Ren'Py Divine Dawn [v0.30] [Cryswar]

[Cryswar]

I mean...It's not like you can't have femdom without consent. In fact, a lot of the femdom portrayed in games is basically just abuse, but its overlooked being fantasy and all. I think consensual femdom is not only really hot, but its pretty healthy too. Plus its not like it needs to be BDSM like a lot of people seem to mix it up with, just having an assertive girl who likes to lead a bit and take charge is hot in its own fashion. She doesn't need to be a domme to get horny and want you to go down on her if its something you're willing to do and close with them. Anyway, I'm going off on a huge tangent there.

I don't mean to imply most/all femdom is nonconsensual by any means, I just wanted to be up front about what flavors of it I intended to write, and make sure we were on the same page about what 'femdom' was. As you noted, the definition of it varies WILDLY by person, and the setting can obfuscate things. The f95 official tag description doesn't really narrow it down much either, sadly. I see this world as being much more sexually permissive in many ways (succubi can be citizens with human rights and some political power, and beastkin have a very different idea of 'consent') but not nearly as anything-goes as some.

Ashley is VERY assertive and forward outwardly, Sarah more hesitantly so, and both will have a fair bit of (mostly) consensual femdom. They are both switches, so at times it will also be maledom/vanilla/etc. Similarly, some future characters will be harder on the femdom, others lightly femdom oriented, others more submissive, though honestly there's not many actually submissive ones planned. I agree that consensual femdom is fantastic and I'm hoping to be able to portray healthy relationships of that nature ingame in the future, without turning the MC into a spineless coward, though not all relationships will start off particularly healthy.

Noted on the grammar. I didn't know that!

 

[Playfulpetfox]

Hehe, someone's a fan of Monster Girl Dreams.

 

[Cryswar]

Hehe, someone's a fan of Monster Girl Dreams.

I haven't touched that game in... close to two years now? But yeah, I used to mod it (Waifupocalypse), and had some good times. Hope that's still going alright for Thresh.

 

[FairweatherFriend]

I haven't touched that game in... close to two years now? But yeah, I used to mod it (Waifupocalypse), and had some good times. Hope that's still going alright for Thresh.

I thought this looked super familiar.

 

[Cryswar]

I thought this looked super familiar.

The game, or the characters?

 

[FairweatherFriend]

The game - the UI looks almost exactly like MGQ. Plays different, though.

 

[Deleted member 1322027]

this game is divine

 

[svolozhanin7]

Damn, this boss battle was TIGHT, I was barely alive as a Water Magic Swordsman with Ashley. I have a lot to say but I didn't comprehended and edited it all yet.

I also noticed that you got a discord Cryswar... Should I keep it here or move there? The only channel I expect that would matter for this is #general, but you know it's #general...

If you want a TL'DR I absolutely loving everything that was added, I might skipped first half since not a lot of changed... Wait, Sam has cyan eye color??? I was pretty sure her eyes were red... Damn, here goes my Water Astaroth and Fire Sam juxtaposition. Oh well. Can't wait for the March update!

 

[Cryswar]

Damn, this boss battle was TIGHT, I was barely alive as a Water Magic Swordsman with Ashley. I have a lot to say but I didn't comprehended and edited it all yet.

I also noticed that you got a discord Cryswar... Should I keep it here or move there? The only channel I expect that would matter for this is #general, but you know it's #general...

If you want a TL'DR I absolutely loving everything that was added, I might skipped first half since not a lot of changed... Wait, Sam has cyan eye color??? I was pretty sure her eyes were red... Damn, here goes my Water Astaroth and Fire Sam juxtaposition. Oh well. Can't wait for the March update!

You can talk in either place; I appreciate posts in either haha! Just do whatever you feel comfortable with.

I'm... admittedly glad to hear the boss was challenging but doable, I beat it with both Sarah and Ashley for testing, but I'm also the dev and know exactly how the mechanics work, it's really hard to tell how easy it'll be for everyone else.

You should have been able to continue the game from where 0.1 ended, did something break there? If you did start over though, I absolutely don't blame you for skipping on a replay lol, I've had to restart so many times for testing I just skip the forest stuff now too.

Sam's eye color did change admittedly, I had a feeling you'd notice. I was worried red eyes would be too on-the-nose for a brash Fire-element swordsman/swordswoman. One thing I had been kinda considering, alongside a suggestion earlier for MC customization, was experimenting with ally customization to some degree... I'm not sure how I'd do it exactly, maybe splitting the 'description' of each character into separate 'eyes' 'hair' 'clothing' 'body' fields? That way you could do stuff like, having a long-haired Sarah, or red-eyed Sam. I don't think the body would be changeable except for MC (skin color etc), but it would make clothes changing easier. idk.

That's a pretty big project so I'd probably have to get feedback on the idea and worry about it more in 0.4 or 0.5. Might do a poll on the discord a bit down the road to see if there would be any actual interest in that sort of feature.

Also, glad to hear you enjoyed the update overall! Hope the slang was at a more tolerable level for you here, and the Sam scene lived up to your expectations.

 

[Mrinituso]

The fewer words you use when writing, the better. A second draft is a first draft, minus ten percent. Adjectives are a risk and adverbs are the devil. The more you can tighten up your prose style, the better the game will be.

I'm downloading the game now, but I found myself skimming the description of the bear, and that's never good in a text-focused game.

I agree with hatless here.

Cryswar, Waifupocalypse was fun, and this game too!

You employ an expressive prose that makes for fun reading.
It sets the humorous mood very well, but they do tend towards the verbose.

The way you write around a scene works well with character humor, and there's a lot of good "show, don't tell" going on with the characters' interaction.
Your lore drops also feel pretty natural, and often spaced just right between its first mention and its explanation.

You might want to truncate descriptions, especially of set pieces and events that don't involve character impressions. They're fun to read, but when found back-to-back, can overload and obfuscate information. Note the urgency of events, or the rate at which a viewpoint character may absorb information when they enter a scene, and you can try matching that pace in the prose.

As an example, some scenes can benefit from a quicker set up, and then have its hilarity and incredulity pointed out through character interactions and impressions.


That said, I think my biggest (maybe even my only) suggestion that you might need a change of fonts.

Five lines of narrowly-spaced, wide sans serif text leave little negative space in the text box, which makes it difficult to quickly scan down each line, or to pick out important information from the text.

Is it possible in Ren'py to provide an option for a serif font type, or reduce the font size and increase the leading?

 

[Cryswar]

You might want to truncate descriptions, especially of set pieces and events that don't involve character impressions. They're fun to read, but when found back-to-back, can overload and obfuscate information. Note the urgency of events, or the rate at which a viewpoint character may absorb information when they enter a scene, and you can try matching that pace in the prose.

That said, I think my biggest (maybe even my only) suggestion that you might need a change of fonts.

Five lines of narrowly-spaced, wide sans serif text leave little negative space in the text box, which makes it difficult to quickly scan down each line, or to pick out important information from the text.

Is it possible in Ren'py to provide an option for a serif font type, or reduce the font size and increase the leading?

Thank you for your kind words! I didn't think anyone would even recognize Waifupocalypse haha.

I immensely appreciate your detailed concrit - it's very helpful, and honestly I can't argue with any of it. I was a bit worried about that with the leadup to and some Metatron scenes, trying to convey the sheer scale and otherworldliness/Old Testament angel vibes without getting to verbal-diarrhea-ey - I will try and keep an eye on that for the future. Brevity is the soul of wit and all that. That's a good suggestion as well, about the viewpoint - something I struggle with and could stand to improve on.

You are very much right on fonts as well. I'm still using the default size/font/placement, but I'm 99% sure you can do both fonts and textbox sizing in Ren'py, just have to look it up. I'll see if there's a way to have an ingame option to change that, which may not be possible, I'm pretty sure that's a define rather than a default and renpy doesn't like you messing with defines ingame.

But I'll try a slightly smaller font size and something in the serif family - kinda looking at Alegraya at the moment, if you (or others) have any particular suggestions I'm all ears!

 

[zeraligator]

I'd just like to point out that a tail is a body part and a tale is a story, you seem to only use tail.

 

[Cryswar]

I'd just like to point out that a tail is a body part and a tale is a story, you seem to only use tail.

I know the difference, did I make a typo somewhere? I ctrl+f'd tail and didn't see any misuse of it with Sarah/Ashley at least.

 

[zeraligator]

I know the difference, did I make a typo somewhere? I ctrl+f'd tail and didn't see any misuse of it with Sarah/Ashley at least.

I thought I saw it misused in the early lines of the new content, before metatron introduces herself.
I also just thought the Abomination and had Sarah set to support but I don't think she actually did anything. The taunt ability also doesn't seem effective enough, early on with Sam and later with Sarah it seemed like they were getting hit far more often than I was. Could this be a problem with the threat calculation?
Also there was an error everytime I used a skill in the boss battle.

 

[Cryswar]

I thought I saw it misused in the early lines of the new content, before metatron introduces herself.
I also just thought the Abomination and had Sarah set to support but I don't think she actually did anything. The taunt ability also doesn't seem effective enough, early on with Sam and later with Sarah it seemed like they were getting hit far more often than I was. Could this be a problem with the threat calculation?

Everyone has 100 base threat, the taunt ability adds 50. So it takes you from a 50-50 targeting ratio, to a 60% chance of being targeted. I can definitely see increasing the value if that seems too low, +100 threat would make it a 2/3 chance of targeting you. Does that sound a little better?

On the Sarah deal - maybe try toggling from support to attack and back? The logic the game uses to pick moves based on AI+player orders is a bit convoluted, and I'll doublecheck it, but I ran the boss with Sarah switching from Support to Attack as needed and she generally seemed to do her job pretty well. Did she just not do anything at all for you? Like, letting your health get low without healing? Or was she just using more attack moves than you wanted?

 

[Fleis]

Followed

 

[zeraligator]

Everyone has 100 base threat, the taunt ability adds 50. So it takes you from a 50-50 targeting ratio, to a 60% chance of being targeted. I can definitely see increasing the value if that seems too low, +100 threat would make it a 2/3 chance of targeting you. Does that sound a little better?

On the Sarah deal - maybe try toggling from support to attack and back? The logic the game uses to pick moves based on AI+player orders is a bit convoluted, and I'll doublecheck it, but I ran the boss with Sarah switching from Support to Attack as needed and she generally seemed to do her job pretty well. Did she just not do anything at all for you? Like, letting your health get low without healing? Or was she just using more attack moves than you wanted?

2/3 seems a lot more reasonable, a tank is supposed to keep damage away from the more 'glass cannon' roles but them still getting hit 40% of the time(combined with possible bad RNG making it seem worse) causes the taunt to feel useless/ineffective. Also, Increasing the taunt value(in my understanding) shouldn't mess with balance too much as the damage is still done, just to a different character.

Also about the Sarah thing, I noticed part way into the fight after I had put her on the support setting at the beginning of the battle so the switching might help but shouldn't she still act even when on a single setting for an entire battle? I had thought that, perhaps, Sarah didn't have any support skills(yet) and that that might have been the problem but from your response I assume she does. I had thought she didn't have support skills because I never saw any buffs/debuffs pop up(other than those applied by the PC or the Abomination) nor did I see any healing other than Metatron's.

 

[Cryswar]

2/3 seems a lot more reasonable, a tank is supposed to keep damage away from the more 'glass cannon' roles but them still getting hit 40% of the time(combined with possible bad RNG making it seem worse) causes the taunt to feel useless/ineffective. Also, Increasing the taunt value(in my understanding) shouldn't mess with balance too much as the damage is still done, just to a different character.

Also about the Sarah thing, I noticed part way into the fight after I had put her on the support setting at the beginning of the battle so the switching might help but shouldn't she still act even when on a single setting for an entire battle? I had thought that, perhaps, Sarah didn't have any support skills(yet) and that that might have been the problem but from your response I assume she does. I had thought she didn't have support skills because I never saw any buffs/debuffs pop up(other than those applied by the PC or the Abomination) nor did I see any healing other than Metatron's.

Thank you for bringing that up, I'll change it to +100 threat. 0.3 update MIGHT bring ability evolution (i not, 0.4), which will let you pick mutually exclusive paths to upgrade an ability, so then you'll probably have the option to increase the taunt power or duration further. But for now, we'll see how 100 works.

You're absolutely right, she SHOULD have acted, I think I found and fixed the issue but have to test it more thoroughly. Never had to do even basic AI before so this has been a... humbling experience. When I last tested with her she was happy to heal on support, not sure what changed.

 

[TFM]

CRYSWAR NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I NEED MORE WAIFUPOCALYPSE!!!!!!!

EDIT: But seriously, great job and happy to see your work as a dev here.

 

[zeraligator]

Thank you for bringing that up, I'll change it to +100 threat. 0.3 update MIGHT bring ability evolution (i not, 0.4), which will let you pick mutually exclusive paths to upgrade an ability, so then you'll probably have the option to increase the taunt power or duration further. But for now, we'll see how 100 works.

You're absolutely right, she SHOULD have acted, I think I found and fixed the issue but have to test it more thoroughly. Never had to do even basic AI before so this has been a... humbling experience. When I last tested with her she was happy to heal on support, not sure what changed.

I think it might be better to give taunt a split path of maybe either giving the player a defense buff or their party an offense buff. The point of taunt is to draw the attention of the enemies so making the main aspect of a skill work better seems like a weird path to(potentially) be locked out of.
Good to know that you managed to find the problem with Sarah's AI, I was starting to think I might have just imagined it.