VN Ren'Py Friends in Need [Ch. 9 v0.60c] [NeonGhosts]

[NeonGhosts]

Oh, well there wasn't anyway I wasn't going to take Gabby to go shopping with me so I totally missed Pepper. I assume there will be another chance?

Yup! I'm planning for a Chapter Four event featuring her.

 

[gregers]

Oh, well there wasn't anyway I wasn't going to take Gabby to go shopping with me so I totally missed Pepper. I assume there will be another chance?

The first encounter is literally just her giving the MC directions to a clothing shop, no reason to expect it to affect future content with her.

 

[Doobiedoobiedoooo]

I hope you'll look into that and perhaps add it for other characters as well. I'm waiting for today's update you mentioned before playing for the first time so I don't know if you've been doing that already, but even adding mentions of birth control or having some sex scenes using condoms is a good start while you're not ready to fully pursue that fetish. After it's in, don't be afraid of using time skips if you can, to advance the pregnancies without needing to wait years in development for it to show.

Please, please, please any time you're lobbying a dev for condoms include the word OPTIONAL. Thx!

 

[Doobiedoobiedoooo]

As long as no one picks the bad path for the super sweet Russian girl.

Anyone doing that deserves to have their arse fingered by an Elephant without lube.

So hard finding unlubed elephant finger content on this site and then you go teasing me with that.

 

[Doobiedoobiedoooo]

While a cute one-liner, that doesn't really mean anything. There are innumerable ways to write someone into a bad situation without compromising their likeability. People can easily find themselves "in need" without having gotten themselves into it by repeatedly being a moron or otherwise being unlikable/irritating/annoying/etc. Just go read the news. Good people get fucked over by bad luck every day. Rent prices skyrocket. People get hit by unexpected medical expenses. Houses burn down. Tons of people in this country are one unfortunate confluence of events from being in a really bad place through no fault of their own.

What is being demonstrated here is a common trap a lot of developers fall into when attempting to design a game which simultaneously wants to allow people to be unrepentant assholes to others and also have a good guy route. If the routes are coupled too closely to each other, one side or the other almost always suffers.

The developer reasonably wants enough people to experience both sides of the story or they might feel like it was a waste of time to put all that work into the evil path if everyone plays the good guy route and then moves on, but statistics of what players choose in games with a good/bad dichotomy tend to lean extremely heavily toward the good side. So, developers have to either make the good side less appealing or the bad side more appealing (usually both) to push people toward a more even distribution.

How does that work in a porn game? You intentionally make the love interests do things that you know the players won't like for whatever reason. If you can make the player angry at the love interest or make the player perceive them as having been tainted in some way, they'll be more likely to pick the degrading options. This increases uptake on the bad guy route at the expense of making a lot of people enjoy the good guy route less than they would have if there were on a route written explicitly for that purpose. Instead of both sides getting stories that quickly diverge onto separate paths tailored to each audience, at least one side (if not both) will get a suboptimal experience because they have to stick to one shared middle path with relatively minor deviations.

Additionally, since I'm not allowed to have the option to not interact with a character because everything has to follow the shared path or I'll miss out on #content, I am finding myself forced to sit through long dialogue sections with characters who actively irritate me in order to get to the ones I still enjoy interacting with. The excuse that I don't have to fuck them is silly. It's like telling someone they don't have to swallow the food they don't like but they do have to keep swishing it around in their mouth for a few minutes before they're allowed to spit it out.

Also, as for the "friends" part of the title, only one of them was actually a friend before the story begins... and the behavior Nicki has demonstrated thus far is not the behavior of a friend. It's more like the behavior of someone who sees you as an emergency parachute that she doesn't want to touch until things get really bad. So, there's a single ex-friend. The only other one with any relation to the MC is family and they're not presented as being friendly with each other either. Everyone else we meet is a stranger who just wants money and/or fame from him.

Dev posted a cute one liner that didn't mean anything so you wrote a book?

 

[wankingbastard]

Gabby is yum, I hope we get to fuck her next update, her cute little ass needs cock

 

[quiboune]

Please, please, please any time you're lobbying a dev for condoms include the word OPTIONAL. Thx!

I'm not lobbying for anything lol but if it was optional with no consequences it'd be pointless, wouldn't it? The ideal scenario would be having the option to tell the love interests to use birth control if you want to opt-out of pregnancy content, but if you choose to not do that some of them would demand the MC uses condoms unless you figure out a way to convince them otherwise or trick them.

 

[Doobiedoobiedoooo]

I'm not lobbying for anything lol but if it was optional with no consequences it'd be pointless, wouldn't it? The ideal scenario would be having the option to tell the love interests to use birth control if you want to opt-out of pregnancy content, but if you choose to not do that some of them would demand the MC uses condoms unless you figure out a way to convince them otherwise or trick them.

Sounds great. Optional everything. I always chose the creampie but if they're hard coded in, I lose interest after the second or third time. It's nice that my main kink for options doesn't step on anyone else's kink.

It's getting a little annoying how many times in these games I chose the creampie and the other party who's not the protagonist starts requesting the creampie because I clicked that.

 

[whizwart]

Hey NeonGhosts, saw you wrote Pregnancy isn't a confirmed kink, and I'm actually surprised. Would have bet money on coming in any of the girls at least spiniing the wheel of impregnation, since it opens up so many reactions/motives (Complete meltdown, golddigging, etc) or having them come back with a "surprise" for the MC.

 

[NeonGhosts]

Hey NeonGhosts, saw you wrote Pregnancy isn't a confirmed kink, and I'm actually surprised. Would have bet money on coming in any of the girls at least spiniing the wheel of impregnation, since it opens up so many reactions/motives (Complete meltdown, golddigging, etc) or having them come back with a "surprise" for the MC.

The issue is really one of programming, not story.

If I have one character who can get pregnant, that's one girl with one variable.

So if say, Gabby gets knocked up, then I need to write a set of dialogue reflecting that fact, and one that doesn't. Maybe it doesn't come up all the time, but it's a big deal, it's going to be mentioned. Not just for one scene, but multiple scenes. With multiple characters interacting with her. A version where her dad knows, and one where he doesn't. Where Madison knows, and doesn't. Where Nicki knows, and doesn't. And she already has four alignment paths through the game. So, that's already a lot, for one character to be pregnant.

Add in every or even several characters who can get pregnant? The game would never be finished. Or I'd have to start doing once-a-year updates.

Now, that said - I'm not ruling it out entirely, in a very limited scope. And in terms of endgame content, that could absolutely be in there. But for now, it's just too daunting a proposition, to integrate into what I'm already doing.

Like, I'm not griping, but my idea to give the MC the choice of multiple girls to jerk off to at night? It's resulted in like three solid hours of coding, writing, and rendering, for what's ultimately a tiny scene, that was already mostly done. This stuff always takes so much longer than you'd expect it to.

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[quiboune]

Give the MC the choice of multiple girls to jerk off to at night? It's resulted in like three solid hours of coding, writing, and rendering, for what's ultimately a tiny scene, that was already mostly done. This stuff always takes so much longer than you'd expect it to.

Why do that though?

 

[Gundamu0079]

wow mc can be real rapey

even that store slav girl can't escape

 

[NeonGhosts]

Why do that though?

Honestly, I thought I'd be done in an hour, and it'd be a good way to highlight some of the girls we've met up to this point. By the time I realized it was becoming a quagmire, it was too late, and I was halfway into it.

But, it's done now. I'm going to put the final/public version out tomorrow morning, after I've had the time to bug-test it.

 

[whizwart]

The issue is really one of programming, not story.

Oh yeah, totally get we aren't getting a breeding harem due to programming constrants. Glad to hear its at least got some consideration for endgame.

 

[DannyLucifer]

I've talked about this in the past a little, but I personally am just not attracted to dick, even when it's on a girl. So, on the one hand, I just don't know that I'm the guy to do that subject justice. On the other hand, trans people (but particularly trans women) experience outsized homelessness, disproportionately take part in sex work, are at a greater risk for assault, suicide, homicide, drug addiction, abuse.. So, it would make sense for the MC to encounter a trans girl in need.

So, the answer right now is maybe?

I wasn't really into foot stuff until I did Nicki's footjob scene. So, maybe writing a trans girl and doing her sex scene would make me a believer! But for right now, none of the characters are trans women, and I don't have concrete plans to add any trans women.

EDIT: Hey, wait. You gave me a two-star review saying my game was basically a kinetic novel bereft of choices. What're you doing asking me about future content?

For anyone wondering where the update is, I've got the renders going now. Hard to say when they'll all be done processing, it just kind of takes how long it takes. Until then, here's a little teaser for something the MC finds, while looking for spank material.

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Yes, I did, but that didn't mean I will drop it, cus I like the overall concept of the story. And if there are choices in the future that actually matter I will redact it, but at this point of the story, it's basically a kinetic novel. I also don't have a messiah complex, so I found the first scene very forced, Like my choice didn't matter. In my opinion, it was a valid point.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

wow mc can be real rapey

even that store slav girl can't escape

Someone is going to get the elephant fingering.

Honestly, I thought I'd be done in an hour, and it'd be a good way to highlight some of the girls we've met up to this point. By the time I realized it was becoming a quagmire, it was too late, and I was halfway into it.

But, it's done now. I'm going to put the final/public version out tomorrow morning, after I've had the time to bug-test it.

Yeah. Very few people know or at least try to understand how hard game developing is.

 

[Doobiedoobiedoooo]

Yes, I did, but that didn't mean I will drop it. And if there are choices in the future that actually matter I will redact it, but at this point of the story, it's basically a kinetic novel. I also don't have a messiah complex, so I found the first scene very forced, Like my choice didn't matter. In my opinion it was a valid point.

Half the thread is marveling that it's one of the only games where it's worth it to play through twice because of what the choices do to the game, and then there's you.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

Yes, I did, but that didn't mean I will drop it, cus I like the overall concept of the story. And if there are choices in the future that actually matter I will redact it, but at this point of the story, it's basically a kinetic novel. I also don't have a messiah complex, so I found the first scene very forced, Like my choice didn't matter. In my opinion, it was a valid point.

Kinetic novel?

 

[DannyLucifer]

Kinetic novel?
View attachment 2049850

It is a type of visual novel where you are playing a premade path made by the author (or Dev here), meaning your choice does not matter in the overall narrative of the story.

 

[Doobiedoobiedoooo]

It is a type of visual novel where you are playing a premade path made by the author (or Dev here), meaning your choice does not matter in the overall narrative of the story.

No choices are displayed in a true kinetic novel. Sometimes the term is used to criticize a game where the choices do nothing, intentionally or not. There's some sarcasm involved in that.