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

[Carl0sDanger]

I'm one of the people who advocated for more story and if things are to remain as they are then I stand by that choice. Modders can add and fix a lot of things but the story and lore will always be Inno's unique trademark (unless it's so bad we're better off without it). But even I can see the current state of the game and its pitfalls and how much of an ache it will be to fix them all.

Even though it pains me to lose 5 years of progress, starting from scratch would be the best solution long-term, for the sake of the game and for the sake of the developer's health (and sanity). Despite my moaning and grievances I still want the game to move forward and be finished at some point in the future, preferably within my lifetime. It's the only one of it's kind with a fuck ton of potential. But if that's not going to happen then let the game follow it's course and hope the community takes the reins when the developer decides to quit.

I'll say it outright - right now, I don't have high hopes of the game ever being finished. From a technical standpoint, the massive amount of memory leaks and constraints on the system (bad optimization and planning overall) means it will eventually reach a critical point where it will not be possible to expand anymore because it has become an unmanageable and unplayable mess. We're not even halfway through development and we're already seeing clear signs of this.

Inno is 100% free to prove me wrong and make me eat my words, I'll gladly do so. But until then, it's not a good perspective to have (especially because it detracts future investors) and it must be even worse for the developer to hear people say they have little faith in the future of the game.

Look, if Inno wants to do the full overhaul of the system, then she should do it. That would absolutely be a constructive use of her time. I agree that it's going to have to be done sometime.

Likewise, if she wants to take the main story as far as the system will allow before the limitations force her to do the overhaul, that's also a constructive use of her time.

What is not a constructive use of her time is to work on side quests rather than the main story or to fiddle around with tweaking systems that are going to have to be completely overhauled before v 1.0. Those things are a waste of time. Those things are why we get the - all too familiar - work pattern of Inno failing to make progress (because you can't make progress on a project by working on things that don't progress that project), getting depressed because she's making no progress and then dealing with that by taking a break, slowing down progress even more and creating a vicious cycle of failure, shame and depression.

What is going to be necessary if this game is ever going to be completed is for Inno to get into a virtuous cycle of releasing content that moves her closer to completing the game, feeling great that she released that new content and working on new content.

 

[anon707]

That's a cool idea. I could see that being a ton of fun. But holy fuck, that would be *so much work* to make it interesting. Like, even if you went with some basic, core playstyles (bruiser, mage, whatever) and then expanded based on skills from that, it's going to balloon out of control. If that was the entire focus of the game you could probably invest enough time to make it awesome though. Without that time investment, you'd just have a system that kind of bland and boring.

For what I'm working on, the sim side of things has turned into the focus, but originally I wanted it to be more adventurey and explorey. I have a decently working procedural map generation system that I could build up a lot. Could totally build out areas to explore for fun and profit, but only if the act of exploring those areas is fun. Combat systems are the easy way to go with that.


Honestly, it breaks my brain to think about. Is java just super heavy on the line count or something, because that's crazy to me.



Huh... okay, I've gained a small amount of respect for the discord mods then.



I don't really want to push the game *story* forward. What I want is more game *area*.

Everything that's been developed had to stay 100% in dominion at all times because no other areas existed. Shit like Nyan's quest where you're trying to find out why she's not receiving magic clothing, that could have spanned multiple zones if the zones existed. We wouldn't need multiple NPCs stacked on the same tile. Maybe it sends you out to the farm areas to figure out why cloth isn't coming in or some random shit. More areas would allow you to shake things up. And with more areas, if we do get to the point where modding is actually meaningful, we'll be able to fit more interesting stuff into the game.

Being limited to only what fits within dominion and submission is boring.

But thats still in the realm of what I meant before. People want the story going forward to have more content for the sake of just having more content when there's still a game that's just limping around. Filling in the game with a bunch of new content doesnt get actual functionality of the game fixed, finished, and cleaned up. Oh cool, we finally get to fight lilith... with a borked and boring combat, perk, and magic system. Talk about anti-climatic. Okay now we get to fuck lilith... with a sex system that has yet to get the kinks worked out and hasnt truly evolved in years besides fucking armpit sex.

If this was just a pure and simple text game where all you had to worry about was just clicking 2 or 3 buttons, i'd be more on the "move the story forward for content!" side, but its not just 2 button text game, it has multiple layers to it, all of which arent done and havent been work done in a significant manner in forever because people want the next big location when the game is doing the Michael Jackson Thriller trying to get there.

I'd get why people are really hesitant if the idea of Inno scrapping the game to start over in fear of having to wait even longer to get anything, but we're already doing that NOW. I honestly think if Inno started over she, pulled her head out of her ass, accept REAL HELP and take good advice on top of taking everything she learned from making this iteration of the game, she would actually get MORE done FASTER than trying to fix up this mess. Trying to drag this out is whats slowing her down, her shitty work ethic aside. She can still take a lot of the assets in this game and bring it to a fresh project.

There is no shame in admitting what you have is fucked and starting from scratch, welcome to the world of creativity where not everything works out as planned. Other games have had to get a refresh on development and have come out better for it. Thats what LT needs to, not "MORE AREAS NOOOOOOOOOOOW!"

 

[throbzombie]

Pshaw.
Fuck combat system.

My idea (for my -never realized- game) was to have skills. And when it's clobbering time, you get options based on those skills.
So, you have "ambidexterity" and "Boxing"... you get 2-3 options related (say, a jab-n-punch, rabbit punch, hook-n-uppercut) and they work as "paths", just using the player's smartness. You're not gonna use a rabbit-punch against a Lamia, so best chose another option or else...
If you only have "Boxing", you get a 1-2 options (say uppercut, hook).
Same way, you get defensive skills.

I think it's better to deal with options and branches (albeit time-consuming and tedious) rather than find a mathematical formula and try to keep the game balanced around it.

Great idea, bro. I still wanna know where you got that sweet drawing in your signature.

 

[[Mister_Arch]]

God Damn there is a whole essay on the last page

 

[Fuzzcat]

That's a cool idea. I could see that being a ton of fun. But holy fuck, that would be *so much work* to make it interesting. Like, even if you went with some basic, core playstyles (bruiser, mage, whatever) and then expanded based on skills from that, it's going to balloon out of control. If that was the entire focus of the game you could probably invest enough time to make it awesome though. Without that time investment, you'd just have a system that kind of bland and boring.

Well, I never said anything about classes lol
Basically, my idea was simple:
You start/build your character, with X skill points (the usual).
From there on, it's about exploring and finding stuff, and meeting characters. That way you can always add whatever you want (be a place, an item, or NPCs) without having to worry about levelling up, combat or any numeric factor.
Example:

You want to enter The Klub. But, the bouncer is a massive Minork (mix of Minotaur and Ork). He laughs at you (if you don't have physical skills, or not enough), and you can only pass if you (or someone with you) beats him in combat, or if you find someone that can whitstand his manhood.
So it all depends on who you met, who you recruited, and if you have skills.
You could try to fight yourself (or some other present NPC), or see who can take it. Trick is, none would, you simply set 2 or 3 specific NPCs. Either the huge Horseman at the farms (which doesn't has combat skills, but he's a massive brute), or that seemingly useless curvy prostitute could take it (if ye bothered talking, she's a half-goo... no limits!). Horseman vs Minork it's a fight scene, and Milf-goo marries Minork it's a sex scene.
This way you reduce the amount of probabilities in specific situations, but on some others you can use the combat "by choices" I've mentioned before.
No classes, each character has skills, and your MC can find/develop new ones.

Great idea, bro. I still wanna know where you got that sweet drawing in your signature.

It's mine.
Some anon comissioned some drawings, that derived in a sort of comic pages, but it was using others artwork (basically, he wanted specific pics, but redrawn to fit what he wanted). I convinced him to start fresh without copying, but after that he dissapeared *shrug*
I took the opportunity to try and test a different style, more in line with Eleuteri Serpieri, since the idea was a sort of post-apoc-like world.

 

[Sarkath]

Honestly, it breaks my brain to think about. Is java just super heavy on the line count or something, because that's crazy to me.

Compared to C++? Nah, I wouldn't say so. Compared to C#? Yeah, a little, and some of that has to do with the fact that LT is effectively locked into Java 8.

There's a lot of copied and pasted code, particularly when setting up the JS engine context and similar tasks. In some cases it just uses too many fields to determine simple traits (such as inheritsFromMother and inheritsFromFather being separate fields). I still need to look at this in greater depth, but it seems to me as though there are a lot of repeated conditionals. I imagine condensing constructs like this:

if(inheritsFromMother) {
    this.torso = this.mother.torso;
    this.eyes = this.mother.eyes;
    this.peepee = this.mother.peepee;
} else if(inheritsFromFather) {
    this.torso = this.father.torso;
    this.eyes = this.father.eyes;
    this.peepee = this.father.peepee;
}

…into this:

GameCharacter parent = inheritsFromMother ? this.mother : this.father;

this.torso = parent.torso;
this.eyes = parent.eyes;
this.peepee = parent.peepee;

…would help significantly. This is a contrived example, of course, but there seem to be a lot of constructs that are similar to that, that could probably be trimmed down. To be clear, if this is viable it would be more of a maintenance benefit than a performance benefit.

And, to shed a bit of light on a mammoth class: GameCharacter.java weighs in at 29398 lines (I don't have cloc on this box so I'm not sure what the distribution of code/comments/whitespace is, but based on a visual inspection I can safely say that it's very code-dense).

 

[Carl0sDanger]

I took the opportunity to try and test a different style, more in line with Eleuteri Serpieri, since the idea was a sort of post-apoc-like world.

Very nice. I'd actually assumed that it was a piece of Serpieri art that you'd added an "F95" sign to. Well done.

 

[Fuzzcat]

Very nice. I'd actually assumed that it was a piece of Serpieri art that you'd added an "F95" sign to. Well done.

Well, I'm kinda flattered lol!
I'm not remotely close to be as good as him.

In any case, the idea was also to do a set of pics on that style for LT, of each background tile to show in-game. But I'm not sure how/if can be done. NPCs are easy, since it's exported stuff.

 

[DirtyMare88]

Compared to C++? Nah, I wouldn't say so. Compared to C#? Yeah, a little, and some of that has to do with the fact that LT is effectively locked into Java 8.

There's a lot of copied and pasted code, particularly when setting up the JS engine context and similar tasks. In some cases it just uses too many fields to determine simple traits (such as inheritsFromMother and inheritsFromFather being separate fields). I still need to look at this in greater depth, but it seems to me as though there are a lot of repeated conditionals. I imagine condensing constructs like this:

if(inheritsFromMother) {
    this.torso = this.mother.torso;
    this.eyes = this.mother.eyes;
    this.peepee = this.mother.peepee;
} else if(inheritsFromFather) {
    this.torso = this.father.torso;
    this.eyes = this.father.eyes;
    this.peepee = this.father.peepee;
}

…into this:

GameCharacter parent = inheritsFromMother ? this.mother : this.father;

this.torso = parent.torso;
this.eyes = parent.eyes;
this.peepee = parent.peepee;

…would help significantly. This is a contrived example, of course, but there seem to be a lot of constructs that are similar to that, that could probably be trimmed down. To be clear, if this is viable it would be more of a maintenance benefit than a performance benefit.

And, to shed a bit of light on a mammoth class: GameCharacter.java weighs in at 29398 lines (I don't have cloc on this box so I'm not sure what the distribution of code/comments/whitespace is, but based on a visual inspection I can safely say that it's very code-dense).

Is Innoxio aware of, or would be open to incorporating code improvements if community members made those edits available? (like in a github?) Obviously that would be potentially awkward, and a touchy subject, and I know coders can get defensive when they perceive there code is being criticized, and this is Innoxio....
But if enough inefficiencies in the code could be corrected it could make a big difference. I don't code or anything, but somethings wrong when LT is eating up more processing power on my computer than a AAA game somehow

 

[tehlemon]

Is Innoxio aware of, or would be open to incorporating code improvements if community members made those edits available? (like in a github?) Obviously that would be potentially awkward, and a touchy subject, and I know coders can get defensive when they perceive there code is being criticized, and this is Innoxio....
But if enough inefficiencies in the code could be corrected it could make a big difference. I don't code or anything, but somethings wrong when LT is eating up more processing power on my computer than a AAA game somehow

She's gotten better about letting contributors do that kind of work. Most of the major improvements and overhauls have come from contributors in the last year. But there's so much to overhaul, and only a handful of people are willing to do it for her. Specially with how much she makes, how much time she takes off, and how little gets done without contributors.

 

[Sarkath]

Is Innoxio aware of, or would be open to incorporating code improvements if community members made those edits available? (like in a github?) Obviously that would be potentially awkward, and a touchy subject, and I know coders can get defensive when they perceive there code is being criticized, and this is Innoxio....

Yep, she's responsive to pull requests. I submitted a patch that reduced save times pretty significantly, and she accepted and merged it.

I imagine larger patches will probably involve a lot more scrutiny to ensure that they don't break anything, but I don't see why it wouldn't eventually be merged if it's a notable improvement.

 

[DirtyMare88]

Does anyone know how much of the file bloat of an advanced game is caused by the increasingly large numbers of PC spawned children? I was wondering about a population control method essentially, too reduce this issue. I know abortion mods are taboo and banned on the discord, and wasn't going there. My thought was to add a third option to the >vagina >birth type. option. Make it a "colonial adoption" or something, since we know Lilith has been steadily pumping demons, and anthro's out into the rest of the world as part of her silent takeover.
As far as programming is concerned this baby would be then deleted like a random encounter during a storm would be, but it would avoid the ethical drama on discord over the abortion rules.
probably obvious reasons why this wouldn't work, but i've got nearly 100 kids clogging up the streets of dominion at this point

 

[anubis1970]

Does anyone know how much of the file bloat of an advanced game is caused by the increasingly large numbers of PC spawned children? I was wondering about a population control method essentially, too reduce this issue. I know abortion mods are taboo and banned on the discord, and wasn't going there. My thought was to add a third option to the >vagina >birth type. option. Make it a "colonial adoption" or something, since we know Lilith has been steadily pumping demons, and anthro's out into the rest of the world as part of her silent takeover.
As far as programming is concerned this baby would be then deleted like a random encounter during a storm would be, but it would avoid the ethical drama on discord over the abortion rules.
probably obvious reasons why this wouldn't work, but i've got nearly 100 kids clogging up the streets of dominion at this point

I don't know about a mod to remove them, but I've found that if you attack, defeat, enslave, and then sell them it keeps the bloat manageable.

 

[Sarkath]

Does anyone know how much of the file bloat of an advanced game is caused by the increasingly large numbers of PC spawned children?

The file does get quite a bit chonkier. I have a save file with something like 4300 NPCs and it weighs in at 70MB. A fresh-ish save file seems to sit at around the 2-3MB range. It's all uncompressed XML, so it's kind of verbose by default.

The game also starts to lag quite a bit when you start getting over 1000-2000 NPCs (YMMV depending on your hardware) due to the way the game handles updating status effects every turn. Keeping the numbers down by threatening, or enslaving/selling, is definitely advisable at this point to keep the file size and resource usage under control. Editing your saved game to batch remove offspring is another option if you're willing to brave the tangled web of XML elements in order to do so.

As long as you stick to an upper limit of around 100-200 offspring you should be fine.

 

[tehlemon]

The file does get quite a bit chonkier. I have a save file with something like 4300 NPCs and it weighs in at 70MB. A fresh-ish save file seems to sit at around the 2-3MB range. It's all uncompressed XML, so it's kind of verbose by default.

The game also starts to lag quite a bit when you start getting over 1000-2000 NPCs (YMMV depending on your hardware) due to the way the game handles updating status effects every turn. Keeping the numbers down by threatening, or enslaving/selling, is definitely advisable at this point to keep the file size and resource usage under control. Editing your saved game to batch remove offspring is another option if you're willing to brave the tangled web of XML elements in order to do so.

As long as you stick to an upper limit of around 100-200 offspring you should be fine.

That depends a lot on what you have those NPCs doing.

My computer is excessive by modern gaming PC standards, and it'll start to lag with less than 100 NPC slaves working in the house. Specially with rooms like the milking room that have to track their stats on top of everything else. Or once you're letting them get pregnant and interact amongst themselves.

With just NPCs standing around I can push 1000+, but once they're doing stuff it goes to shit. I've had games were I've filled every fill-able tile in the game with NPCs just standing around and been fine, but I've also had games where 30 or less slaves start adding up to a second for every movement. Doesn't sound bad, but I think we both agree that gets annoying fast.

This also balloons the save file even more. I think its the logging of slave interaction between each other that do it. I had a save with ~30 NPCs hit 200MB. I'm not planning on actually digging any deeper on it to find out if that's the actual reason, but eyeballing it, it seems likely.

Maybe I'm playing the game wrong, but I almost always hit the point where the game is chugging if I'm playing casually.

 

[davvero123]

if two of my slaves have a child together is it possible for me to meet their offspring somewhere within city?

 

[Cybul]

How to get upgrade points for spells?

 

[Golden_Buddy]

if two of my slaves have a child together is it possible for me to meet their offspring somewhere within city?

no thankfully not because that would lag the game

 

[ViviX12]

How to get upgrade points for spells?

buy them from the weapons shop in the mall place

 

[IvoryOwl]

An update on her Sub.Star page, from yesterday.

Update very soon

Hello again,

I'm really sorry for not making a progress post this week; I once again fell into the habit of repeatedly thinking that I'd be releasing v0.4.1.1 that day, only for it to be pushed back to the next day. Anyway, I just wanted to make this small post to let you know that it really will be released very soon now (definitely by Sunday evening).

Just so that you know what to expect, this update will add a few more characters with content in the Farmer's Market, as well as random bandit encounters out in the Fields. Minotallys's content won't be in it, but I plan on making the next few updates very quick ones, so it shouldn't be long to wait until her content is added.

I only wanted this to be a small post to let you know that v0.4.1.1 is almost ready, and so I'll go into more detail about future release plans after its release (which, again, should be by Sunday evening). See you again soon, and thank you for your patience!