame menu, it'll produce an instructions.txt file in your saves folder which you can use to see what pace you should try to aim for.
If you have a run you're proud of, send it to me so that I can add it to next release's Hall of Fame! Even making the attempt might be a good way of practicing your skills - there are a few mechanics planned for later releases which reward players for being able to accomplish a lot with as little Meaning of Life as possible.
Looking forward, here's my updated estimate on where we stand for progress on Release 2.
Goals and Actions for meeting Lancia - DONE
Power attribute implementation - DONE
Goals and Actions for meeting Paladin - DONE
Mindfulness attribute implementation - DONE
College town quest extensions - 75% done
Release 2 main story goal - 33% done
Side feats implementation and testing - DONE
Visual assets - 5% done
Textual assets - 10% done
For now, I'll be starting work on assets, and then I'll close the current romance scene poll at the end of the month. I'll start next month by writing the winner's scene, and then I also have an idea for date scene which Jackal which I want to write. From here on, the main focus will be on reaching Release 2!
there are a few mechanics planned for later releases which reward players for being able to accomplish a lot with as little Meaning of Life as possible.
Is this possible by resetting your MOL upgrades and buying a few? Like if you have 10k MOL total, but reset upgrades and only spend 500 MOL on upgrades. Or does it require you to restart the game?
Edit: I was on MOL upgrade page when I switched to the new version. Got around 100 MOL out of it. I guess it's due to costs of upgrades changing, so I got refunded? Or MOL reward from achievements changing and it recalculated it when I loaded the save?
Thank you for the update and the dark mode! My eyes thank you.
Is this possible by resetting your MOL upgrades and buying a few? Like if you have 10k MOL total, but reset upgrades and only spend 500 MOL on upgrades. Or does it require you to restart the game?
If you want to try for the Hall of Fame, then you should backup your save and start from Loop 1, since part of the challenge is fulfilling the upgrade unlock conditions while still earning decent MoL.
If you're just wanting to practice trying to achieve things with as little MoL as possible, then of course it's up to you how you play.
Edit: I was on MOL upgrade page when I switched to the new version. Got around 100 MOL out of it. I guess it's due to costs of upgrades changing, so I got refunded? Or MOL reward from achievements changing and it recalculated it when I loaded the save?
Well I think I did about all I could for this version (except for avoiding the abduction but that's going to take a crazy amount of time and effort). Think I got a good chunk of the possible scenes. One thing though, does anyone know what exactly the "fasting" diet supposed to do? I searched the thread but couldn't find anything.
It interacts with stats that don't exist yet, so for now it's just a teaser of what's to come.
The one thing you can do with it on this build is use it to unlock Jackal's romance scenes, the guide for which is included in one of the txt files that comes with the download.
Are there about the same number of male and female characters here or is there almost only lesbian content when I play with a female character?
And are there animations?
Are there about the same number of male and female characters here or is there almost only lesbian content when I play with a female character?
And are there animations?
Almost every single major character in the game has a male and a female variant. Unfortunately for H scenes, only the female variants have content as of now, for both male and female mc.
Almost every single major character in the game has a male and a female variant. Unfortunately for H scenes, only the female variants have content as of now, for both male and female mc.
Sounds like overly ambitious design.
They should cut out the male NPCs, at least for now.
Can always add them later after recruiting a dedicated writer for them.
Sounds like overly ambitious design.
They should cut out the male NPCs, at least for now.
Can always add them later after recruiting a dedicated writer for them.
Not sure where this perspective is coming from. It's just a toggle with different images and mildly modified text. No need for a dedicated writer for content that will be 95% the same. There's no gameplay impact at all.
New update is fire, it flies like a charm with basically 0 input lag.
One another thing that might make it a bit more optimized is by tinkering with the event image display system. Right now it reloads the entire composite (background, characters, and other images if any) every text box. But a lot of time background doesn't change. So you don't need to redraw it every time.
Depending on how you are rendering it, you might still have to redraw it if characters move on screen (to redraw the space they used to occupy), but character sprites (at least look like they) take up the same space regardless of expression, so you can just redraw them in the same place over their old sprites. It would work even faster if you can isolate their base model and their expressions and just redraw the expressions.
That said, the game also already associates a unique emoji with each relationship, so if people find it helpful, it'd be pretty easy to attach that to the bar.
This might be interesting as long as the dev doesn't get lost in the sauce like they did for their previous game. Once more content gets added we will see.
So, I burned way too much time on my day off today doing a Hall of Fame run. I finished one round in 6 loops, but then got strategy in my head and decided to try again. I finished rescuing Tanaka from Metropolis on Loop 3, Day 101!
For real though, I don't have any further ideas on improvement, damn.
From what I understand, for now only the lesbian images were created. Not sure if FMC with love interests set to male has all of the text appropriately changed, but full implementation is definitely coming in the future. The dev is cool like that.
So, I burned way too much time on my day off today doing a Hall of Fame run. I finished one round in 6 loops, but then got strategy in my head and decided to try again. I finished rescuing Tanaka from Metropolis on Loop 3, Day 101!
I unlocked ECA/Vuln, used ECA to unlock HHG faster, and then stuck with HHG until I hit like 9 Focus. I then unlocked serve breakfast, and did an ECA/Vuln session pumping DuMont's relationship level via Serve Breakfast, Attend DuMont, and Ask For Help. Mid-run, DuMont relationship is VERY important, as Larceny Kit gets heavily multiplied through the end-game and will provide most of your Finance to bring you up to the needed 11.
