Ren'Py Lab Rats 2 - Reformulate [v2025 4.0.37]

[Diconica]

except most of those were moved to random_generation_functions.rpy not sure when 48.1 for sure

This question traces back to page 90 something.

If they are using my mod I made a weighted age list.
This way it doesn't get rid of older women entirely just reduces the number of them.

weighted_age_list = [[18,20],[19,20],[20,19],[21,19],[22,18],[23,18],[24,17],[25,17],[26,16],[27,16],[28,15],[29,15],[30,14],[31,14],[32,13],[33,13],[34,12],[35,12],[36,11],[37,11],[38,10],[39,9],[40,8],[41,7],[42,6],[43,5],[44,4],[45,3],[46,2],[47,1],[48,1],[49,1],[50,1]]
if age is None:
    #age = renpy.random.randint(18,50)
    age = get_random_from_weighted_list(weighted_age_list);

They could use the same thing and cut down the number of ages.

weighted_age_list = [[18,12],[19,15],[20,18],[21,21],[22,18],[23,15],[24,12]]
if age is None:
    #age = renpy.random.randint(18,50)
    age = get_random_from_weighted_list(weighted_age_list);

Doing so would give more control over the ages.
You could do something like I did above where 21 is the most common age selected and it reduces on both side of it.

 

[stormcalled]

I've been trying to figure this out, but is it possible to employ your family? If so, how do you go about doing that?

 

[eldoen]

I've been trying to figure this out, but is it possible to employ your family? If so, how do you go about doing that?

in the Mod, currently only if you own the strip club, that will change based on what vanilla is adding to game, and then Mod becomes compatible with that.

 

[alex2011]

Adding story content wouldn't usually cause any form of change in the save. The reason is that is essentially fixed data that doesn't change during the game. The dialog lines and so to that effect aren't adjusted and then saved back to a variable or built on the fly. Which is why none of that stuff causes an issue.

I get were you are coming from you are putting the blame on Vren for making the types of changes he is doing.
My point is if the engine was written differently he could still make changes like this and it not require new starting new games.
I know that for a fact because I develop game engines. That's where I spend most of my time these days building game engines.

Vren could have also done a few things differently at the start of the development for this project. If say the character attributes were saved in an array rather than as individual variables you could write the code then so it doesn't require a new start easily.
But like I said above most people don't fully get the implications of the way Renpy saves stuff.

Just because I say the engine is at fault for something doesn't mean I am saying the engine is bad. I'd say more the issue is this game is using an engine that isn't suited for the purpose he is wanting to use it for.

But if you want to fair assessment of the engine. It's excessively slow for what it does. If we simply look at the graphic performance and not bring python into the factor. Renpy is built on Pygame. Pygame can move about 1000 objects on screen at 60fps on a 3.0ghz system. Pygame is built on SDL2. But they don't fully use its capabilities instead for some reason they nerf the fuck out of it. You can move to pysdl2 and get 3400 objects moving on screen at 60fps. Use ModernGL with python and you can make use of several features that SDL2 doesn't and bump it up even more. Use Vulkan and you can get a bit more. Really depends on what you are doing and your skill at coding.

So there is a crap load of performance thrown the hell away this game engine could make use of.
If they made a glyph system with SDL2 textures rather than what they are doing now and moved to SDL2 textures and not just the surfaces they would get more than 3x performance.
You can still have the ability to change stuff while using texture. What you do is store a surface and then keep bool for if it is modified. If it is modified you copy it again to the texture. When it isn't modified you just keep using the texture as is. That way you get the ability to modify surfaces and the performance of textures.

The save and rollback system in Renpy:
He created a script system and the rollback system which was a good bit of work. However, they save a massive amount of information they don't need to. In most game engines we don't save the state of something like python. Renpy does. It also saves the state of its own functions right down to what function you are in and what iteration you are on in a for loop in renpy script. In C and C++ or even other python games we simply save the information to recreate the state of the game at that time.
You might think that won't work for rollback. You would be wrong.
You can create systems that are reversible. In fact there is an entire programming language that is reversible. You don't need to go that far though. What you are primarily in need of is the functions that effect variables and things like arrays and so on.
That would be things like add,sub,mul,div and anything that adds to an object,array, tuple,dic... It should be vastly a good bit easier under python than C and C++ for this. You primarily need to create a standard way at each scene to call a reverse on what was done. The simplest way is creating two functions one called forward and one called reverse. The character selection is provided to it for that event type or screen and it makes the change according to it. Yes, it means creating a forward and reverse for each scene but it doesn't mean doubling the code or anything like that. In truth variable manipulation in stuff like visual novels is rather low. Even in lab rats 2 it isn't that high.
Then you effectively need an vector or array in this case that stores a tuple with location and the change that happened so you can go back through it and just undo stuff. In the last system I used this on it amount to 2 variables one that was the game state and the other was the choice selection. The game state variable indicated location and screen and so on. This was made rather easy because we treated locations like screens the same.

The resulting difference in that method vs Renpy's is you can undo many more events for the amount of space renpy uses. Also because you aren't saving such a large amount of data each time with the auto update it will give back a lot of performance.

If you think its a lot of work we used a modified version on a proof of concept for a 2D rpg where all the characters actions that caused changes in their stats were saved. This was built into each character. That way we could look at the progress of the characters. We wanted the ability to rollback through it based on time so we did have to add a time stamp to the tuple in the array. You could then scroll through the time line allowing you to see each characters progression over time.

That said Renpy's method takes next to nothing for story developers to implement other than adhere to some guidelines.
With the system above you have two options. The first is build the reverse system into the script and that would be hidden as this is from the developers. Given he wrote a script and a more complex rollback system. I think the time would have been better doing that instead. But that's just an opinion based on stuff I built. The second alternative is the forward and reverse function method you can have game developers create for each scene and screen method. That would require the game / story developer to be actively involved in building the rollback methods. It also would require developers to learn a different design approach for building games from what they are currently using. So while this is a lot more efficient and would work for seasoned developers it wouldn't work for most of the developers who have little to no programming experience.

So Renpy's Save and Rollback system in my book is good. It isn't great and it isn't bad either.
If I looked at it based on target users I would rate it a good bit higher than I would for general users.
Lets say it was designed with people new to programming in mind. Then its a 8 or so.
If you look at it with the general user in mind including those with medium to advanced programming skills it drops to a 6.
If I was looking at it from an advance programmer perspective it drops to a 5. (Primarily because we don't have to spend time building it thus raising it up a point)

That's my point, he's done enough to the inner workings for a while and has done very little to the actual story. If it was anyone but Vren or someone else with a good record based on previous games, there would already be suspicion of milking patrons, but it is Vren, the developer behind that great game that is the original Lab Rats. He could easily go a few updates on developing actual content, changes to the story that we actually see, not the code making the mechanics work that we don't see. This would allow players to go through several updates without restarting. He could also do some art updates, the single most requested thing in the game is fixing the majority of the art.

I'm not so much putting the blame on Vren for making the changes, because I know they have to happen, as much as putting the blame on him for making the changes back to back when the underlying mechanics have enough work done that he could move to story development for a few updates with no issue. The actual story has been on the same spot for a very long time now in terms of development time and that basically means we get to restart for these mechanical changes every update only to be stuck exactly where the last update left off when we finish the next update. It just gives the game a sense of not being worth the effort, which is part of the reason I jumped from 0.33 or something like that to 0.46, I've been fighting burn out on playing the game, something that should not be happening, because there is nothing new to see unless I use the main mod. I get what you're saying with the engine, but there are ways to get the same effect in Renpy, he just has to move in the story development or art development direction for a while and there won't be necessary restarts until he can't move in those directions anymore.

I agree that the engine is not suited for this type of game. It can do it, as we see here, but it is more VN focused. Like I said before, this is why Lab Rats 1 did so well on this engine.

 

[lukin13]

I've gone the other route as far as 'models and animations' go for my personal mod. I mean it is still just ren'py after all. Rather than try to make hundreds of renders just to get a new hairstyle on the existing 3d model, I took images and movies from other games I enjoy and just put them into the code with the standard 'show' command and a hefty number of nested IFs in various locations. They run in conjunction with the game rather than just staring at a location background image during conversations and sex. Since I started this mod, I rarely play anything other than this game anymore. I literally can visit all of my favorite characters from dozens of other games by playing this one. You can separate all the images and movies using the roles easily enough for unique characters and I've added functionality so even the randoms get 'anonymous' images based on skin color and age.

That's a really cool idea and looks great. I like the customization options in LR (and would like them even more if the models were improved) but your idea is really good.

Also, where is that original pic from?? She's my kind of milf, think I need to play that game as well!

 

[Phoexist]

That's a really cool idea and looks great. I like the customization options in LR (and would like them even more if the models were improved) but your idea is really good.

Also, where is that original pic from?? She's my kind of milf, think I need to play that game as well!

Thanks! That's Isabella from Being a DIK. I've pretty much used the entire cast of that game in some capacity among several dozen other games.

 

[Diconica]

That's my point, he's done enough to the inner workings for a while and has done very little to the actual story. If it was anyone but Vren or someone else with a good record based on previous games, there would already be suspicion of milking patrons, but it is Vren, the developer behind that great game that is the original Lab Rats. He could easily go a few updates on developing actual content, changes to the story that we actually see, not the code making the mechanics work that we don't see. This would allow players to go through several updates without restarting. He could also do some art updates, the single most requested thing in the game is fixing the majority of the art.

I'm not so much putting the blame on Vren for making the changes, because I know they have to happen, as much as putting the blame on him for making the changes back to back when the underlying mechanics have enough work done that he could move to story development for a few updates with no issue. The actual story has been on the same spot for a very long time now in terms of development time and that basically means we get to restart for these mechanical changes every update only to be stuck exactly where the last update left off when we finish the next update. It just gives the game a sense of not being worth the effort, which is part of the reason I jumped from 0.33 or something like that to 0.46, I've been fighting burn out on playing the game, something that should not be happening, because there is nothing new to see unless I use the main mod. I get what you're saying with the engine, but there are ways to get the same effect in Renpy, he just has to move in the story development or art development direction for a while and there won't be necessary restarts until he can't move in those directions anymore.

I agree that the engine is not suited for this type of game. It can do it, as we see here, but it is more VN focused. Like I said before, this is why Lab Rats 1 did so well on this engine.

I get how you want the focus to be more on the story content but you are missing a huge issue.

The more code he tries to write in other areas means he would have to make a lot larger changes later on that would take more time.
Vren's choice to focus on the underlying functions of the game is actually the correct and professional choice one should make in this case.

Let's say he wrote thousands of lines of game content based on some version.
He then comes up with decides to add in health stats. Maybe, the girl gets sick or injured or whatever.
Just think how many lines of code he would need to change more for all the checks that could make.

If you consider there is probably about 1 or more checks ever 4 to 5 lines of code think about the added work that would mean fixing after the fact. It means vastly more bugs.
Lets say he has 10,000 lines of dialog now. He adds 5000 more in on the new content you want rather than work on the base system. So he has 15,000 lines of code and about 3000 check points to go over and hopefully not miss any. Rather than the 2000 he currently has.

Let's be honest. He isn't a professional game developer. Frankly, he is doing more than a little alright considering his skill level and what he is working with.
Even professional developers fail in development at times and planning and so on.

The way you should be looking at this is you want him to get the base stuff done and over with and then he can focus on purely the content side. But if he has to come back later on after making a lot of content and make changes to the base that will create much larger intervals that has no content being created.

 

[bloodbus]

I get how you want the focus to be more on the story content but you are missing a huge issue.

The more code he tries to write in other areas means he would have to make a lot larger changes later on that would take more time.
Vren's choice to focus on the underlying functions of the game is actually the correct and professional choice one should make in this case.

Let's say he wrote thousands of lines of game content based on some version.
He then comes up with decides to add in health stats. Maybe, the girl gets sick or injured or whatever.
Just think how many lines of code he would need to change more for all the checks that could make.

If you consider there is probably about 1 or more checks ever 4 to 5 lines of code think about the added work that would mean fixing after the fact. It means vastly more bugs.
Lets say he has 10,000 lines of dialog now. He adds 5000 more in on the new content you want rather than work on the base system. So he has 15,000 lines of code and about 3000 check points to go over and hopefully not miss any. Rather than the 2000 he currently has.

Let's be honest. He isn't a professional game developer. Frankly, he is doing more than a little alright considering his skill level and what he is working with.
Even professional developers fail in development at times and planning and so on.

The way you should be looking at this is you want him to get the base stuff done and over with and then he can focus on purely the content side. But if he has to comback later on after making a lot of content and make changes to the base that will create much larger intervals that has no content being created.

I can appreciate this alternate perspective to this game's development. It can be easy to get sucked into the Vren bashing circle jerk

 

[JuanSinTierra]

Let's say he wrote thousands of lines of game content based on some version.
He then comes up with decides to add in health stats. Maybe, the girl gets sick or injured or whatever.
Just think how many lines of code he would need to change more for all the checks that could make.
-snip-
The way you should be looking at this is you want him to get the base stuff done and over with and then he can focus on purely the content side. But if he has to come back later on after making a lot of content and make changes to the base that will create much larger intervals that has no content being created.

I would agree, if he was on update 5, or let's be generous, update 10. But it's almost update 50, over four years of development, and there's still variables to implement? The gameplay system will have sweeping changes that will need the game code and story to need to be rewritten from scratch? I don't buy it.

Something is not right with the development, either the guy doesn't know what he's doing, at all, so he expends his time redoing the same thing over and over because it is always wrong; or he is purposefully staling since people are still paying, the more he delays the more money he makes off the game.

 

[Diconica]

I would agree, if he was on update 5, or let's be generous, update 10. But it's almost update 50, over four years of development, and there's still variables to implement? The gameplay system will have sweeping changes that will need the game code and story to need to be rewritten from scratch? I don't buy it.

Something is not right with the development, either the guy doesn't know what he's doing, at all, so he expends his time redoing the same thing over and over because it is always wrong; or he is purposefully staling since people are still paying, the more he delays the more money he makes off the game.

Again you still aren't thinking of the dynamics of what is going on.

First, he is allowing supporters dictate some stuff about the game. Because of that it means not everything is planned out before hand. Meaning he couldn't possibly know every variable he will and won't know when it is up to the fucking whim of other people.

You are right there is something wrong with development.
First, he started a game like this as an amateur. He has no other software experience. He is learning python and programming as he goes. You can tell that from the improvements he has made since the first game right through all the updates he has for this version.
Second, he is letting others have a say in the game so he can't fully plan stuff out. He should have came up with something else to offer them. Or if they wanted a say in the game build them an API and let them create add-on content.

Then you have people like yourself who have little to no understanding of software / game development bitching about stupid shit. How can I tell your level of experience because I wouldn't have to explain the shit above to any of the people I work with. Which means you aren't anyways close to that level.

Do I complain about stuff related to this game sure as hell do. I make points about code issues and lazy behavior on Vren's part. He over relies on just random numbers way to often rather than thinking on how stuff is tied together. Which is why I created a mod to fix those type of issues. Those issue stem from him either being an amateur or lazy. Some times I can't tell which it is.
But this issue at had we are discussing isn't that.

If you take a look at most the canceled games on this site and look at their source code you will notice something. They kept adding content on top of bad code over and over again. Rather than spend the time to clean up the underlying code they piled shit on top of shit. Eventually the task of fixing it becomes to daunting or overwhelming and they quit.
Frankly, I'd like to see him avoid that.

 

[Edwarf]

I would agree, if he was on update 5, or let's be generous, update 10. But it's almost update 50, over four years of development, and there's still variables to implement? The gameplay system will have sweeping changes that will need the game code and story to need to be rewritten from scratch? I don't buy it.

Something is not right with the development, either the guy doesn't know what he's doing, at all, so he expends his time redoing the same thing over and over because it is always wrong; or he is purposefully staling since people are still paying, the more he delays the more money he makes off the game.

That's not fair.

Is VRens second title and, iMO, is even better than LR1, at least good enough to make ppl code mods for it. I mean, no suspicion on milking patreons here, at least for me.

Of course, as player that LOVES the game, I could consider myself in the right of demanding a clear milestone system, and complain about changes in the gameplay and/or if the game heads in a direction I dislike... but again, is VRens time, VRens game, and VRens rules.

The day I consider the game is completelly ruined (I hope it won't happen), I'll fetch a "when-still-was-good" old version, and stay away from this project.

 

[tlsmith1]

What Happened to Mom? She is not in her room, not at her work or strip club. Called her to ask where she's at. Answer I'm at Purgatory

 

[Hallucination]

What Happened to Mom? She is not in her room, not at her work or strip club. Called her to ask where she's at. Answer I'm at Purgatory

She's in the Backrooms, see if an event pulls her out.

 

[tlsmith1]

She's in the Backrooms, see if an event pulls her out.

She has been at a few events but, she still in Purgatory .

 

[Daishi]

For some reason in the modded version permanent serums aren't.

 

[Nonya Bizz]

For some reason in the modded version permanent serums aren't.

I recall seeing something about how truely permanent serums were causing issues for some people, so now they have like... a repeating chance or they come back with half the turns left. I wouldn't be surprised if the issue is due to stuff like the serum toxicity thing, if you accidentally gave someone two permanent serums it'd have been impossible to stop either and you'd always add toxicity giving them a serum.

Spoiler: Regarding all the debating

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[Ranker]

Any idea how close we are for the next modded version to come out?

 

[frombally]

When i can download ver0.48?

 

[phlore101]

Any idea how close we are for the next modded version to come out?

You can see how they are going on gitgud:

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Looks like it'll be a while still. Doesn't look like they have started on the new content yet. I'm probably going to just sit out a few iterations and come back in a few months time.

 

[ecksdude]

I've given up waiting on mods, so instead I've been modifying stuff myself just to see if I can.

So far so good, but takes a lot of time to figure out the flow.