Others No Trace Of Luck [Development Thread] [Godot]

[NoTraceOfLuck]

I liked the fact that I was losing. it's always better to have some RNG in battles rather than a guaranteed win. In my opinion, you don't have to make the game easier otherwise it would feel like a slideshow to me.

There are currently 4 ways to lose a date:

1. You lose because you repeated questions too often
2. You lost immediately because you picked one really bad choice
3. You lose because you didn't complete the main dialogues (Poker Training, etc...)
4. You lose because you didn't make enough 'good' responses

I plan to still keep #1, #2, and #3

#4 is the only one I am planning to remove, because I feel like it's not clear right now if you've progressed enough. Sometimes it feels like you didn't do anything wrong, but you still lose. So it will still be possible to lose, and it will still be possible to "win" without fully unlocking all the memories.

Were you aware of the #4 scenario / is that one of the scenarios you liked? I wasn't sure if anybody even knew that scenario existed since it isn't explained anywhere and I don't show it anywhere in the game.

 

[CREONMILKY2]

Were you aware of the #4 scenario / is that one of the scenarios you liked? I wasn't sure if anybody even knew that scenario existed since it isn't explained anywhere and I don't show it anywhere in the game.

I was aware of the #4 scenario, but I mainly remember losing immediately for making a really bad choice at #2. There wasn't a clear difference between them, so removing #4 seems reasonable.

 

[NoTraceOfLuck]

Small status update

The new dating minigame is nearly complete, I just have to wire together some final systems. Overall, I think it serves its purpose. It's not the most fun minigame in the world, but it's quick and pretty easy. I think it will do a good job serving as glue for some fun side stories.


I've been trying to launch updates every 2 weeks, however I mostly likely will take an extra week for this next update, because I want to work in the changes I mentioned before around replacing certain characters for copyright reasons. I would also like to include some additional story content beyond just the new Ashely addition (and I still need to add in her little animation.) And I want to make some new updated art for my itch.io page and F95 banner (since that still shows the old style of character artwork that is no longer in the game.)

The next story content will be either Ana (pink girl) or Amy (purple girl). Probably Ana.

So most likely the next full update will release next weekend some time.

 

[lagaard]

Looking forward to giving it a try. Not sure I 100% grasp it in word format, but getting to play around with it will be different!
Still lookin' forward to our first proper/full strip poker scene though. I know it has to properly bake!

 

[H2Ooze]

Small status update

The new dating minigame is nearly complete, I just have to wire together some final systems. Overall, I think it serves its purpose. It's not the most fun minigame in the world, but it's quick and pretty easy. I think it will do a good job serving as glue for some fun side stories.


I've been trying to launch updates every 2 weeks, however I mostly likely will take an extra week for this next update, because I want to work in the changes I mentioned before around replacing certain characters for copyright reasons. I would also like to include some additional story content beyond just the new Ashely addition (and I still need to add in her little animation.) And I want to make some new updated art for my itch.io page and F95 banner (since that still shows the old style of character artwork that is no longer in the game.)

The next story content will be either Ana (pink girl) or Amy (purple girl). Probably Ana.

So most likely the next full update will release next weekend some time.

Good work on the minigame! Its easier to grasp in video form than text. I like the crack the code style of it, seems fairly simple!
Im also hoping you choose Ana for the next bit of story. She's probably the one Im looking forward to the most lol

 

[kaikai121]

I'm looking forward to it, take your time

 

[CREONMILKY2]

Keep crushing it! The extra week shows your care for quality—copyright tweaks, art refresh, and Ashley’s animation will pay off. Ana’s story sounds hype! Take the time, polish the magic. Players will vibe with it!

 

[NoTraceOfLuck]

Latest update notes:

I have absolutely zero background in UI design, so I always just do my best to design the graphics and UI in the game. These changes have involved a lot of work in terms of UI.

Working on systems like this make it clear to me why games take so long to create. You can really spend 20 hours on a single piece of the UI and still have ideas on things you could add to it.

A UI involves all of the following things:

• The actual graphics / artwork
• Animations / moving things around the screen
• Timing while chaining animations together.
• Sound effects
• Timing of the sound effects inside of the animations
• Particle effects

While I could still think of 100 things I could add to the UI, I think I got to a really good middle-ground without spending even more time on it.

Here are some screenshots of new UI elements that will be in the next update:

New Phone App - DateConnect

DateConnect is the app where you will access the 'side stories' (and play the new dating minigame).

Dates are categorized by the number of 'Hearts' involved (shown in the red ribbon on the icon). Currently I plan to add dates up to 3 hearts for each character (though it will be a long time before all of these dates are complete, since they will contain complete stories, artwork, etc...)

I have also built in support for branching stories inside of DateConnect dates, depending on how you do as part of the minigame.





Character Relationship Progression

You will unlock characters for access in DateConnect as part of their main story. Here is what it looks like to unlock Ashely's DateConnect (+ here's how her animation looks in the game.)

I love this animation, I will certainly be commissioning future animations




New Date System

And of course the new date system will be in the game. Accessed via DateConnect. The experience is nearly complete, the only feature that is missing is the "Spicy Question" reward.

Here it is complete with animations and sound effects



Optimization

Those who have read my previous posts might remember one where I talked about optimizing the game by making it so the game does not load all the images in the entire game at once.

With the addition of the new animations, which are very large, I started to have issues with the game using too much RAM. Actually it crashed the game on my laptop. My laptop is not very good, but there are definitely a lot of people with worse laptops, so I decided I needed to optimize the game to work on worse systems.

So I've made the decision to do some optimization with this update. You will now notice that when you begin certain scenes (usually when you click on them in the phone) you may get a very short lag spike. By allowing this lag spike, I was able to reduce the amount of RAM the game takes by over 75%. (It used to take 4gb+ and now it takes <1gb)

 

[NoTraceOfLuck]

Finally wrapped up this next update. There is a TON of stuff I wanted to shove into this update that I didn't get around to. But I did manage to get a great story continuation for Anna into the game.

The artwork and story for this scene is some of my favorite in the entire game.

This update also contains the new DateConnect phone app, however I chose to create the new Anna storyline rather than creating a full, proper date for DateConnect. So currently the DateConnect app has only one 'Beta' date available, which does not have any story nor the spicy question feature. It's basically just the minigame.

Hopefully next update I can include some actual stories for DateConnect.

This version still has some very slightly rough edges I will clean up, a little bit of additional testing, and clean up for my itch.io page, then I'll release this version on Patreon, Itch, and F95's main page

You must be registered to see the links

 

[H2Ooze]

View attachment 4657514



Finally wrapped up this next update. There is a TON of stuff I wanted to shove into this update that I didn't get around to. But I did manage to get a great story continuation for Anna into the game.

The artwork and story for this scene is some of my favorite in the entire game.

This update also contains the new DateConnect phone app, however I chose to create the new Anna storyline rather than creating a full, proper date for DateConnect. So currently the DateConnect app has only one 'Beta' date available, which does not have any story nor the spicy question feature. It's basically just the minigame.

Hopefully next update I can include some actual stories for DateConnect.

This version still has some very slightly rough edges I will clean up, a little bit of additional testing, and clean up for my itch.io page, then I'll release this version on Patreon, Itch, and F95's main page

You must be registered to see the links

I like the new Anna stuff! The new images and date were all very cute! I hope the trend of her casually taking of pieces of clothing every time you meet her continues, Its a goofy little quirk lmao. I also appreciated the little warning letting us know to save so we dont miss any images. Its a nice qol thing to add!
The DateConnect minigame is also pretty easy to grasp. It took my a few tries but I eventually got a perfect score.

Thanks for the update! Looking forward to future ones (More poker/strip poker soon maybe? )!

 

[NoTraceOfLuck]

I like the new Anna stuff! The new images and date were all very cute! I hope the trend of her casually taking of pieces of clothing every time you meet her continues, Its a goofy little quirk lmao. I also appreciated the little warning letting us know to save so we dont miss any images. Its a nice qol thing to add!
The DateConnect minigame is also pretty easy to grasp. It took my a few tries but I eventually got a perfect score.

Thanks for the update! Looking forward to future ones (More poker/strip poker soon maybe? )!

Thanks for playing!

I do agree I think it's time for some strip poker! I have been trying to get all of the characters storylines established so that it would make sense to play strip poker with them. Amy still doesn't really have a story yet, but I'll hold off on her for now. Maybe a big Amy update in 2-3 updates from now.

I was planning to have Tessa be a sort of easy/side-character for some sexy action (girl in red dress you meet in the casino), but with how much time all the main characters are taking to progress, I think I might just remove Tessa from the game entirely. Or come back to her much later. I think most people would prefer that I spend that extra time on poker for the main characters instead. A good strip poker scene takes long time to make, lots of artwork.

 

[shorewood]

Praying we get a segment where we get to play as Lisa putting the strip poker knowledge we've given her to use against another opponent

 

[NoTraceOfLuck]

Working on the next scene. I know people want Lisa but I have bigger plans for her story, so she's not quite ready yet.

I've found a way to make Ashely's art look a lot more stylistically consistent than it was in the theater scene. It's more work, but looks great in my opinion.

I have the story prepared for this segment, I'll keep it a secret for now though. But I think it's going to be a great one.

Here's a preview

 

[H2Ooze]

Working on the next scene. I know people want Lisa but I have bigger plans for her story, so she's not quite ready yet.

I've found a way to make Ashely's art look a lot more stylistically consistent than it was in the theater scene. It's more work, but looks great in my opinion.

I have the story prepared for this segment, I'll keep it a secret for now though. But I think it's going to be a great one.

Here's a preview

View attachment 4681593

Is the Ashley art for a new date scene or poker scene? Either way im looking forward to it, she looks great!

 

[NoTraceOfLuck]

Is the Ashley art for a new date scene or poker scene? Either way im looking forward to it, she looks great!

Hopefully a bit of both

 

[NoTraceOfLuck]

 

[NoTraceOfLuck]

Been a minute since I posted an update, still working away on the poker. So far I've got about 50 images and it's maybe ~40% done. The final poker scene will likely be >100 images. I'm also working on some more possible branching, including special art depending on whether you've lost clothing or not. So I'm hoping to make this scene very special.

One thing that will change with this poker scene though: you won't see the player's clothes drawn on the table. (Like how you saw his white shirt on the table in the Boa scene). The reason for this is that it multiplies the amount of art that I need to create. By drawing only the girl's clothes on the table, it's much easier to extend the scene and make it branch into different sequences without worrying about "Okay should the player's shirt be there or not?"

I want to share some art but I think I'll leave it as a surprise for now, but it's really good, I think you're all gonna like it.

Since this scene will have branching with different artworks, and it's also a much longer scene, I also want to add in some options to make it easier to win/lose on purpose so you can more easily experience all the scenes. I'm not sure exactly how I'll add this in yet, but it's something I plan for.

Here's are some fun image that won't be in the game, but kind of like a little teaser. These are raw outputs / too dark / kind of weird style, but not too far off what you might be seeing soon

 

[shorewood]

What's the plan for losing the poker games? Quick game over like the Boa game, a longer game over situation or a different branch?

 

[NoTraceOfLuck]

What's the plan for losing the poker games? Quick game over like the Boa game, a longer game over situation or a different branch?

I plan to have a brief scene with some special artworks, however nothing too crazy - you have to win this one to get the good stuff. As the game starts to progress into later matches (2nd or 3rd poker match with the same girl) the matches will start to focus more on exciting endings of different types (for wins and losses)

Artwork takes a very long time on these scenes, since it needs to be a consistent character in a consistent space with consistent clothing -- all of which AI is very bad at. I don't think there are any other AI games making artwork like this, on this scale, 100+ consistent images of the same character in the same space. And branching scenes increases the artwork requirements even more. So for now I need to focus on one really good branch in the story + some smaller side branches.

But yeah, across all the poker matches for every girl, you'll get a good variety of win or loss scenarios. I might even have one where winning is actually the "game over" and you need to figure out how to lose

 

[lagaard]

While I certainly did like the effect of seeing lost clothing showing up on the table, I can understand its not exactly easy to keep consistent. That and of course, all the more variations that have to start to exist.