4.70 star(s) 15 Votes

xizaaR

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Mar 29, 2022
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I'm interested in your feedback about sandboxes in general. I'm torn on how much to implement without it becoming too confusing of a system. What do you not like about them? What do you think I should avoid?

Thanks
I often find them tedious, boring and just really make it hard for me to be interested in the story when it's as disconnected as it is in most sandboxes. I just really prefer a full on VN.
 

LaETDev

Newbie
Game Developer
Dec 23, 2017
61
267
I often find them tedious, boring and just really make it hard for me to be interested in the story when it's as disconnected as it is in most sandboxes. I just really prefer a full on VN.
Yeah that's fair. Those are my concerns as well. I've played a few games where the sandbox just gets in the way of getting to the content and it's important that I avoid that feeling. Ideally any girl you want to hang out with is just a couple clicks away, instead of behind a wall of "purchase this item, put it in this room, text her this, now visit her at this time of night". Getting the flow and speed to feel natural will be important going forward. Thanks.

As for any decay system I implement, I wouldn't use it as a means to punish the player but more as a way of diversifying the sex scenes. If you haven't seen a girl in a while maybe she craves it more when you visit, and has different positions/dialogue, that kind of jazz. I'm not interested in "relationship" decay values.

Interesting thoughts for the future for sure.
 
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Comaco

Member
Aug 10, 2017
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Yeah that's fair. Those are my concerns as well. I've played a few games where the sandbox just gets in the way of getting to the content and it's important that I avoid that feeling. Ideally any girl you want to hang out with is just a couple clicks away, instead of behind a wall of "purchase this item, put it in this room, text her this, now visit her at this time of night". Getting the flow and speed to feel natural will be important going forward. Thanks.

As for any decay system I implement, I would use it as a means to punish the player but more as a way of diversifying the sex scenes. If you haven't seen a girl in a while maybe she craves it more when you visit, and has different positions/dialogue, that kind of jazz. I'm not interested in "relationship" decay values.

Interesting thoughts for the future for sure.
The main problem with sandbox games is that they mostly don't work well with early access development like this. I much prefer a VN where you can toggle each character's interactions on or off entirely instead of having to navigate a sandbox to find the content with each character.

I am interested in playing a game ONCE and getting all the content served up, with me preferably being allowed to choose which interactions happen and which don't, in case the game includes a fetish I don't like. Check out Apartment 69 for a tolerable Sandbox, since it includes a walkthrough telling you exactly how to get to the next scene for each character without ANY grinding at all. Basically, the sandbox in that game just allows you to choose the order of events, so you can jump straight to your preferred content before doing the rest for each release. Having several variations of a scene you can't all get in one playthrough, especially when it isn't immediately clear which choice leads to each variation, feels like the game doesn't respect my time.

This is also the reason I prefer harem games. Having to play a game through multiple times to see each character's content takes up too much of my precious time for my liking. Especially if you have to repeat some scenes each playthrough, and even more with episodic releases, since I'd have to maintain several saves and follow each storyline for each release. Too much effort to be worth it with so many other great games readily available doing things to my preference.

In that respect, the old abandoned VN Offcuts did it right, developing each character's storyline to the end one at a time before releasing the next one.
 

LaETDev

Newbie
Game Developer
Dec 23, 2017
61
267
The main problem with sandbox games is that they mostly don't work well with early access development like this. I much prefer a VN where you can toggle each character's interactions on or off entirely instead of having to navigate a sandbox to find the content with each character.

I am interested in playing a game ONCE and getting all the content served up, with me preferably being allowed to choose which interactions happen and which don't, in case the game includes a fetish I don't like. Check out Apartment 69 for a tolerable Sandbox, since it includes a walkthrough telling you exactly how to get to the next scene for each character without ANY grinding at all. Basically, the sandbox in that game just allows you to choose the order of events, so you can jump straight to your preferred content before doing the rest for each release. Having several variations of a scene you can't all get in one playthrough, especially when it isn't immediately clear which choice leads to each variation, feels like the game doesn't respect my time.

This is also the reason I prefer harem games. Having to play a game through multiple times to see each character's content takes up too much of my precious time for my liking. Especially if you have to repeat some scenes each playthrough, and even more with episodic releases, since I'd have to maintain several saves and follow each storyline for each release. Too much effort to be worth it with so many other great games readily available doing things to my preference.

In that respect, the old abandoned VN Offcuts did it right, developing each character's storyline to the end one at a time before releasing the next one.
Those are good points and I'll keep them in mind. I'll check out those other games you mentioned for ideas. I find the idea of developing a character all the way through for a release -at least up until a major plot point- to be a pretty good one.
 

yoyomistro

Engaged Member
Jan 15, 2017
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Why does this have a parody tag? I'm not up on all the new anime and shit, my knowledge is all pre-Truck-kun era.
 

LaETDev

Newbie
Game Developer
Dec 23, 2017
61
267
in love already
Thanks, first couple updates will be pretty enormous in scope as I look to properly introduce each character with 3-5 scenes, most getting an animation similar to Mei's movie night, etc... We'll see how it goes. I'll post previews on the Patreon if it doesn't get blasted before then.

Stay tuned.
 
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TheDick69+

Active Member
Jun 29, 2021
654
1,017
I'm interested in your feedback about sandboxes in general. I'm torn on how much to implement without it becoming too confusing of a system. What do you not like about them? What do you think I should avoid?

Thanks
My feedback about sandboxes is a big NO! Just now I play one game with sandbox and many, many others without. That I stand sandbox in that game, me and names doesn't go well either so don't remember the name, is that the hints tell you exactly what to do. All you have to do is skip time, made easy, and you're there.

Another game I liked also had sandbox in the first 3 episodes, and I wasn't certain if I should continue even if I liked the game. Then he posted a non-sandbox version of ep 3 and asked if he should continue with that or keep the sandbox. Now the game is an ordinary VN with choices instead, I was one of the strongest voices to advice him to do that instead. :cool:

I liked the start of this game but not certain if I'll keep playing this with sandbox. (Stopped playing another game with uncle, niece, school, horror and so on with sandbox even if loved the game, you all know which!). So, if you considered to skip sandbox I'm certain I'll keep playing this. (y)
 

LaETDev

Newbie
Game Developer
Dec 23, 2017
61
267
It's just going to be morning/noon/evening/night with a radial menu that lets you pick from the available girls at each given time. I'll have to split it up between the city/school/dorms if it gets too crowded.

So menu->location->girl

No nothing more than that is planned sandbox-wise.
 
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jarb5

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Feb 4, 2019
20
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Thanks, I'll be back in two weeks to continue development. First couple updates will be pretty enormous in scope as I look to properly introduce each character with 3-5 scenes, most getting an animation similar to Mei's movie night, etc... We'll see how it goes. I'll post previews on the Patreon if it doesn't get blasted before then.

Stay tuned.
great cant wait for the updates
 

aleafinthewind

New Member
Nov 11, 2019
9
14
I just finished the demo and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Cute girls, interesting plot hooks, decent humor while (mostly) avoiding lolrandom, and the author shows some surprising technical prowess for a Koikatsu VN (I'm a huge fan of the 3d lookarounds). I enjoy the author's sense of humor, and actually chuckled out loud at some scenes.

There were a few minor typos and capitalization or grammar issues, such as mixing up "your" and "you're", but for the most part the writing was fine. The characters are well differentiated in appearance and speaking style, and they mostly avoid Koikatsu Face Syndrome (Kumi comes close, but it's mostly due to her hairstyle). The characters are a bit cliched, but none of them felt poorly done in what's been shown so far. Mei and Emiho are both standouts in my mind, and the latter is only in the demo for a few minutes!

(Also, how much of the inspiration for Emiho was YunYun from Konosuba?)

I'm curious how the full version will implement toggleable horror sections. It seems to be a huge part of the story's framing and not easily removed. I hope it does work out, as the loss of focus on character stories to spend time on tedious supernatural blathering were my least favorite parts of competing VNs.

Regarding the sandbox elements, I'm for it if it's done well with no affection grinding and no constant searching for the next character story (or if it at least contains an integrated guide). In other words, so long as I never find myself watching the same scene thirty times, or clicking on every option just to see if a new scene appears. Though I'm mainly for sandbox because I'm a completionist and a sandbox means there's less likely to be missable content. If it's possible to make the story linear without missing anything, that's fine too.

All in all, I'm definitely keeping an eye on this one. I can't wait for the full version!
 

OhGodNotAgain

Well-Known Member
Aug 11, 2023
1,360
3,394
It's just going to be morning/noon/evening/night with a radial menu that lets you pick from the available girls at each given time. I'll have to split it up between the city/school/dorms if it gets too crowded.

So menu->location->girl

No nothing more than that is planned sandbox-wise.
Will there be events where we will have to skip an entire week or more to get to?
 

LaETDev

Newbie
Game Developer
Dec 23, 2017
61
267
Will there be events where we will have to skip an entire week or more to get to?
Usually the way you see time programmed in a VN (based on my limited research) is that people literally hardcode day minimums you have to hit before an event can be trigged, like you need to get to day 160 before you can fuck said character.

The way I've programmed the event system is that the amount of days passed is meaningless, the only time that matters is the section of the day you're on and the day of the week, after that time does not exist and is only pushed forward by the events themselves. Lore-wise this is explained later.

So an event has a day of the week and time of the day that it occurs at and that's it. Each event has a list of prerequisite events that need to occur for it to show up though. So a bisexual scene between two girls will require you to see both of those girls prereq scenes before it automatically appears on it's day. Main events simply occur after the previous main event has been triggered as completed.

It's important to me that the player never feels like they want to hit the skip button repeatedly to get to content.

Let's say there's a scenario where you've exhausted all the current character scenes in a patch, but you have 3 main events left that all occur on Monday (a worst case scenario). Technically you'd have to skip through to that event right now, but ideally the player is rewarded for also spending time with the girls during their unique animations (think Mei's movie night). Mei's movie night animation currently has 14 very short scripts to pull from so that every time you spend time with her you get a slightly different interaction. Also whenever your relationship "levels up" with a girl the animation will change, so on the next version of Mei's movie night she'll be slightly closer to the MC, sitting in a different position. It's designed this way so that if you're playing through the game, maybe you'll say "hey, I haven't sat in the library with Emiho for a while" and be rewarded for doing so. Instead of the typical "You spent time with Emiho, +1 to relationship." Is it mandatory to do so? No. But there will eventually be benefits to doing so. Most of the girls will have one of these animations in the next patch, and Mei will have one new one (because she's the star).

It's up to me as the designer to ensure that these animations/scripts feel rewarding to take part in.

But I also have the ability to just query the event lists and see if there's nothing available and just stuff a big skip button directly on the page to take you to the next week or something. I understand some people are impatient, we'll see how it goes.


(Also, how much of the inspiration for Emiho was YunYun from Konosuba?)

I'm curious how the full version will implement toggleable horror sections.

Regarding the sandbox elements, I'm for it if it's done well with no affection grinding and no constant searching for the next character story (or if it at least contains an integrated guide).
I'll be honest. I don't watch much anime and I have never heard of Konosuba. I actually have to do research into stuff when I try to add specific anime references... or rely on my teammate who does watch, and reads a lot of manga.

Horror scenes that I feel are actually scary will be replaced by a short narration that appears on the screen to explain what happened in a non-scary way, so for that ending scene in the demo it would just be "the MC passes out after seeing a flashback of Mei in the shower, a screeching noise overwhelming his senses" or something stupid like that, then it'll just skip ahead to the next image. I don't expect many people to use this so I won't put major effort into it. That said, I've got some pretty fucked up horror shit planned for far in the future so who knows.

There will be no affection grinding in this game. But in the future girls will react positively to an MC who spends time with her often.
 
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Woodstock_1983

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Sep 16, 2020
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They should put a tag for superpowers if there are super powers. At the beginning the girl threw fire, are they magical characters?
 

Bob Jared

Active Member
Sep 22, 2017
654
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Not bad so far. Internal thoughts should be marked as such to distinguish them from spoken dialog though.

Also, pretty sure Haya using the ball as a springboard (and therefore touching it) while it was still airborn doesn't count as a dodge or catch so she should have been out with the victory going to Satsuki.
 
4.70 star(s) 15 Votes