HTML Inheritance [vB9a] [Aftermath Team]

[GateKeeper]

Alright. If you don't mind I'll give it a try.

First for the good thing. Your game has excellent writing is really engaging. Overall it really has me hooked.

The gameplay inside the house and interacting with the characters is just fine. Yes, you repeat the same event over and over again and yes it could be improved by adding more variety to some of those events or adding more of them in general(how many times a day can I compliment Anna on her cleaning?) but that really is a minor issue at worst. The reality is that, when it comes to this part of the game and especially when you have more girls in your home to add to the random event list the game flows well.

Critically, the constant repeated events serve to make the game feel padded out which is essential to getting the proper feeling of slow passage of time that you need for the purpose of realism. Unlike many developers that fall into the trap of quick fixes you understand that the sort of trauma the girls have been through is not something that one can cure in a fortnight over a couple headpats. And your gameplay gives us the experience of living inside the house with the girls and slowly building up that relationship as you realistically would, slowly getting them to trust you over a long time and eventually, hopefully helping them find happiness.


However, when it comes to plot relevant events you have a problem. And that problem has to do with the way they are accessed. In particular a lot of content is essentially undiscoverable through the natural flow of the game. Allow me to try and explain what I mean by this.

Your game has two types of events, repeatable and plot events. And there seem to be little to no direct triggers for any of them. They both rely equally on being in the right place at the right time AND rolling the right dice. Or at least that's how it feels from a player perspective. And that means that realistically the only way to get an event to trigger is to enter an area enough times to roll the dice right. This can be once, but it can also be tens of times or worse.

And fundamentally this is a problem. And it is a problem that is directly proportionate to how specific the conditions are for that event to happen and becomes extreme if it is to happen outside of the house.

You see, when playing inside the house there is always something to do so you will be clicking around those rooms a lot. And this manages to ensure that, for the most part, unless an event has very specific triggering conditions that aren't common the player will stumble upon it eventually. And whilst this is less than ideal at least you know the player probably, possibly won't miss out on the stuff.


But when it comes to all the events that happen in the outside world things are drastically different. Fundamentally, there simply isn't enough content outside of the manor to get the player to click around that much. And I don't imagine there could be without distorting the flow of the game and pushing it far away from the core which is the mansion and girls.

What this means is that during the normal course of gameplay odds are very high that the player simply won't run into a lot of the possible events and characters simply because he isn't naturally triggering those areas enough times for it to randomly happen.

Take for example the event when you meet the girl who wants to jump off a bridge in the middle of the night in the rain. That is arguably a critical plot event. After all it's how you unlock a character. And one whose writing and execution are fantastic. But it is also an event that took me at least 20 attempts before I got it to trigger when I was grinding for it.

Is there really enough of a reason for the player to ever be driving to town at night in the rain? Let alone to do so again and again and again until it randomly triggers? The answer is no. In fact, I would argue that there is no reason for the player to do so even once organically. And definitively not so many times to randomly stumble upon her. And this means that realistically, unless you know the event is there and grind for it you just won't get it ever. And you WILL miss that character entirely.


What all this means in practice is that effectively your game relies on the player constantly having the wiki open in another tab to look up events and than grind for them. And that is suboptimal. In fact, I would go so far as to say that grinding for events is quite unfun as well as immersion breaking. Ideally, the end goal of any story driven game should be to produce a game where the player can get to see all the events without ever having to look things up.


My suggestion for correcting this would be to introduce several changes. But they all boil down to basically making your plot events more like a quest chain. Much like you did with Bubbles.

To go back to my previous example. Instead of having that event trigger randomly when I go to town in the night during rain, something that is rarely or ever going to happen on its own have it be a quest chain that starts inside the house. Have something happen at a random night when its raining that gives me a good in game reason to be rushing to town in the middle of the night during a storm. And when I comply, add a 100% trigger that ensures that event will happen on the way back.

And if you want randomness in when the event triggers this is where you put it. You put it before this initial event and in a place where the player has a much higher probability of triggering it. And ideally, you would have some set of conditions that eventually forces it to happen anyway. Like a timer or a timer + certain girls present + other stuff. Or at least gradually push the odds up on a timer. Something so that the player can't be completely screwed out of it by bad luck.


Hope this is helpful. I tried to be as detailed as I could.

For starters, thank you very much for the feedback.

As you pointed out, the game is a bit of a grind at times. As the game continues to grow, that grind will become less and less. I know that the game isn't growing as fast as many people might like, but there are only so many hours in a day.

We have somewhat recently written some code (One of the brilliant coders who helps out wrote it, I can't really take any credit here) that allows us to force a scene to trigger. In the case of important scenes and time sensitive content, we can now force a scene to trigger so long as you meet the requirements for it. We've largely tried to limit the use of this to holiday and other time sensitive content, but it is included for some other important events too.

When people report troubles triggering certain scenes, it is very common for me to go into the code to look at the conditions and adjust the probability up or down depending on the scene. Another thing that we have the code in place for that I haven't finished implementing is that the NPCs can move about the mansion on their own now. I need to add a snip of code to each scene's trigger to include their presence. What this will do is allow you to go to a place an NPC is currently at and it will ONLY trigger scenes that are appropriate to who is there. By doing this, the scene poll should drop significantly in those places at any given time. Example: If a location has 20 ambient scenes, 10 Anna scenes, and 10 Eve scenes. And only Anna is present in the location at the time, then only her content will appear. Same with Eve's content, if both are present then any scenes including one or both of them would be able to appear. The ambient/filler scenes would only trigger if a viable NPC is not present. This will both make it easier to trigger rare content and make it easier to grind stats in a way that doesn't feel so monotonous.

Something to keep in mind about the outside world is that my original intent was to make the mansion itself feel active, then to branch into the grounds, then the town. However with a project that accepts submissions, some people wanted to explore that bigger world and rather than deny them the ability to do that I took the time to put the bare minimum of content into those location and allow others to populate them while I continue to grow the mansion. In the last year, I've been branching into the grounds a bit more, but the majority of my writing time (Minus commissioned content. Vanni's content is a good example of commissioned work that draws my time out of the mansion.) has still been spent working on the mansion.

The girl on the bridge event I am actually hoping will be easier to trigger moving forward. Recently I've been commissioned to write a girl named Vanni into the game who is a criminal in town. Her content is most active in the evenings. There's also Olivia who's a fairly recent character in town who triggers her first scene in the evenings. With a new reason or two to come into town at night, that in theory should help make that scene more likely to trigger. On that note, I just increased the probability of that scene triggering.

The ultimate goal is to create enough content in the setting that you can evolve relationships without it feeling like you're grinding, to have enough scenes that you have to play more than once to see everything because there's so much to see.

One final point related to this is that I actually hope to have multiple scenes for some important events. Multiple ways to introduce some characters to the game. By including more entry points for NPCs and important events, not only does it increase replayability, but it also will make it easier to find those plot driven storylines.

I love that there's so much interest in seeing plot driven content. There's very little of that in the game so far because I've been more focused on making the game playable with repeatable content, I'm very excited to create stories in the setting. And on that note, I really need to write the next scene in Anna's wedding storyline, . . . .

I appreciate the feedback a great deal. It looks like a lot of it involves scene probability, which is something we're always tweaking based on feedback. I hope that my replies give a little perspective from my side of the situation. It seems to me that a lot of what you brought up is things that we're already working toward, or simply haven't fully implemented yet. I'll be mindful of the feedback moving forward and maybe be a little more liberal with the forced scene function as appropriate. I want the world to feel real, like it's living and fluid. Forcing too many scenes makes it feel scripted, so there's a balance to be struck for sure.

 

[GateKeeper]

Ugh gotta wait another month for the next version before I can get that stupid chastity cage I don’t own off.

Here's a modded version of the A55 build that includes the ability to remove it. (HTML only, you'll need your current image pack, just unzip and replace your current html with this one.)

Additionally, the author who write the cage content is working on a removal scene right now. I am hopeful that they'll have it ready in time for the next build in addition to the removal function that was added into A56 as a stopgap until proper scenes could be added.

Options should be accessible through the protagonist's inventory.

 

[issue28]

is there a walkthrough?

 

[Icarus Media]

And on that note, anyone wants to write things like this, I'll gladly credit you and add them to the game.

So if you want to write scenes for the game do you just write the story part or do you want the code element as well? Where do you send it?

EDIT: Found the submission guide.txt. Any specific software program to write a scene in or could I just use Notepad +?

 

[Knight 001]

is there a walkthrough?

There is a wiki where you can find the requirements for the various events here (

You must be registered to see the links

) but I suggest you play it without it at least for the first time because you're gonna spoil yourself.

 

[MausMaus]

Loving the game so far, but is there a map anywhere, it would make things a lot easier?

 

[smilyguy]

Unless I'm missing something obvious there doesn't really seem to be any way to naturally trigger anything beyond the random scenes wandering around the house. Are you supposed to play this with the wiki open? The game seems to lack a driving force.

 

[biglazydog]

I honestly just feel like the game needs to have a quest chain that tells (or hints) the player what to do next to advance the story. It's not just that it's a grind (and it is overwhelmingly grindy) it's that there is often just no reason to even do the grind.

 

[Furmilk]

Does anyone know if the dev is intending on changing the standing portraits for the characters? The art that pops-up for scenes isn't bad, but the standing pictures are kind of horrifying.

 

[MausMaus]

I honestly just feel like the game needs to have a quest chain that tells (or hints) the player what to do next to advance the story. It's not just that it's a grind (and it is overwhelmingly grindy) it's that there is often just no reason to even do the grind.

Yeah I agree, needs some sort of stated objective or goal, something to kind of push you to go further and some hints to get you there. Right now I'm just clicking around repeating stuff, I'm not really sure what it is I'm actually supposed to do.

 

[Daishi]

Suggest improvements. I won't promise to use all of them, but I'm always looking for better ways to do things.

Less time tossing in more neigh inaccessible without the patrion cheats version late game submitted/sponsored content, more time actually spent trying to make the core gameplay loop actually be a gameplay loop and not be about as enjoyable as driving a nail through your scrotum.

Make events less common but actually impactful. I mean, how much times can one woman lose her most precious possession in a single day? (that damned photograph)

Put in the ability to use shortcuts.

Actually put some work in on the transformation content.

Stop adding in new crap until you've actually shored up the bases.

Actually fill out the existing slave girls before you add in any new ones. I mean 2/3 of them you can't even FUCK. In a game about SEX SLAVERY!

 

[xianhun3757]

About pregnancy,don't tell me directly.Let me find it myself. The symptoms of pregnancy,such as morning sickness

 

[tacosnap123]

i think my current save is still bugged have yet to see bridgett even though i agreed to buy her and second i really dont see imiages to the secans but i did look how you trigger the anne and misukop event in the sauna

 

[AgainstDaMachine]

Less time tossing in more neigh inaccessible without the patrion cheats version late game submitted/sponsored content, more time actually spent trying to make the core gameplay loop actually be a gameplay loop and not be about as enjoyable as driving a nail through your scrotum.

Make events less common but actually impactful. I mean, how much times can one woman lose her most precious possession in a single day? (that damned photograph)

Put in the ability to use shortcuts.

Actually put some work in on the transformation content.

Stop adding in new crap until you've actually shored up the bases.

Actually fill out the existing slave girls before you add in any new ones. I mean 2/3 of them you can't even FUCK. In a game about SEX SLAVERY!

1. So you're asking him to stop adding in people's submissions simply because they're "late game" content? That's a good way to push people away so that's an incredibly dumb idea. That and sponsored content is sponsored content, he's going to focus on that because it's people paying to have a scene written, I mean go ahead and bitch about it but that's exactly what you're doing, is bitching about other people paying to have scenes they want to see, written.

2. Photograph scene is suppose to play once.

3. "Some work" is being put into it.

4. This loops back to 1, are you asking for the dev himself to stop adding his own content OR ALL "new" content? If it's the latter, then my advice is to stop bitching because other people are going to submit shit to a game, if you don't like it, tough shit mate. If it's the first, well, fair enough.

5. Anna and Eve have been pretty "filled" out, Misaki and Gaia are the only other slaves that the Dev actually writes for. I'd advise reading the changelog, or reading the Slaves wiki pages, it generally tells you who created them. All other slaves are created/written by other people.

 

[QQP_Purple]

1. So you're asking him to stop adding in people's submissions simply because they're "late game" content?

I think he is complaining about the fact that it's all night inaccessible. Which as I explained it is due to the way the event trigger system currently works. Look at my post for a detailed explanation.
https://f95zone.to/threads/inheritance-va55-aftermath-team.6291/page-100#post-6161631

But long story short, a lot of those events are cool but impossible to access unless you have the wiki open and are willing to grind. Where as they really should be accessible through normal gameplay. So adding more and more of them is counterproductive until such a time that the dev fixes that underlying issue. After all, I can't imagine even the patrons feel super stoked about having to grind just to see their own events.

From what he said though the dev team seems to be well underway toward fixing those issues as we speak. So that's going to be mega cool when it happens.

 

[Renart]

I really like the game and I love Anna, guess that's all I can add.

 

[GateKeeper]

So if you want to write scenes for the game do you just write the story part or do you want the code element as well? Where do you send it?

EDIT: Found the submission guide.txt. Any specific software program to write a scene in or could I just use Notepad +?

I honestly just write in Notepad++ then change the file extension when I go to add it to the game.

Loving the game so far, but is there a map anywhere, it would make things a lot easier?

If you look in the images folder, there are maps of the mansion if that helps.

Yeah I agree, needs some sort of stated objective or goal, something to kind of push you to go further and some hints to get you there. Right now I'm just clicking around repeating stuff, I'm not really sure what it is I'm actually supposed to do.

The goal up to this point has largely been trying to add enough content to the game to remove the grind. We've started storylines related to Anna's wedding, Anna & Eve's history, and a couple of other things, but it's WIP. As the game grows, there will be a gradual shift toward story driven content.

Less time tossing in more neigh inaccessible without the patrion cheats version late game submitted/sponsored content, more time actually spent trying to make the core gameplay loop actually be a gameplay loop and not be about as enjoyable as driving a nail through your scrotum.

Make events less common but actually impactful. I mean, how much times can one woman lose her most precious possession in a single day? (that damned photograph)

Put in the ability to use shortcuts.

Actually put some work in on the transformation content.

Stop adding in new crap until you've actually shored up the bases.

Actually fill out the existing slave girls before you add in any new ones. I mean 2/3 of them you can't even FUCK. In a game about SEX SLAVERY!

That sounds uncomfortable.

Define shortcuts?

Transformation content is tied to the doll system we use for art. As more of that is implemented, more TF items will become available.

Which parts are "crap"?

My characters include Anna, Eve, Gaia, Misaki, and Olivia. The other girls in the game are submitted characters by other authors for the most part. Anna, Eve, and Misaki have more sex content than any other character in the game, though Sidra and Mitsuko might come close. Of my five girls, only Olivia doesn't yet have sex content.

About pregnancy,don't tell me directly.Let me find it myself. The symptoms of pregnancy,such as morning sickness

A lot of early symptoms of pregnancy mirror period symptoms. Also watch for sensitivity to smell, tenderness in the chest area, and morning sickness. I read several books on the subject coming into the content, but this should point you to the basic behaviors to watch for:

You must be registered to see the links

i think my current save is still bugged have yet to see bridgett even though i agreed to buy her and second i really dont see imiages to the secans but i did look how you trigger the anne and misukop event in the sauna

We found a bit of broken code in that recently. Looks like A55. If you're still having trouble getting her shoot me a private message and a copy of your save and I'll see if one of our coders can get to the root of it and fix it for you.

1. So you're asking him to stop adding in people's submissions simply because they're "late game" content? That's a good way to push people away so that's an incredibly dumb idea. That and sponsored content is sponsored content, he's going to focus on that because it's people paying to have a scene written, I mean go ahead and bitch about it but that's exactly what you're doing, is bitching about other people paying to have scenes they want to see, written.

2. Photograph scene is suppose to play once.

3. "Some work" is being put into it.

4. This loops back to 1, are you asking for the dev himself to stop adding his own content OR ALL "new" content? If it's the latter, then my advice is to stop bitching because other people are going to submit shit to a game, if you don't like it, tough shit mate. If it's the first, well, fair enough.

5. Anna and Eve have been pretty "filled" out, Misaki and Gaia are the only other slaves that the Dev actually writes for. I'd advise reading the changelog, or reading the Slaves wiki pages, it generally tells you who created them. All other slaves are created/written by other people.

1. I write sponsored content to order, and I add submissions. The content I personally write I try to maintain a balance with. Many of my scenes evolve with relationship progression so they will be able to appear to a wider range of players and give you a closer look at how a character's behavior around you evolves with your treatment of them. Sometimes I will also add content based on what seems lacking recently in the game, so if there's a lot of "Nice" content, I am more likely to write dungeon content or middling content.

Just today I finished up a scene where you serve Anna breakfast in bed, it starts in the middle range of relationship and evolves as you move up into better relationship ranges. It doesn't include any mean content though. This scene has a total of 14 variants depending on relationship and whether or not you have children with her.


2. True. It's been fixed recently to trigger once. If it's still triggering more than once still then let me know and we'll add it to our list of stuff to look into.


3. I think I covered this one above?


4. Likewise, loop up to 1.

On a side note, Katy's author is very focused on story driven content, having expressed that the character will be more focused on story progression than most other characters in the game.


5. Mostly accurate. A few characters have been abandoned by their writers and on occasion I will try to write a scene for them if only to create a bit of closure for them. (Girl who now works in the candy store for example) There are currently enough abandoned characters in the game that I've stopped accepting new characters until a few of them can at least have SOME closure. But yes, as a general rule, I just have a small number of characters I try to focus the bulk of my attention on to flesh them out rather than spreading it out too much.

It should also be noted that town NPCs often have a 0-100 stat range instead of the 0-1000 stat range for mansion NPCs, this balances the fact that some people you live with and see MUCH more often compared to those you're more likely to meet in passing in town.

On a side note. Sit down and eat meals with NPCs, have them assigned to eat with you. You get a +1 to EVERY stat for EVERY NPC at your table for each meal, and that's assuming you don't trigger a special scene that will increase stats in addition to that. It may not be a huge boost, but it adds up in a hurry.



Whoo! I think I hit everything? If not, poke me and point it out.

 

[GateKeeper]

I think he is complaining about the fact that it's all night inaccessible. Which as I explained it is due to the way the event trigger system currently works. Look at my post for a detailed explanation.
https://f95zone.to/threads/inheritance-va55-aftermath-team.6291/page-100#post-6161631

But long story short, a lot of those events are cool but impossible to access unless you have the wiki open and are willing to grind. Where as they really should be accessible through normal gameplay. So adding more and more of them is counterproductive until such a time that the dev fixes that underlying issue. After all, I can't imagine even the patrons feel super stoked about having to grind just to see their own events.

From what he said though the dev team seems to be well underway toward fixing those issues as we speak. So that's going to be mega cool when it happens.

It's taking longer than I would like, but yes, it's an active thing that we're trying to address. Adding more scenes that will trigger automatically if important or time sensitive over RNG scenes, trying to create additional ways to access content which serves to make that content easier to progress/find AND adds to replayability, and just generally trying to keep enough new content coming to keep everything fresh and to have new things to experience in the game.

 

[GateKeeper]

Make events less common but actually impactful. I mean, how much times can one woman lose her most precious possession in a single day? (that damned photograph)

One of our coders just poked at the photo scene. It looks like if you give it back, she's capable of loosing it again. If you take it, the scene should stop appearing.

 

[QQP_Purple]

It's taking longer than I would like, but yes, it's an active thing that we're trying to address. Adding more scenes that will trigger automatically if important or time sensitive over RNG scenes, trying to create additional ways to access content which serves to make that content easier to progress/find AND adds to replayability, and just generally trying to keep enough new content coming to keep everything fresh and to have new things to experience in the game.

Speaking of replayability. I recently tried restarting the game but the restart button didn't reset the stats properly. So I can start the story all over again but the stats remain high. Only they weren't exactly the same but like similar.

Like for example in my current Save Anna has 1168 Affection and after a reset + start she started off with 700. I tried it across multiple versions (since I don't delete old ones) and it's always the same for me going back all the way to V26.

Not sure if anyone else had this problem. But I figure it was worth reporting. Also, in case it matters I am using Firefox to play the game.