Ren'Py Rovering to Sussex [Ch. 3 v0.3.5] [Zargon_games & RFB]

Ceesko · Aug 19, 2022

Interesting game, and it looks like it will feature lots of choices and different paths. When is 0.2 coming out?

reflexbound · Aug 19, 2022

Ceesko Thanks! This is what I posted a few days ago on the Discord channel:
We're working hard on it, but it will be a huge chapter with many new locations, quite a bit of lewdness, some minigames, a lot of work to be done. And Zargon is of course working on Young Again as well, that won't be cut short. We'll keep you informed once we have a better idea of when the chapter might be done.

Mpkstroff · Aug 20, 2022

reflexbound said:
Are you (still) interested in Catherine? Who is your favorite girl right now?

I honestly can only remember 3 girls from this game, Catherine, the one with the boyfriend and Anne I think?
I liked Catherine, she care for her cousin when drinking, but after "that" scene.. mmm.. nup.
I dont think I like anyone yet. As Yngling said, Anne share some similarities with Emma, and maybe that why I kinda like her.. I dont know...
I can tell that the game has been made with love (que esta hecho con cariño), but its not clicking with me yet..
Its still the first release, so I wait for now.

quorkboy · Aug 20, 2022

reflexbound said:
Are you (still) interested in Catherine? Who is your favorite girl right now? (Might make a poll on this, but probably not before chapter 2 is out and you know more of them) Or do you plan to just go for all of them? (It is not a harem game though, so you will have to decide eventually) And if you have a favorite, why is it that girl?

I am still interested in Catherine. She seems like a fun girl. Relationship material? Who knows. But as a fuck buddy? Hell yes!
Other girls: I don't know them well enough, but physically the most appealing to me are Rachel and Vanessa. After the bathroom masturbation scene I'm interested in Anne as well.

Zargon_games · Aug 20, 2022

reflexbound said:
Are you (still) interested in Catherine? Who is your favorite girl right now? (Might make a poll on this, but probably not before chapter 2 is out and you know more of them) Or do you plan to just go for all of them? (It is not a harem game though, so you will have to decide eventually) And if you have a favorite, why is it that girl?

I don't know if I'm allowed to answer this question since I'm part of the development of the game, but well, here's my answer:

I'm still interested in Cat, maybe not wife material but we definitely can have a good time with her!

And my favorites for now, (although we still know little to nothing about them) are Katie, Helen and Susan.

reflexbound · Aug 21, 2022

Zargon_games Haha, you know too much about what will happen and how the characters will evolve. No vote for you

E_nigma · Aug 21, 2022

kschn68 said:
"Fell in love" is a bit much. But even there are plenty girls in the game she was actually the most interesting for me. The others are already taken (Charlotte) - or not really interesting, a bit boring. Well, it's not a big drama, this game is probably not for me. Time to move on.

Yeah literally the only reason I clicked on the thread in the first place was her, I've obv read about the content in question and didn't auto-ignore hoping dev would address peoples concerns. But hearing how dead set dev is on unwholesome content and how it(the scene) and her were deliberately intended to create ntr vibes, yeah f false advertising.

quorkboy · Aug 22, 2022

You wanted the dev to change their vision for the story to suit your personal tastes. Yeah, f that.

Bring on more wholesome consensual sharing!

johnqaz · Aug 22, 2022

kschn68 · Aug 22, 2022

quorkboy said:
You wanted the dev to change their vision for the story to suit your personal tastes. Yeah, f that.

Bring on more wholesome consensual sharing!

If you say so...

I actually was expecting something different in this game, especially since it was hyped as such by the development team in advance in their Patreon posts. But as I've already said, I've learned it the hard way here and will now avoid their games in the future (should have listen more in the discord forums before I blindly played it - they were already called the NTR/sharing/swinging stuff developers since this game started...).
Well, good luck. I'm out.

ZagorTeNay · Aug 27, 2022

Yeesh, the drama. Judging from some comments, expected full blown gangbang bukkakke session with your-bride-to-be, on the upper floor. Game clearly indicates from the get-go how Catherine is like ( "slut" as some would call it). Maybe she will commit/fall for MC later on, if you hook up with her, but so far how it plays out makes sense. MC is not the only guy in the group, and he's a newcomer. ( fantasies like WVM or "My New Family", creep me the hell out, all female characters staring at MC like doe-eyed puppets. Too self indulgent and ridiculous, even if you were the best looking man on the planet)
Anyways, the game is good so far, I like it. Kind of reminds me of "Best days of our lives".
MC could use some personality boost though, and I hope we see/learn more of other characters ( more distinctive traits, backstories, etc).

reflexbound · Aug 27, 2022

ZagorTeNay said:
MC could use some personality boost though, and I hope we see/learn more of other characters ( more distinctive traits, backstories, etc).

I'm not sure I can promise too much about the MC, though his behavior will certainly change a bit once he's acquainted with the group some more. And you'll surely get more of the other characters in the next chapters, they will all get their share of screen time, some maybe sooner, some might need more time, but they are all equally important to me.

hkennereth · Sep 1, 2022

reflexbound said:
Devlog #2 - Personality

Welcome back everybody! It's RFB again with another devlog for our upcoming game Rovering to Sussex. Today we'll have a look at how to shape your main character's personality.

But before we dive in, I want to clarify what kind of game Rovering to Sussex is. From last week's devlog, and maybe even more from this one, some of you might think it is a sandbox game. Let me be very clear that it isn't. There is no repeated grinding of the same scenes over and over to increase some values so that you can finally advance individual paths of a loose story.
Instead, Rovering to Sussex is a visual novel with lots of choice. There is one story that you follow as you play the game, but you can often choose whether you want to see some scene or or not. Sometimes you have to choose between different alternatives. In some scenes you can decide whom to talk to, what questions to ask and what answers to give.
And whatever you choose, the game will remember it and change based on what you know and don't know yet or how the different characters see you. We hope that this makes it interesting to play the game over and over again as there will always be something new to discover as you check out different paths.

Now that this is out of the way, back to today's topic. Your character's personality is one of those ways how the game remembers what you decided and changes how different characters see you:

Traits

In Rovering to Sussex, the personality of your main character is defined by three traits:

- Athletic: This represents your character's interest in sports and fitness. You'll gain it for example by going to the gym or doing tasks that involve more manual labor.
- Social: This is about being open and talkative, but also about appearances. You'll gain it, e.g., by talking to people and you can lose it if you are a bad friend.
- Nerdy: The last one is about theoretic knowledge and can be gained for example in quizzes or when discussing nerdy stuff.

As with most choices you can make in the game, there is no right or wrong here, just pick what you like and see how it plays out.

Personality AI

The way you see the current state of your traits is the *Personality AI* app. It shows your personality as a point in the triangle between the three different traits:

View attachment 1823534

As this presentation suggests, the three traits are mutually exclusive, so you can't have high (or low) values in all of them, but every gain in one trait will lose you some points in the other two and vice versa. If you want to reap the benefits of different traits, you may have to consider your actions very carefully, especially since decisions later in the game won't much the needle much (there is no distinction between decisions earlier or later, but after you've taken ten nerdy decisions, going to the gym once won't suddenly make you athletic).
The triangle also rotates to always keep your top trait on top to make it easier to see what you are doing.

The "Your Profile" button in the app takes you to a screen similar to the contact info presented in the first devlog so you can get some information about your own character:

View attachment 1823531

It is pretty empty right now, but as you play, it will fill with more details of what you experienced and some of the choices you made.

Effects

So, why should you care? How does your personality affect the game?

First of all, there will sometimes be minor variations in the dialogue or thoughts depending on your traits. This doesn't affect gameplay much, but adds some touches to make your character feel more realistic and improve your immersion.

Second, a high enough value in some trait may give you additional benefits or options during the game. A nerdy character might get hints for quizzes, an athletic one might have an easier time with some manual tasks and a social one might have a better pick-up line for you to chose.

The final and probably most important effect of your personality is that each of the other characters you encounter will see you differently depending on your traits. We'll talk more about the details of relationships and how they are affected by your traits in the next devlog though so stay tuned.

See you next time!
RFB

I have to say I'm truly fascinated by the trait system you designed. I do believe the biggest gains are your own, because this system means that you can design branching dialogue and story beats and never have to worry about how many points a player is meant to have at any given moment, all you need to worry is whether it passes a threshold for a minor (around 0.35) or major (around 0.65) traits. You probably still need to rely on some hard choices here and there if you want to branch the story more dramatically (did you save the princess or not), but for dialogue and character relationship this system is pretty great. I particularly liked how you bring traits as weighted values into relationship points, reflecting how some people just might dislike big aspect of your personality, but one you can win over by being nice to them. It's a very clever system, congratulations.

The one downside of it is the one you highlight on the devlog itself: choices become decreasingly meaningful as time goes by because the total pool of choices is being divided by larger and larger numbers, so each individual point affects traits less and less.

However, I wanted to ask if you considered the idea of... well, throwing older choices away. If you make the system only take into consideration a pool of the last X choices made, you give players the option to change their personality as time goes by, which makes all choices more relevant, and better reflects how people have the ability to learn and change with time. Maybe they started as some big nerds and learned to pay more attention to their body health, or they were all about parties and being social, and decided to focus on their studies and become more nerdy.

With a big enough number of choices in the pool you still get the benefits of slow change by each choice, but at least you can change course... without editing variables or something. How big a pool really depends on how many choices per "chapter" you will end up having, but I think it's an idea worth considering.

reflexbound · Sep 1, 2022

Thanks hkennereth!

hkennereth said:
However, I wanted to ask if you considered the idea of... well, throwing older choices away. If you make the system only take into consideration a pool of the last X choices made, you give players the option to change their personality as time goes by, which makes all choices more relevant, and better reflects how people have the ability to learn and change with time. Maybe they started as some big nerds and learned to pay more attention to their body health, or they were all about parties and being social, and decided to focus on their studies and become more nerdy.

Yes, I considered such a moving average. You are right about some benefits of that, but I happy with the current system for now. It's not like later choices matter less. Whether you pick an athletic choice first and then a social one or the other way round, you'll always end up at the same values, so they did matter exactly the same. Just the swings that you see are getting smaller.
But the nice thing is, if it doesn't work out, I can always change the way the points are calculated, because they are not stored directly, but I track your decisions, so I can change how they impact the values at any time if I need to.

estrada777 · Sep 4, 2022

Updated Android port. Nothing too fancy but let me know if you have any issues.

Version: 0.3.0

Appreciate my porting? Leave a Tip! You're supporting my efforts, paying for storage, and encouraging more ports!
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