[Ren'Py] SU Re-Imagined, an UNOFFICIAL Proof of Concept Ren'Py Demo - Community Development Thread

[ThatRandomRaichu]

Bit of a random story suggestion: maybe come up with a different reason for getting Raven whenever she gets implemented? To me at least it doesn't/didn't make much sense for her to be from a different universe than the one the game takes place it, and yet Jinx somehow knows and doesn't like Raven when Jinx technically shouldn't know who Raven is. Idk this is just me spitballing ideas here IG.

 

[paracetamol95]

Actually, holy shit. With this being crowd-developed, the potential for non DC characters being introduced through Tala summoning from alternate universes is very intriguing.

 

[ThanosfromTitan]

There's not many sex scenes in this game right? it's more management as of right now correct?

 

[OhWee]

There's not many sex scenes in this game right? it's more management as of right now correct?

Yeah, there's a stripping scene or two, but that's about it... oh and stripping and eroplay in the Glamour Slam. Right now we've mostly been focused on getting the underlying mechanics working and fine tuned...

 

[DudeMcGuy1477]

Actually, holy shit. With this being crowd-developed, the potential for non DC characters being introduced through Tala summoning from alternate universes is very intriguing.

I would be so down to work on that if anyone on the coding side is interested. Think of the possibilities! Instead of shit alternate locations like Nanda Parbat or whatever that only have like 1 or 2 interactions possible, you could go through a portal and end up in, say, Marvel's New York, or on Coruscant in Star Wars.

 

[OhWee]

Our main limitation is artwork that fits within the SR7 style. Other than that I've suggested introducing a bunch of different characters. and am down with whatever people can come up with that fits within the base storyline!

 

[DudeMcGuy1477]

Our main limitation is artwork that fits within the SR7 style. Other than that I've suggested introducing a bunch of different characters. and am down with whatever people can come up with that fits within the base storyline!

I can mimic the SU style pretty well (I learnt how to draw watching the original Bruce Timm Justice League cartoons) and if we go at it from an alternate universe angle (via teleporter or Tala's portal) we can get away with having marginally different art styles too, say, Earth's Mightiest Heroes style art for Marvel, and maybe a 2D style based on the Clone Wars 3D style for Star Wars, just as an example.

 

[DudeMcGuy1477]

Managed to put together a pretty decent Lois spanking set with existing sprites and a bit of editing and drawing on top. If anyone wants to try their hand at adding this in, let me know if you need any edits done.

 

[Gettyra]

Is the text font the final one or a placeholder?

It functions perfectly well for reading but i personally just find it a bit irksome. Really nothing to move heaven and earth for but i was curious if there are going to be any options for changing it in the future.

 

[Macfinn99]

One of the things i criticized in the original game was the diminishing of the Justice League as Luthors opponent. To have a proper game you really need effective antagonists and protagonists and then main and minor conflicts that need to get resolved.

The only candidates for major antagonists so far are the other villians such as Joker, Slade, Sportsmaster, Grodd, Ras al Ghul and Vandal Savage. None of them have ever posed a real threat, (mostly annoyances), nor been dealt with.

Joker threatened Luthor with exposure and the end result was Luthor obtained Harley as an asset. (I still wanna see Harley on stage at the Glamour Slam BTW). After Harley got Tala to summon an Alternate Harley I suggested that each new Harley would summon another Harley until you had 5 to 10 of them. The next time Joker tried to blackmail Luthor, he could unleash all of the Harleys on the Joker for a reverse gang rape. (Ought to be able to sell tickets for that!)

The other active threat is Grodd. (Savage, Ghul and Slade are potential threats.) Grodd only mousetrapped Luthor to get him arrested and out of the way for a limited time. With his mind control powers, Grodd could really have caused major problems by messing with Luthors mind controls of the heroines. Combine that with Grodd builing his own army of villians you have a scenario for a lot of clandestine conflicts occurring behind the scenes. Neither Luthor nor Grodd would want the conlict to come out into the open because that would draw the attention of the heroes.

Lastly, where the hell is the Crime Syndicate? Owlman should have figured out somewhere along the way that Superwoman was abducted. There should have been some sort of response to that.

I have a lot of hope that Re-Imagined will address some of these issues.

 

[ScarletIce]

Thanks!

I'm uploading the 0.25 build now, will share links here shortly...

---

And, here it is! The weekly playtest build...

SU ReImagined Proof of Concept Demo, Version 0.25!!!

PC:

You must be registered to see the links

Mac:

You must be registered to see the links

No Android version yet. Depending on how this round of playtesting goes, I may reach out to the Android port types to see if they want to take a crack at this...

DISCLAIMER:
This is an unsanctioned, unofficial project that is designed to explore new gameplay ideas for SU using the Ren'Py framework.
This should be considered beta software at best, so expect to encounter bugs, and PLEASE try to screenshot the error screen when these come up and post up here so that I can attempt to track down the issue.

ATTN: Moderators:
This is still not a game, it's just a proof of concept, with not a lot of 'story content' yet. So kindly leave this tread here in the development section, as it's a community project that explores various game mechanics, not a game.


Changelog:

Hmmm, can I remember ALL the things that I've been changing/adjusting/adding in the last week...

1) Security Upgrades available in the Lexcorp Sublevels Security section. Upgrading the security level will reduce threat level by an extra 11 points each day, per level of upgrade.

2) The Threat Level system should be working now. Threat Levels will DEFINITELY change based on what you are doing/not doing atm that might attract attention...

3) Scheduling girls to 'Crime Fighting' will help reduce threat levels slightly. Sending them all to fight crime as you are performing a GS/MB upgrade isn't a bad move...

4) I attempted to fix a couple of nagging issues with the Management scheduler buttons, only through playtesting will I know how successful I was at this.

5) I worked on the Talashop.rpy code for a bit, so can't hurt to go through that to find what I missed. Note that you need to talk to Tala a couple of times to trigger a heist and also to get her to work as a henchman...

6) Made some tweaks to the Legion Interface screen. Again, tried to deal with a couple of bugs, we'll see how I did...

7) Added a 'difficulty level' screen at the start of a new game. Have fun!

8) Added a cheat menu to the Lexcon Interface. Click on the Lexcon interface (upper right corner when it appears) and you'll see the cheat options.

9) A bit of Stargirl cell content. Thank Perniciousducks for working on this!

10) Some tweaks to the income levels and cash heist incomes. Let me know how the new numbers' feel to you!

I'm sure there's other stuff, but my brain hurts right now so have at it!

Feedback is ALWAYS appreciated!

I just got done playing this version, though I got a bit stuck due to some bugs. I saved the rollbacks as txts for you. I tried not to have too many duplicates, but there are probably a few. You said there is stargirl cell content, but it won't let me upgrade her device to put her in the cell, saying there is no cell content. The only girls I was able to put in the cells were Zatanna, Batgirl, and Supergirl. Batgirl just had some dialogues hen nothing else, supergirl unlocked her hero outfit and nightgown, then nothing else. Zatanna unlocked her casual and silver age outfits, along with stripping and capped out there. Felt weird since on their profile screens it said all their content was available. I couldn't capture Artemis, Terra, Starfire, and Kitelass because I got locked out of the legion management screens. Every time I tried to do something I would get an error message, if I ignored it it would spit me out at the upgrade confirmation screen asking if I wanted to upgrade to level 4, even though it's already max level. This also prevented me from doing Zatanna's heist. I think that's everything... I hope it helps. Despite the bugs and lack of content, this is already way better than the original in my opinion. I'm looking forward to it getting finished!

 

[SID Gaming]

I played this last night. Watched Batgirl dance and then immediately got lost in menus.
I appreciate the attempts to both add more gameplay to the original game and remove its "thousand clicks to do anything" feature, but I would definitely recommend a better tutorial. It's great that you're trying to add framework for all the features you want first, but don't throw them all at the player on day 1. Instead of overwhelming the player with a whole bunch of buttons that do nothing or say "work in progress", just don't even make the thing clickable. Let the player get used to a tight core gameplay loop, then after a few days in game, start dribbling new things in one at a time.

Ex. I would actually not let the player do anything themselves for the first few days. After Batgirl's first dance, automatically advance to the next day without throwing up the nighttime menu and letting us get sidetracked. Then have an interaction the next day where a villain comes to see Luthor and says that it's good to have him back, and there are a bunch of other bad guys awaiting his next orders. This can unlock the legion hq and the first heists. You go there and get a tutorial about how that works. Teach the player that a "night" should consist of going there, setting something up, going to the Glamour Slam, talking to Roulette, then repeating. Have a flag in the code that KNOWS when you've got enough money for a second device, and ONLY THEN open the area of the game that you can craft them. Wait to unlock any of the other areas of Lex's base, maybe by making the player build and pay for them, and even then give them the option between one or the other, again so it's only one new thing to worry about at a time.

TLDR; keep things locked until there's actually something you can do there so as to not overwhelm the player. When they can do something new, give a visual tutorial that walks them through the steps, not just a wall of text on a completely different menu.

 

[OhWee]

I just got done playing this version, though I got a bit stuck due to some bugs. I saved the rollbacks as txts for you. I tried not to have too many duplicates, but there are probably a few. You said there is stargirl cell content, but it won't let me upgrade her device to put her in the cell, saying there is no cell content. The only girls I was able to put in the cells were Zatanna, Batgirl, and Supergirl. Batgirl just had some dialogues hen nothing else, supergirl unlocked her hero outfit and nightgown, then nothing else. Zatanna unlocked her casual and silver age outfits, along with stripping and capped out there. Felt weird since on their profile screens it said all their content was available. I couldn't capture Artemis, Terra, Starfire, and Kitelass because I got locked out of the legion management screens. Every time I tried to do something I would get an error message, if I ignored it it would spit me out at the upgrade confirmation screen asking if I wanted to upgrade to level 4, even though it's already max level. This also prevented me from doing Zatanna's heist. I think that's everything... I hope it helps. Despite the bugs and lack of content, this is already way better than the original in my opinion. I'm looking forward to it getting finished!

Thanks for taking the time to screencap all of those screens!

There's a few issues that I found on my end, one of which (legion heist/capture success calculations) will require me to re-type a section of code. Well, I could attempt to insert a few more 'elif' statements, but now that I know what I want, I just want to restructure those sections of the code so that it's cleaner. I did that with a couple of other things in the 0.25 update, and it seems to have helped a bit.

The other thing that I need to do is add the difficulty screen to the Lexcon interface so that those of you that want to tweak the difficulty on the fly to test the numbers can.

At the 'standard' difficulty setting (whatever I called that), I think that I made things a little too hard, specifically the income grind is taking a bit longer than I intended. I fixed a previous bug where there was a decimal point error in the Meta Bordello, so that was fixed, but for the 'higher tier' activities, I may have nerfed them a little too much.

Were you starting with a new game or playing an existing game with Stargirl? If it was an existing save, you can bypass this by opening the Ren'Py console and typing:

Stargirl_quarterscontent = True

The 'defaults' for old variables get loaded at the start of a new game, but won't help an existing game. There's a workaround for that, but I haven't set up a 'this was changed' check point in the code. I can add this during the 'end of day' or perhaps set up a label after load or something, but right now I'm focused on getting things working smoothly.

Note that if the girl doesn't have quarters content this will 'break' the game for those other girls, so only try this with Stargirl.

Anyways, it looks like you spent some time on this, so I'd appreciate your insights r.e. the gameplay in general, i.e. things that popped in to your head as you were playing that could be improved, what you like, ideas, etc. (besides bugs).

 

[OhWee]

SID Gaming

I appreciate the feedback! Right now I'm just trying to get everything working. The things that you mention are great suggestions, that I'll keep in mind for when I'm ready to 'go back' once I get everything working as intended.

One of the reasons that I set up the upgrade buttons to let players click on them is so that they can get more detailed information on what that upgrade is, before doing the income check. That way they can decide if that's a 'goal' that they want to shoot for right now. That being said, it's easy peasy for me to add a 'requires this much money' note to the menu option in question so that the player has 'advance warning' if he can see how much money he already has. There's a couple of ways I could do this, I'll tackle that idea eventually.

I haven't updated the 'quick rundown' text at the beginning of Day 4 in a while, that's a great spot to 'build' a guided tutorial for the basics, it's really just a placeholder for now... I should run through that text at least though and rewrite that text to reflect where things are now...

At some point in doing this, I've become a slightly better Ren'Py coder, but Python still isn't my jam!

So yeah, better documentation and perhaps 'easing' new players in a bit more is definitely a design goal to put on the 'to do list'! Your feedback is most appreciated!

 

[SID Gaming]

SID Gaming

I appreciate the feedback! Right now I'm just trying to get everything working. The things that you mention are great suggestions, that I'll keep in mind for when I'm ready to 'go back' once I get everything working as intended.

One of the reasons that I set up the upgrade buttons to let players click on them is so that they can get more detailed information on what that upgrade is, before doing the income check. That way they can decide if that's a 'goal' that they want to shoot for right now. That being said, it's easy peasy for me to add a 'requires this much money' note to the menu option in question so that the player has 'advance warning' if he can see how much money he already has. There's a couple of ways I could do this, I'll tackle that idea eventually.

I haven't updated the 'quick rundown' text at the beginning of Day 4 in a while, that's a great spot to 'build' a guided tutorial for the basics, it's really just a placeholder for now... I should run through that text at least though and rewrite that text to reflect where things are now...

At some point in doing this, I've become a slightly better Ren'Py coder, but Python still isn't my jam!

So yeah, better documentation and perhaps 'easing' new players in a bit more is definitely a design goal to put on the 'to do list'! Your feedback is most appreciated!

I learned Ren'Py for my own game. The hardest part was the lack of any graphical interface for building menus, layouts, and UI, but shift+R quickly became my favorite hotkey. It sure does make having copious amounts of dialog easier!

 

[ScarletIce]

Thanks for taking the time to screencap all of those screens!

There's a few issues that I found on my end, one of which (legion heist/capture success calculations) will require me to re-type a section of code. Well, I could attempt to insert a few more 'elif' statements, but now that I know what I want, I just want to restructure those sections of the code so that it's cleaner. I did that with a couple of other things in the 0.25 update, and it seems to have helped a bit.

The other thing that I need to do is add the difficulty screen to the Lexcon interface so that those of you that want to tweak the difficulty on the fly to test the numbers can.

At the 'standard' difficulty setting (whatever I called that), I think that I made things a little too hard, specifically the income grind is taking a bit longer than I intended. I fixed a previous bug where there was a decimal point error in the Meta Bordello, so that was fixed, but for the 'higher tier' activities, I may have nerfed them a little too much.

Were you starting with a new game or playing an existing game with Stargirl? If it was an existing save, you can bypass this by opening the Ren'Py console and typing:

Stargirl_quarterscontent = True

The 'defaults' for old variables get loaded at the start of a new game, but won't help an existing game. There's a workaround for that, but I haven't set up a 'this was changed' check point in the code. I can add this during the 'end of day' or perhaps set up a label after load or something, but right now I'm focused on getting things working smoothly.

Note that if the girl doesn't have quarters content this will 'break' the game for those other girls, so only try this with Stargirl.

Anyways, it looks like you spent some time on this, so I'd appreciate your insights r.e. the gameplay in general, i.e. things that popped in to your head as you were playing that could be improved, what you like, ideas, etc. (besides bugs).

I'm glad I was able to help! I was using a save I started in version 0.24, so I guess that was the cause of the Stargirl issue. As far as my own thoughts, hmmm... Well, on the management menu, it would be nice if you could tell what a girl was generally doing. Even something as simple as working/unassigned/crimefighting would be super helpful. Maybe just have them highlighted with different backgrounds or something? If you wanted to add more detail, maybe make it so you can tell which establishment they are working at.
Hmm, what else... It would be nice to have a tab to navigate to the profiles from the management screen without having to click on a girl and selecting profile from her. It's a small thing, but it would be nice.
Oh, I think the capture function from the profile menu needs reworking. It just defaults to Mercy with no option to choose someone else, and I think it just always fails from the menu. I've never once gotten a success trying to capture from there.
Oh, that reminds me of another bug I think I found. I bought those 4 heroine's devices from their profile menus, then tried to capture one, had it fail like I said, then tried to capture another, after which it said mercy was busy. After that, I couldn't try capturing from the profile menus anymore no matter how many days passed. The button was always grayed out and saying mercy was busy.
That's all that comes to mind atm, but if I think of anything else I'll let you know.

 

[OhWee]

I'm glad I was able to help! I was using a save I started in version 0.24, so I guess that was the cause of the Stargirl issue. As far as my own thoughts, hmmm... Well, on the management menu, it would be nice if you could tell what a girl was generally doing. Even something as simple as working/unassigned/crimefighting would be super helpful. Maybe just have them highlighted with different backgrounds or something? If you wanted to add more detail, maybe make it so you can tell which establishment they are working at.
Hmm, what else... It would be nice to have a tab to navigate to the profiles from the management screen without having to click on a girl and selecting profile from her. It's a small thing, but it would be nice.
Oh, I think the capture function from the profile menu needs reworking. It just defaults to Mercy with no option to choose someone else, and I think it just always fails from the menu. I've never once gotten a success trying to capture from there.
Oh, that reminds me of another bug I think I found. I bought those 4 heroine's devices from their profile menus, then tried to capture one, had it fail like I said, then tried to capture another, after which it said mercy was busy. After that, I couldn't try capturing from the profile menus anymore no matter how many days passed. The button was always grayed out and saying mercy was busy.
That's all that comes to mind atm, but if I think of anything else I'll let you know.

ScarletIce

So the 'Mercy Insta-Capture' thing is a hold-over from previous builds (when assigning other henchmen to captures wasn't a thing yet), that we've left for now to make Mercy more useful.

Mercy's capture chances are supposed to be pretty low (Tier 1 isn't bad though) to encourage people to capture girls using the 'Normal' methods. However, Mercy's chance of a successful capture currently will go up by 10% if a capture attempt has been assigned in the Villain Interface that hasn't been successful yet. So this gives you a 'mulligan opportunity' of sorts.

This has an associated issue that I need to look at, you are supposed to get a message that tells you that Mercy already captured some gal on a given day if you access the Villain Interface or Legion Hideout, noting that the henchman in question has been unassigned and is available for other duties, I need to 're-instate' that...

If Mercy has made a capture attempt, she becomes busy, and if she's been assigned elsewhere, she'll also be busy. This is a 'game balance' thing as much as a reflection that the girl can only do one thing at a time...

Tala's in the same boat. If you engage with Tala in her shop, she won't be available for Capture and Heist attempts.

I need to make this more clear in the 'quick rundown' text that I haven't updated in a while, this could also be a 'tutorial' thing when I get that far.

As for telling what a girl is doing...

There's some tiny text below her profile pic, below the big fatigue bar, that will tell you her current assignment. It's not bigger 'cuz of lack of available space. Anyways, to the left of her profile pic is the 'Show Profile' button, which should take you directly to her profile on the the profile screen.

Adding a 'tab' or 'button' for the profile screen is probably redundant, as that is what the 'Show Profile' button already does (showing the girl that is the 'current_profile_girl' first) but I'll think about that.

The big issue is the tiny 'current assignment' text below the big fatigue bar on the management screen, as that's easy to miss, so I need to consider my 'available space' options.

The biggest reason to bounce between Management and Profile screens right now is to upgrade a girl's device, and note the device icon level at the lower right of her profile pic on the management screen. I'm considering making that a 'clickable' button (if not in cooldown mode) that will allow you to upgrade her device from the Management Screen instead of having to go to the profile screen first. I'd probably consider locking out that functionality out at Level 6 though, as Level 7 removes her from the Management Screen unless she's Starfire (i.e. is Sexworker = True, nobody else has that designation currently).

The 'device cooldown' thing is new, something I added to 'better fit' the narrative of a girl needing to be 'eased' in, but that will eventually become an optional rule, or perhaps have an adjustable value (say if you only wanted a 1 day cooldown instead of 3).

I have lots of ideas that I still need to tackle, and only so many hours that I can work on this in a day...

There's also a weird bug with 'Unassign' and 'Fighting Crime' where both buttons grey out, and the only way to 'reset' this is to assign the girl to a slot and then click the 'Unassign' or 'Crime Fighting' button again. It's not a biggie, but it tasks me...

Again, your feedback is most appreciated!

 

[OhWee]

BTW, there will be a patch incoming in the next day or so. This will be tiny (just .rpy files) so you'll just need to replace the .rpy files with the ones in the patch. The incorrect Legion Heist/Capture percentages thing is really annoying me!

 

[ScarletIce]

ScarletIce

So the 'Mercy Insta-Capture' thing is a hold-over from previous builds (when assigning other henchmen to captures wasn't a thing yet), that we've left for now to make Mercy more useful.

Mercy's capture chances are supposed to be pretty low (Tier 1 isn't bad though) to encourage people to capture girls using the 'Normal' methods. However, Mercy's chance of a successful capture currently will go up by 10% if a capture attempt has been assigned in the Villain Interface that hasn't been successful yet. So this gives you a 'mulligan opportunity' of sorts.

This has an associated issue that I need to look at, you are supposed to get a message that tells you that Mercy already captured some gal on a given day if you access the Villain Interface or Legion Hideout, noting that the henchman in question has been unassigned and is available for other duties, I need to 're-instate' that...

If Mercy has made a capture attempt, she becomes busy, and if she's been assigned elsewhere, she'll also be busy. This is a 'game balance' thing as much as a reflection that the girl can only do one thing at a time...

Tala's in the same boat. If you engage with Tala in her shop, she won't be available for Capture and Heist attempts.

I need to make this more clear in the 'quick rundown' text that I haven't updated in a while, this could also be a 'tutorial' thing when I get that far.

As for telling what a girl is doing...

There's some tiny text below her profile pic, below the big fatigue bar, that will tell you her current assignment. It's not bigger 'cuz of lack of available space. Anyways, to the left of her profile pic is the 'Show Profile' button, which should take you directly to her profile on the the profile screen.

Adding a 'tab' or 'button' for the profile screen is probably redundant, as that is what the 'Show Profile' button already does (showing the girl that is the 'current_profile_girl' first) but I'll think about that.

The big issue is the tiny 'current assignment' text below the big fatigue bar on the management screen, as that's easy to miss, so I need to consider my 'available space' options.

The biggest reason to bounce between Management and Profile screens right now is to upgrade a girl's device, and note the device icon level at the lower right of her profile pic on the management screen. I'm considering making that a 'clickable' button (if not in cooldown mode) that will allow you to upgrade her device from the Management Screen instead of having to go to the profile screen first. I'd probably consider locking out that functionality out at Level 6 though, as Level 7 removes her from the Management Screen unless she's Starfire (i.e. is Sexworker = True, nobody else has that designation currently).

The 'device cooldown' thing is new, something I added to 'better fit' the narrative of a girl needing to be 'eased' in, but that will eventually become an optional rule, or perhaps have an adjustable value (say if you only wanted a 1 day cooldown instead of 3).

I have lots of ideas that I still need to tackle, and only so many hours that I can work on this in a day...

There's also a weird bug with 'Unassign' and 'Fighting Crime' where both buttons grey out, and the only way to 'reset' this is to assign the girl to a slot and then click the 'Unassign' or 'Crime Fighting' button again. It's not a biggie, but it tasks me...

Again, your feedback is most appreciated!

Just to clarify, what I meant about checking the girl's status was to be able to know without clicking on the girl. Being able to just glance at the roster and know what everyone is up to. Would be a big time saver.

 

[OhWee]

Again, look for the text below her profile pic and large fatigue bar on the management screen. I'm pondering ways to make more space to increase that text size.

As for adding status text in the girl picker below her icon, that'd be about the only way do show what all of the 'management' and maybe 'profile' girls are doing, which might look a bit messy. I'll ponder that though...

A third screen with a list of assignments could be an option I suppose...