VN Ren'Py Rick and Morty: Another Way Home [r4.0] [Night Mirror]

[Night Mirror]

But that is odd that they only put in a Space Christmas Eve and not a morning scene with some sorta follow-up to spice up the scenes that followed.

Scenes from the Unity game often have the issue of not relating to previous scenes most of the time. I've had to add a lot of extra interaction for the flow of the game to have any semblance of connectivity. The vast majority of the time when you see a callback to a previous action you picked, or something that happened, that usually (not always) doesn't exist in the Unity game.

I'll use the last two "Beth" scenes from the Unity game as an example. These two scenes are: the water park (the pool in the Unity game), and Space Christmas Eve (just Christmas Eve in the Unity game). This means that in the Unity game, if you are doing Beth's story, it goes from the hottest day of the year, to Space Beth showing up in the kitchen, and no transition between the two (other than maybe wandering around the house looking for Beth to click on her).

This is not a unique issue to this scene, and stuff like this is all throughout the Unity game, events just sort happen with little to no setup or connection. Again, some do (mostly in the early game), but many that come out as their own update often don't get follow ups.

I should illiterate that i didn't think the writing was bad at all, it was pretty good. Funny too. I just didn't like the 5 windows part given the limitations.

This scene mainly exists as it does due to my own limited art ability and a desire to add something unique, but still Rick and Morty-esk into the game. When we were first talking Christmas morning there were three options: Don't make it and hope we don't need it (always the first thing when thinking about scenes I have to make), make a simple bumper scene to gloss over it (similar to the pre-breakfast content), or try and get a sexy scene out of it (usually a lot more effort).

I opted for option 3, knowing that if I couldn't pull it off, I could always roll back to just the bumper (and if we didn't need it, hold off including it entirely). But, this presented an issue, who would Morty spend Xmas Morning with? In fact, there is a choice with who to choose (that isn't a choice), there as a subversion of the trope of picking someone.

I don't really like branching content (either making it or playing it other games) and the reason why is that instead of the effort going to making 1 good scene, that effort is split into however many branches are needed. Case in point, if this had been a player choice to spend time with 1 of the 5 girls, then I have to make art to support 5 different paths. 4 of which players won't see and I wasted time making. I was already struggling to make 1 path, so, four additional ones were out of the question.

But I did have what felt like a fun idea, based very loosely off a Gravity Falls episode where the main character copies himself. The difference being, I didn't want the clones to have their own personalities (because people would cry NTR), but rather to be like extra arms and legs for the player.

In the first draft of the scene, I had Morty and Space Beth walking around the house, with Morty trying desperately to keep her away from all the places he is having sex. This meant one scene at a time with each girl, and felt a lot more like clones of Morty were having all the fun, while the player was not.

At some point, I thought, hey, wouldn't it be interesting if you could see what was going on all at once? And I tried different variants of the final result. An important aspect of them is that all the shots (sort of with Morticia, I have to work with the art I have) are POV, you don't see Morty's face in any of them, except the chat with Space Beth, to imply you are seeing through their eyes, not seeing what your clones are doing.

Does it work perfectly? Eh, I think it's fine. It most likely isn't a hot scene I'll replay to *ahem* enjoy, but to be honest, it is very hard to enjoy most of my own scenes (and many of the ones I've worked on (the one major downside of the project is that when I've worked on the same content for hundreds of hours, it is often impossible to get pleasure out of it anymore (so, yeah, I ruined the game for myself so other could enjoy (ironic really...)))).

It looked a LOT more complicated than previous updates - experimental to test Renpy's capabilities, perhaps? I may be reading too much into it, but are we going to expect some new ideas going forward in terms of features or what other possibilities we can explore?

If so, I'm very curious what else this engine can do!

The Ren'py engine is fairly robust and while I hadn't tired this specific thing before, code wise there is nothing too complicated going on behind the scenes.

Renpy is pretty great. There are a lot of good reasons why I picked it for this remake over other options. It does VNs exceptionally well compared to pretty much everything else. And there are few things I've tried to do in it that it can't do (ATL so far has been the most limiting for what I want it to do, but it is still very powerful).

I found an error on day 18, scene 3 (Liftin' Bro)

When Morty finishes helping Reka while she lifts the bar, they have the next conversation:

---
Reka: Hell no, it's your turn on the bench again.
Reka: B-, but my zipper...
Reka: Relax, all the girls are doing legs on the other side, nobody's gonna see anything.
---

The second one is said by Reka instead Morty.

Fixed! Thanks for the spot!

 

[TheRedWiseman]

Thank you for explaining, Night Mirror! Very fascinating stuff. I usually find the things that I'm able to get off to are usually the things that are my best work. If I don't get off to my own writing, it never seems to be as good as it could be. Different strokes for different folks not withstanding, it is unfortunate you can't do the same for yourself. I think the stuff you two write are some pretty good writing (although i do suggest suggestive synonyms in some scenes).

If you don't mind the critique.

 

[Night Mirror]

Thank you for explaining, Night Mirror! Very fascinating stuff. I usually find the things that I'm able to get off to are usually the things that are my best work. If I don't get off to my own writing, it never seems to be as good as it could be. Different strokes for different folks not withstanding, it is unfortunate you can't do the same for yourself. I think the stuff you two write are some pretty good writing (although i do suggest suggestive synonyms in some scenes).

If you don't mind the critique.

One of the more challenging parts of this remake has been to balance the tone of the writing. Keep in mind that I'm adapting from an existing game, one I don't wholly want to replace with something completely different. I'm trying to match the style Ferdafs tends to write in, without giving up too much of what is already there. (or, in other words, it should be hard (or impossible) to tell which lines came from which game)

A lot of the time, one of the major (self imposed) restrictions is that narration should be something Morty might think or say, so the vocabulary we can use is more limited. And going too far with synonyms or overly descriptive narration, can make those lines stand out in a way (that I feel) detracts from the game. Unique words, or different words just to have them, can easily pull the player out of the moment to think, huh, that line feels oddly out of place next to everything else.

We do try our best to vary as much as we can, and not repeat where possible, but sometimes, the option is either choose a new synonym that sound wildly out of place, or repeat.

 

[TheRedWiseman]

I suppose that works for dialogue and internalized thoughts. But scene description, or description of an action being taken seems like a safer bet than characters having a verbose repertoire of literary vocabulary and social finesse (or: people having really fancy ways of talking all pretty like and seems like British gentleman, indubitably). If the artwork is limiting the scope of a series of events then the writing should paint the picture with much more vivid and lucid representation of to fill in the gaps to convey the intention.

If the scenes all converge in the Living Room, then describing what's in the environment should setup the new scene. If it was a simple template scene, "you're in the Living Room" and play dialogue - it's not really much different than all the other starters that begin within the area itself. If it was setup as: "Entering the Living Room, you find an auspicious decorated pine tree just sitting in the corner. Odd, you find Beth speaking to someone in the kitchen and noticed Morticia perplexed by the sudden appearance of a Christmas Tree even though it is summer" - queue the dialogue and the character thoughts, so on and so forth with the layman terminology and character quips that comes naturally to their specific characters for continuity and structural consistency. Give more for readers to chew on and help stretch scenes out to build up the world as a substitution for limited artwork to fit the occasional event or scene then revert to a standard template descriptor for the area if it's just a meeting place to give context to a given situation and doesn't require EVERY room to be fully described in absolute detail.

As for sex scenes, I find a few word choices to be "tongue-in-cheek" if you catch my meaning. I find myself reading a few creampie scenes and the word "belly" comes up more frequently than: womb, babymaker, oven. While expecting some characters to be in strong moments of ecstasy while screaming: "Ohh YEAH! Breed me! Fucking RUIN me, agh!" Like with Alt Summer (Autumn) when we see her in the waterpark or while in the tub scene. It may fit her better, but that's my opinion on that approach. Obviously it's not going to work on all characters with that kind of dialogue but - i think the way they talk reflects how they react in a sex scene. Autumn is more strong willed, forceful and *definitely* more turned on by being dominated - queue the above response - it fits better because it's more expressive and more raw. Like hate fucking simply for the roughness and energy (and the not emotional gentleness). That may come out as weird, sorry in advance if that was a weird way of putting it. Uhm ... Hm ... the expression is: "Less is more"(?) as it pertains to lingerie and sex appeal.

 

[FalconLover420]

Where can I find the compressed version?
I cant seem to find it when I search for it unless im blind lol

 

[Night Mirror]

Where can I find the compressed version?
I cant seem to find it when I search for it unless im blind lol

The game is compressed by default. That is why there is an uncompressed image patch on the first page.

 

[FalconLover420]

The game is compressed by default. That is why there is an uncompressed image patch on the first page.

Ah roger that, thank you so much! LETS GET FAPPING BOIS

 

[Night Mirror]

Got curious about specific word count so I tossed together a script to scrape the dialogue and show how many times each word is used in the game. It isn't perfect, and some of the text replace stuff has some wackness to it (when you get down to single use words), still sort of a neat insight. Attached as a plain text files because it's 680 lines long. Enjoy?

Edit:
Fixed minor output error.

 

[aaronminus]

I suppose that works for dialogue and internalized thoughts. But scene description, or description of an action being taken seems like a safer bet than characters having a verbose repertoire of literary vocabulary and social finesse (or: people having really fancy ways of talking all pretty like and seems like British gentleman, indubitably). If the artwork is limiting the scope of a series of events then the writing should paint the picture with much more vivid and lucid representation of to fill in the gaps to convey the intention.

If the scenes all converge in the Living Room, then describing what's in the environment should setup the new scene. If it was a simple template scene, "you're in the Living Room" and play dialogue - it's not really much different than all the other starters that begin within the area itself. If it was setup as: "Entering the Living Room, you find an auspicious decorated pine tree just sitting in the corner. Odd, you find Beth speaking to someone in the kitchen and noticed Morticia perplexed by the sudden appearance of a Christmas Tree even though it is summer" - queue the dialogue and the character thoughts, so on and so forth with the layman terminology and character quips that comes naturally to their specific characters for continuity and structural consistency. Give more for readers to chew on and help stretch scenes out to build up the world as a substitution for limited artwork to fit the occasional event or scene then revert to a standard template descriptor for the area if it's just a meeting place to give context to a given situation and doesn't require EVERY room to be fully described in absolute detail.

As for sex scenes, I find a few word choices to be "tongue-in-cheek" if you catch my meaning. I find myself reading a few creampie scenes and the word "belly" comes up more frequently than: womb, babymaker, oven. While expecting some characters to be in strong moments of ecstasy while screaming: "Ohh YEAH! Breed me! Fucking RUIN me, agh!" Like with Alt Summer (Autumn) when we see her in the waterpark or while in the tub scene. It may fit her better, but that's my opinion on that approach. Obviously it's not going to work on all characters with that kind of dialogue but - i think the way they talk reflects how they react in a sex scene. Autumn is more strong willed, forceful and *definitely* more turned on by being dominated - queue the above response - it fits better because it's more expressive and more raw. Like hate fucking simply for the roughness and energy (and the not emotional gentleness). That may come out as weird, sorry in advance if that was a weird way of putting it. Uhm ... Hm ... the expression is: "Less is more"(?) as it pertains to lingerie and sex appeal.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback on prose! It’s a large aspect of what I’m thinking about while working (actually THE biggest thing…), always happy to hear someone weigh in. So, I tend to agree that overall (not specific to one scene) I’d like to see a bit more variety in vocab, specifically in narration. It’s a tough balance, because without limitation, I easily fall into the trap of overwriting a bit too much (which is my weakness that NM helps keep in check).

For me, the sweet spot is a little more, but not too much. I’m less stuck on the “narration should sound like Morty” thing, and more worried about the large amount of people who enjoy the game but have English as their second language (if the forum is any indication). If we don’t impose a limitation somewhere, those people would probably have a difficult time with the prose that comes naturally to me, and I don’t want that. I usually find myself simplifying on my own before Night Mirror has to tell me, because I know where his tolerance level generally is, and I agree I can’t get too flowery. Despite the limitation, I do really try my best to avoid falling into a game-wide cliche, but… there’s also only so many ways to describe sexual acts before you get into more abstract language… which I don’t mind doing, but at the same time, I understand that more unique prose in sex scenes doesn’t always translate to wide sexual appeal. I was raised off of a healthy diet of literotica/fanfiction, so my tolerance is higher, but I know what I like isn’t necessarily the norm, at least outside of the niche subculture of (predominantly female) writers on Fanfiction.net

Usually, I try to find the unique momentum/dynamic of a sexual encounter and pull that story to the forefront so that each scene feels like it stands on its own. Sometimes a scene is more pleasure focused, and you get a bit more description, sometimes it’s more mental, and you get some internal dialogue, and sometimes it’s more of a conversation. I also try to give each girl their own sexual traits which helps set them apart from the others. For example, Wild Summer didn’t originally have the trait of stronger internal muscles, or a breeding fetish, but it felt right when you look at her character. Beth gets more motherly/mature language, while Morticia is more cute and cuddly. There’s also the challenge of the birth control system, because it exists as an opt in choice, there’s usually an incentive in most scenes to tease impregnation risk… I say challenge because there really *is* only so many ways you can do it, and while I’m happy to go there (I like the kink) it’s work to keep it fresh.

Anyway, thanks again, always happy to talk the nitty gritty about this aspect, that’s where my head is usually at when I’m working.

 

[051201levlev]

hello everyone, I have a huge request, could someone record a video from the screen when the new scenes will take place? I'm on a business trip now and I don't have any devices other than an iPhone, and I won't be able to play, but I really want to see new content in the game, please help me, the business trip will last a very long time

 

[sausiech]

Got curious about specific word count so I tossed together a script to scrape the dialogue and show how many times each word is used in the game. It isn't perfect, and some of the text replace stuff has some wackness to it (when you get down to single use words), still sort of a neat insight. Attached as a plain text files because it's 680 lines long. Enjoy?

Why are there two separate lists with a frequency of 1?

 

[Night Mirror]

Why are there two separate lists with a frequency of 1?

Because I only spent ~20 minutes writing the script... Not sure why there are two, was a last minute adjustment to condense the extra 1000 lines.

Edit:
Fixed the issue and re-uploaded the file.

 

[kentastic]

im loving this game. great artwork, no glitches or bugs that make me restart, and the story content is not only original but also tastefully done. add to that a very subtle sense of humor, i think this one plays better with fewer restarts that the ferdafs edition but thats just me. all in all great game. just hope they stick with it and keep expanding on the story lines.

 

[aaronminus]

Got curious about specific word count so I tossed together a script to scrape the dialogue and show how many times each word is used in the game. It isn't perfect, and some of the text replace stuff has some wackness to it (when you get down to single use words), still sort of a neat insight. Attached as a plain text files because it's 680 lines long. Enjoy?

Edit:
Fixed minor output error.

Ctrl-F "Teasing" = 55
Ctrl-F "Precum" = 82
Nature is healing...

 

[Night Mirror]

Ctrl-F "Teasing" = 55
Ctrl-F "Precum" = 82
Nature is healing...

Fuck, gotta shove a bunch more of those in across the game. Copy-pasting precum into every other line! HERE WE GO!!!!!!

 

[Smudgey]

It's that time again, congrats to the team on another successful patch. I didn't really feel like doing another full playthrough so this is only covering what I could immediately find in the newest content. Also I made sure these were all found in the full download of the game.

Bug/Typo Report

Day 17: Midnight Snack

• At the line "Maybe I could make you something to eat?" selecting "Too tired(Skip)" causes a renpy crash screen.

Day 27: Passed Out

• In both consent/rape, at the line (Which hole do I take?), selecting (Skip) causes a renpy crash screen.
• In both consent/rape, if you chose to fuck Morticia's butt and cum on her buttcheeks, the next day her dialogue will incorrectly talk about her pussy instead.

Day 28: Mr.Meesex

• At the line "Awesome, let's summon a few more, then!" selecting "We don't need them.(Skip)" causes a renpy crash screen.

Day 33: Bathtime

• At the line "(Oh man, do I really want to get involved with this?)" selecting (Skip) causes a renpy crash screen.

Day 39: Mortyplicty

• Narration doesn't refer to Wild Summer's changed name in the line "You pick up the other Summer's gift and can barely manage to lift it."
• All mentions of "coco" should be "cocoa"

And that's all I could find, seems pretty clean aside from the (Skip) issues, might wanna stick that on a checklist for next time.

Errors aside, I also had a general question that's been bugging me. Why is there multiple versions of the morty/morticia hugging kiss image? I don't wish to be rude, but it seems a bit redundant when one is clearly higher quality than the other.

 

[aaronminus]

Thanks for the bug reports. Darn, skip options probably got borked with the under the hood changes. For the picture, one is a bit older than the other, I believe. The reason that one was opted for was because (and I can't stress this enough) I can't draw, and Morticia needed panties edited on in the shot. A "challenge" as simple as a side perspective with a looser shirt is beyond my skill level... and there's the point of variety.

 

[Night Mirror]

It's that time again, congrats to the team on another successful patch. I didn't really feel like doing another full playthrough so this is only covering what I could immediately find in the newest content. Also I made sure these were all found in the full download of the game.

Bug/Typo Report

Day 17: Midnight Snack

• At the line "Maybe I could make you something to eat?" selecting "Too tired(Skip)" causes a renpy crash screen.

Day 27: Passed Out

• In both consent/rape, at the line (Which hole do I take?), selecting (Skip) causes a renpy crash screen.
• In both consent/rape, if you chose to fuck Morticia's butt and cum on her buttcheeks, the next day her dialogue will incorrectly talk about her pussy instead.

Day 28: Mr.Meesex

• At the line "Awesome, let's summon a few more, then!" selecting "We don't need them.(Skip)" causes a renpy crash screen.

Day 33: Bathtime

• At the line "(Oh man, do I really want to get involved with this?)" selecting (Skip) causes a renpy crash screen.

Day 39: Mortyplicty

• Narration doesn't refer to Wild Summer's changed name in the line "You pick up the other Summer's gift and can barely manage to lift it."
• All mentions of "coco" should be "cocoa"

And that's all I could find, seems pretty clean aside from the (Skip) issues, might wanna stick that on a checklist for next time.

Fixed! Thanks for the finds. Just extra stuff on where it shouldn't have been. Was pretty sure I double checked all the skip menus... but, lots of moving parts, so easy to miss.

Errors aside, I also had a general question that's been bugging me. Why is there multiple versions of the morty/morticia hugging kiss image? I don't wish to be rude, but it seems a bit redundant when one is clearly higher quality than the other.

The less good one was my original (Unity version didn't have any images of them kissing (pretty sure it still doesnt?)), and the higher quality one is from WatsonTouya. While my attempt is not the best, it is something different. I already re-use a lot of art all over the game, so some diversity is better in my opinion.

 

[Theshim]

sweet more rick and morty

 

[KamakaziPython]

I get this Error every time i try to skip a scene. Any workarounds?

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
  File "game/scripts/story/day_0015.rpy", line 971, in script call
    call skip_text(mcs.morti.t, "room") from _call_skip_text_27
  File "game/scripts/script.rpy", line 866, in script
    $ track.t.new_event(title=title, sex=False)
  File "game/scripts/script.rpy", line 866, in <module>
    $ track.t.new_event(title=title, sex=False)
AttributeError: 'Character_Tracker' object has no attribute 't'

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
  File "game/scripts/story/day_0015.rpy", line 971, in script call
    call skip_text(mcs.morti.t, "room") from _call_skip_text_27
  File "game/scripts/script.rpy", line 866, in script
    $ track.t.new_event(title=title, sex=False)
  File "D:\VNs\RickNMorty\RMAWH-r3.8-pc\renpy\ast.py", line 1131, in execute
    renpy.python.py_exec_bytecode(self.code.bytecode, self.hide, store=self.store)
  File "D:\VNs\RickNMorty\RMAWH-r3.8-pc\renpy\python.py", line 1061, in py_exec_bytecode
    exec(bytecode, globals, locals)
  File "game/scripts/script.rpy", line 866, in <module>
    $ track.t.new_event(title=title, sex=False)
AttributeError: 'Character_Tracker' object has no attribute 't'

Windows-10-10.0.22621 AMD64
Ren'Py 8.0.3.22090809
Rick and Morty: Another Way Home (r3.8) r3.8
Thu May 25 12:32:59 2023