Ren'Py Making a Mark [v0.18.00] [Fasder]

[Fasder]

Okay so I'm going to try to address the energy problem here.
The things with energy is that it is very easy to maintain once you start buying food. And you should be able to buy food by the second week at the very least. I know it's possible to not get the job at the school still and it's something I have on my to-do list, it just didn't make it in this round of changes. That means it can be very problematic to get any food.

When you don't have access to food then it's still pretty easy to maintain your energy levels using a pretty simple stat managing system I.E. Wake up-> Work out -> Lecture -> Take a nap -> Shower. At this point you should be at around 30 energy. This should be enough to perform any of the other tasks that day, granted you may still need a second nap.

But I hear you guys loud and clear, I will do my best to balance this better. That being said, this type of balancing is difficult to do as there is an element of free choice. It's also worth pointing out that I'm the only person testing the game before release and because I know more or less everything about the game then I automatically become a pretty bad fit for testing.

For now try to buy and eat food it should make things a whole lot easier.

I really appreciate you guys taking the time to play and give feedback!

Does anyone know the requirements to get the bar event with sarah? Im talking to her at the pool, only choosing the first option when you massage sun lotion on her, and I waited 5 weeks now and still hasn't popped up.

This is not in the game right now, sorry. It's in likely to be included in upcoming content.

 

[Fasder]

Hey, thanks for playing! And glad you... mostly... liked it.

Assuming we're using a scale of 0-100 at least.

That assumption is wrong, the scale is 0-70 and because you jump to a label after each action you reduce energy by -3 so you end up with 67 as your maximum.

Speaking of sleep, the player should also be able to sleep and carry on to the next day at anytime after the evening.

That's an easy fix, I've never seen it as a problem before. It may cause issues in the future if I implements any nightly activities. So having more of a range on it seem a bit safer. But I see what you're saying.

The sister also stopped showing up in her room at 20:00 for me at some point

That's intended, I don't want players to grind something thinking it will eventually lead to something else when in fact it does not. It's intended as a repeatable scene to get your affection up and establish some of the story.

Honestly, if you worked out the energy issues the game would be setup nicely future updates.

It's an iterative process, I will try to fix this the best I can. If it still not great for the next update I will tweak it again and so on. Both me and the players need to feel like it's a good balance. The only thing I'm skeptical about is that people are actually eating food.

I don't really know what the hell is going on with the story

I like writing the story and it's one of my favorite elements of developing the game. Do you have anything more specific you can point out? I'm not sure about how many actually get the subtext of what is going on.

but... titties.

The MC also isn't a pubescent douche, which is nice.

I don't understand why they are so common. Aren't there actual adults who likes getting dirty?

 

[secrecy]

Many thanks for feedback. There will be an energy patch for last version?

 

[Fasder]

Many thanks for feedback. There will be an energy patch for last version?

Patching is not really an option due to how the game is packaged. But I've been thinking about making it more patch-able. Another version though I.E. 0.03.02 is not out of the question. That being said it will release to my patrons, but seeing how quickly the game appeared here I doubt it will make much of a difference for you guys.

I actually just changed the values(-2 instead of -3) to see the cause and effect and while it doesn't overlap as well it seems to be fine. But on the other hand I thought it was fine for this version too.

There is also the "cheat question" that I get every other week. I might just make a cheat menu for money and the possibility to turn energy of entirely. The problem with this is that I will not get the right feedback from people because they aren't testing my mechanics the way they are supposed to be played. Much like a walkthrough, it's a double edged sword.

So what I'm thinking right at this moment is probably that I will make a cheat menu and release the version with the modified values. In addition to this I will likely remove the script files (or at least some of them) from the archiving. This means I would just have to release a modified version of a script file to make changes instead of having people downloading the full 450 MB for a small change.

 

[PoEbalu]

dem screens,straight out of 90's

 

[GrandJury]

@Fasder great game man! keep it going.

 

[FlipTopBin]

@Fasder just wanted to say great game, keep up the good work.

+1 to the energy comments

I can understand your reticence on a walkthrough from a testing point of view but for players it is a god send and will make them love you more.

However, if you don't do a walkthrough you absolutly HAVE to do either a changelog or some kind of in game quest log/achievements/hints so people can tell how much new content they should be looking for and when to give up.

 

[Fasder]

@Fasder just wanted to say great game, keep up the good work.

+1 to the energy comments

I can understand your reticence on a walkthrough from a testing point of view but for players it is a god send and will make them love you more.

However, if you don't do a walkthrough you absolutly HAVE to do either a changelog or some kind of in game quest log/achievements/hints so people can tell how much new content they should be looking for and when to give up.

I have made a walkthrough(see OP), just not for 0.03.01 yet, that will probably come in a week or so. This is to ensure that I get the feedback I need.
There is a changelog for my patrons. Since I wasn't the one to upload 0.03.01 version here, I can't tell you why it was excluded on this site.
An in-game log for the events you have seen and not seen is doable and it's likely to be added at some point.

 

[openSquadw4]

This game is good , but up-to-date is slow .. Cant wait next version

 

[FlipTopBin]

BUG: When you give the hammer back in exchange for the ear plugs the option to break the lock in the bathroom re-appears and you can go through the whole get the hammer for 50 and break the lock thing again. You don't loose the ability to peak though.

Feature Request: I too am finding the inability to advance time easily is becoming a problem. I really like the hour glass facility in Man of the House which allows you to advance time no matter what location you are in and allows you to wait until a certain time. This would really useful here too.

 

[Fasder]

BUG: When you give the hammer back in exchange for the ear plugs the option to break the lock in the bathroom re-appears and you can go through the whole get the hammer for 50 and break the lock thing again. You don't loose the ability to peak though.

Feature Request: I too am finding the inability to advance time easily is becoming a problem. I really like the hour glass facility in Man of the House which allows you to advance time no matter what location you are in and allows you to wait until a certain time. This would really useful here too.

Thanks for the bug report. I'll mark it down.
The advance time this is something I've commented on previously and it's mainly due to the fact that I want to reserve the possibility of adding stuff in relation to this interaction.
Just because something makes sense right now does not automatically mean it will make sense in future releases.
I may still add a feature like this, it all depends on if I can realize my initial plan in some sense.

 

[Fission Mailed]

Adding a "waste time" button seems like a no brainier, if it makes us skip over an interaction of some sort pop up an "Odd, I feel I'm missing something important" text and then attempt trigger it again the next day (or next week if it can only be triggered on a specific day). Or, in the same vein, pop up a "No, can't waste time there's people to save" text (or something that hints there's something you need to do somewhere rather than just blocking the time-skip).

 

[Deadlyreaper]

ok game down load install..dam I have to go to the Toilet and then in the kitchen to drink something in the room and ... um ... yes .. I'm tired have no energy sleep must ..... get up I'm hungry in the kitchen to make something to eat have forgotten something in the other room .... oh no again no time to gamble have no more energy sleep first .... then wake up noooooo I must go to the Toilet and shopping I also do not gamble with anything else after that I have to sleep no longer have energy ........

and? do you notice something? your stupid energy burn system sucks totally how ridiculous is that please? for me it looks like the trial to stretch the game so it does not notice that there is not much to do

 

[Lorric17]

For those of you who want to play v0.03.01 without having to worry much about energy, I have "hacked" the functions.rpy file and changed it to add 1 instead of subtracting 3 whenever you change rooms. I have also capped energy at 100 in the same place.

Unpack the attached zip file and copy functions.rpy into your Life / game folder (the one where archive.rpa is). Then start the game and it should be working. Don't try and use this file with other versions of the game! The changes are around line 103 in the file.

@Fasder I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me

 

[Fission Mailed]

ok game down load install..dam I have to go to the Toilet and then in the kitchen to drink something in the room and ... um ... yes .. I'm tired have no energy sleep must ..... get up I'm hungry in the kitchen to make something to eat have forgotten something in the other room .... oh no again no time to gamble have no more energy sleep first .... then wake up noooooo I must go to the Toilet and shopping I also do not gamble with anything else after that I have to sleep no longer have energy ........

and? do you notice something? your stupid energy burn system sucks totally how ridiculous is that please? for me it looks like the trial to stretch the game so it does not notice that there is not much to do

lol
You don't know how little there is to do until the Sis stops showing up at 8pm because the Dev doesn't want you "grinding" more points with her that way. Once she stops showing up there is fuck all to do from ~6pm until Midnight other than spam the "watch tv" button. Then you can only grind points with her when she's in the pool, and only till about 35pts...then I'm not sure how you get more, I got bored and somehow all the affection stats magically increased to 50.

 

[Fasder]

For those of you who want to play v0.03.01 without having to worry much about energy, I have "hacked" the functions.rpy file and changed it to add 1 instead of subtracting 3 whenever you change rooms. I have also capped energy at 100 in the same place.

Unpack the attached zip file and copy functions.rpy into your Life / game folder (the one where archive.rpa is). Then start the game and it should be working. Don't try and use this file with other versions of the game! The changes are around line 103 in the file.

@Fasder I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me

No worries!

 

[gestved]

when I played 0.2 I never eaten anything, if you really want players to eat everyday, you may want to add a hunger stat, that if it gets too low energy goes away much faster. Also, if food restores energy, when you have lunch with sister you should get some energy back as well

on sandboxes like this one, it's pretty common for players to go through all locations at different times just to see if they find something to do, so if moving around consumes energy it's no wonder a lot of people complained

 

[Arldor]

Hi
Cool game! Any walkthrough for ver. 3.0?

 

[Fasder]

Hi
Cool game! Any walkthrough for ver. 3.0?

Thanks! Not yet, it will likely be something I release in a week or so.

 

[Lycan Huntz4Oppai]

This is not in the game right now, sorry. It's in likely to be included in upcoming content.

Thank you for clearing that up!