HTML Inner Empire [v1.69] [Defiant Explorer]

[Defiant Explorer]

NotaGayyy, thanks. Regarding your question:



Mmm, it's not something that can be fully answered in two words...

• Integrating someone else's work as your own is not right. I don't want to appropriate the work of modders.
• AI arts are seen by many prejudiced as a black mark. And not without reason.
• I leave links to mods with no problem. So that anyone can easily find them without digging through the thread's depths.
• The portraits that I've added may not be exemplary art, but that's not the goal for them. I am quite satisfied with their minimalistic style. Their task is to speed up the player's perception. So that a player knows who is speaking. Everything else that is not on the portrait, players' imagination builds up by itself. How many wrinkles are on Sargon's face? Not on the portrait, but on the face that appears in your imagination when you read the dialog with him? Everyone will have their own version. Is it so important that the portrait be super detailed, 100% showing how many wrinkles are on his face? If it turns out to be important for a scene in the future, I'll describe it separately. But that way, the minimalist style wins out. You just know Selene is talking to Sargon in this scene, focusing on meanings in the dialog. The portraits are just a tool, not a goal.
• Still, portraits from mods contain inaccuracies in the lore context and some discrepancies with text descriptions. This in itself is not a problem, if someone wants to make all the furry characters through the AI generator, I will gladly add this mod to the others. But obviously, it won't quite match the descriptions in the game.

In general, inaccuracies with AI portraits can skew perceptions a bit. Here, for example, is a portrait of Iolanta in a white dress by lookinoff:



A lovely portrait in such a light anime-like style. I like it. Although from my subjective point of view, it doesn't really capture her femme fatale vibe very well, that half-smile that rarely leaves her face and the quick, tenacious, assessing gaze. She seems more like a kind country girl than an experienced actress who's seen the world and some shit.

Also, there's an inaccuracy in the lore. The portrait shows rather a pale girl, the kind of near-European soft brunette. But Valatean and Velastian have darker skin. And Iolanta is Velastian. She's more of a searing, sultry brunette. That's how it's described in the game when she first appears to the protagonist in this dress:



There's also another point. Blue Eyes. What's wrong with blue-eyed people? There's nothing wrong with them. Except there's no such thing as blue-eyed Velastians or Valateans. There are people in the game with black hair, light skin, and blue eyes. They're the Tyrunians (Tyrunian Wilds on the map, south of Nomadic World). They're barbarians even by barbarian standards. They live in the Stone Age but are rumored to have powerful witches who have even more power in their tribes than the male chiefs. And blue eyes are their most notable feature. If Selene meets a Tyrunian in the Republic (they're rare, but it's possible), blue eyes are the first thing she'll notice. Because Selene probably hasn't seen blue-eyed people at all before.

So... These and a few other reasons are why I don't use AI art or other people's mods. But I'm all in favor of mods! If you make a furry Selene via AI and share your result - I'll add them to the rest of the mods. To hell with lore, if you prefer it that way - play as you wish.

 

[cd13]

Yeah, AI art have a problem of being utterly generic and it is kinda unavoidable at that point.

 

[Defiant Explorer]

Yeah, AI art have a problem of being utterly generic and it is kinda unavoidable at that point.

After the second portrait mod and a few complaints about game's artwork, I started thinking about making a sort of light guide about the peoples in the game world. Both those that are present in-game already and those whose representatives you may meet in the future. Like what the Northerners and Southerners look like. There are general descriptions of them in the game, but they are tied to certain Origins or situations. Khull the White Tiger is described in the Heiress' memories. As well as the Southerners. Also, through a secret scene in the Survivor's Origin, with certain answers, you can get to a dialog with Iolanta where she describes her encounter with the three Southerners.

My point is that many of the peoples and their appearances are still behind the scenes. For example, how would the person know that there are no blue-eyed Velastians if I didn't mention it anywhere in the game itself? So some sort of reference guide for those modders who want their artwork to match the lore? Of course, nothing like strictly mandatory, just for those who want their AI to generate something that doesn't conflict with the lore or in-game descriptions. On the other hand, I'm not quite sure if anyone really needs it.

 

[damnedfrog]

After the second portrait mod and a few complaints about game's artwork, I started thinking about making a sort of light guide about the peoples in the game world. Both those that are present in-game already and those whose representatives you may meet in the future. Like what the Northerners and Southerners look like. There are general descriptions of them in the game, but they are tied to certain Origins or situations. Khull the White Tiger is described in the Heiress' memories. As well as the Southerners. Also, through a secret scene in the Survivor's Origin, with certain answers, you can get to a dialog with Iolanta where she describes her encounter with the three Southerners.

My point is that many of the peoples and their appearances are still behind the scenes. For example, how would the person know that there are no blue-eyed Velastians if I didn't mention it anywhere in the game itself? So some sort of reference guide for those modders who want their artwork to match the lore? Of course, nothing like strictly mandatory, just for those who want their AI to generate something that doesn't conflict with the lore or in-game descriptions. On the other hand, I'm not quite sure if anyone really needs it.

About the art, I think I'm in the minority here, but I like your minimalist approach. Like I wrote in my review of the game, they remind me of some Sci-Fi Belgian/French comic of the 70's.
But I know lot of people here will complain about them, preferring more realistic ones. There even who will complain because there is too much to read or that there is no animation (in a text game... ). So there will always unpleased people :-(.
As a one-man team, you must balance your effort between pleasing you audience, while keeping you vision of the game, with limited productive capacity. Every effort and time put in the artwork won't go in the advancement of story, bugfix...
So I think proposing people to create mods and publishing them here is a good solution.

About the lore of your world, I've been wondering for a while if you shouldn't add a kind of encyclopedia.
With common knowledge, what every people should know, like the pantheon, the mythology (at least the main myths/heroes that everybody should have heard about, even illiterate vagrant), the different ethos, the main animals and creatures... Or what everybody in this world will see (the 2 suns, the Sky Ring...).
In a ideal world, at the start this encyclopedia should depend of the the Origin and Ethos chosen. And then expend according to what the player discovers, like no entry for the Highlanders until a certain conversation Selene has about them and there interaction with goat .
But I have no doubt it will require a lot of work to implement and maintain it.
So perhaps just a basic encyclopedia with basic knowledge. And maybe which could expend after each new chapter when something new is learned.

 

[M0nte]

Personally, as an artist and fellow writer, implementing Ai procedural content, be it imagery or textual, into your game would really lower my view of this whole project. Not only because of the whole unethical angle, but because it undermines the work other people and you put into. So I am in full support of keeping current artwork.

 

[Defiant Explorer]

About the lore of your world, I've been wondering for a while if you shouldn't add a kind of encyclopedia.
With common knowledge, what every people should know, like the pantheon, the mythology (at least the main myths/heroes that everybody should have heard about, even illiterate vagrant), the different ethos, the main animals and creatures... Or what everybody in this world will see (the 2 suns, the Sky Ring...).
In a ideal world, at the start this encyclopedia should depend of the the Origin and Ethos chosen. And then expend according to what the player discovers, like no entry for the Highlanders until a certain conversation Selene has about them and there interaction with goat .
But I have no doubt it will require a lot of work to implement and maintain it.
So perhaps just a basic encyclopedia with basic knowledge. And maybe which could expend after each new chapter when something new is learned.

I pondered the idea of a codex/general encyclopedia at the pre-development stage. But in the end, I rejected it in favor of hyperlinks that appear when mentioned.

To:

• To avoid perceptual overload for those who choose to master this encyclopedia all at once.
• To avoid forcing players to search it each time they encounter a new term in the game.
• To avoid a situation where players who will be too lazy to dig through the encyclopedia complain to me - say, "hey, there are too many obscure terms."

Hyperlinks help to avoid all this. In addition, the information in hyperlinks sometimes changes depending on the Origin or other things:

• The link to Khull of the White Tiger is unique to each Origin.
• In Noble Origin, links with social or historical aspects often have additions. And one link (so far) has a unique description. Because a noble, educated girl knows a bit more about society and history, it's her feature.
• There are links where descriptions can be supplemented depending on a certain variable. Like Kish's description if hunger = truth, will be with Selene's rebuke to herself for thinking about food when she is so hungry. This line would disappear if hunger = false.

 

[Defiant Explorer]

Personally, as an artist and fellow writer, implementing Ai procedural content, be it imagery or textual, into your game would really lower my view of this whole project. Not only because of the whole unethical angle, but because it undermines the work other people and you put into. So I am in full support of keeping current artwork.

Well, to be fair, I do use AI. The very first of them. Translation programs. They save me a lot of time by at least removing the need to manually enter text when translating. But there's a downside. Only ~15-20% of their translations I leave unchanged, everything is fine there. In about ~50-60% I make edits, change words and rearrange sentences. But the remaining ~20% are so bad that I have to completely rewrite them by hand because the AI gives some nonsense or completely misses the context.

And even with such good helpers, translating a short scene + subsequent manual editing still takes at least 2-3 days. Without AI translators, updates would probably come out ~ 1-2 months later.

 

[Hargan2]

Well, to be fair, I do use AI. The very first of them. Translation programs. They save me a lot of time by at least removing the need to manually enter text when translating. But there's a downside. Only ~15-20% of their translations I leave unchanged, everything is fine there. In about ~50-60% I make edits, change words and rearrange sentences. But the remaining ~20% are so bad that I have to completely rewrite them by hand because the AI gives some nonsense or completely misses the context.

And even with such good helpers, translating a short scene + subsequent manual editing still takes at least 2-3 days. Without AI translators, updates would probably come out ~ 1-2 months later.

Oh man, I don't envy you translating such a text-heavy game. I've done some editing work on two small projects, where someone else would translate from Japanese to English and then I'd clean up their translation and fix grammar/wording/etc issues. I can't imagine doing the translating *and* the editing for a pure text-based game like this. Major respect.

 

[Defiant Explorer]

Oh man, I don't envy you translating such a text-heavy game. I've done some editing work on two small projects, where someone else would translate from Japanese to English and then I'd clean up their translation and fix grammar/wording/etc issues. I can't imagine doing the translating *and* the editing for a pure text-based game like this. Major respect.

Just the latest update (1.5) has 368 pages in the Word draft xD

What can I say... I got into this on my own. Plus, that feeling when your fantasy takes shape that others can touch and feel too... It's worth it.

 

[Hargan2]

Just the latest update (1.5) has 368 pages in the Word draft xD

What can I say... I got into this on my own. Plus, that feeling when your fantasy takes shape that others can touch and feel too... It's worth it.

Ohhh yeah, it's absolutely worth it. I just recently finished my biggest ever project for one of the games I write for, and after all the stress and dealing with writer's block and having to compromise between what I want to write and what can reasonably be coded/work with the game mechanics... hearing all the positive comments and learning that people were even DMing the primary developer I work with to give positive feedback... so, so worth every second.

Love the game, by the way, I haven't played much of it yet because it's the type of the game that deserves a proper "sit-down-and-read" style of play and I haven't had time yet. But what I've seen so far is amazingly well written and really good.

 

[Defiant Explorer]

Love the game, by the way, I haven't played much of it yet because It's the type of the game that deserves a proper "sit-down-and-read" style of play and I haven't had time yet. But what I've seen so far is amazingly well written and really good.

You make me blush. Thanks

 

[M0nte]

Well, to be fair, I do use AI. The very first of them. Translation programs. They save me a lot of time by at least removing the need to manually enter text when translating. But there's a downside. Only ~15-20% of their translations I leave unchanged, everything is fine there. In about ~50-60% I make edits, change words and rearrange sentences. But the remaining ~20% are so bad that I have to completely rewrite them by hand because the AI gives some nonsense or completely misses the context.

And even with such good helpers, translating a short scene + subsequent manual editing still takes at least 2-3 days. Without AI translators, updates would probably come out ~ 1-2 months later.

So you write the text in your language, translate it into English and edit it after is how I understood it. Am I correct in that regard.

 

[Defiant Explorer]

So you write the text in your language, translate it into English and edit it after is how I understood it. Am I correct in that regard.

Overall, yes. And more additions in the testing phase. Sometimes what looks good in the draft doesn't always look good in the game itself. So I have to add separate lines or descriptions, as well as whole new branches of dialogs.

 

[SharonSotaLover]

NotaGayyy, thanks. Regarding your question:

View attachment 2787118

Mmm, it's not something that can be fully answered in two words...

• Integrating someone else's work as your own is not right. I don't want to appropriate the work of modders.
• AI arts are seen by many prejudiced as a black mark. And not without reason.
• I leave links to mods with no problem. So that anyone can easily find them without digging through the thread's depths.
• The portraits that I've added may not be exemplary art, but that's not the goal for them. I am quite satisfied with their minimalistic style. Their task is to speed up the player's perception. So that a player knows who is speaking. Everything else that is not on the portrait, players' imagination builds up by itself. How many wrinkles are on Sargon's face? Not on the portrait, but on the face that appears in your imagination when you read the dialog with him? Everyone will have their own version. Is it so important that the portrait be super detailed, 100% showing how many wrinkles are on his face? If it turns out to be important for a scene in the future, I'll describe it separately. But that way, the minimalist style wins out. You just know Selene is talking to Sargon in this scene, focusing on meanings in the dialog. The portraits are just a tool, not a goal.
• Still, portraits from mods contain inaccuracies in the lore context and some discrepancies with text descriptions. This in itself is not a problem, if someone wants to make all the furry characters through the AI generator, I will gladly add this mod to the others. But obviously, it won't quite match the descriptions in the game.

In general, inaccuracies with AI portraits can skew perceptions a bit. Here, for example, is a portrait of Iolanta in a white dress by lookinoff:

View attachment 2787103

A lovely portrait in such a light anime-like style. I like it. Although from my subjective point of view, it doesn't really capture her femme fatale vibe very well, that half-smile that rarely leaves her face and the quick, tenacious, assessing gaze. She seems more like a kind country girl than an experienced actress who's seen the world and some shit.

Also, there's an inaccuracy in the lore. The portrait shows rather a pale girl, the kind of near-European soft brunette. But Valatean and Velastian have darker skin. And Iolanta is Velastian. She's more of a searing, sultry brunette. That's how it's described in the game when she first appears to the protagonist in this dress:

View attachment 2787104

There's also another point. Blue Eyes. What's wrong with blue-eyed people? There's nothing wrong with them. Except there's no such thing as blue-eyed Velastians or Valateans. There are people in the game with black hair, light skin, and blue eyes. They're the Tyrunians (Tyrunian Wilds on the map, south of Nomadic World). They're barbarians even by barbarian standards. They live in the Stone Age but are rumored to have powerful witches who have even more power in their tribes than the male chiefs. And blue eyes are their most notable feature. If Selene meets a Tyrunian in the Republic (they're rare, but it's possible), blue eyes are the first thing she'll notice. Because Selene probably hasn't seen blue-eyed people at all before.

So... These and a few other reasons are why I don't use AI art or other people's mods. But I'm all in favor of mods! If you make a furry Selene via AI and share your result - I'll add them to the rest of the mods. To hell with lore, if you prefer it that way - play as you wish.

Iolanta's portrait you made she looks like Italian to me, easily like a Roman/Greco woman

 

[LobsterWithKrabs]

Really fantastic! A 'come in expecting porn stay for the writing' situation. Nice lore and realistic interactions between characters with a lot of room for playing a role. Highly recommended.

 

[Deniz31]

I hope there'll be a free-roam sequence in next episode.

 

[Defiant Explorer]

I hope there'll be a free-roam sequence in next episode.

There will be.

 

[Bongmaster69]

Great game. Really impressed with the quality of writing and world-building. The background art (Dungeondraft?) is used perfectly and the modded portraits look great too. Curious how much work has been done behind the scenes to account for the different backgrounds/choices because it feels like there is a shitload of custom dialogue based on character creation.

Just a top-tier game on this site and as a connoisseur of HTML games this is another level compared to many out there.

My only criticism is that it feels a little railroaded in the Telltale Game sense; you feel like you can do different things but ultimately it all kind of funnels back on itself. More opportunities in the future to do sandbox-y things around camp or elsewhere similar to the beginning of the game would be appreciated but this is just a minor complaint.

 

[damnedfrog]

Great game. Really impressed with the quality of writing and world-building. The background art (Dungeondraft?) is used perfectly and the modded portraits look great too. Curious how much work has been done behind the scenes to account for the different backgrounds/choices because it feels like there is a shitload of custom dialogue based on character creation.

Not only your origin/ethos could give you specific choices, but you sometimes get specific information or little scene according to them.
And you also can see NPC sometimes reacting to your origin/ethos.
It could be subtle, but it gives the feeling that NPC react depending of what you are.
It's really great!

 

[Amnelis]

My only criticism is that it feels a little railroaded in the Telltale Game sense; you feel like you can do different things but ultimately it all kind of funnels back on itself. More opportunities in the future to do sandbox-y things around camp or elsewhere similar to the beginning of the game would be appreciated but this is just a minor complaint.

I do look forward to more sandbox areas but I don't mind railroad bits since it usually means a stronger narrative and more options within those scenarios. Some games set out to make a bunch of different paths but then sacrifice depth within each path. I personally prefer having roughly the same path for everyone but having lots of options as far as my MC's reactions and actions go vs multiple paths where you are kinda forced into a personality type.