VN Ren'Py Friends in Need [Mini-Sode: Blue Valentine] [NeonGhosts]

[NeonGhosts]

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Not much new really, just trying to get back in the groove post-holidays. Knocked out 20 renders today, with more to come this week.

 

[joeysalamander]

Playing this game on the good path is giving me emotional blue balls. Like there's hot scenes and all, but at this point I'm more interested in seeing happy endings for the characters than getting my rocks off. Also, head scritches are GOATed.

 

[JBG123]

So I played this awhile ago when it was just about that first night and just replayed it today and I have to say that this has been *really* good. Like there's a bunch of game that has 'choices' about how you act but it's kind of two sides of the same coin going in the same direction at all points. This has done a good job of if you're going to be an asshole you *really* feel like you're being one and how that pans out is appropriate alongside if you're just kind of a jerk or if you're a good noodle. That takes a lot of skill to pull off and NeonGhosts is doing pretty well at it thus far. And even when there's a choice that leads to about the same spot it's done well enough to make you feel like the one you made was the one you wanted: For example when Nicki shows back up after three months and is surprised you remembered how she liked your coffee and you had a choice of Be Kind or Be Familiar. No matter how you chose to go before that both options were still good ones for the situation.

Happily looking forward to how this goes.

And, uhhhh, if in the end you gimme a harem option I would not be opposed. Just saying. <.<

 

[CatSìth]

Are there any plans to add pregnancy or any other tags? It was pretty hot when Nicki was telling MC to breed her

 

[NeonGhosts]

Been meaning to do this for a bit, but here are some sigs for Viola and Brittani. I need to fiddle with the animation a bit more, but good enough for now!

Playing this game on the good path is giving me emotional blue balls. Like there's hot scenes and all, but at this point I'm more interested in seeing happy endings for the characters than getting my rocks off. Also, head scritches are GOATed.

Man, it's hard for me, too. :'D It's probably obvious, but I love writing all the mushy romance stuff, and trying to unpack what makes MC's relationship special with each girl. Part of me is just dying to get to all the happy endings.

So I played this awhile ago when it was just about that first night and just replayed it today and I have to say that this has been *really* good. Like there's a bunch of game that has 'choices' about how you act but it's kind of two sides of the same coin going in the same direction at all points. This has done a good job of if you're going to be an asshole you *really* feel like you're being one and how that pans out is appropriate alongside if you're just kind of a jerk or if you're a good noodle. That takes a lot of skill to pull off and NeonGhosts is doing pretty well at it thus far. And even when there's a choice that leads to about the same spot it's done well enough to make you feel like the one you made was the one you wanted: For example when Nicki shows back up after three months and is surprised you remembered how she liked your coffee and you had a choice of Be Kind or Be Familiar. No matter how you chose to go before that both options were still good ones for the situation.

Happily looking forward to how this goes.

And, uhhhh, if in the end you gimme a harem option I would not be opposed. Just saying. <.<

Glad you're digging it! It can be a struggle to try to balance the options in a way that ultimately serves all playstyles, but comments like this make it worth it.

 

[CrazyRabbit]

Playing this game on the good path is giving me emotional blue balls. Like there's hot scenes and all, but at this point I'm more interested in seeing happy endings for the characters than getting my rocks off. Also, head scritches are GOATed.

I know what you mean... and I'm an insensitive a-hole so it's a challenge for me

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

Man, it's hard for me, too. :'D It's probably obvious, but I love writing all the mushy romance stuff, and trying to unpack what makes MC's relationship special with each girl. Part of me is just dying to get to all the happy endings.

Yeah happy ending for everyone.

 

[Uriel ☁]

I finally got enough time to catch up to all the comments since the release. I played the update even before BaDIK since they released on the same day, and that's possibly the greatest compliment I can give to any game lol.

Loved Nicki's content in the relationship path, I'm a sucker for casual sex portrayed like that. I'm actually sad she's no longer our roommate, even if I understand she needs her space and the MC as well until he keeps fucking around lol.

The photoshoot was good. I would like to make Brittani my protégé and sponsor her actress career, for a return of course.

As things stand right now Jamie is nothing more than a minor annoyance. Given our power and influence it would be nice to let us decide to which lenght go to get our revenge. Something like:

• forget your revenge, we got what we wanted already
• little revenge, something to make him understand we mean business without compromising him too much
• satistying revenge, we teach him a lesson in a satistying way
• massive overreaction revenge, we utterly detroy him and fuck him up in all ways except the phisical one; potentially ruining his life for good and turning him in a subject for our charity, but even there we reject to help him

And just like with the rape choices, I won't ever choose the hardest approach. But knowing it's there will make my pragmatic approach more meaningful.

 

[desmosome]

Bro... this is amazing. What the fuck. I played the very first release and held off on playing until it got a few more updates. My initial assessment was that it would be a pretty good fap game for people who like dark shit. But what the hell, you can write a fucking script like no other! It's amazing. The dialogues are spot on. I'm just reading through Nikki's return, and I haven't seen anything like this before. It's so real. The feelings. The motivations. The emotional roller coaster. Their dynamic in this scene is really something else. I never imagined this would be possible after what my MC did to her (yea, I was a real asshole lol).

I mean, the whole Madison/Gabby scene at their house already had me very impressed. You got a real talent, and it would be great to see future characters receive the same amount of depth. It's extremely rare to see this in a game designed to produce very dark themes.

Edit: But just one thing. I think apologizing to Nikki should have its own variable. Just subtracting some dark points doesn't seem to be enough to keep track of this dynamic going forward. Because apologizing here should be a huge thing for their relationship, in my opinion. Currently, it seems like you had a real heart to heart where you both laid the cards on the table and MC regretted treating her so badly. Being able to treat her like a whore right after this in the bathroom seems a bit iffy, but that's optional. But even if you don't take advantage and give her a shirt, the MC will insinuate that she gotta be his whore to stay at the place if you have mcdark >= 3. I think giving the apology a variable and using it to adjust the tone of their relationship after would make things a lot more logical.

 

[NeonGhosts]

Bro... this is amazing. What the fuck. I played the very first release and held off on playing until it got a few more updates. My initial assessment was that it would be a pretty good fap game for people who like dark shit. But what the hell, you can write a fucking script like no other! It's amazing. The dialogues are spot on. I'm just reading through Nikki's return, and I haven't seen anything like this before. It's so real. The feelings. The motivations. The emotional roller coaster. Their dynamic in this scene is really something else. I never imagined this would be possible after what my MC did to her (yea, I was a real asshole lol).

I mean, the whole Madison/Gabby scene at their house already had me very impressed. You got a real talent, and it would be great to see future characters receive the same amount of depth. It's extremely rare to see this in a game designed to produce very dark themes.

Edit: But just one thing. I think apologizing to Nikki should have its own variable. Just subtracting some dark points doesn't seem to be enough to keep track of this dynamic going forward. Because apologizing here should be a huge thing for their relationship, in my opinion. Currently, it seems like you had a real heart to heart where you both laid the cards on the table and MC regretted treating her so badly. Being able to treat her like a whore right after this in the bathroom seems a bit iffy, but that's optional. But even if you don't take advantage and give her a shirt, the MC will insinuate that she gotta be his whore to stay at the place if you have mcdark >= 3. I think giving the apology a variable and using it to adjust the tone of their relationship after would make things a lot more logical.

First, thanks for the kind words! I'm glad that people keep rediscovering the game, and being pleasantly surprised by it.

As for Nicki, I agree - that's a good point. I may look at least making that dialogue more neutral, if you don't visit her in the bathroom. I do have a variable in place for "bathroom sex," so that's easy enough to change if you started on her jerk path. And then by bypassing the night BJ, you'll end up on her friend path, which would make sense.. I'll make a note of it.

Honestly, four chapters in I'm finally just attaching a variable to every consequential choice. My life would be a lot easier I'd been doing it since the beginning. :'D

 

[desmosome]

First, thanks for the kind words! I'm glad that people keep rediscovering the game, and being pleasantly surprised by it.

As for Nicki, I agree - that's a good point. I may look at least making that dialogue more neutral, if you don't visit her in the bathroom. I do have a variable in place for "bathroom sex," so that's easy enough to change if you started on her jerk path. And then by bypassing the night BJ, you'll end up on her friend path, which would make sense.. I'll make a note of it.

Honestly, four chapters in I'm finally just attaching a variable to every consequential choice. My life would be a lot easier I'd been doing it since the beginning. :'D

Not to tout my own horn... but I did warn you about this way back then.

The problem with using a scaling variable for everything is that there is no information on how you arrived at the current value. That's fine in some instances, but many times, it's a problem.

As someone who has looked at the code of many renpy games, I can tell you, the optimal way to do it like this. Use the scaling variable like mcdarkpts as a general disposition of the character. You are doing great on this front. But for significant choices that may alter a relationship dynamic, route decision, or just anything that you think needs to be tracked, use a flag like sex1 = True.

And frankly, there is no downside to going wild with flags. If you don't use it later on, that's fine, but you can rest easy knowing that you won't break the saves by adding it retroactively if you happen to need it down the line.

 

[NeonGhosts]

Not to tout my own horn... but I did warn you about this way back then.

Hah! Fair! :'D I really threw myself into this thing not knowing what I didn't know.

Honestly, I'd really like to redo the code for the first two chapters, but it'd force everyone to restart their games.. Which isn't ideal. But, it may be better than continuing to build on a shaky foundation.

 

[desmosome]

Hah! Fair! :'D I really threw myself into this thing not knowing what I didn't know.

Honestly, I'd really like to redo the code for the first two chapters, but it'd force everyone to restart their games.. Which isn't ideal. But, it may be better than continuing to build on a shaky foundation.

I'll play through the rest of the game and try to see if there are any other instances that are off. The apology not being tracked seems like the first major blunder, but your proposed remedy for this using ch3bathroomsex seems like it will work, especially since "staying silent" could also kinda be interpreted as MC regretting how he treated her in chapter 1.

I think the tone that you are using with the conditional [nickirel == 1 or nickirel == 2] is fine for the most part for a relationship dynamic that is on the mend, but not quite as friendly as nickirel == 0. You just have to adjust some of the dialogues that go too far for an MC that had a change of heart about Nicki. For those cases, you could check ch3bathroomsex in addition to the [nickirel == 1 or nickirel == 2] to give a less predatory vibe just to tide things over until the friend/couple/submissive flags is set.

If there are no major inconsistencies after this, I don't think you have to start over. For the most part, you made it work using the current system. Adding more flags on top of the usual variable system you use for dark, lust, reluctance will add more versatility going forward and I'm glad you've come to the same conclusion at this point.

 

[CrazyRabbit]

Hah! Fair! :'D I really threw myself into this thing not knowing what I didn't know.

Honestly, I'd really like to redo the code for the first two chapters, but it'd force everyone to restart their games.. Which isn't ideal. But, it may be better than continuing to build on a shaky foundation.

And forcing us to replay that awesome game ? Making us go through bettering the lives of everyone and seducing gorgeous women ?

 

[NewTricks]

First, thanks for the kind words! I'm glad that people keep rediscovering the game, and being pleasantly surprised by it.

As for Nicki, I agree - that's a good point. I may look at least making that dialogue more neutral, if you don't visit her in the bathroom. I do have a variable in place for "bathroom sex," so that's easy enough to change if you started on her jerk path. And then by bypassing the night BJ, you'll end up on her friend path, which would make sense.. I'll make a note of it.

Honestly, four chapters in I'm finally just attaching a variable to every consequential choice. My life would be a lot easier I'd been doing it since the beginning. :'D

I like the apology dynamic the way it is. It gives you the opportunity to give a 100% bullshit and insincere apology if that is the character you are playing. Maybe it butters her up a little bit, but when you jump right back up on your asshole horse it lets her know where she stands. You get to decide if the apology is actually going to change anything.

 

[desmosome]

The dark path for Brittani photo shoot was intense. I consider myself a connoisseur of fucked up porn, but that was too much even for me lol. It was too real, and seeing her gradually go from a bubbly girl full of potential to a broken mess was hard to go through. I mean, I still fapped to it, but I'm probably gonna go with the happy or neutral version of the shoot for the run.

Maybe I'm not too far gone yet lol. I always did find it kinda hard to go through "sad rape" scenes (ones where they are crying and traumatized). I prefer the "happy rapes" like in hentai where they eventually get ahegao'd and enjoy it. Of course, that doesn't fit the rather realistic tone set in this game, but I think I'm also fine with situations where they aren't completely broken. Like submissive Nicki route is pretty mean, but she does maintain her spunk and takes her situation surprisingly well. Gabby and Ashe are feisty and doesn't break (at least not yet).

Just thinking out loud here. Not a critique of the game. The game knows exactly what it wants to do on the routes and it's done amazingly well. Real fucked up on the hardcore routes and pretty fucking wholesome (but still kinky) on the good routes.

 

[_Berto_]

I made a dedicated thread for fan art and assets here: https://f95zone.to/threads/friends-in-need-neonghosts-fan-art-assets-thread.142415/

Feel free to chime in for those of you who are daz3d users.

 

[NeonGhosts]

I made a dedicated thread for fan art and assets here: https://f95zone.to/threads/friends-in-need-neonghosts-fan-art-assets-thread.142415/

Feel free to chime in for those of you who are daz3d users.

I added the DUFs for Nicki, Guy, Ashe, and Viola.

Once other characters get their first hardcore scene, I'll add them, too.

 

[Raoddik]

Honestly, I'd really like to redo the code for the first two chapters, but it'd force everyone to restart their games.. Which isn't ideal. But, it may be better than continuing to build on a shaky foundation.

Well, better to do it sooner than later then I guess. Overall it's not that big deal (starting from the start) when game is straightforward VN imho (some with mini games are pain to start again > >), the skip button was made for something after all.

Just don't forget big warning that old saves don't work just so half people can miss it anyway and report errors.

 

[RC-1138 Boss]

Well, better to do it sooner than later then I guess. Overall it's not that big deal (starting from the start) when game is straightforward VN imho (some with mini games are pain to start again > >), the skip button was made for something after all.

Just don't forget big warning that old saves don't work just so half people can miss it anyway and report errors.

Agree. Now while the game isn't that big would be better.