- Jul 30, 2017
- 415
- 1,351
- Jan 27, 2017
- 7,670
- 23,791
i didn't want to discourage you, it's just no 1-click-solution like renpy->android
Hey Taboo,
I think you made a grate game so far. Do you plan to change her pircings at some point? Maybe larger ones?
I think you made a grate game so far. Do you plan to change her pircings at some point? Maybe larger ones?
- Jul 30, 2017
- 415
- 1,351
I'm not sure, some people have said they don't like them, and others do. Perhaps we could do a poll like I have done in the past.
I don't want them to go away, I have plans for them.
Ok, poll could be an option when you are not sure which way.
I'am curious what plan you have in mind. Can´t wait to see it in the game.
- Feb 4, 2018
- 344
- 870
For sure, I am one of the guys, that don´t like the piercings, but in first place this is your game and you can fullfill your visions in it. You had some creative ideas so far, therefore you should not stop considering, because of some gusy, like me.
Depending on the versions number, you are half way through with the game, enough time to get rid of the piercings after whatever you have planned!
- Aug 7, 2017
- 141
- 89
I also agree with Suidakra. There will always be people who don't like this or that or want this or that to be added/changed/removed.
So, I was a bit negligent about saving. I believe it is because I was so enthralled with the story. Then the game crashed.
Does anyone have a save near the trip to the "Casino" for 5.5? Thanks for the help and for this great game.
Does anyone have a save near the trip to the "Casino" for 5.5? Thanks for the help and for this great game.
- Jul 30, 2017
- 415
- 1,351
I spoke a bit too soon. I cant get to the school and if I go to the train station, it starts the story from the beginning.
- Jul 30, 2017
- 415
- 1,351
Yeah, I was afraid the switches would be all messed up. Sorry man, you're just going to have to run through the game fast or wait until this weekend and I can try and get you something then.
- Jul 30, 2017
- 415
- 1,351
Most people I have heard from asked that they go back to normal, or pretty much normal. But we haven't seen the last of the large breasts.
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- May 9, 2018
- 2,490
- 6,860
Yes please, keep them normal.
I guess it would double the work if you made the piercings optional? A whole set of renders with and a set without
- Jul 30, 2017
- 415
- 1,351
#Upvote Good word choice.God damn, this game is soo kafkaesque. Now I feel bad for devin
- Aug 11, 2018
- 1
- 0
And yet another Ren'Py game that got made in RPGM by accident. *sigh*...
I have a few points I'd like to make. If they've been mentioned previously, I apologise, but the game has crashed on me often enough it could have been made by Bethesda, so I'm not particularly in the mood for reading nearly 40 pages. That being said, please do not misunderstand my intention - despite the constant crashes, I have not been able to stop playing this game for the past near 5 hours! It's a great and delightfully devious story, told through a highly unfitting medium. I do not wish to criticise, but to suggest improvements (though criticise I will, by necessity).
1. The engine
As I've already mentioned, this is not a good RPG Maker game. RPGM absolutely shines in two areas - combat and environment. This game makes use of neither. On the other hand, this game makes plenty of use of cutscenes told via a series of pictures, which happens to be an area where Ren'Py is the current undisputed champion.
2. The maps
I am somewhat confused by this game - am I in a modern age town, or a fantasy village? The story says the former, the maps say, "Duuuurrrrr..." In short, the maps are... bad. And none more than the one the player will see the absolute most of, the main town map. The map is huge, and yet nothing is really going on. There are some random buildings thrown haphazardly here and there with no logic whatsoever. In between the building, there is... green. Just green. (And not even supergreen!) If you compare that with a map you will see once - the beach. Sure, it's still bigger than it needs to be, but there's stuff happening! There are things going on! It's visually busy without being too crowded. It's a good map (if maybe still a bit too big for its needs).
And talking about that, pretty much every map is far too big, which then adds to their emptiness. It's RPGM, not Unreal Engine! You don't need realism, you need sketches of reality. Instead of twenty lockers, just put three. Instead of changing rooms you could ball-dance in, make them small and cosy with one or two tiles of movement.
3. The town itself
I know, I know, I said to forget realism, but let's walk that one back a little bit. This point is related to the previous one, and it's simple - the town makes no sense.
These are the points I know about this town from playing the game:
My suggestion then would be - rework the entire town map. Grab some modern tileset and (literally) go to town. Get inspiration from real towns. Most towns have building right on the street, not way off on a path. Most towns have buildings right next to each other, especially in the centre - real estate is expensive downtown, you don't buy anything more than you need and use up the most you can! One café? One clothes shop? To make the town live, add multiple shops - a grocer's, maybe some restaurants, a hardware shop, odds and oddities, ... Keep only the few shops that are in use accessible (even a simple "I don't need anything here." message would do wonders). It does require some reworking of the story, though, now that there are establishments not associated with the school - perhaps the ones the player can access are the ones owned by the school, or that have some kind of a partnership?
And one more thing - lose the hospital and just replace it with a clinic. All you really need (game-wise and story-wise) is a reception, a doctor's office, and a small ward.
4. The bugs
Or rather, the bug. I'm not sure if this is caused by the engine or some plugin, but as far as I can tell, the game doesn't unload any picture, which makes it gobble down memory worse than a leaky Java applet (again, see my point about what RPGM games are good at and what they're not). It went from ~300 MB just moving around to over 800 MB after about three short cutscenes. And that's not fun, trust me. Not to mention that at a certain point (quite possibly a specific number of pictures loaded), the game just straight up crashes to black screen (and a couple times it segfaulted straight to desktop). I was able to work around it by diligently saving before every cutscene trigger, but... well, see my next point.
5. The cutscenes
Now, as I mentioned previously, RPG Maker games are at their best when you use the environment. And it's really awkward when the cutscene shows the characters (usually Devin) moving around, when in the game itself she's sittting on the event trigger tile. Little bit of movement won't kill anyone, will it?
But the big elephant in the room is the big sauna cutscene, which could be easily cut up into (at least) three or four separate scenes.
Scene 1 - The swimming pool diving lessons. The belly flop. Sauna suggestions. *scene ends*
Scene 2 *trigger: sauna door* - The sauna. Relaxation. Nap. Door snap. *scene ends*
Scene 3 *trigger: pool exit* - The locked door. Alternate exits? *scene ends*
Scene 4 *trigger: back fence* - Climbing the fence. Sneaking across the back lawn. Hobo. ...
Scene 2 can be split into more scenes, though it would require a sauna map -> end the first part after waking up, then do a quick "search for clothes, find a towel" scene, and then the door.
Scene 4 can also be split, though (again) a new map would be needed -> climbing the fence as one scene, then let the player creep across the lawn, then start up the next scene.
And the reason I'm suggesting it is because I have no idea what comes next. Not a clue. Because that bug I was mentioning above? It happens here too. Even if you load up a save right before the start. And at the exact same spot. Except you can't save between the scenes, because the player is just along for the ride to marvel at the story. Nossiree, can't let the player have any control, who knows what they'd do with it. They might actually want to play the game.
6. The story
Just a bunch of little inconsistencies I've noticed - your (fictional) new house is on 122 Maple Lane when you get off the train, but on 114 when you actually get there. Multiple times, the headmaster tells you to return to him in the afternoon/the next day, but if you actually try, he will give you the default reply that he's busy. Seems a bit out of character for him. There are some mentions days later how you were supposed to come to him, but still feels weird. Or the time the game flat-out ignored my choice after the haunted mansion field trip in not going to Henry and instead heading up to change (which - inconsistency - was only supposed to be a quick change, with Devin mentioning she'll be back in a couple minutes, but the next event is just going to sleep with no mention of going down and talking to Henry), only to act the next day as if Devin had sat down with Henry and came with the vibe in her while watching Henry's favourite movie.
7. The spelling
And for my final point, I'm afraid I have to be wholly negative. For the sake of all that is holy, get a proofreader! An editor would not go amiss, too (though to be honest, that's my default suggestion to anyone writing anything online - get an editor). A principal is not a principle. You do not what to get embarrassed for sloppy writing, do you?
And yes, I am aware that RPGM is incredibly clunky when it comes to text input and editing. Again, not to extol the virtues of Ren'Py, but their text-based format is much better for proofreading than RPGM's clunky JSON dumps (unless they added some text dump in the time I haven't been using it - possible, though unlikely).
---
And you know, if this was a bad game, I'd have just gone and played something else. No reason to bother with it. But this game has so much potential (plus, on a personal level, it hits so many fetishes it's uncanny). It's good already, but it could be great.
I have a few points I'd like to make. If they've been mentioned previously, I apologise, but the game has crashed on me often enough it could have been made by Bethesda, so I'm not particularly in the mood for reading nearly 40 pages. That being said, please do not misunderstand my intention - despite the constant crashes, I have not been able to stop playing this game for the past near 5 hours! It's a great and delightfully devious story, told through a highly unfitting medium. I do not wish to criticise, but to suggest improvements (though criticise I will, by necessity).
1. The engine
As I've already mentioned, this is not a good RPG Maker game. RPGM absolutely shines in two areas - combat and environment. This game makes use of neither. On the other hand, this game makes plenty of use of cutscenes told via a series of pictures, which happens to be an area where Ren'Py is the current undisputed champion.
2. The maps
I am somewhat confused by this game - am I in a modern age town, or a fantasy village? The story says the former, the maps say, "Duuuurrrrr..." In short, the maps are... bad. And none more than the one the player will see the absolute most of, the main town map. The map is huge, and yet nothing is really going on. There are some random buildings thrown haphazardly here and there with no logic whatsoever. In between the building, there is... green. Just green. (And not even supergreen!) If you compare that with a map you will see once - the beach. Sure, it's still bigger than it needs to be, but there's stuff happening! There are things going on! It's visually busy without being too crowded. It's a good map (if maybe still a bit too big for its needs).
And talking about that, pretty much every map is far too big, which then adds to their emptiness. It's RPGM, not Unreal Engine! You don't need realism, you need sketches of reality. Instead of twenty lockers, just put three. Instead of changing rooms you could ball-dance in, make them small and cosy with one or two tiles of movement.
3. The town itself
I know, I know, I said to forget realism, but let's walk that one back a little bit. This point is related to the previous one, and it's simple - the town makes no sense.
These are the points I know about this town from playing the game:
- It is a "small" town - with at least 112 individual addresses.
- There is a full-on hospital, somehow staffed by a single doctor and a nurse.
- There is a working café, a beach bar, and a strip club.
- All the establishments in town seem to mostly get staffed by the students and teachers.
- There are four houses that we know of, with another four implied off-screen.
- There are a handful of people not associated with the school (Henry, the doctor, the nurse, whoever runs and works at the club, the old people on the bench in the square).
My suggestion then would be - rework the entire town map. Grab some modern tileset and (literally) go to town. Get inspiration from real towns. Most towns have building right on the street, not way off on a path. Most towns have buildings right next to each other, especially in the centre - real estate is expensive downtown, you don't buy anything more than you need and use up the most you can! One café? One clothes shop? To make the town live, add multiple shops - a grocer's, maybe some restaurants, a hardware shop, odds and oddities, ... Keep only the few shops that are in use accessible (even a simple "I don't need anything here." message would do wonders). It does require some reworking of the story, though, now that there are establishments not associated with the school - perhaps the ones the player can access are the ones owned by the school, or that have some kind of a partnership?
And one more thing - lose the hospital and just replace it with a clinic. All you really need (game-wise and story-wise) is a reception, a doctor's office, and a small ward.
4. The bugs
Or rather, the bug. I'm not sure if this is caused by the engine or some plugin, but as far as I can tell, the game doesn't unload any picture, which makes it gobble down memory worse than a leaky Java applet (again, see my point about what RPGM games are good at and what they're not). It went from ~300 MB just moving around to over 800 MB after about three short cutscenes. And that's not fun, trust me. Not to mention that at a certain point (quite possibly a specific number of pictures loaded), the game just straight up crashes to black screen (and a couple times it segfaulted straight to desktop). I was able to work around it by diligently saving before every cutscene trigger, but... well, see my next point.
5. The cutscenes
Now, as I mentioned previously, RPG Maker games are at their best when you use the environment. And it's really awkward when the cutscene shows the characters (usually Devin) moving around, when in the game itself she's sittting on the event trigger tile. Little bit of movement won't kill anyone, will it?
But the big elephant in the room is the big sauna cutscene, which could be easily cut up into (at least) three or four separate scenes.
Scene 1 - The swimming pool diving lessons. The belly flop. Sauna suggestions. *scene ends*
Scene 2 *trigger: sauna door* - The sauna. Relaxation. Nap. Door snap. *scene ends*
Scene 3 *trigger: pool exit* - The locked door. Alternate exits? *scene ends*
Scene 4 *trigger: back fence* - Climbing the fence. Sneaking across the back lawn. Hobo. ...
Scene 2 can be split into more scenes, though it would require a sauna map -> end the first part after waking up, then do a quick "search for clothes, find a towel" scene, and then the door.
Scene 4 can also be split, though (again) a new map would be needed -> climbing the fence as one scene, then let the player creep across the lawn, then start up the next scene.
And the reason I'm suggesting it is because I have no idea what comes next. Not a clue. Because that bug I was mentioning above? It happens here too. Even if you load up a save right before the start. And at the exact same spot. Except you can't save between the scenes, because the player is just along for the ride to marvel at the story. Nossiree, can't let the player have any control, who knows what they'd do with it. They might actually want to play the game.
6. The story
Just a bunch of little inconsistencies I've noticed - your (fictional) new house is on 122 Maple Lane when you get off the train, but on 114 when you actually get there. Multiple times, the headmaster tells you to return to him in the afternoon/the next day, but if you actually try, he will give you the default reply that he's busy. Seems a bit out of character for him. There are some mentions days later how you were supposed to come to him, but still feels weird. Or the time the game flat-out ignored my choice after the haunted mansion field trip in not going to Henry and instead heading up to change (which - inconsistency - was only supposed to be a quick change, with Devin mentioning she'll be back in a couple minutes, but the next event is just going to sleep with no mention of going down and talking to Henry), only to act the next day as if Devin had sat down with Henry and came with the vibe in her while watching Henry's favourite movie.
7. The spelling
And for my final point, I'm afraid I have to be wholly negative. For the sake of all that is holy, get a proofreader! An editor would not go amiss, too (though to be honest, that's my default suggestion to anyone writing anything online - get an editor). A principal is not a principle. You do not what to get embarrassed for sloppy writing, do you?
And yes, I am aware that RPGM is incredibly clunky when it comes to text input and editing. Again, not to extol the virtues of Ren'Py, but their text-based format is much better for proofreading than RPGM's clunky JSON dumps (unless they added some text dump in the time I haven't been using it - possible, though unlikely).
---
And you know, if this was a bad game, I'd have just gone and played something else. No reason to bother with it. But this game has so much potential (plus, on a personal level, it hits so many fetishes it's uncanny). It's good already, but it could be great.
- Jul 30, 2017
- 415
- 1,351
Hi Birion,
1. I absolutely agree. I think the largest mistake I made was using RPG maker. When I first started making the game I really didn't know what it was going to be or how the story was going to be told. But what it has turned into would be much better told on Ren'Py.
2. The maps I hadn't really considered doing back and updating. I guess I could add a little flavor to the main town...
3. Lol, yeah... The town is a little inconstant. I'm not sure what the local economy is like, but it doesn't make much sense the way it is now.
4. & 5. The game should only load one image at a time. All the images use the same image slot, so one should be removed as the other is loaded. I could be wrong about this, but that was my understanding. As to cutting the scenes into smaller sections. That is possible, but it adds quite a bit more programming/design time to each event. People have asked they be cut down some, and I am making an effort to do that.
6. & 7. The spelling should get a lot better with the later content. When I first started, I wasn't using any type of spell checking and now I use three. So.. It should be better... The little inconsistencies in the story I'm aware of, but going back and trying to find all those little things is again very time-consuming. I would honestly rather convert the entire game to Ren'Py than go back and try and fix those bugs.
I'm glad you took the time to post your thoughts, and that you care enough to actually do so. I want the game to be fun and crashes and inconsistencies aren't fun for anyone. But keep in mind that I had never used RPG Maker, Ren'Py or Honey Select before. Or even made anything like this. I'm hopeful that some of smaller issues will be worked out in time, and the larger ones I'm chalking up to lessons learned and look forward to being able to do it better next time.
Taboo