Ren'Py Lessons in Love [v0.44.0] [Selebus]

[JelF547]

I am a bit bored of questions, so I made full chapter 4 walkthrough (0.44). I promise to keep this post updated at least until chapter ends

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UPD: 0.44

Updated. Nothing changed in the old content, new event chain is easy to start

 

[bobloblawwwwwww]

Quick question, I didn't view Happy Event: Amy before moving into chapter 4. Do things open back up to where I can go back to the mall on the weekend? Or should I load an old save so that I can view it? I haven't gotten to the sport/dorm war thing yet.

 

[Dc345]

Pareidolia: "Her spider tattoo is covering up something special"
*Unravel starts playing*
Sekaori Ghoul

 

[Vizer007]

Well, many things were answered in this update (and many more questions appeared).
The most pressing one is new music Saudade.mp3. Did I missed something or it was just not used anywhere?

Also, guys, keep in mind the values for buying "sex", since I am sure it will either bite us later (I mean, is there really anyone who not just +100500 their money?) or...not bite and Sel was actually intended it this way. (if he is not - he is delusional. Who in their right mind would play with no "cheating" and waste away 10 hours on boring and tedious task?)

 

[Nadekai]

Yep, game is getting very unstable. I had one or two crashes from Ren'py apparently running out of memory. Game is getting rather unwieldy and there might be a memory leak or two in there. It's probably not helped by keeping so many saves

... Sel should divide the game into 2 ...
... Make LiL part 1 being chapter 1-3, and part 2, 3-6 ...

 

[vehemental]

The moment you start thinking about "proper game design," "immersion," etc you've already lost because you're on the completely wrong track. It is blindingly obvious that the purpose of the puzzles is not to provide a fun and engaging experience. They reflect that fact that the further one goes into Lessons in Love, the more the world rejects the player (this goes for both the literal player and Sensei). It becomes increasingly hard to progress, increasingly unfun, increasingly grindy - it would be reductive to state there is only one ludonarrative purpose for this, but that is the design. The artistic purpose. It is an experience the developer is attempting to convey through mechanic. It is axiomatic to say that "video games should be fun," "puzzles should test innovative thinking," etc, which is to say that they are not fundamental truths - they are platitudes liable to become thought-terminating cliches. Looking at systems clearly designed to reject the player and make their life difficult then complaining about how they aren't fun enough is so foolish I balk that one so invested in the story and theory-crafting would be so blind to this point. Let us examine once again Moby Dick.

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In chapter 32 there is a lengthy chapter devoted to the physiology of whales. This is a highly dull chapter to read and a well-known roadblock for prospective readers of the work (yet I must explain it in detail here because it is dubious whether any poster in this thread has ready even such a fundamental cornerstone a literature such as Moby Dick). However, in this context of literature removed from "a porn game that should be fun and get my pee pee hard," we see immediately how foolish it would be to critique it from a lens as those critiquing SENSEI QUEST and other resets are. Can you imagine going to Melville and saying, good sir, it is all well and good that you wish your novel to be a testimony to every aspect of whales from the physical aspects of their being to the mythological image they come to represent, but this chapter was quite dull! Could you not make it a bit more fun and exciting? In fact, quite a few of your chapters could be shaved down, let's have more action scenes and whale hunting, you would really get more readers that way! It is rather obnoxious that you should even think to force me to read some boring chapter on whales when I can in fact simply flip the pages! Do you not know I will just flip the pages? You are not listening to me sir, I am telling you to make your novel more fun for me!

It really is just that simple: think, for one moment, the purpose. Now, it is entirely fair if you look at Lessons in Love rejecting the player and making it increasingly hard/unpleasant to make progress as a foolish thing. Some people think whales are dumb. However, this is not what is happening. The angle of attack is so completely off base it's like one is seeing reality on an entirely different level. Like one's mind is so boxed in by platitudes that any time something isn't fun and satisfying their every urge for what they want it to be that the entire world starts to seem wrong. How can one profess themselves to be a deep thinker, a lover of thought and figuring things out, so proud of each theory and confirmed idea, if such basic mental walls blind them so deeply? Such that they look upon a rock and see a mountain, or they look upon a mountain and see a rock? You really think for one fucking second the puzzles are meant to be fun tests of knowledge? You really think they contain anything but spite and hostility? You really think this is supposed to be a good time? You really think that 'all media must be fun' is a God-like axiom that subsumes all other purposes one may have? What? WHAT???????????? The populace is rendered infants before the most basic and blunt artistic purpose which itself is literally stated directly over and over. Shocking! Nothing really is beautiful!

Moby Dick was an intricate work of years, each chapter, even the boring ones, fulfilling a well-rounded purpose. LiL reset puzzles are works of a week, hastily cobbled together and by your own admission, only serving one singular-dimensional purpose. You are comparing Starry Night to the wallpaper behind it.

You read a chapter in Moby Dick about the science of whales and come out the other side knowing more about whales, having been given a pleasant intermission and a palate cleanser from the chapters previous, and a sort of tongue-in-cheek rational, scientific contrast from the rest of the book's thematic elements. What do you come out the other side of a LiL reset having gained, other than a redundant reinforcement of the previously-well-established knowledge that the game is hostile to you? Is understanding that to an even further degree worth the time it takes to accomplish resets unaided? If there's some grander design, and anywhere near the nuance of Melville that you've somehow neglected mentioning so far, feel free to chime in with it.

You keep uncharitably shadowboxing, so arguing with you is largely pointless - no one is either saying or implicitly expecting that "video games should be fun" or "puzzles should test innovative thinking" in this context, people just want the barest experience of having the time they put into a "literary" work be respected. Melville put a huge amount of research, love, and care into the "dull" chapters of Moby Dick you love so much, which means that yes, people skipping those parts is unreasonable.

But again... the comparisons you're making are fundamentally outrageous. Works like Moby Dick are so great and near perfection of their craft that the reader has no reasonable choice except to have the book dictate a change in their first impression of something, like the viability of purely scientific-oriented chapters in a work of fiction. I'm not extending that same charity to the developer of a game who demonstrably can't keep his mood on a particular day out of the story he's writing, in the naive hope that this attempt is materially different than his prior attempts.

And I can only speak for myself, but this game has never once served as porn for me or made my pee pee hard. I find it to be almost astoundingly unerotic, even with the non-taboo characters. (0.44)Kaori is one of my favorite characters, and the fact that her sexual awakening came in the form of "a god inhabited my body and put me on his dick and I really liked it"... yeah man, peak erotic fiction right there. It uses sex as a horror element instead, like the works that inspired it.

Given you see us all as childish, porn-addled degenerates who can't appreciate good literature, normally I wouldn't know why you would keep wasting your time interacting with us, but every one of us in this thread enjoys wasting our time on hopeless endeavors - that's why we play this game at all. Most of us just maintain some degree of healthy, informed boundaries with the content we consume.

 

[vehemental]

I think reality speaks to the fact that LiL's primary purpose is not to make money, and that the game is not designed around either this or making it as pleasant as possible for readers. It is obvious on the face of it that Selebus is not just accidentally ~poorly designing~ puzzles then accidentally losing a lot of money without realizing it. You can now work backwards from here. Also I'm not Selebus.

 

[matt_riochka]

Quick question, I didn't view Happy Event: Amy before moving into chapter 4. Do things open back up to where I can go back to the mall on the weekend? Or should I load an old save so that I can view it? I haven't gotten to the sport/dorm war thing yet.

same thing happened to me, not sure if in the future you'll be able to but as of now you can't, so you need to reload an old save

 

[bobloblawwwwwww]

same thing happened to me, not sure if in the future you'll be able to but as of now you can't, so you need to reload an old save

Thanks. I decided to just go view it and then go back to my main save. Wiki says it's not a missable event and, while I haven't exhaustively combed through the wiki, it doesn't look like I'll miss any events for not having seen it.

 

[Josh Spicer]

Any chance to get the Bonus Sex Scenes with the Tavern or Merchant or do you seriously have to grind to a million?

 

[barglenarglezous]

What do you come out the other side of a LiL reset having gained, other than a redundant reinforcement of the previously-well-established knowledge that the game is hostile to you?

In all fairness, as someone who's never drunk coffee, I know a whole lot about it simply because I assumed there would be a test on that 54 page discussion of coffee in chapter 3.

 

[LiesLiesLiesLies]

Any chance to get the Bonus Sex Scenes with the Tavern or Merchant or do you seriously have to grind to a million?

nothing happens when you buy them, just a joke

 

[Josh Spicer]

nothing happens when you buy them, just a joke

Bet. Thanks for saving me time and energy lol

 

[barglenarglezous]

Welp, I did say I wanted an 8-bit RPG, and got exactly that.

Monkey's Paw, indeed.

 

[k1n5l4y3r]

I've updated the reset guide in the frontpage, I've partially used somedudewhogames grind guide in it. The link is here or puzzle guide in the front page.

 

[vehemental]

Welp, I did say I wanted an 8-bit RPG, and got exactly that.

Monkey's Paw, indeed.

It was either you, or that Good Kid made an 8-bit RPG and made the soundtrack for it copyright-free with the rest of their music

 

[Moonflare]

I feel like, at times, we might forget that parts of this game might be more like... interpretations of things not supernatural but more like hallucinations or altered mental states. Like, i'm more keen to lean on Sekai 'taking control' and making Akira kiss Yumi being less literal, Sekai is his abuser, his groomer, the ghost of his trauma, in a broken headcase like him, that situation with Yumi could cause flashbacks of his trauma and in that altered state, he'd just be on autopilot, copying what was done to him but to her. Like, i know with all the timelooping stuff there's got to be more to this than it turning out he's just a dude in a psychward dealing with his insanity, that'd be the lamest cop-out of an ending Selly could go for, but always assuming shit is exactly what it is on face value kind of strikes me as going too far the other way, some of the shit he does and goes through has got to be manifestations of his abuse trauma... replicating past experiences is beyond common in long term abuse victims, particularly those abused in their formative years, i myself enjoy getting physically hurt in the bedroom as a form of twisted and soothing replication of all the times my father beat the shit out of me growing up.

I suck at this theory stuff but sometimes i think sucking at it might offer some unique insight, sort of a situation of seeing the forest for the trees, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Is this one of those times?

I have supported this theory following Yumi's scene with Akira.

Basically, it could very well be that this town has two halves is just Akira feeling compelled to kiss Yumi because of how many times he did it already in previous loops. Thus it's himself controlling himself, no actual supernatural force involved. Same for a lot of stuff, he's reproducing what he already did.

I think rarely, if ever, someone is forcing Akira to do something. Pareidolia may have lied about a few things, but the message of gods have no power other than what you allow them to have has been repeated enough times for me to believe it. Sana outright rejects Pegasus and nothing happens.

As for Akira, he's been told multiple times that he's a freaking idiot by going around and leaving the door of his mind open.

Edit: I will say however that Nodoka contradicts part of what you said. She explains that Akira is controlled by memories yes, but not memories as you put it. It's not memories of his abuse, but rather the cyclical memories of what he has already done compelling him to do the exact same thing again.

Also rip Nodoka and Pareidolia, our unsung heroes that did way more for the solving of the puzzles than any of the "actual heroes".

 

[Dc345]

If Tsubasa participates in next years Halloween party the perfect costume for her would be Maddie Fenton from Danny Phantom.

 

[John E. Ringo]

In all fairness, as someone who's never drunk coffee, I know a whole lot about it simply because I assumed there would be a test on that 54 page discussion of coffee in chapter 3.

I think you are confusing Ch. 3 of this with Ch. 32 of Moby Dick. Melville was a huge fan of the Aero Press, dontcha know!

Hmm...wait...does "Moby" translate to "very large" by any chance? Maybe, just maybe...naaah, can't be.

 

[Bingoogus]

I have supported this theory following Yumi's scene with Akira.

Basically, it could very well be that this town has two halves is just Akira feeling compelled to kiss Yumi because of how many times he did it already in previous loops. Thus it's himself controlling himself, no actual supernatural force involved. Same for a lot of stuff, he's reproducing what he already did.

I think rarely, if ever, someone is forcing Akira to do something. Pareidolia may have lied about a few things, but the message of gods have no power other than what you allow them to have has been repeated enough times for me to believe it. Sana outright rejects Pegasus and nothing happens.

As for Akira, he's been told multiple times that he's a freaking idiot by going around and leaving the door of his mind open.

Edit: I will say however that Nodoka contradicts part of what you said. She explains that Akira is controlled by memories yes, but not memories as you put it. It's not memories of his abuse, but rather the cyclical memories of what he has already done compelling him to do the exact same thing again.

Also rip Nodoka and Pareidolia, our unsung heroes that did way more for the solving of the puzzles than any of the "actual heroes".

How in the fuck did you find that old post? It's more than a year old...