Ren'Py Sexbot Restoration 2124 [v0.8.1] [squirrel24]

[Otherguy2012]

You make a good point and it's not the first time I've heard about people on 'automatic pilot' clicking on a button they didn't mean to. I've done it myself many times!

This next part isn't my full answer but I hope you know there is a 'Back' button to back up when you do this? It's on the top right near Q Save, Q Load, and Menu. I use it whenever I do the 'automatic pilot' thing.

I've considered this issue before and I'm sort of stuck in "paralysis of analysis". I can't decide on which locations within the game have this problem because the one you mentioned is not the only one. Then I can't decide which buttons need to move and where I should put them. After pondering these things for a while and not coming up with good answers I get bored and want to work on some new feature instead. Not my best moment! I'll keep trying but it's a good idea that probably won't happen very soon. Sorry.

Silly unrelated question.
The AI that runs the capsules...um what happens if we never went into the settings and just advanced them? They still seem to be helping, but I was curious.

 

[squirrel24]

And to my other point, 5 weeks of identical text in the journal is not "step by step" instructions. It's the appearance of an infinite loop. If I see a minor variant of this image every week for weeks on end in the game, that would indicate to me as a player that nothing is going to change. If there was something showing a change each week like some kind of flavor text "Man, this is getting frustrating, I need to figure out a way to put a stop to this" or something over time to show that there was progress, that would make sense.

Spoiler: Mob Journal Entry weeks 1-5

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Maybe I'm the odd one here, but having no indication that anything is changing over time is frustrating at best. Completely off-putting at worst.

Looking at the code, it isn't until phase_6_extortion6 that there is any kind of actual indication of real progress in the quest. Before that it's simply variants of "they want this bot, I'd better deliver it."

Spoiler: mob_protection code

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Please understand I'm trying to offer constructive feedback. I like the game. Under the covers it has some of the most sophisticated code I've seen in a renpy game. But it definitely has some rough edges that could be polished from an end user perspective. People (like me) are dumb, and want to take shortcuts. If you make the intro to every quest description identical, even if the full description has subtle changes, it will feel like nothing is changing. Knowing human behavior, you can create those shortcuts to understanding. By doing a minor restructuring of the opening and closing sentences of each quest step description, you would make it infinitely easier for people to understand that there is progression happening.

Edit: Heck, put the headers for each of your phase classes as the header of the quest! Seeing the numbers change/description change would indicate progress, and be minimal effort/changes to the code base!

    class phase_2_extortion2:  ##  describe Combat Bot level 1
    class phase_3_extortion3:  ##  describe Sex Bot level 1
    class phase_4_extortion4:  ##  describe Combat Bot level 2
    class phase_5_extortion5:  ##  describe Sex Bot level 2
    class phase_6_extortion6:  ##  describe Techie Bot level 1
    class phase_7_extortion7:  ##  describe Combat Bot level 3
    class phase_8_extortion8:  ##  describe Sex Bot level 3
    class phase_9_extortion9:  ##  describe Combat Bot level 3

Sorry you're disappointed. Some of your points are valid but some are exaggerations. I'm not going to debate with you, it's a waste of your time and my time. Perhaps you should find another game you like better.

 

[squirrel24]

Silly unrelated question.
The AI that runs the capsules...um what happens if we never went into the settings and just advanced them? They still seem to be helping, but I was curious.

Sorry, I don't understand your question, what do you mean by "... never going into the settings and just advanced them".

 

[AkiranGaming]

Sorry you're disappointed. Some of your points are valid but some are exaggerations. I'm not going to debate with you, it's a waste of your time and my time. Perhaps you should find another game you like better.

I understand your frustration, you have put a lot of effort into the game and doing the best you can, but to suggest finding another game may be going a little to far. It is like telling a person to leave the country they live in and love because they aren't happy with a little something and voice an opinion.

Actually, a header for quests that give some idea of the progression would be a nice feature and think something like it was suggested previously.

 

[squirrel24]

I understand your frustration, you have put a lot of effort into the game and doing the best you can, but to suggest finding another game may be going a little to far. It is like telling a person to leave the country they live in and love because they aren't happy with a little something and voice an opinion.

Actually, a header for quests that give some idea of the progression would be a nice feature and think something like it was suggested previously.

Your comparison is a little dramatic, playing a game is trivial compared to where you live. I'm not telling you what to do or forcing you to do anything. All I said is "Perhaps you should find another game you like better".

The feature idea is reasonable, I may use it in future quests but I'm unlikely to rewrite old ones. Cheers!

 

[AkiranGaming]

Your comparison is a little dramatic, playing a game is trivial compared to where you live. I'm not telling you what to do or forcing you to do anything. All I said is "Perhaps you should find another game you like better".

The feature idea is reasonable, I may use it in future quests but I'm unlikely to rewrite old ones. Cheers!

My comparison was meant to be dramatic, to point out how extreme your suggestion to find another game was in response to the original comment, which was just offering some constructive feedback. It should be clear that we like the game and have enough interest to give suggestions on how we think it could be improved, so to respond "Perhaps you should find another game you like better", felt a little harsh.

As you said previously, there is no reason to debate the issue, which would be a waste of time, best used working on or playing SR24, lol.

Finally, thank you for all your devotion to the game and look forward to more updates in the future.

 

[Sleeping In Pieces]

Not really disagreeing with you but I considered the skin layer enough for males who don't need hourglass figures.

Will it be too much of a hassle to add it in?
Males don't need hourglass figures but have their own preferences in terms of bodily beauty (wide shoulders, prominent pecs, V-shaped torso, well-formed butts). And the differences in components is glaring.

Besides I don't think having only a skin layer will be comfy for those using these bots for their intended purpose.

BTW I also noticed a bug on the Good Neighbor quest. I donated an A-class bot with B-class parts. When it came back for repairs it had A-class parts. Was sorely tempted to swap the parts out.

 

[5mithers]

Spoiler: Diff output

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Quick edit for the mob quests with the comment headers added to the quest descriptions. Feel free to integrate it into the game.

 

[squirrel24]

Will it be too much of a hassle to add it in?
Males don't need hourglass figures but have their own preferences in terms of bodily beauty (wide shoulders, prominent pecs, V-shaped torso, well-formed butts). And the differences in components is glaring.

Besides I don't think having only a skin layer will be comfy for those using these bots for their intended purpose.

BTW I also noticed a bug on the Good Neighbor quest. I donated an A-class bot with B-class parts. When it came back for repairs it had A-class parts. Was sorely tempted to swap the parts out.

Yes, implants probably would apply to male bots but I'm not going to put them in. I like that maintaining male bots is a little easier than female bots because they have one less part that would get damaged during combat and sex training. Related to this, I've thought about separating hands and arms into two parts or adding heads as a new part but I haven't done it because adding more parts to bots increases the amount of grind involved in maintaining them. I'd need to add more AP to balance the game and I don't want to get into an "arms race" (pun intended) between parts on bots and the AP necessary to maintain them. Before anyone says it, yes I know 'master techies' reduce the magnitude of this issue but you'd still need to waste a capsule to hold an additional 'master techie' bot.

Sadly the difference between the bots you donate to the patrol and the damaged bots that return occasionally is more of a 'feature' than a bug.

The bots that come back for repairs are always the same ones that were used to display the MC delivering the first pair of bots to the patrol which, barring wild coincidence, are not the actual bots you delivered. These bots are Camilla and Quinton with different hair colors and Camilla has a different color outfit. Camilla is an A bot with A parts and Quinton is a B bot with B parts. You could probably use Camilla as a source of A parts if you have a supply of B parts and want to spend the time and AP to gain 1 level higher parts. I could have written code to keep the actual bots you delivered hanging around invisibly so I could use them as the damaged bots but that would have required more code and the images still wouldn't match. Since the images will never match anyway I saved myself some work and always use the first pair of bots as the damaged bots. You didn't mention this but the bot's names don't match either! I'm sorry but this sort of thing will always happen in SR24.

All images in SR24 are a compromise, except for rare coincidences, the bots you see in missions and performing roles are not the actual bots involved. This is bogus of course but to make images in activities match the actual bot I'd have to do two things that I don't want to do:

1) Reduce the number of bots in the game. DSCS had only 5 different bots but even that would take 5X the amount of work creating images for each activity. Right now I spend approximately equal amounts of time on these 3 activities: creating images, programming the game, and the build/test/revise/rebuild loop. Yes I know, a good programmer wouldn't have to spend so much time in that last part! Multiplying 1/3 of the effort by 5 would more than double development time and SR24 has 21 bots not 5.

2) Remove support for bot mods. I can never make images for them so they would have to be removed from the game.

If you got through all of this I apologize for being long winded!

 

[squirrel24]

Spoiler: Diff output

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Quick edit for the mob quests with the comment headers added to the quest descriptions. Feel free to integrate it into the game.

I opened the file and it's mostly my game code. I assume you made changes here and there in the text. As you know, I'm not very motivated to do this and I'm not going to spend my time comparing files to find your edits.

Also, I'm not trying to be offensive but I will not paste someone else's code into the game without knowing exactly what it contains. If you think about this I believe you'll agree that this would be a risky activity. I'd prefer you mark your edits so I can copy and paste them into my own file. I will not spend time proof-reading all of my own code in your file to make sure it matches. I'm sure many people are much better at using tools to make this activity easy but I don't have that skill and I have to read the code which is tedious and takes a long time.

 

[DrLizardman]

This is an unexpected question. I wasn't planning on it because there are so many bot mods available and my skills in DAZ aren't that great. I haven't learned how to make animations yet so they are all static images and many bot mods include videos.

One thing I did when creating images for SR24 is make all of them have a white border which I believe helps them to stand out from the background image better. Mod images and videos don't have this border and I don't know how to add one on the fly during game play.

That's fine I am just an odd person who hates mixing art styles. I will live with the baseline 5 bots. As a side note, would you consider this new version having enough new content for someone who beat the original using your mod or should I wait a bit longer?

 

[squirrel24]

That's fine I am just an odd person who hates mixing art styles. I will live with the baseline 5 bots. As a side note, would you consider this new version having enough new content for someone who beat the original using your mod or should I wait a bit longer?

I misunderstood, if you only have 5 bots you're playing DSCS. SR24 has 21 bots in it, the 5 that were in DSCS and 16 others. SR24 has all of the squirrel mods I made for DSCS. It expands the workshop to permit up to 20 bot capsules and it has capsule upgrades that improve a bot's stability a little each turn so the MC doesn't have to do it all the time. It has two new bot roles; one allows bots to fix other bots so the MC doesn't have to spend all his time tinkering with damaged bots and the other sends other bots on routine missions so you don't have to micromanage all of your bots. It's still a work in progress but there are more things to do than there are in DSCS including two additional quests. I try to put out a new version about every 6 weeks so it grows incrementally. Cheers!

 

[5mithers]

I opened the file and it's mostly my game code. I assume you made changes here and there in the text. As you know, I'm not very motivated to do this and I'm not going to spend my time comparing files to find your edits.

Also, I'm not trying to be offensive but I will not paste someone else's code into the game without knowing exactly what it contains. If you think about this I believe you'll agree that this would be a risky activity. I'd prefer you mark your edits so I can copy and paste them into my own file. I will not spend time proof-reading all of my own code in your file to make sure it matches. I'm sure many people are much better at using tools to make this activity easy but I don't have that skill and I have to read the code which is tedious and takes a long time.

I agree. You should NEVER blindly include code in a project you found online.

That's why I included a

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. A very standard software development practice that shows exactly the changes between the file attached and the original file.

I tried to make it dead simple so your only effort would be checking the diff.

 

[squirrel24]

I agree. You should NEVER blindly include code in a project you found online.

That's why I included a

You must be registered to see the links

. A very standard software development practice that shows exactly the changes between the file attached and the original file.

I tried to make it dead simple so your only effort would be checking the diff.

Sorry, I'm a self taught amateur and I don't even know what that is. Many of the people following this game could do a far better job than I can but since I'm retired I have more time than they do.

 

[MadSargeant]

how do i start the good neighbour quest? I gone to club many times now after mob got dismantled.

 

[squirrel24]

how do i start the good neighbour quest? I gone to club many times now after mob got dismantled.

Two things:

1) You must have finished Night School. You will have a lot of trouble completing Good Neighbor without high social skill so I don't let you start the quest and get frustrated. I should have put in a clue about this. There is a bug fix release coming out soon and I'll put in some sort of clue.

2) When you see the message on the screen in blue about going out do it. You need to do this at night, it doesn't happen at other times.

In the next version I'll make this more natural because there will be a back story in the neighborhood during the entire game. It won't be a big deal but it will include a little social xp for the MC. Unfortunately if you don't start a new game you'll never see it. I probably should have put the back story in first but I was anxious to advance the story line. I had been promising to advance the story line for a couple of versions but kept getting distracted by other things.

 

[AkiranGaming]

Two things:

1) You must have finished Night School. You will have a lot of trouble completing Good Neighbor without high social skill so I don't let you start the quest and get frustrated. I should have put in a clue about this. There is a bug fix release coming out soon and I'll put in some sort of clue.

2) When you see the message on the screen in blue about going out do it. You need to do this at night, it doesn't happen at other times.

In the next version I'll make this more natural because there will be a back story in the neighborhood during the entire game. It won't be a big deal but it will include a little social xp for the MC. Unfortunately if you don't start a new game you'll never see it. I probably should have put the back story in first but I was anxious to advance the story line. I had been promising to advance the story line for a couple of versions but kept getting distracted by other things.

 

[willdotoo]

This game has numourous annoying features, you fix and train a bot and then you find out you overlooked the bot classification is, you work to build a bot to sell and the listing is gone, I could go on forever...AND I LOVE IT! makes me use my tiny brain, I have all available modded bots installed and I love the variation. In the discord the developer mentions he's thinking to adjust the number of male bots, that would be a most welcome developement. Thank you Squirrel24 for going though the trouble of making this adaptation to the original game (which I have not played, nor do I want to), I'm a big fan.

 

[squirrel24]

This game has numourous annoying features, you fix and train a bot and then you find out you overlooked the bot classification is, you work to build a bot to sell and the listing is gone, I could go on forever...AND I LOVE IT! makes me use my tiny brain, I have all available modded bots installed and I love the variation. In the discord the developer mentions he's thinking to adjust the number of male bots, that would be a most welcome developement. Thank you Squirrel24 for going though the trouble of making this adaptation to the original game (which I have not played, nor do I want to), I'm a big fan.

Thank you for your very kind words. Most people would have gone the other direction so this was a very, very pleasant surprise. When people encounter those types of frustrations they typically say "this game sucks" or "the game is broken". I'm glad you take things in stride and I hope you continue enjoying the game. You just made my day!

 

[Otherguy2012]

I really enjoy this game. You have done it justice and the new mechanics for things like bots fixing each other are very welcome.

Have run into a slight snag with combat though. Not just the random thug attacks, but in the S class arena. How much of combat is just chance? I have sent in an S bot with 3+++combat at S,and all S gear and lost. Roll back and replay it and win. Did it a few times. Most of the time I won,but still 1 out of 4 or so I lost. How does it work mechanics wise? Same for random thug encounters when my bot has S combat abilities,and I lose to some random thug and it tell me to work on my 100S+++ combat skill lol.

I can not wait until bots can repair equipment(making a pile rofl). 70 bots currently,most fully trained.What? I have changed how I use capsules though. Keep 12 good bots full time. I can make 60k a night,keep everyone from going crazy,and have time to go out and gather and train new bots. At 13 full time it is managable,but you have to pay much closer attention.

Side note. Does putting a bot with no stability in a capsule effect every bot in other capsules? Because it appears to affect them all,if only for a short time.