Java Lilith's Throne [v0.4.11.3 Hotfix] [Innoxia]

[Sarkath]

Some of us may be jaded but at the end of the day we still want the game to succeed. Her subscribers could have influenced her for the better, instead, they chose to ignore the problem, either due to ignorance or because they didn't want to besmirch their reputation and hurt the developer's feelings.

The problem with Patreon/SubStar is that oftentimes the sunk cost fallacy will rear its ugly head. Consider that if you pay $5/month for a campaign for a year, you've effectively bought a AAA game. That, coupled with the comments section, not to mention the opportunity to connect directly with the artist in question, can lead to a shocking degree of attachment.

If more people treated these sort of pledges as a business transaction or investment I don't think we'd see this degree of complacency, but as we've seen in the past (even around here) people take this sort of thing very, very personally.

You see all the Games/VNs that have been either Onhold for awhile or simply abandoned.

It's usually because of what you mentioned, burnout. Single or a small group of devs get well over their heads and have no idea how to rein themselves in. So the whole project (or themselves) collapses.

I think a lot of people also forget that organizing large projects is hard. It's not enough to simply know how to program, or to have followed a half dozen tutorials for a game engine.

Unfortunately, the type of organizational skills you need to be able to manage code can only really be acquired through painful experience (or if you're some sort of geeky virtuoso). You also can't be afraid to realize that things are going awry, slam on the brakes, and spend a day on refactoring and planning.

The problem with LT in general (and I've stated this a few times in the past) is that I get the feeling that Inno went in with minimal experience and, when things started going off the rails, blindly pushed on instead of thinking, "Hey, there's probably an better way to do this."

It makes Inno's refusal to share the workload more frustrating. It's been obvious for a while now that she could use the help, and I think she's finally at the point where she could afford to pay for assistance (or, as I suggested previously, set up a bounty system).

 

[BeholdTheWizzard]

Inno keeps overestimating how much she can do within her self-imposed deadlines. She justifies it by saying the estimates push her to work harder but what it ultimately does is cause her to overstress about it all, which is terrible for one's mental health, especially when it keeps happening over a long period of time. She doesn't accept that the parameters have changed and she cannot keep treating this game as it was back in 2016.

When this project started off in 2016, she made it one of her goals to release a new update every two weeks. This was easier to achieve because there was less of an amalgamation of code to manage every time she wanted to add something. Things have changed. Her workflow, health and motivation have changed, yet she keeps ignoring the signs, either due to foolishness, stubbornness, or both. She has been taking breaks due to personal and health concerns more and more often. Progress has slowed down over the years and if it keeps up like this it may come to a halt completely.

Stress, fatigue, headaches, light-headedness - there's a plethora of conditions that cause these. However, one condition that could easily be affecting her, that includes all of these, is burnout. Resting is good but it won't solve the issue if she's going to return to her old methods and workflow right after. She needs to change her approach towards development and slow down in order to do more in the long-term. But I doubt she will. Stubborn people only learn when something drastic happens that forces their hand. Her health is going to have to implode to dangerous levels for her to realize she can't continue like this...

She's going to hit rock-bottom one day, the question is whether she will still be able to work on the game at that point (or even want to)...

I don't believe at all Inno is working hard or competently.

 

[theforstycow]

I don't even play this game. I just love reading the same predictable blog posts.

"Sorry for the delay, [insert excuse here]"
"Sorry for the delay, [insert excuse here]"
"Sorry for the delay, [insert excuse here]"

Isn't such a strange coincidence that game devs seem to be sick 24/7?

100% positive Innoxia just goofs off and procrastinates most of the time. Then when crunch time happens they try to jam everything into a small window, freak out, then make and excuse. Rinse and repeat. Seen it all before with independent, inexperienced developers who have no ability to actually manage their own time.

Whether they like it or not, most people require a boss to keep them in check.

This person claims to work 6-7 days a week 12 hours a day? Absolute, grade-A bullshit. Unless you consider "work" sitting at your computer browsing Reddit. Seriously, working for 4 hours a day 4 days a week should produce more results than this.

 

[HumblestRanger]

Damn, I expected some more rat lore this update. What a shame, but I'm sure Inno is working very hard

 

[Shadoriader323]

so i can now never play this at all because the game is imcompatable with everythihng i own and now seeing updates sucks my soul out if possible can anyone find a way for the game to be eithwr played on joiplay or on chromebook

 

[mrttao]

I don't even play this game. I just love reading the same predictable blog posts.

"Sorry for the delay, [insert excuse here]"
"Sorry for the delay, [insert excuse here]"
"Sorry for the delay, [insert excuse here]"

Same. I am playing excuse bingo instead of playing the game. Very amusing.

Not because the game is terrible mind you.
But because I already played it, and nothing new is being added.
(disclaimer: I am sorry but adding a couple of outfits does not count as content)

 

[Deleted member 87153]

All their posts begin with "Sorry". They might as well not say anything and just post updates when they are ready. Saves people any expectations, and saves them (Innoxia) the trouble of justifying themselves every time.

 

[NopeNopeNope12345]

Another game in a similar vein but with a female protag would be Lustful Desires (made on RenPy). It's mostly straight oriented with some beastiality thrown in occasionally, but it also has a decent amount of content. I don't like that I have to grind mats to make potions though (you're an alchemist so it's your job). Boring grind is boring.

Um, I hate to break it to you but LD is not at all straight oriented lol.
You CAN play as a female protag, but its primarily all bara m/m content designed for homosexual men into that sort of thing; its not even the traditional yaoi take on m/m made to appeal to women. I think there's one single illustrated scene with a female character in the entire game, and you don't even see her genitals. The discord structure kinda gives it away considering there's only one channel for straight content, and all the others are by default m/m bara lmfao.
--
Anyway, I don't think I've ever actually posted a comment on F95, but Inno's constant "sorry guys!" posts are obnoxious more than useful. I have no investment in this developer as a person or their health, I have an investment in the game...
The game they do not deliver new content on month after month, despite having a loads of support and "constantly working".

What they implemented could've been done in one day, in less than a few hours. The excuse that "the project is too big to handle" is absolutely ridiculous considering the fact that there are entire teams of people creating mod content for the game at a pace faster than the base code is being expanded upon. Don't want to burn out? Don't ask people for money.
Terrible business practice, glad F95 exists.

 

[jupojupo]

a quick question, is there any mod for or to increase group content cause it sucks that it got drop

 

[Jamsalad]

yeah nothing significant has been added since I've first played this game probably close to 2 years ago

 

[hotaruchan1]

a quick question, is there any mod for or to increase group content cause it sucks that it got drop

you can turn on companions in the settings. and it says there that nothing is going to agknowledge them. Ino stoped writing in allowances for them. so you can have one that is just kinda there and never refrenced but that's about it

 

[BBGunna]

Some of us may be jaded but at the end of the day we still want the game to succeed. Her subscribers could have influenced her for the better, instead, they chose to ignore the problem, either due to ignorance or because they didn't want to besmirch their reputation and hurt the developer's feelings. Even now, you speak anything that isn't outright praise and you get told off, point in case was that Sub.Star comment where one person told her to get a team because she was overworked, and got called "rude and impatient" by the community. We were the first ones to point out that Inno's workflow wasn't sustainable and would lead to problems down the road, we warned about this years ago, but since we're the "salty malcontents" nobody cared...

Yup, been following this game for quite some time, since before subscribestar, back before comments on the blogspot were locked. I could tell from back then that LT was heading in a bad direction and while yeah the discourse was getting painfully toxic sometimes when I saw the response was to basically lockout blogspot in favor of a highly curated discrod I knew exactly where this game would be going. As you said, people rightly pointed out that she was taking out way too much work for one person and as updates started to take longer suggestions of hiring a team emegred and were prompty shut down.

There's no shame in admitting you need help or that a project has evolved past the scope of your own capabilities. I don't hate this game, even if its broken underveloped form there's still tons of potential and its still one of the better ones in its genre despite the flaws. It's just a shame that it feels more and more that this project seems doomed to eventual abonnement as Signs of Inno's clear burnout become more and more apparent each year...

 

[BlidBear]

I'm unable to run the .jar - Used command line and the main class can't be found for some reason.

 

[Shopopo]

I'm unable to run the .jar - Used command line and the main class can't be found for some reason.

I had this issue with the last version's jar. I think it's something to do with JavaFX. I recently updated both the JRE and JDK, and maybe that changed something? The .exe of the previous version worked for me, hopefully the new version of that gets added.

 

[Bernard Bernoulli]

Do you happen to have the exe version too? Thanks.

Sorry, no idea how to compile into an exe.

 

[Hongfire Survivor]

I'm unable to run the .jar - Used command line and the main class can't be found for some reason.

I had this issue with the last version's jar. I think it's something to do with JavaFX. I recently updated both the JRE and JDK, and maybe that changed something? The .exe of the previous version worked for me, hopefully the new version of that gets added.

Sorry, no idea how to compile into an exe.

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Used this program to do it.

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Opened the game, no obvious errors but would backup saves just in case.

 

[madchef]

It's usually because of what you mentioned, burnout.

Nah, that's not it. It's the everything sandwich syndrome that this and many other amateur porn games suffer from. What starts as just one, moderately interesting idea for a game soon grows into an overindulgent mess of fetishes stacked upon fetishes, an endless entanglement of incoherent sexy thoughts that, just like a pizza topped with spaghetti and stuffed inside a roasted chicken, is not as appetizing as all these same ingredients enjoyed separately. The devs themselves find their overgrown projects just too much and simply dread the thought of continuing work with something they perhaps once loved doing those 5 years ago but now unconsciously abhor. Yet, they simply cannot wrap it up due to financing model they've adopted, so it becomes this 25+ season of a soap opera that will never end as long as there is at least one new fan who is going to give this old chestnut a raving review.

Rarely you'll see a sex game dev here who'll make a short to medium-length game exploring just a couple of kinky scenarios, but deep and well, while providing an interesting gaming challenge instead of just clicking away and choosing the obvious answers. The game that will have a beginning, the middle and an end, even while still being WIP. Seems like most of them want to dethrone de Sade in this absurd pursuit of yet another perversity, however minute and tepid it might be, to be added to the catalogue of tags and the changelog litany. Despite this, the player sooner or later realises they're running in circles, in essence fooling around with either a text-based or a paperdoll-based sexyfied character creator, not that much different than what the guy next door is making.

 

[JoleenStar]

Changelog Simulator. Love reading them.

 

[Hongfire Survivor]

The devs themselves find their overgrown projects just too much and simply dread the thought of continuing work with something they perhaps once loved doing those 5 years ago but now unconsciously abhor.

That sounds like burnout to me, but the rest of your post is spot on.

Having burnout doesn't absolve them from not telling people "Hey folks, I think I/we've have taken on a little too much".

You don't need to include every kink under the sun. Stick to a couple that work well together and keep to your vision.

But as you said, Patreon and SubscribeStar put the pressure (and sometimes complacency) on to the dev/devs because they make money this month regardless of if they put anything meaningful out.

Sometimes I wonder if it would help to have adult game publishers around to curb some of this, since the Patreons don't hold the creators accountable (and the ones that do are ran off).

 

[IvoryOwl]

Sometimes I wonder if it would help to have adult game publishers around to curb some of this, since the Patreons don't hold the creators accountable (and the ones that do are ran off).

Sometimes I wonder if it would help to have adult game publishers around to curb some of this, since the Patreons don't hold the creators accountable (and the ones that do are ran off).

Patreon is one of the best and worst inventions for content creators. It works great when the creator has a good head on their shoulders and knows their limitations, otherwise it just perpetuates bad habits as they will be paid regardless of results. The porn industry in particular is a great crowd to take advantage of, as they think less with their heads and more with their genitals.

The West is still very conservative towards sex and the porn industry. We have big corporations (and their investors) making pushes to make most things "family-friendly" as that's where the big money is - YouTube and Patreon come to mind. So long as things remain as they are, we are going to have to rely on crowdfunding to support a chunk of the indie industry. People need to change their mindset regarding these platforms - they are business, first and foremost, and should be treated as such.

Patreons need to understand that the whole "benevolent donator" mentality isn't always beneficial and sometimes you need to be a "shrewd investor" to prod creators a little in the right direction. One of the problems with Patreon is that it is a lot easier to just cancel your subscription and leave than it is to deal with a white-knight community. The dev could just as easily tell you off too, since a few "upset" people are rarely worth the hassle and they probably make enough money that they don't care about you leaving...

The only lone individuals that can cause waves are usually other content creators with a sizeable following (i.e, streamers, YTubers) and those don't review or play porn games with their audiences watching, nor do they talk about it on social media. At least I never found one who did.

So long as the majority keep supporting bad practices, things aren't liable to change...