Ren'Py RWBY Trainer : Let's be honest, this is a [Devlog] now

[Fatbot]

1st leg of the journey begins!
Half a globe away from my pc, so these weekly checkins will be buttless ("oh, the humanity!", "woe, woe", "won't somebody think of the perverts" etc.) but simce lovely people continue to play my game and provide feedback I'll try to drop a post anyway.

I've had feedback here and on the main post both about players feeling progress is being lost AND clearly a bit confused about what's happening.

This is a fault of my design on two levels that I'll work to rectify in the next round of updates.
1: the tutorial content was mostly written before these design changes were implemented, so it's being inadequately explained to new users.
2: progesss bars are the wrong medium to express this new form of capped development, and need to be revised.

I've never had to think ludonarratively about end user interaction mechanics before, and my inexperience in the games field is showing.
Just goes to show how different games design and software engineering in other fields are, even at the fundamental level of control and progress mechanics.

Still a valuable lesson learned for future updates.

 

[Fatbot]

Not Dead!!!
Also still abroad in the world of men.
So still no butts
Radio silence likely for another week at least, thanks everyone for patience!
FatBot

 

[Fatbot]

I'm BACK!!!
Huzzah!
That's right folks I have returned from my travels, still fat, still a robot, and still excited for the next stage of the project!
And that looks like it's going to be an artist hunt!
The survey over on the main tread is due to end in a few hours and there's not much chance it's not going to fall on the "ask for money for art" outcome!
I've made a Patreon (which is going through their approval process) and soon it'll be underway!
Speaking of the main thread I'm dropping what I'm dubbing "The Ludonarrative Update" which has made some minor changes to the tutorial and removed the Trust and Punishment visible progress bars.
If you've been following along this is designed to help players engage more comfortably with the new stat growth pacing system.
And yeah, I'm back so here's a butt!!!!

 

[Fatbot]

Here's the proof of it all incoming then!
The survey closed with the vast majority being pro-art and launching the Patreon.

And about time too, I've gotten nearly as far as this can go visually without donations, and it's scary as hell to think that just to catch up with the art assets I've used it'll cost about as much as a decent 2nd hand small car does here in Aus!

Prepping a detailed document of what I need and it's 81 art assets ranging from full backgrounds to a whole suite of sfw and nsfw sprites, which honestly could be improved upon so much with the budget but that'd double or even triple the image count.

Still it's exciting that it's underway!
patreon.com/FatBotStudios

Anyhoo, it's an update day so here's a butt!

 

[JimmyJeremyJerome]

I'm late to the party this time. I have tracebacks, though. Quite a lot of them, actually. I'm kind of disappointed no one else seems to have reported anything. A lot of unicode character names in brackets are causing errors. That's the bulk of these; I suspect you forgot to include a necessary library in the release or something. The amount of interruptions is pretty rough. The new additions to the game I've seen so far have been great, but at this point I think I'd like to wait for a fix before I keep going. There are some other bugs in here too, like a misspelling of Narrator in the code causing an error.

 

[JimmyJeremyJerome]

I have no tracebacks this time, which is good. I did still encounter bugs though. I took a screenshot of the most glaring text bug. I also reached a strange state on a punishment scene in the classroom that softlocks the game in an endlessly repeating and unskippable dialogue. I'll provide you the save. I have a suspicion that there are scenes that aren't triggering correctly, but I can't prove that. It's just based on a strange lack of change in response to some stat increases. It's equally possible you just haven't implemented them yet. I've never been able to get Ruby horny enough to initiate for example.

Despite all that Ruby's new bedroom scenes have been great, and I love the control the game gives in terms of how to guide and corrupt Ruby. Your writing and adaptive text style hits hard when everything's working.

 

[Fatbot]

I have no tracebacks this time, which is good. I did still encounter bugs though. I took a screenshot of the most glaring text bug. I also reached a strange state on a punishment scene in the classroom that softlocks the game in an endlessly repeating and unskippable dialogue. I'll provide you the save. I have a suspicion that there are scenes that aren't triggering correctly, but I can't prove that. It's just based on a strange lack of change in response to some stat increases. It's equally possible you just haven't implemented them yet. I've never been able to get Ruby horny enough to initiate for example.

Despite all that Ruby's new bedroom scenes have been great, and I love the control the game gives in terms of how to guide and corrupt Ruby. Your writing and adaptive text style hits hard when everything's working.

Well I know exactly what I did with the first one, I included a % without the break character!

I'll look into the locked loop.....

 

[Fatbot]

JimmyJeremyJerome
Fixed bar the loop, and rewarded with butt, over on the main thread
I'll get on the loop ASAP, but don't have time this morning.

 

[Fatbot]

I'll provide you the save. I have a suspicion that there are scenes that aren't triggering correctly, but I can't prove that. It's just based on a strange lack of change in response to some stat increases. It's equally possible you just haven't implemented them yet. I've never been able to get Ruby horny enough to initiate for example.

The save was super helpful, Ruby's iteration of her counting the strikes was improperly indented and so wasn't triggering, hence the loop.

As for scene triggering, to get her into that action and hit the loop her Horniness must be up over 60% but below 99% (or she'd have orgasmed again and received a much harsher punishment for her bad behaviour).

When it comes to the sex scenes Ruby should start showing willing after a horniness of 40%, seem keen after 60%, be actively seductive after 80%, and literally pounce on you at 100%.

Given the scene you got stuck in she should either seem receptive and keen (if she's bang on 80%) or be actively coming onto you if she's at 81% or more....

You may find now the loop's fixed she should be behaving more seductively, in fact when I ran it she straight up jumped me (also changed into her gym uniform mid-leap, so I fixed that too)!

She's not yet set up to ask for sex as a reward (or for it to be used as a punishment) at all, features haven't been implemented.

What I'm finding is that as we get into the behaviours we're not really meant to reach in the demo version (but that I got over-excited and made or outlined anyway) we're hitting a lot more errors with the code.

It's just another good reason to do a full review before I move on beyond the Demo version.

Anyway, thanks for your sterling work bug hunting as always, here's a spanked Weiss Butt as a reward

 

[Fatbot]

There are 11,476 lines of dialogue in this game now.
That is NOT a fun spellcheck.
But it's done. the spellcheck is done.

Playtests seem pretty stable (barring old saves), but I need to look at rebalancing the thresholds for rewards, stat progressions.
Now we have a clear pathway in place with the milestone content the build-up content needs to be re-aligned to match up better.

One bug fixed though, I found ANOTHER batch of Unicode typo errors, which it seems I have a blind spot for.

BUT the spell-checked version is done and uploaded on the main page.

Anyway, you're here for the butts right?
I find the Gen programs so interesting. It has such an easy time with Ruby and Yang, struggles with Weiss and Glynda, but SUCKS sat Penny and Blake. I wonder why?

 

[Fatbot]

Not much to report that's not in the main thread TBH.
Been creating flow-charts to track stat development to ensure everything works right, and outcome matrices to see how progress would flow.

But no-one other than me finds the match behind their porn game interesting, so have a behind you WILL find interesting instead. Went a bit harder than usual on poor Ruby over on the main thread, and she does not look best pleased.

 

[Fatbot]

Hello Devlog Devotees!
Ugh, some 600 stat adjustment incidents and 200+ tests.
Looking forward to a coding task that isn't just brute-forcing stuff next week!
Although first thing's first, skippable interactions, which will mean at least some more brute force.
But once they're in I can just have them embedded in any new content I add.

Patreon News, we're up to $29 a month now, which doesn't sound like much but does mean after the next payment comes due I can pay the Leramor team for the first Background (which will allow me to begin rolling out the upscale).

Anyway "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Fatbot in possession of an update, must be in need of a butt to post."
Blake doesn't normally get as much attention from me, but she seems to have enjoyed this dose.

 

[JimmyJeremyJerome]

I left a bug report in your patreon chat a couple days ago. You should take a look at it if you haven't already. It prevents players from getting past the academic tutorial.

 

[Fatbot]

Bloody Patreon Chat!
It does not seem to be sending me notifications
I'll get a look in ASAP, ta JJJ.

 

[Fatbot]

Hey JimmyJeremyJerome good news!

That was in fact the same error that was shared in the main thread on Wednesday, and was fixed that same day
I think somehow I managed to upload the pre-test version and not the post-test version this time around, as far as I can tell I managed to somehow roll back all my fixes from testing before I compiled it (don't ask me how).
Not my finest hour to say the least.
Since this bug already got hunted, and got a butt, I've sent you a personalised Pyrrha butt over on Patreon as a thankyou for your forbearance