Java Lilith's Throne [v0.4.9.9] [Innoxia]

[Sarkath]

Warning: Sarkath ramble mode engaged (oh hush, I haven't done this in a while)!

I think the best thing we can do is find a developer that is actually willing to do a game like this right (With actually good modding support for custom species, custom kinks, good comanion support & lots of customization) and properly fund them; If we keep waiting for this to be done by this woman, it will be at least a decade before we have a good beta for this game.

The problem is that LT's design isn't really all that great from a creative perspective. This may sound odd given the depth of LT's character customization, but what it's doing really isn't all that compelling. Like, the dynamic sex system is pretty much a series of "if player has tail, allow tail-fucking," with a bunch of numbers and simple calculations to handle arousal based on a randomly generated set of interests. It's about as sterile as it gets. Think about it: when you're in the middle of a sex scene in LT, what's actually driving your enjoyment of the scene: the text on the screen or your imagination? For me it was almost exclusively the latter.

As a programmer who dabbles in writing, the idea of recreating something like that would make me feel creatively bankrupt. You're essentially playing madlibs with sex acts and when the thing that I'll charitably call an AI completely b0rks, it fucks up any sense of immersion you might have. Most of LT's actual writing is all world-building and individual character development, but you're never going to get the same level of attachment with 99% of the other characters you're going to encounter. In a game like CoC you're obviously going to get a lot of repeated scenes with random enemy encounters, but because of the unique story text I find myself more attached to the random tentacle beasts in games like that than I am with a max affection, max loyalty fox friend in LT.

You can see some attempts at proper character building in the aborted companion system. There are some unique bits of dialogue that you'll only get if you walk around with certain companions. Obviously this has the potential to get a bit overwhelming as the game develops, but there's actually a far larger problem: the fact that few people are likely to see that extra dialogue.

Limiting the companion system would have allowed players to get closer to the crafted characters in the game world. I would have loved to go globe-trotting with Brax and possibly get a little closer to that smug bastard, but all we're likely to ever get is a bunch of canned sex actions that make a relationship bar (which barely has any practical effect) go up a tiny bit. I'm not sure how much laziness played into this, but if 80% of players are just going to bring a random hyena-morph with them everywhere what's the point of developing it any further? Why would you spend hours writing meticulously crafted dialogue that almost nobody is going to see?

If the companion system were limited rather than axed you could still have your generic fuck buddies and slaves back at the manor, but could also adventure with and snuggle with your wolfy husbando. However, that wouldn't have fit in with LT's design philosophy, would it? It's proven that it wants to be a true sandbox game at all costs and removing a core feature outright is apparently more appealing than cutting back its scope. Again: creativity takes a backseat to customization.

And, really, I feel that's the core issue here. LT gives the player practically infinite freedom but often at the cost of personality and soul. I wouldn't want any part in creating a game like that and I can understand why others would be equally hesitant.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

 

[anubis1970]

Or in layman's terms. Miles wide, 1/64th of an inch deep.

 

[tehlemon]

Like, the dynamic sex system is pretty much a series of "if player has tail, allow tail-fucking," with a bunch of numbers and simple calculations to handle arousal based on a randomly generated set of interests. It's about as sterile as it gets.

It literally took me a single evening to recreate 90% of LT's sex system, with most of that time spent writing the various bits of flavor text since I'm not about to straight up plagarize a game that'll likely be my competition if I ever get around to releasing anything. And I did that while drunk as fuck and chatting with friends on discord.

Its a very simple system. And a very boring one at that.

But...

As a programmer who dabbles in writing, the idea of recreating something like that would make me feel creatively bankrupt. You're essentially playing madlibs with sex acts and when the thing that I'll charitably call an AI completely b0rks, it fucks up any sense of immersion you might have. Most of LT's actual writing is all world-building and individual character development, but you're never going to get the same level of attachment with 99% of the other characters you're going to encounter. In a game like CoC you're obviously going to get a lot of repeated scenes with random enemy encounters, but because of the unique story text I find myself more attached to the random tentacle beasts in games like that than I am with a max affection, max loyalty fox friend in LT.

...but I still see why such a basic system is useful for porn games. Writing porn is hard. Writing *a lot* of porn is really hard. And if you try and write too much porn without enjoying what you're writing, it becomes really, really unfun.

So starting with a simple system that can be throw in front of any sex scene is an easy solution to move on.

As a programmer who stopped programming professionally, but then started writing. And then wrote semi-professionally for a short while. And then started programming again... As someone who does both, sometimes the creatively bankrupt system can get you to the parts you actually want to work on. And for me that's the sim side of a game like this. I'm going to need a procedural sex system eventually, because I want to allow NPCs to interact with each other. So now that's done-ish, and I can move on to some other fun stuff.

And with this shit being properly designed, I can literally drop in a new system if I ever make one.

Which is where I think the real problem with LT lies. All this shit feels like the placeholders I've written, but they're not. Everything feels like the system I'd use before dedicating any real time to really fleshing that stuff out.

But you're not wrong, it's really hard to have character development and personality in dynamic sex scenes. I'm sort of trying to make it work by having the scenes be faster, and allowing each action to be more in depth. But I'm also adding a lot of individual content into them, which I know isn't sustainable long term unless I change something.

Snip, just cause space

I have no idea how to deal with companions. I know I want to include them in my own project, but yeah. My current plan is to just include a number of generic content for randomly generated NPCs. But I'm also leaning really heavily into NPC personality traits. I want them to really matter, and I want them to have meaningful effects on the sim side of things. A shy but perverted NPC should behave differently than a super extroverted NPC.

Which again, LT seemed like it was going to go down that route too. And then just didn't. It's like the bones are there, but they never added the flesh to any of the systems. Like, do the personality traits have anything to do with anything currently? I really don't think they do.

Game design is hard. And I really think Inno just never got out of the "that's a cool idea I should do something with" phase. And at this point I don't think she ever will.

 

[Sarkath]

It literally took me a single [drunken] evening to recreate 90% of LT's sex system

…case in point. XD

<< dynamic sex systems >>

That's fair, and that does sound like a great way of spicing up NPC interactions (especially if you manage to reduce some of the madlibs-isms that these systems often have).

My plan is to produce a universe that people would want to write for, coupled with an author-friendly engine (inspired by stuff like Ren'Py, Twee, etc.) and a simple build process. Definitely more CoC-style than LT-style, not to mention that it'll all be free software (likely GPLv3 for the code with the story being CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

<< character development in sex scenes >>

You don't necessarily need to do the character-building in the sex scenes themselves. Having some meaningful dialogue and interactions before the scene can really prime the player's imagination.

One thing that LT did right with its sex system is allow for some bits of personalization here and there (Rose's hand-holding minigame, skipping the line at the club, etc). Injecting parts of the character's personality (even if it's showing reluctance to do certain actions) into the dynamic sex system would greatly improve immersion and add to their overall personality.

<< companions, personality system… >>

The personality traits are used very, very sparingly. I recall seeing that one of the personality traits can impact dialogue when the player gets profiled by the enforcers (IIRC, it was either "act normally" or "act meekly"). As with most things, the framework is in place but almost nothing takes advantage of it.

Companions are a bit of a touchy thing. Trying to lean into them too hard will make writing kind of tricky, given the sheer number of possibilities. For generic NPCs, it could be as simple as letting the character's personality affect how they interact with the world, while other factors (species, race, gender, etc.) could impact how the world reacts to the NPC.

Personally, I would probably feel better with non-procedural companions. They'd definitely be harder to write but I feel that the end result is worth it. I don't think I'd remember Mass Effect as fondly as I do (especially after that absolute dumpster fire of an ending) if it weren't for the unique and interesting characters I met along the way.

 

[BlidBear]

Oh no... What have I started...

 

[Sarkath]

Oh no... What have I started...

Eh, this isn't the strangest diversion this thread has taken. At least we're still talking about game design.

 

[tehlemon]

That's fair, and that does sound like a great way of spicing up NPC interactions (especially if you manage to reduce some of the madlibs-isms that these systems often have).

My plan is to produce a universe that people would want to write for, coupled with an author-friendly engine (inspired by stuff like Ren'Py, Twee, etc.) and a simple build process. Definitely more CoC-style than LT-style, not to mention that it'll all be free software (likely GPLv3 for the code with the story being CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

It's sort of madlibs-y still, but not as bad. Because its quicker and more to the point, it doesn't wear out its welcome as fast, at least in my opinion.

But I still want to have the option for both fully written sex scenes, and a quick option for people like me who get more into the game-y part of porn games lol

IDK, it's not great. But it's an easy starting place. I'm going to doom myself to the same placeholder hell Inno has lol

You don't necessarily need to do the character-building in the sex scenes themselves. Having some meaningful dialogue and interactions before the scene can really prime the player's imagination.

One thing that LT did right with its sex system is allow for some bits of personalization here and there (Rose's hand-holding minigame, skipping the line at the club, etc). Injecting parts of the character's personality (even if it's showing reluctance to do certain actions) into the dynamic sex system would greatly improve immersion and add to their overall personality.

Yeah, those are the parts I really like. I'm trying to get character traits and personality traits to have a more meaningful impact on that kind of stuff. I don't necessarily care about character-building through sex, but I do care that the character's personality is relevant. Between all the games that use this type of system, that's my biggest complaint.

The personality traits are used very, very sparingly. I recall seeing that one of the personality traits can impact dialogue when the player gets profiled by the enforcers (IIRC, it was either "act normally" or "act meekly"). As with most things, the framework is in place but almost nothing takes advantage of it.

I really wish the personality traits were used more in LT. It was one of those "to-do" things that just never got done. But there's so much potential there. And it's not actually *that much* additional writing to add a bit of flavor in. Specially if you're using a simple system that allows for easy interjections into your script.

Companions are a bit of a touchy thing. Trying to lean into them too hard will make writing kind of tricky, given the sheer number of possibilities. For generic NPCs, it could be as simple as letting the character's personality affect how they interact with the world, while other factors (species, race, gender, etc.) could impact how the world reacts to the NPC.

Personally, I would probably feel better with non-procedural companions. They'd definitely be harder to write but I feel that the end result is worth it. I don't think I'd remember Mass Effect as fondly as I do (especially after that absolute dumpster fire of an ending) if it weren't for the unique and interesting characters I met along the way.

Yeah, its definitely tricky. I honestly don't know the best solution for this kind of thing. Like you said, there's so many possibilities, and I kind of want to leave room for all of them. For me, the hard part is figuring out a good combat system. I'm not sure what I'd really want out of LT's combat system at this point. And I'm not at all sure what I'd make for a combat system. Even before I was working on anything myself and I was just trying to come up with some way to make LT's combat interesting, I've come up with dozens of ideas and ruled them all out for various reasons. Usually because I don't think they'd be fun under heavy repetition.

Oh no... What have I started...

Fun!

You started fun! I love talking about game design.

 

[aspar4gus]

Eh, this isn't the strangest diversion this thread has taken.

*having flashbacks of that one time ppl had miniature train discussion here*

 

[Sarkath]

It's sort of madlibs-y still, but not as bad. Because its quicker and more to the point, it doesn't wear out its welcome as fast, at least in my opinion.

Yeah, the pace helps a ton. Early game LT feels like you're basically spamming the same action an awful lot to get the bars to move.

Getting rid of all the madlibsiness would be pretty goddamn difficult. I imagine having different text for different states of arousal would probably help. Basically anything to add a bit of variety.

But I still want to have the option for both fully written sex scenes, and a quick option for people like me who get more into the game-y part of porn games lol

IDK, it's not great. But it's an easy starting place. I'm going to doom myself to the same placeholder hell Inno has lol

And that's the beauty of a proper design: as you said before, if you design it well you can change it without impacting anything else.

I really wish the personality traits were used more in LT. It was one of those "to-do" things that just never got done. But there's so much potential there. And it's not actually *that much* additional writing to add a bit of flavor in. Specially if you're using a simple system that allows for easy interjections into your script.

That's one of the positive things that LT has going for it: the fact that you can do simple evaluations within a block of text to allow for subtle dialogue variations. It's really curious why it isn't used more in situations like that. It might be yet another feature that were implemented a bit later on in development and none of the old stuff was retrofitted to make use of it.

Its implementation is pretty janky (like, it uses a full-on JavaScript engine behind the scenes to handle expression parsing…AGH) but it does the job well enough. I think its biggest problem is that this system is bolted onto an XML-based dialogue engine. Granted, putting story text into a CDATA block is better than trying to hack it into a JSON object, but schema-less XML is fucking cursed.

I've pretty much relegated myself to having to write a simple language to deal with this in my project. I've experimented with YAML a bit to define story data since its probably the closest you can get to a human-writable data format, but it's just straight up bad. It's like they set out to make a better JSON only to realize that making a markup language actually requires a lot of difficult decisions.

Pulling in an existing language (JavaScript, Lua, Python, etc), sandboxing it, and wrapping some story functionality around it is tempting, but my goal is to stay in my lane and get the hell out of the writer's way. Something like Twine/SugarCube would be perfect but it's not really an embeddable system.

And hey, it wouldn't be the first time I've done something like this. It's kinda fun!

For me, the hard part is figuring out a good combat system. I'm not sure what I'd really want out of LT's combat system at this point. And I'm not at all sure what I'd make for a combat system. Even before I was working on anything myself and I was just trying to come up with some way to make LT's combat interesting, I've come up with dozens of ideas and ruled them all out for various reasons. Usually because I don't think they'd be fun under heavy repetition.

The combat system is one of those things that I wish I could put off indefinitely, but nay. XD As I mentioned a while back, my project is going to be a planet-hopping sci-fi romp, so I'm going to need two combat systems. It wouldn't feel right to me using the same system for both ship combat and ground combat, after all.

I get what Inno was going for with LT's combat system, but I'm not convinced that a turn-based, combo-based combat system is really tenable for this sort of game. Unless you spend a metric ton of time on it, it always feels like you wind up with a tiny handful of exceedingly effective actions that the player just winds up spamming until they win.

In terms of overall functionality, CoC's system is the closest to a traditional RPG combat system and is likely one of the best ones in the genre, but there's a certain stigma behind making yet another CoC clone.

As much as I love Flexible Survival, its combat system is kinda bad.

Tales of Androgyny's combat system is kind of a marvel, but it's a bit too complex for my liking.

This is yet another one of those cases where taking a modular design approach is absolutely wonderful. It gives you the opportunity to easily prototype a system and quickly torpedo when it inevitable doesn't work out.

 

[tehlemon]

I imagine having different text for different states of arousal would probably help. Basically anything to add a bit of variety.

Just gonna go add that to the ol' onenote file...

That's one of the positive things that LT has going for it: the fact that you can do simple evaluations within a block of text to allow for subtle dialogue variations. It's really curious why it isn't used more in situations like that. It might be yet another feature that were implemented a bit later on in development and none of the old stuff was retrofitted to make use of it.

Its implementation is pretty janky (like, it uses a full-on JavaScript engine behind the scenes to handle expression parsing…AGH) but it does the job well enough. I think its biggest problem is that this system is bolted onto an XML-based dialogue engine. Granted, putting story text into a CDATA block is better than trying to hack it into a JSON object, but schema-less XML is fucking cursed.

I still think she went XML for everything just because it's easy. It gives you an easy way to read/write to the file without having to really know anything about what you're doing or having to think about the structure at all. Like, the way it seems to be getting used in LT isn't too different from how young me used ini files when writing bots using mIRC many decades ago lol

I've pretty much relegated myself to having to write a simple language to deal with this in my project. I've experimented with YAML a bit to define story data since its probably the closest you can get to a human-writable data format, but it's just straight up bad. It's like they set out to make a better JSON only to realize that making a markup language actually requires a lot of difficult decisions.

Pulling in an existing language (JavaScript, Lua, Python, etc), sandboxing it, and wrapping some story functionality around it is tempting, but my goal is to stay in my lane and get the hell out of the writer's way. Something like Twine/SugarCube would be perfect but it's not really an embeddable system.

And hey, it wouldn't be the first time I've done something like this. It's kinda fun!

First time for me too. I've been trying to build everything myself just for the challenge of building it myself. I'm really not working on these project with the intention of every actually having anything worth releasing. It's mostly just to give myself shit to do. Less important now than during the pandemic's high point, but its still fun to just have a never ending project to work on when I'm bored.

I've been sort of ripping off how a bunch of other engines work and mashing all my favorite parts together. It's turning into a mess and I'm probably going to scrap everything I've got done regarding scene scripting (as in like, in-game scenes and their writing). I had a couple loose plans when I started, and they didn't all pan out.

The combat system is one of those things that I wish I could put off indefinitely, but nay. XD As I mentioned a while back, my project is going to be a planet-hopping sci-fi romp, so I'm going to need two combat systems. It wouldn't feel right to me using the same system for both ship combat and ground combat, after all.

I get what Inno was going for with LT's combat system, but I'm not convinced that a turn-based, combo-based combat system is really tenable for this sort of game. Unless you spend a metric ton of time on it, it always feels like you wind up with a tiny handful of exceedingly effective actions that the player just winds up spamming until they win.

LT is the prime example of why you *can't* put off combat systems. They're intrinsically tied to your game's progression and if you leave the core loop as a placeholder you'll never really be able to build out game progression in that way. At best you'll just end up with a boring as fuck progression, which is what we have now. LT's skill trees are boring as fuck. There's only about 10 nodes on the entire tree that are interesting.

In terms of overall functionality, CoC's system is the closest to a traditional RPG combat system and is likely one of the best ones in the genre, but there's a certain stigma behind making yet another CoC clone.

As much as I love Flexible Survival, its combat system is kinda bad.

Tales of Androgyny's combat system is kind of a marvel, but it's a bit too complex for my liking.

This is yet another one of those cases where taking a modular design approach is absolutely wonderful. It gives you the opportunity to easily prototype a system and quickly torpedo when it inevitable doesn't work out.

FS's combat is boring as hell. At this point, anytime I play that game I just cheat and give myself 25 to every stat so that I can mostly ignore the combat. It's really an example of what I *don't* like with combat. It takes a ton of player actions to get through early on, and its really repetitive. I'd seriously rather it just roll a dice and tell me if I won or lost rather than making me spam a key over and over.

CoC has a similar problem, but at least it gets out of its own way and lets you get through combat nice and quick fairly early into the game. And the combat actions are more interesting, which is nice.

I really need to finally play Tales of Androgyny.

Aug... I don't know. I'm weird with these games. I really like optional complexity that's rewarded. But I also really like higher level game play where I can avoid getting bogged down in combat once its getting repetitive. Whatever system I end up going with, I want to find a functional 'quick combat' option to allow you to get through combat more quickly.

The only combat systems I've liked in porn games are the ones that are more 'games with porn' instead of 'porn with a game'. Portals of Phereon is a good example of that. It's way more of a game that happens to have porn in it, and I rather enjoy the complexity of the combat now that I understand it. But its not really a game where the game play is what people are getting off on lol

As for LT, so as to stay on topic and hopefully maintain the mercy of the mods, I don't know what the fuck Inno should do at this point. I think the current skill trees should be scrapped entirely. They're boring. Pull a WoW, remove all the fluff but give less points, and then just make every point you put in one of the interesting nodes. But the combat itself, fuck if I know. As it stands now, there's no possible way to add progression to the system. It probably needs to just be scrapped entirely.

And while we're at it, scrap the fetish trees. Like, its cool that there's so many fetishes added. But how you gain/lose them is boring as hell. And there really binary choices when they clearly weren't intended to be. It's a sandbox mechanic that just didn't go anywhere..

 

[Sarkath]

I still think she went XML for everything just because it's easy. It gives you an easy way to read/write to the file without having to really know anything about what you're doing or having to think about the structure at all. Like, the way it seems to be getting used in LT isn't too different from how young me used ini files when writing bots using mIRC many decades ago lol

The problem is that she made it difficult by making everything schema-less. Take a look at the serialization code for a great example of this. I'm not sure how much you worked with it, but Java/.NET/whatever are fully capable of handling XML (de)serialization more or less automatically, but LT's approach is to manually build the XML document. When I actually gave a shit, I noticed that the serialization logic took a surprising amount of CPU time. When I looked at the serialization code I noped the fuck out and gave up, lol.

First time for me too. I've been trying to build everything myself just for the challenge of building it myself. I'm really not working on these project with the intention of every actually having anything worth releasing. It's mostly just to give myself shit to do. Less important now than during the pandemic's high point, but its still fun to just have a never ending project to work on when I'm bored.

For me this is more or less about building the kind of game that I've wanted to play for a long time.

Admittedly, I am a little worried about Starfield sucking me in (especially after the modding scene gets their hands on it), since I'm sure that's gonna hit a lot of the right buttons.

LT is the prime example of why you *can't* put off combat systems.

I guess it would be more accurate to say, "shove it further down the pipeline like the filthy procrastinator I am."

FS's combat is boring as hell. At this point, anytime I play that game I just cheat and give myself 25 to every stat so that I can mostly ignore the combat.

Same, honestly.

They did open up a Patreon poll about revamping the combat, but I'd be surprised if that happens anytime soon given their switch to Godot.

CoC has a similar problem, but at least it gets out of its own way and lets you get through combat nice and quick fairly early into the game. And the combat actions are more interesting, which is nice.

It's basically a light RPG combat system, which I think is a bit more in line with expectations. IMO, it's biggest issue is that it's a bit unrefined and its UI is kind of dreadful to navigate (I get that they were trying to maintain a unified UI, but still: ugh).

I really need to finally play Tales of Androgyny.

Ooh yeah. It's a bit on the overwhelming side, but it's probably one of the most innovative systems I've seen so far. It essentially has a full-on stance and stability system, with grapples, and incorporates a dynamic sex system in the combat engine.

Aug... I don't know. I'm weird with these games. I really like optional complexity that's rewarded. But I also really like higher level game play where I can avoid getting bogged down in combat once its getting repetitive. Whatever system I end up going with, I want to find a functional 'quick combat' option to allow you to get through combat more quickly.

Yeah, finding that balance between complexity and Cookie Clicker is really tough, and lately I've been finding myself looking outside of the adult gaming sphere for inspiration since those games tend to live and die at the hands of their combat mechanics.

As for my current thoughts: I find that Pokémon's TTL is about right where it needs to be for random encounters, I rather like that Earthbound lets you auto-win low level fights and will definitely consider that (basically, the prompt would come up and you could pick "ignore," "auto-win", or "submit" to be able to see the scenes), and I find Final Fantasy VII's materia system to be a simple, yet powerful, system for choosing skills and abilities.

The only combat systems I've liked in porn games are the ones that are more 'games with porn' instead of 'porn with a game'. Portals of Phereon is a good example of that.

I'll have to check that one out. Thanks!

As for LT, so as to stay on topic and hopefully maintain the mercy of the mods, I don't know what the fuck Inno should do at this point. I think the current skill trees should be scrapped entirely. They're boring. Pull a WoW, remove all the fluff but give less points, and then just make every point you put in one of the interesting nodes.

Don't forget about some of the grossly overpowered racials. I mean, I understand why a wolf-morph might be stronger than a human, but a +25 physique and +25 unarmed bonus is just nuts. There's a reason games generally tend to bend the rules a bit in order to balance things out.

Another thing that doesn't help LT's combat system is that so many critical strikes depend on the "only when used thrice" rule.

Oh, another thing that doesn't help is that the game literally tells you what moves your opponent is using. Sigh.

And while we're at it, scrap the fetish trees. Like, its cool that there's so many fetishes added. But how you gain/lose them is boring as hell. And there really binary choices when they clearly weren't intended to be. It's a sandbox mechanic that just didn't go anywhere..

Not to mention that it's a bit, uh, half-baked:

 

[tehlemon]

This is getting too long, time to collapse the post.

The problem is that she made it difficult by making everything schema-less. Take a look at the serialization code for a great example of this. I'm not sure how much you worked with it, but Java/.NET/whatever are fully capable of handling XML (de)serialization more or less automatically, but LT's approach is to manually build the XML document. When I actually gave a shit, I noticed that the serialization logic took a surprising amount of CPU time. When I looked at the serialization code I noped the fuck out and gave up, lol.

To be honest, I've only ever used XML when working on C# projects during uni. Entirely because it did all the work for me like you said. It was never the right solution, it was the lazy solution. I just figured she was doing the same lol

It's been like three years or so since I've bothered looking at that part of the game. I honestly completely forgot how she was doing this.

For me this is more or less about building the kind of game that I've wanted to play for a long time.

Admittedly, I am a little worried about Starfield sucking me in (especially after the modding scene gets their hands on it), since I'm sure that's gonna hit a lot of the right buttons.

The game I want to play is a more interesting version of LT's slave management sandbox. Or, I guess more accurately, a way more interesting version of free cities. And I kind of really like emergent game play in games. Give me a a fairly simple sim with lots of variables that leads to interesting results and I'm having a good time. I'd rather create the porn version of dwarf fortress than make another text adventure, even if I'm using exploration as a driver for progression with the rest.

I've got a prototyping/testing tool that'll absolutely end up being in the game, if it ever reaches the point of being a game, where the game just kind of plays itself in pseudo-real time and you can just watch all your NPCs going about their lives. It's literally just a simple system where its taking "turns" automatically, but its fun to watch the NPCs going through their routine and seeing how small changes affect them. It's like those moments in LT where you get to spy on your slaves doing there thing, but on crack. And my favorite thing about developing something like that is watching how small additions can have a big impact on what's happens.

When I first found LT, I thought that it was a sandbox game and probably going in that direction. Boy was I wrong about that. Probably why it bothers me so much how jank that part of the game is lol

Although really, the more I work on my own project the more I side eye this game. Because holy fuck, it's really *not that hard* to create complex behaviors and have lots of characters with lots of variables per character and not have it run like ass. I mean, I knew that, just look at like, RTS games and shit. LT shits the bed when tracking like 50 entities. I was playing games 20 years ago that would track 10000 individual units with as complex of an AI. And the more I work on this shit, the more I realize how easy some of the pitfalls Inno has fallen into are to avoid. There's absolutely no reason why save files should be so fucking massive for so few NPCs, for example.

I guess it would be more accurate to say, "shove it further down the pipeline like the filthy procrastinator I am."

I'm ADHD as fuck and I'm usually working on this stuff while off meds lol

I'll get a lot of work done when the passion is there. And if I want to do something else, fuck it. I say embrace your inner procrastinator, as long you're enjoying the stuff you're doing instead. But also don't make the stuff you're procrastinating on your job lol

Without any joking, I seriously wonder if Inno has ADHD and isn't medicated. She behaves like I would if I wasn't medicated and didn't have any external pressure to do anything.

Same, honestly.

They did open up a Patreon poll about revamping the combat, but I'd be surprised if that happens anytime soon given their switch to Godot.

I'm not really counting on anything happening anytime soon with that game. They have so many partially done story lines and re-writes. Plus moving engines at the same time. I have a feeling a number of the story lines are being put on hold until they're able to do more with it. The current version of the game is pretty damn restrictive.

Ooh yeah. It's a bit on the overwhelming side, but it's probably one of the most innovative systems I've seen so far. It essentially has a full-on stance and stability system, with grapples, and incorporates a dynamic sex system in the combat engine.

Shit, okay I'll play that after testing out Unholy Arts' new update. That sounds fun. And I'm always drawn to the overwhelming games lol

Yeah, finding that balance between complexity and Cookie Clicker is really tough, and lately I've been finding myself looking outside of the adult gaming sphere for inspiration since those games tend to live and die at the hands of their combat mechanics.

As for my current thoughts: I find that Pokémon's TTL is about right where it needs to be for random encounters, I rather like that Earthbound lets you auto-win low level fights and will definitely consider that (basically, the prompt would come up and you could pick "ignore," "auto-win", or "submit" to be able to see the scenes), and I find Final Fantasy VII's materia system to be a simple, yet powerful, system for choosing skills and abilities.

I tried looking at the games I like most, but it turns out their all MMOs, FPSes, or exploration platformers like the Ori games. And I don't have the artistic talent for anything like that lol

FFVII, also the original Dragon Age are two games with systems I liked. I like the idea of being able to set up conditional scripts for your characters and then letting them play out the fight without player input. But that's a pretty fucking complicated thing to create lol

That said, it's right in line with the kind of emergent game play I was talking about earlier, so its definitely something I'm going to *try* and create at some points. Because fuck it. What's the worst that happens? It ends up being good and taking a ton of work? lol

I'll have to check that one out. Thanks!

I feel like I should have included a warning about that one being overwhelming lol

The UI is a cluster fuck and pretty overwhelming. It's one of those games where there's a lot to it, and the UI is a mix of badly organized and organized for experienced players without thinking about how it'll make things complicated for new players. It also has a couple difficulty walls that it won't explain well. It took me like, 5 or 6 games before I puzzled out how to get past some of them. Just be ready to ask questions over in their thread (and then you'll probably get an answer for one other person or myself, depending on what time it is lol)

Don't forget about some of the grossly overpowered racials. I mean, I understand why a wolf-morph might be stronger than a human, but a +25 physique and +25 unarmed bonus is just nuts. There's a reason games generally tend to bend the rules a bit in order to balance things out.

Aug, yeah. That shit. Again, this is stuff that I think other games figured out ages ago. Give interesting or meaningful non-combat related bonuses, or limit most of the bonuses to small defensive bonuses.

And yeah, that wolf bonus is fucking bonkers. Like, isn't the unarmed bonus capped at 100? The fucking racial gives 25% of the cap? Like, why? Again the progression in that game is so fucked.

Another thing that doesn't help LT's combat system is that so many critical strikes depend on the "only when used thrice" rule.

Yeah, the rule of 3 system is dumb. Just wholesale dumb.

Not to mention that it's a bit, uh, half-baked:

View attachment 1771461

Yeah. Honestly, I could write another couple pages on how much I hate the fetish system, but this is getting long enough. I realize its just a super simple system meant to turn on or off some optional dialog and to influence the NPC AI, but I just hate how simple and static it is.

The couple perks that you get with the right combinations are interesting. I originally expected that whole system to get expanded with more stuff like that, but it just never happened.

 

[Sarkath]

This is getting too long, time to collapse the post.

Good call!

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[Tattletale21]

Eh, this isn't the strangest diversion this thread has taken. At least we're still talking about game design.

*Flashbacks to the three-page tangent on trains*

 

[tehlemon]

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*Flashbacks to the three-page tangent on trains*

Oh yeah, that was fun. The train room I was helping build out for a very wealthy individual got an upgrade recently. I had help build out this really complex module lighting system for it. Now we've made that controllable through a iPhone app and website. And then we hooked up a ton of cameras in the room so that he can stream everything going on from various angles.

The dude now has a full train room that's web enabled and able to be streamed anywhere from multiple camera angles lol

Its honestly really cool to see someone like that guy be so passionate about something so goofy, and I kind of love it. And for a wealthy as fuck dude, he's generally a good guy. I'm actually getting sick of having the conversation where I assure him that I'm not agreeing to work on this stuff because he owns the company I work for lol

 

[Captainlewd138]

So i'm wondering how to get your slave to use level drain on you? If it's even possible...

 

[Saxxy]

How many estimates are we gonna go through for this one?

 

[crash.7ds]

View attachment 1772794
How many estimates are we gonna go through for this one?

Answer: Yes. We will see Yes many.

 

[Sarkath]

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[tehlemon]

I'm putting mine in quotes because having two posts in a row where the whole thing is spoilered is weird looking lol

Avalonia is easily the closest I've come to a cross-platform WPF. Data bindings aren't quite as intuitive in my experience, but I find that I can just copy and paste a surprising amount of old WPF code over and it'll Just Work™. It's even capable of spitting out WebAssembly nowadays if that sort of thing interests you.

I'd say the biggest issue I've run into with applications is that getting Mac apps to feel native takes a bit of effort, but application lifecycles on macOS are quite a bit different than Windows/Linux (basically, one instance with multiple document windows, rather than multiple application instances). Not really a big deal for games or single-window applications, though.

Cool, I'll add it to my list of things I need to check out. It's a list that grows without end lol

Having to learn something new from scratch is the main reason why I've been putting off thinking about this one. So if its that similar this might be a good direction to look towards. And luckily I won't be thinking about macOS for awhile, since my mac broke and it'll be awhile until I can snag another one from work for free.

Last time I looked at it there wasn't really enough to critique. The new UI doesn't exactly have the best aesthetics, but at least all of the functionality is right there in reach.

Aug... Hopefully the UI at least works. I like the minimal UI, except for inventory management, so I hope they keep it simple at the very least. That's my main problem with TiTS these days. Their new UI is... not great. I hate it.

Not to mention that you eventually have to reach a point where the buff runs its course. In the Elder Scrolls games you can do a surprising amount of early-game DPS if you roll an Argonian or Khajiit and run around clawing people, but that only gets you so far.

True. But that would require having a progression curve, which we really don't have currently.

I also get the impression that one of the design objectives (especially given its weird combo system) was simply "be different than CoC."

Yeah, probably. Which is too bad, because CoC wasn't terrible. It has a lot of glaring flaws, but overall there's plenty of good stuff to look at for what works and what doesn't.

But I get it. It's like during the MMO boom when everyone was just trying to be 'not like WoW' as their selling point. There's a lot of developers who don't want to be like the popular thing hoping that that's how they'll distinguish themselves. But the popular thing is usually popular for a reason. I'm perfectly happen to look back at CoC and see what worked and what didn't, and borrow from it anytime that'd be valuable.