Recommending Story-first games

[noping123]

Visually the game is amazing, and it has one of the best phone submenus I've seen. Devs claim it's their first game, but I don't believe it, I mean looking at all these alleged "first games" like A long Journey, A&O, Entrepreneur, Elvensang and now SH, I bet there are dozens of failed game husks littering those devs basements. They can't be that good on the first tr

Lol. Some people are just naturally talented. You look at my game and you can tell it's a first time effort. Then you look at some of the ones you mentioned, and it doesn't seem like it at all. In some cases the person has a background in other areas (art/writing/game development) that helps a ton, in others they just have the talent to work from. I know more than a couple devs who got into this "Just because" with nothing to draw on, and put up pretty impressive fronts for a first try.

The big thing you're overlooking, is for every game you look at and go "wow that's pretty good for a first time offering", there's a few dozen "first time offerings" that suck horribly, or get abandoned pretty quickly (or both).

 

[jufot]

Stellar Crossroads, the sequel to the fairly well-liked and OP-listed Callisto, is

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for $5+ tiers. It takes place decades after the first game and is centred on an unassuming but strategically important space station. Think Deep Space 9, but smaller. There are many references to Callisto and the story wouldn't make much sense without it, so I recommend refreshing up on the lore before starting this one.

This first chapter is about ~30 minutes long. We're introduced to the MC, five other characters, and the story's connection to Callisto. It's pretty good! I just hope the dev can avoid the annoying sandbox stuff this time

 

[boobsrcool]

Stellar Crossroads, the sequel to the fairly well-liked and OP-listed Callisto, is

You must be registered to see the links

for $5+ tiers. It takes place decades after the first game and is centred on an unassuming but strategically important space station. Think Deep Space 9, but smaller. There are many references to Callisto and the story wouldn't make much sense without it, so I recommend refreshing up on the lore before starting this one.

This first chapter is about ~30 minutes long. We're introduced to the MC, five other characters, and the story's connection to Callisto. It's pretty good! I just hope the dev can avoid the annoying sandbox stuff this time

Great news! Playing through Callisto right now and loving it thanks Jufot

 

[Tlaero]

Thanks so much for taking the time to play through AO.

I just tried it out, and you're off to a great start. Your long history doing artwork shows through. The "Animate to open their mouth when speaking" part is interesting. I'm not used to it, but I like that you're putting your own graphical spin on things.

I love the soundtrack. In the jam session I waited for the entire song to end. Hall of the Mountain King was early Metal music.

The need to treat different people differently is nice.

I feel that your dialog is a bit verbose. It feels like you're having your characters say maybe 50% more lines than is necessary. The general rule is, if you can say it with less words, you're often better off doing so. In this case, the words are okay, but you often have 2 or 3 lines where one is all you need. This is the first thing you've written, though, and you'll get better at it with practice.

There's one thing that you have to fix though. I hate, hate, hate, the "typewriter effect" where you have to sit and wait for the text to type out. In every other renpy game, you can set the text speed to maximum in the Preferences, and the lines appear instantly. You've got the preferences screen, but the setting doesn't seem to take effect. That happens automatically in Renpy, so you must have done something to disable it. Please fix that. Watching the text type out saps my will to live...

Tlaero

 

[Raife]

I feel that your dialog is a bit verbose. It feels like you're having your characters say maybe 50% more lines than is necessary.

Tlaero

All of Tlaero's advice is great -- which isn't exactly a surprise, given the source. I particularly commend her suggestion to pare down your dialogue: so many of these games feature overly verbose, elaborate dialogue that kills realism.

Think about your conversations in ordinary life. Very few of them contain long, paragraph-like sections or monologues; for the most part, they are staccato renditions of brief ideas.

Good luck with your game -- the first episode was promising.

 

[Raife]

Stellar Crossroads, the sequel to the fairly well-liked and OP-listed Callisto

I _still_ haven't played through Callisto, believe it or not, because I bombed out with the annoying sandbox feature. (I don't hate all sandboxes... but most of them are so poorly implemented that they are a big distraction from the game.) Thanks for the reminder.

 

[Ezykeyal]

I just tried it out, and you're off to a great start. Your long history doing artwork shows through. The "Animate to open their mouth when speaking" part is interesting. I'm not used to it, but I like that you're putting your own graphical spin on things.

I love the soundtrack. In the jam session I waited for the entire song to end. Hall of the Mountain King was early Metal music.

The need to treat different people differently is nice.

I feel that your dialog is a bit verbose. It feels like you're having your characters say maybe 50% more lines than is necessary. The general rule is, if you can say it with less words, you're often better off doing so. In this case, the words are okay, but you often have 2 or 3 lines where one is all you need. This is the first thing you've written, though, and you'll get better at it with practice.

There's one thing that you have to fix though. I hate, hate, hate, the "typewriter effect" where you have to sit and wait for the text to type out. In every other renpy game, you can set the text speed to maximum in the Preferences, and the lines appear instantly. You've got the preferences screen, but the setting doesn't seem to take effect. That happens automatically in Renpy, so you must have done something to disable it. Please fix that. Watching the text type out saps my will to live...

Tlaero

Thanks so much, sound advice indeed! I will pay attention to the wording for sure.

One of the most common bits of feedback I received, was about the text speed. I'm not sure why the speed slider stopped working as I never touched it (that I know of), but it will be fixed in the next release.

 

[Hildegardt]

I _still_ haven't played through Callisto, believe it or not, because I bombed out with the annoying sandbox feature. (I don't hate all sandboxes... but most of them are so poorly implemented that they are a big distraction from the game.) Thanks for the reminder.

I skipped through Callisto for the sex scenes.
It just seemed like the typical harem fuck fest to me. PC picks up all the women in his ship, who each get little stories that unlock more sex in the sandbox section. The stories get a little more involved in later updates, but I always felt like the main thing about them was the promise of more sex in the end, so I eventually just started skipping.
Also, if I remember correctly, the main gameplay consists of the oldschool stairway to heaven of grinding out interactions with each woman before you can go further.

 

[noping123]

Thanks so much, sound advice indeed! I will pay attention to the wording for sure.

One of the most common bits of feedback I received, was about the text speed. I'm not sure why the speed slider stopped working as I never touched it (that I know of), but it will be fixed in the next release.

It's because of how renpy works, and how you define cps within character definitions. Your definitions basically say "Fuck your slider". The slider should still work for all non-character text, but for character text the definitions would take precedence. Effectively, you're declaring the cps speed as a slow text style (slow meaning it displays 1 by 1 instead of all at once), and declaring the speed, overriding the slider entirely.

While sometimes cool, it is the sort of thing that can make players rage quit. There are otoh ways to make it optional - that is something like a menu preference where they can play with slow text, or the more common "All at once" style.

The other alternatives are:

"slow_cps = True" - instead of using a number, setting it to True allows it to maintain slowcps (1 by 1 letters), but still take the value of the slider based on user preference, or

"slow_cps_multiplier = #" - again slow cps, but it's a multiplier based on the slider value. So twice as fast as it, or half the speed, or whatever.


Totally off-topic, but whatever. Basically when you define a static value for slow cps, you completely override user preference, which is why it doesn't work.

 

[jufot]

It just seemed like the typical harem fuck fest to me. PC picks up all the women in his ship, who each get little stories that unlock more sex in the sandbox section. The stories get a little more involved in later updates, but I always felt like the main thing about them was the promise of more sex in the end, so I eventually just started skipping.

While there is some truth to that, it's not really a harem. I've initially bounced off it as well, but I came around.

Also, if I remember correctly, the main gameplay consists of the oldschool stairway to heaven of grinding out interactions with each woman before you can go further.

Yes, the sandbox results in pointless repeatables that slowly build relationship points, unfortunately.

 

[Raife]

I skipped through Callisto for the sex scenes.
It just seemed like the typical harem fuck fest to me.

I agree. It felt that way during my first attempt at a playthrough.

 

[boobsrcool]

In case anyone didn't see already Leap of Faith final update is up

 

[Tlaero]

Thanks so much, sound advice indeed! I will pay attention to the wording for sure.

One of the most common bits of feedback I received, was about the text speed. I'm not sure why the speed slider stopped working as I never touched it (that I know of), but it will be fixed in the next release.

One other thing. You've got it set to obfuscate your code. I don't go that route because it doesn't really hide the code the way you think it might. There are ways to unpack it after the fact, so anyone who really wants to see it can. It's just an extra step. I didn't bother doing the extra step last night, but had the code been visible I would have fixed your slow text problem myself.

The point of obfuscating the code is either to keep people from stealing it or to keep them from cheating. But anyone who would want to steal it still can, and there's not much point in trying to keep people from cheating at a single player game.

Not a big deal either way. I wouldn't have noticed if not for the slow text issue. But, it's something to think about.

Tlaero

 

[noping123]

One other thing. You've got it set to obfuscate your code. I don't go that route because it doesn't really hide the code the way you think it might. There are ways to unpack it after the fact, so anyone who really wants to see it can. It's just an extra step. I didn't bother doing the extra step last night, but had the code been visible I would have fixed your slow text problem myself.

The point of obfuscating the code is either to keep people from stealing it or to keep them from cheating. But anyone who would want to steal it still can, and there's not much point in trying to keep people from cheating at a single player game.

Not a big deal either way. I wouldn't have noticed if not for the slow text issue. But, it's something to think about.

Tlaero

To be fair, it's not only done for obfuscation purposes. I do it myself, but it's for 2 reasons. #1 - compression. It's not huge compression, but it is compression, and when you package android version like I do, every little bit helps. #2 - it makes issuing patches/bug fixes/etc a lot easier.

I agree there's no real point in trying to "hide" your code or anything like that, but generally I think packaging it that way provides other benefits that make it worth doing.

 

[Tlaero]

I'll grant you compression if you're doing jpegs at 80% compression or better. If not, you're spending a LOT more wasted space on your images than Renpy will provide. Fair point on patching, though.

Tlaero

 

[Ezykeyal]

One other thing. You've got it set to obfuscate your code. I don't go that route because it doesn't really hide the code the way you think it might. There are ways to unpack it after the fact, so anyone who really wants to see it can. It's just an extra step. I didn't bother doing the extra step last night, but had the code been visible I would have fixed your slow text problem myself.

The point of obfuscating the code is either to keep people from stealing it or to keep them from cheating. But anyone who would want to steal it still can, and there's not much point in trying to keep people from cheating at a single player game.

Not a big deal either way. I wouldn't have noticed if not for the slow text issue. But, it's something to think about.

Tlaero

I mainly did that because it packaged the entire game into a neat little package. I'm not bothered about people wanting to have a look or steal something. Any code I have is mostly frankensteined from other people's code from various fora anyway.

I fixed the text stuff. It was a dumb thing on my side. I wasn't even aware that the speed slider actually gave the desired effect if you use it, as the default setting is for text to appear instantly. I basically customised every character definition with a default because I was unaware you could already do this.

I've now removed that and you can actually play with the slider to either make it instant or slow it down. The default is 200cps, which already is much faster than before, but if you want it instant, you can.

Hope, I'm not going too far off-topic... not meaning to hijack the main purpose of the thread, apologies!

 

[jufot]

There are ways to unpack it after the fact, so anyone who really wants to see it can.

Actually, it's

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to decompile most rpyc files for Renpy 7.5 and above. It really annoyed me with a few recent games

 

[noping123]

Actually, it's

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to decompile most rpyc files for Renpy 7.5 and above. It really annoyed me with a few recent games

We're getting way off topic, but so what!

Actually it is.

https://f95zone.to/threads/unren-ol...windowed-3-7-0-unren-powershellhack-v2.92717/


https://f95zone.to/threads/unren-ba...compiler-console-developer-menu-enabler.3083/

both the 1.0.5 version, and the ultrahack v7 generally have success with 7.5->8.0 packages.

I've personally used both and had no problems with any games made with newer versions of renpy so far.

 

[jufot]

both the 1.0.5 version, and the ultrahack v7 generally have success with 7.5->8.0 packages.

I've personally used both and had no problems with any games made with newer versions of renpy so far.

Interesting! I wasn't aware Unren supported decompiling rpyc files. I usually stick to unrpa and unrpyc. Good to know, but alas I'm on Linux and that version of Unren is Windows only

 

[Tlaero]

Hope, I'm not going too far off-topic... not meaning to hijack the main purpose of the thread, apologies!

It's Jufot's thread, but I figure if we can talk about things we don't like in games and discuss how to fix them, then text speed is on topic. In your case, it turned out to be a programming thing, but it could have been someone doing it for stylistic reasons (ie, trying to make it sound like the character was speaking slowly, etc) and then it would be totally on topic.

Tlaero