Ren'Py Abandoned Lab Rats 2 [v0.51.1] [Vren]

[ramvivat]

Too bad after a certain amount of gamplay you can meet every single person in the city. No new ones seem to spawn.

you can generate new NPC in the bar.
you need "Order a drink for... >>"
and you get one ??? character in the list with named NPC.

=)

 

[Diconica]

Huh. Storing the character data in SQLite seems ... surmountable. Hell, you could even finagle a pretty fast rollback system, depending on how Ren'Py implements it. But would that be worth it? If you have too many NPCs, you get procedural soup. You stop seeing differences and start seeing similarities. Lab Rat's thirty or so is pretty much there already.

The real solution is not more NPCs, but fewer. There is no way for NPCs to permanently leave the game, and there should be. Be it death, emigration, or human trafficking, there needs to be a way to GTFO and make way for new arrivals.

Lab rats biggest issue when it comes to similarity is the face and hair styles.
Those two area's are were we as humans generally look at people and make associations.
You don't have different noses, mouths,eyes or ears and you only have a few hair styles.
You don't have changes in head shape, hair line, cheek bones...

You also don't have a lot of range in body types. In real life we have people with different length legs, torsos, wastes, butt shapes and sizes, and a lot more...

Then of course you have visual aging markers, and other characteristics that make them look different, tats, scars, ...

If the characters are 3D you can make all those chances a lot easier. If they are rendered images as they are it would take a lot of images to store all that information. The most simplistic method would use gigabytes of storage. Making better use of file space can reduce it some.
There are other options such as converting the rendered image to an SVG format. Then you can also store the offset changes for the different body parts and types. You can achieve photo realism with an SVG.

You could also store a modified version of the character model and clothing. Instead of rendering the objects normally create projection images of each character off the model. It would be using an old game programming style of rendering the image from back in the DOS days. You could however get lighting and so on. Texturing is fairly simple for it. You could generate textures at the start of the game the first time it is played. After that they would be stored. If a new character is generated it could create the few initial images needed then add to create others in the background. Unfortunately cpython has the GIL so running it on a separate thread isn't possible. But can be run when other loads aren't so heavy. If you wonder if there is enough performance to do it we were doing it on 33Mhz systems and now we are over 3Ghz. Even doing it with python vs C/C++ then you should still be running several times faster than we were then.

You can look the method up in books like the blackart of 3D game programming. Given it isn't needing to be rendered in real time you have more time to do stuff like add lighting and shadows in which is easy since it is projection.

Being that it would now have a 3D model you could change any of the features.

 

[Strec]

Lab rats biggest issue when it comes to similarity is the face and hair styles.
Those two area's are were we as humans generally look at people and make associations.

Exactly.

When Vren announced at start " The game will feature procedurally generated girls " everybody was full of dreams. When the result seen is there are very few models everybody was very disappointed .

And it was 4 years ago and for 4 years Vren said "I'll correct this in next versions" and for 4 years nothing happened, and now we understand why...

 

[Diconica]

Exactly.

When Vren announced at start " The game will feature procedurally generated girls " everybody was full of dreams. When the result seen is there are very few models everybody was very disappointed .

And it was 4 years ago and for 4 years Vren said "I'll correct this in next versions" and for 4 years nothing happened, and now we understand why...

Vren's skills when he started the project is the biggest issue and still is.
He doesn't still possess the knowledge to see the greater picture of how something will play out effecting the project.
When he started he probably didn't realize like most people how much more work 2D is to create characters vs using 3D.
He probably didn't realize how much more space it would take up and other aspects. He sure as heck couldn't list off all the alternatives to do what he was doing. If he had he probably wouldn't have chose this method.
If you look at his choice to use "Live 2D" it shows he is still lacking in that area.
He isn't a professional developer nor does he have decades of experience in the field of software development or other stuff.

What I am seeing is exactly what I'd expect to see of someone at his skill level without a strong source to get information from.
There are plenty of good game dev communities but my guess he isn't on any of those forums.
Even if he was he would need to figure out who to listen to.

Having seen the changes in his code over the last while I can say he is definitely learning and improving. Maybe, not at the rate we all hope.

There are a lot of things he has done with the code which is a huge improvement but also lots of stuff that well is also a few steps backwards. That's another discussion though.

 

[ffive]

Lab rats biggest issue when it comes to similarity is the face and hair styles.
Those two area's are were we as humans generally look at people and make associations.

I wouldn't say this is really an issue, not when you have tons of games with anime visuals being evident counterpoint in this regard -- with their one-face-fits-all approach and relying mostly on hair/eye color and (limited) number of hair styles to set characters apart.

Heck, quite a few VNs with rendered 3d characters reuse the same faces on different characters to save money, with little to no complaints.

 

[Diconica]

I wouldn't say this is really an issue, not when you have tons of games with anime visuals being evident counterpoint in this regard -- with their one-face-fits-all approach and relying mostly on hair/eye color and (limited) number of hair styles to set characters apart.

Heck, quite a few VNs with rendered 3d characters reuse the same face on different characters to save money, with little to no complaints.

Haha, you would think right.
If you looked at "quintessential quintuples" you would think it perfectly supports your premise.
It does in a way but not for the reasons you probably think.
The less realistic a face is the less the brain treats it as a face and so resorts to basically object mode identification.
In short it can't find the visual cues it normally looks for to identify who or who or what is what so then switches modes.

I'll give you a better way to visualize it. Take those girls heads and imagine putting the "cat's eye" or "City Hunter" girls faces on them.
The different level of detail would make them look out of place.
If you look at "Cat's eye" females they have a lot more detail outside the face as well. Hair as more ends curls, same with clothing and so on. But you don't look at the clothing to generally ID them.
If you look at the black and white images even when the girls were a similar out fit you can tell who is who why because facial features.

Less realistic anime you move to looking at shape, color, accessories and so on.

So it depends on what you are looking at as to if what you said is true. I said when we look at people.
Would you say Vren's renders more resemble realism or anime?

 

[hyfka]

Would you say Vren's renders more resemble realism or anime?

Horror

 

[ffive]

So it depends on what you are looking at as to if what you said is true. I said when we look at people.
Would you say Vren's renders more resemble realism or anime?

They're 3d renders of reasonably detailed models, but this is why i also mentioned that even games which use such renders for their characters (and i mean Vicky4 sort of models here) evidently get away with using what's effectively clones with different wigs in their renders.

Put it differently, people who play porn games aren't overly concerned whether a character's nose is slightly bigger than that of another character, or if their jawlines are noticeably different. So i really think that trying to pursue some extra fidelity/variety in this area would be ultimately a waste of resources. Much like this whole Live2D thing for this matter.

 

[Diconica]

They're 3d renders of reasonably detailed models, but this is why i also mentioned that even games which use such renders for their characters (and i mean Vicky4 sort of models here) evidently get away with using what's effectively clones with different wigs in their renders.

Put it differently, people who play porn games aren't overly concerned whether a character's nose is slightly bigger than that of another character, or if their jawlines are noticeably different. So i really think that trying to pursue some extra fidelity/variety in this area would be ultimately a waste of resources. Much like this whole Live2D thing for this matter.

The key words you used "Get away with".
It's not that people don't notice it they tolerate it.
Each person's interaction and reaction to a game is different. We all have different needs.
Some people like myself need the story line to make sense. Some can care less about story and just mash the button to skip dialog and fap. People have different needs. Face matter to some people not to others.

 

[Croak]

Still no abandoned tag?

 

[Evil13]

Still no abandoned tag?

I think there has to be a period of at least 6 months without any updates from Vren.

So no.

 

[Ranker]

For the people paying patreon, what updates you all been getting? any new images or is it still the same?

 

[Hermenegild]

For the people paying patreon, what updates you all been getting? any new images or is it still the same?

Even if you are a non-paying patron, you can see the fact that a creator posted something, you can even see the post's title, you just won't see the content of the post. So, no, the last post from Vren on Patreon was on October 30th, and it was titled "Next pose poll!".

swagfiend said Vren was more active on reddit. I don't have time to follow him there, however, so I don't know what his current situation is.

 

[HNH1985]

It's more than half year since last update.
No news about next update

 

[Porrvald]

swagfiend said Vren was more active on reddit. I don't have time to follow him there, however, so I don't know what his current situation is.

I think you misunderstood regarding reddit. Not sure exactly what reddit-speak is but it was probably intended as an insult.

Unless Vren has multiple reddit accounts, he has been silent there for 8 months.

You must be registered to see the links

 

[bloodbus]

I think you misunderstood regarding reddit. Not sure exactly what reddit-speak is but it was probably intended as an insult.

Unless Vren has multiple reddit accounts, he has been silent there for 8 months.

You must be registered to see the links

I've only ever seen him update changelogs there a few days early. So idk if it's a good way to judge his activity

 

[Hermenegild]

Considering:

I think you misunderstood regarding reddit. Not sure exactly what reddit-speak is but it was probably intended as an insult.

Unless Vren has multiple reddit accounts, he has been silent there for 8 months.

You must be registered to see the links

and

I've only ever seen him update changelogs there a few days early. So idk if it's a good way to judge his activity

I don't really know what swagfiend meant in his post I linked. What activity was he talking about? I understood the post as if it was about Reddit, but now it doesn't seem so.

Anyway, he did actually detail his problems, project blockages, absence (posts when he has made progress only), and what his progress is. He always has. A one month gap that was not unexpected to happen shouldn't come as a surprise.

The sources I have access to do not indicate any recent activity from Vren. Where exactly did he "detail his problems, project blockages, absence (posts when he has made progress only), and what his progress is"? I agree he usually did so, on Patreon for example, and I've seen some long silences from him earlier, too, so I wouldn't be too concerned with all this issue. But it has been more than half a year already, and while I do hope he's still working on the game, I'm loosing faith with each day of silence.

I understand he's alone on this, but I have offered him help a few years ago, even sent him a few ready-to-merge patches, and he flatly rejected all my offers. So my understanding is, Vren wants to be alone on this. He's also frustrated because he can't handle Live2D the way he wants to, so he did try to engage the community on this (hence GitGud). However, after an initial flurry of small fixes and typos, he failed to articulate what exactly he needs help with, so the community turned off, and he was left alone with his problems.

In summary, Vren's facing some problems he doesn't know how to handle, and he doesn't want to (or doesn't know how to) explain what exactly they are. So, he's working on them alone, probably digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole he created. He's aware of this, and it's seriously demotivating him from working on the game, therefore his progress gets even slower, and the devious cycle repeats.

I do wish him all the best, and I'm ready to help him, however I can't help but worry about the game's future.

 

[themagiman]

Has there been any word from vren? I'm dying for new content.

 

[ramvivat]

There are a few overseeing in the game.

1 let's say a girl has a hatred for pink in her preferences. but I see with my own eyes that she is wearing pink. how can this be? I have some thoughts (I didn’t look into the code, because I don’t know how the generation of clothes for dressing a girl works) perhaps the random number generator for each color does not exactly hit, and let's say it turns out not quite pink, according to the code, but it looks pink to the eye. that is, it is necessary to introduce some "backlash" for each declared color. or cancel the free choice of colors and leave only the table - then the color preferences of the girls will match the colors of the clothes they are wearing. a word with flowers needs to be thought out.
1.1 it may be necessary to introduce specific RGB combinations for those colors that are found in the preferences of the NPC, so that clothes are not generated with this color if the character does not like this color more -
1.2 I would like a more convenient procedure for entering RGB color codes. preferably in the form in which the codes are found on the Internet - that is, 0..255 and not 0.00-1.00 - so that you do not have to recalculate in the calculator. or in the settings you need to set the color representation format - percentage or WEB coding.

2 why when at the end of a date a girl invites us to have sex at her home, then after sex we are invited to train the girl (of course, if we sent the girl into a trance) but in other cases, when, for example, a girl came home to us from a night, when I choose "let's call it a night" - the offer to train the girl does not appear - why?
as I understand it, they forgot to add a call line to check the girl for a trance state?

dates.rpy contain this call
//
call check_date_trance(the_person)
//

3 triggered orgasm (TO) - shouldn't it be counted towards the trance state? so why does it not participate in any way anywhere, but is a "thing in itself" - a kind of useless element. in contrast, there is a very useful acquisition - "pregnancy fascination", which gives, for example, "easy access" when he approached a girl and said "do you want to fly in?" or went up to the girl and without saying a word bent her over and pulled up the hem of her skirt and "began to do his manly things." but what does this very MOT give practical? or was it just made in the game "to be"?
but it is necessary to make sure that TO is taken into account in the general accounting of orgasms in a trance state - that is, if I lack one orgasm from my cousin so that she is in a very deep trance, then THAT would be very useful to me ... otherwise - a waste of clarity...
Or am I missing something somewhere?
well, then where should I look, where and what effects should I see?

4
is it realistic to increase the maximum number of staff in the company? just a her... a team of 39 co... girls - this is not very much milk for the daily milk yield, you can earn little money.
or during the game you can buy the expansion of the company to increase the number of staff?

 

[ramvivat]

1 does it make any practical sense to do incest "love" instead of "like"? my family has incest in the "Like" position - but will "love Incest" give something?
2 How are skills trained in girls? I mean oral experience or vaginal... only through post-trance training or normal sex (how long does it take for example an oral skill to train this skill?) of course, if only post-trance training, then there are no questions, because I already know this myself. But if there are other ways - tell me more, please.
3 Does fertility booster overpower birth control pills? and a double dose of a fertility booster - overpowers?