Others Abandoned Esoteric Erotica [v0.149 Alpha] [EsoDev]

5.00 star(s) 1 Vote

rllog

Member
Apr 3, 2018
127
298
Is there any erotic content implemented that's not some debug stuff? Because I honestly gave up looking after trying to pick up correct adjectives for each part of my body and finding a fully functional minesweeper in the game. Why on earth?

Honestly the concept is amazing, but with such spectacularly wide feature creep I foresee nothing but development hell for this project. A shame really.
 

EsoDev

Newbie
Mar 4, 2020
63
62
Is there any erotic content implemented that's not some debug stuff? Because I honestly gave up looking after trying to pick up correct adjectives for each part of my body and finding a fully functional minesweeper in the game. Why on earth?

Honestly the concept is amazing, but with such spectacularly wide feature creep I foresee nothing but development hell for this project. A shame really.
No.

And the Minesweeper is there because there was a time when I was teaching myself JavaScript to be able to more effectively make use of it in-game, if needed, and that was the result of it.
 

heckinT

Newbie
Jan 2, 2019
90
55
Curious about using the engine for other projects. Do you plan on going further with the engine to make it dev-friendly/accessible? Is there any documentation yet? Apologies if these questions have been answered already.
 

EsoDev

Newbie
Mar 4, 2020
63
62
Curious about using the engine for other projects. Do you plan on going further with the engine to make it dev-friendly/accessible? Is there any documentation yet? Apologies if these questions have been answered already.
As stated in the license, the engine can be used by anyone however you are not allowed to decompile it etc. etc. (but that's mostly to cover myself). The game itself is also open source. Just mind you this is an actual engine and not say, a text based VN maker like Ren'py, you need to code in all the game mechanics yourself, or use what I have in there already for your own needs.

Realistically speaking the engine is feature complete by this point, however, I've been still adding quality of life updates to it from time to time. And any changes I make aim to be backwards compatible with earlier versions (essentally code written for any version of the engine should run on any later version of it as well). Honestly the updates are generally just a handful of API extensions... speaking of which... the API documentation can be found within the game itself under Bonuses, It's a simple semi-searchable dictionary of the functions used by the engine. The rest you can find on my blog under the Fundamentals section.

If you are actually interested in it I'd suggest to just join my server and talking about it.
 

peppytheclown

Newbie
Apr 1, 2020
24
36
Hey, I like what you've got but once it's done i'd like it to be permanently removed from my system, did I miss an uninstaller for the engine or is there no such thing?
 

EsoDev

Newbie
Mar 4, 2020
63
62
Hey, I like what you've got but once it's done i'd like it to be permanently removed from my system, did I miss an uninstaller for the engine or is there no such thing?
The only change the installation actually applies to your system is adding a single registry key.
This key will be one of the two below, depending on your machine (64 or 32 bits, so it's likely the first):

Code:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION\Esoteric.exe

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_BROWSER_EMULATION\Esoteric.exe
If you remove the key you "permanently" removed it from your system.
 

Joe Steel

Engaged Member
Jan 10, 2018
2,326
3,089
Just played for the first time, and I have to say that I am impressed with the writing, if a bit confused about gameplay.

The writing strikes me as very atmospheric, sounding natural enough but formal, as if in, say, Lovecraft's time. Game mechanics are reasonably straightforward, and things like clothing have the effects one would imagine them to have in real life. There's obviously more than a bit missing because it is an alpha build, still, but what's there works.

What isn't clear to the player at present is how much content there is. There bis a guide that tells the player, somewhat, what the current actions should be, but it isn't at all clear that this list can be completed in the current build. That's more than a little bit frustrating, especially as some of the items on the to-do list appear to require random events to occur. Are there really 6 NPCs available to be met in this version, for instance? I only found one. The lack of release notes just makes this worse.

I did experience a few crashes to desktop, mostly when trying to do anything complex with the landlord, like asking for headpats and kissing. Given that these interactions make up about half of the content I could find, that's probably something worth looking into.

A more serious issue to look into is the fact that the installer asks for administrative privileges. Only ignorance could excuse a user for granting administrative privileges to an unknown executable from an unknown source. That's pretty much the same as telling a known thief that your house is unlocked and you are going on a two-week vacation. Maybe you won't get hosed, but if you do it will be disastrous.

So, GL with this, and I look forward to more, but please, if you need to modify the registry, tell people how to do it on their own. A malicious person could easily modify your executable and put up your game on some other host and really screw over some users.
 
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EsoDev

Newbie
Mar 4, 2020
63
62
I did experience a few crashes to desktop, mostly when trying to do anything complex with the landlord, like asking for headpats and kissing. Given that these interactions make up about half of the content I could find, that's probably something worth looking into.
Details, I'd love to see what's up with that. If your game crashes to desktop there's a stack trace. Provide them if you can.

A more serious issue to look into is the fact that the installer asks for administrative privileges. Only ignorance could excuse a user for granting administrative privileges to an unknown executable from an unknown source. That's pretty much the same as telling a known thief that your house is unlocked and you are going on a two-week vacation. Maybe you won't get hosed, but if you do it will be disastrous.
You mean like if what? They DLed a free game from a different source where someone modifies the installer to do something malicious? What you are saying makes little sense in practice. You're trying to sound security savy, but that's not how things work, especially since you likely have multiple games installed on your system with ring 0 permission.
 

EsoDev

Newbie
Mar 4, 2020
63
62
I did experience a few crashes to desktop, mostly when trying to do anything complex with the landlord, like asking for headpats and kissing. Given that these interactions make up about half of the content I could find, that's probably something worth looking into.
Nevermind, found it, fixed it. It was an issue with newer systems being phased in clashing with older systems being phased out. I made both sides play well with each other even if the older systems are very unlikely to be used once they are gone.
(A temporary solution to never have this happen is to exit the conversation and then enter it again.)

Additional observation. This should only possibly happen if you play the new version without playing the new intro. If this wasn't the case, I'd like an explannation on what you did/how this happened.
 
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lifesuckz69

Member
Mar 5, 2017
354
252
Oh man, as i get older my feeling of time gets warped, but I feel like I played a proof of concept of this around 10 years ago already and I feel that this is not much further than that
 

EsoDev

Newbie
Mar 4, 2020
63
62
Oh man, as i get older my feeling of time gets warped, but I feel like I played a proof of concept of this around 10 years ago already and I feel that this is not much further than that
It's your right to feel that, but you're also wrong.
 

lifesuckz69

Member
Mar 5, 2017
354
252
It's your right to feel that, but you're also wrong.
The 10 years was obviously an overexaggeration, as I don't know how long it's been, but it definitely has been a very long time since I played it and playing through it right now, I still don't see much more progress.

Though let me add that it was and is an interesting concept and elaborate engine to play with. I just wish it was further down the line.
 

EsoDev

Newbie
Mar 4, 2020
63
62
EsoDev I found some, I don't remember which one, the top post was in English and the rest was in squiggles.

My dumbass thought that when I searched for example "hentai", the 2 paragraph text thing on the top would spit out the entry. It was only after doing that several times when I saw the text thingy say something along the lines of "yo wtf are you doing, have you forgotten what you came to this world for stop wasting yo time searching weird shit and go" was when I realised time moves in this game. From 9:50 to 1 something pm. Very cool.

I didn't really know if there was a guide anywhere, so I decide to experiment. Spent the past hour or so looking at the menus and stuff. Then I was busy so I had to do something else.
The squigglies are for placeholders. ATM anything that isn't a squiggle can be entered and explored. In the future it will look a bit differently but time, TODO lists, etc.
 

fakehb

Member
Jun 30, 2020
121
153
You're right, just for you I'm going to increase the game's scope over 2 times to make it happen.
First off I love the concept, and I also love the engine.

But is there really so little to do? Are all the greyed out options incomplete, or am I just missing requirements? If I'm not missing requirements, then is there a bunch of content I'm not seeing for some reason?

If not, and I've been searching for awhile, then 2x doesn't go very far. The amount of content feels like it's not much more than one might expect from a somewhat audacious game-jam project; not something that's been baking for more than a year now.
 
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5.00 star(s) 1 Vote