Unreal Engine Completed Subverse [v1.0] [Studio Fow]

[Deleted member 324588]

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[Thrway8113]

Except once there's enough scenes added to the game you could likely do that. you could have one centered around mantics, or tentacles. Or for the vanilla folk, you can start with a tease, then a handjob, a bj, one sex position/a premium sex position, and then a finisher/after scene.

Even with the current small amount present you could do that now with DEMI's tease, handjob, recruitment scene, and then either of her After shots.

No, even with the GIFs that are meant to be paired together, they don't have proper flow in the current build. You just hop from one ~20 second GIF to the next where the characters are just warped into different positions - there's no proper transition between the GIFs so it doesn't generate an actual scene that flows properly - hence the "transition animations" I mentioned that would help eliminate the disjointed nature inherent to Pandora as it's currently designed.

 

[Gwedelino]

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My face when I see that most of the new sex scenes added still doesn't include any context.

 

[Cpt.SumTingWong]

With all these teasers I hope that the update comes out on monday

 

[TheUnsaid]

No, even with the GIFs that are meant to be paired together, they don't have proper flow in the current build. You just hop from one ~20 second GIF to the next where the characters are just warped into different positions - there's no proper transition between the GIFs so it doesn't generate an actual scene that flows properly - hence the "transition animations" I mentioned that would help eliminate the disjointed nature inherent to Pandora as it's currently designed.

Most games don't do that, and that's a lot of work to just get this nebulous sense of connection.

Honestly? Most games I know about just transition from the VN ADV section to the fullscreen scene CG. What's more important is dialogue during the scene, and the scenes having multiple CG to show the girl laying there > getting fucked > creampie.

I think focusing too heavily on the presentation on a visual level ignores other things they can do to get that same level of immersion and emotional involvement.

Honest question but have you played other adult games? There are interesting solutions to this problem that have been tackled before.

 

[Nalsuloth]

~SNIP

But... because they are aware that people don't like everything they made it so adult content is unlocked based on your tastes so all of it is canon while none of it is. The story can't change because of adult elements that happen, and adult elements can't naturally happen over the course of the story.

~SNIP

Funny you should say that considering, that in the Devblogs they been posting. It says they heard people being disappointed with how everything Sexual is in Pandora only. And are planning to integrate that stuff more into the story.

 

[Thrway8113]

Most games don't do that, and that's a lot of work to just get this nebulous sense of connection.

Honestly? Most games I know about just transition from the VN ADV section to the fullscreen scene CG. What's more important is dialogue during the scene, and the scenes having multiple CG to show the girl laying there > getting fucked > creampie.

True enough, although most games don't have a $2M kickstarter to get things going.

I think focusing too heavily on the presentation on a visual level ignores other things they can do to get that same level of immersion and emotional involvement.

Honest question but have you played other adult games? There are interesting solutions to this problem that have been tackled before.

Yep, I've played more than a few adult games, mostly from this site and a few others that I found on Steam that I bought there. Most of the ones are from this site, which are probably the better games I've played. And they are usually made by Indie devs working alone via Patreon support, which makes their accomplishments more impressive to me. Whereas Studio FOW is an established studio, not saying they are huge by any means, but they have been making movies and learning animation development for upwards of 10 years or so IIRC, and are pretty darn good and experienced at animation, so my expectations for a project from an established studio with a $2M headstart are going to be higher than they are from Indie developers.

What were your thoughts on other ways they could / should tackle the emotional involvement? I'm always open to hearing suggestions and other considerations as I've certainly not played every game out there.

 

[Deleted member 324588]

True enough, although most games don't have a $2M kickstarter to get things going.



Yep, I've played more than a few adult games, mostly from this site and a few others that I found on Steam that I bought there. Most of the ones are from this site, which are probably the better games I've played. And they are usually made by Indie devs working alone via Patreon support, which makes their accomplishments more impressive to me. Whereas Studio FOW is an established studio, not saying they are huge by any means, but they have been making movies and learning animation development for upwards of 10 years or so IIRC, and are pretty darn good and experienced at animation, so my expectations for a project from an established studio with a $2M headstart are going to be higher than they are from Indie developers.

What were your thoughts on other ways they could / should tackle the emotional involvement? I'm always open to hearing suggestions and other considerations as I've certainly not played every game out there.

Ya really can't hold the budget up as the end all answer though. A cut goes to KS, another to Epic for the engine use, then there's the matter of there being an entire team to pay for 2 years and going, as well as bringing on more in recent months. So its not as simple as looking at the amount of 0's and saying 'why thing not how I want it to look', you have be more realistic.

Regarding the other bit about the emotional involvement, have ya heard any of the devotion dialogue thus far? Cuz there's already personal emotions being shown by the characters in them.

 

[Thrway8113]

Ya really can't hold the budget up as the end all answer though. A cut goes to KS, another to Epic for the engine use, then there's the matter of there being an entire team to pay for 2 years and going, as well as bringing on more in recent months. So its not as simple as looking at the amount of 0's and saying 'why thing not how I want it to look', you have be more realistic.

Sure I can, it's quite applicable here given what we're talking about and I would bet that for many people who've come here to check the game out, and who knew about the funding they got ahead of time, that has contributed to why this game is rated 2.5 stars currently versus some other games on this site that are still in Early Access just like Subverse but are ranked 4 and 5 stars and received exactly $0 via a Kickstarter page. Because the games handle intimacy better than a game made by a literal porn studio. That's just embarrassing, dude.

And I've gone on record in the past about the things I like about the game, so it's not like I'm being unreasonable here - the graphics are fantastic, and the game features some of the best voice acting I've seen, so there are absolutely positives, but many many many negatives, as well. And it's absolutely fair to discuss those things.

Regarding the other bit about the emotional involvement, have ya heard any of the devotion dialogue thus far? Cuz there's already personal emotions being shown by the characters in them.

I have seen all of them. Killi's & Lily's are mostly just some storytelling - no doubt to 'crack the door' for future conversations, but ultimately nothing to speak of - Demi's was pretty good, though.

I have no doubt the dialogue will improve over time, but I am skeptical and maintain low expectations with Pandora though regarding intimacy / romance / emotional development in the xxx content for all the reasons that have been discussed over the last few days in this thread. I expect the animations to be good (they usually are with SFow; as I mentioned earlier they are an experienced studio regarding animation development), but I expect them to continue to be mostly short GIFs with poor scene coordination / transition and likely minimal intimacy and romance. But I'm open to having my mind changed (I just don't expect it to happen) and will update my review accordingly as updates are released.

 

[Deleted member 324588]

Sure I can, it's quite applicable here given what we're talking about and I would bet that for many people who've come here to check the game out, and who knew about the funding they got ahead of time, that has contributed to why this game is rated 2.5 stars currently versus some other games on this site that are still in Early Access just like Subverse but are ranked 4 and 5 stars and received exactly $0 via a Kickstarter page. Because the games handle intimacy better than a game made by a literal porn studio. That's just embarrassing, dude.

And I've gone on record in the past about the things I like about the game, so it's not like I'm being unreasonable here - the graphics are fantastic, and the game features some of the best voice acting I've seen, so there are absolutely positives, but many many many negatives, as well. And it's absolutely fair to discuss those things.



I have seen all of them. Killi's & Lily's are mostly just some storytelling - no doubt to 'crack the door' for future conversations, but ultimately nothing to speak of - Demi's was pretty good, though.

I have no doubt the dialogue will improve over time, but I am skeptical and maintain low expectations with Pandora though regarding intimacy / romance / emotional development in the xxx content for all the reasons that have been discussed over the last few days in this thread. I expect the animations to be good (they usually are with SFow; as I mentioned earlier they are an experienced studio regarding animation development), but I expect them to continue to be mostly short GIFs with poor scene coordination / transition and likely minimal intimacy and romance. But I'm open to having my mind changed (I just don't expect it to happen) and will update my review accordingly as updates are released.

I understand your views, I was among those not that pleased with the initial launch offerings that Pandora offered. But given their explanation as to why it looked so barebones, I believe there is plenty of room to improve. They've taken into plenty of feedback from their paying customers, and though we won't see the Pandora system changed up significantly yet (that's stated to be coming after the Ela update), I don't see the need to constantly loop back to the subject until we see them. They've already said sex is gonna be part of Ela's recruitment story, so that's already a marked change.

And unless someone else comes in here that's owned their own company and had to pay employees with a limited budget that wasn't being funded beyond its initial campaign, I don't think anyone here is qualified to talk about the budget.

 

[Thrway8113]

I understand your views, I was among those not that pleased with the initial launch offerings that Pandora. But given their explanation as to why it looked so barebones, I believe there is plenty of room to improve. They've taken into plenty of feedback from their paying customers, and though we won't see the Pandora system changed up significantly yet (that's stated to be coming after the Ela update), I don't see the need to constantly loop back to the subject until we see them. They've already said sex is gonna be part of Ela's recruitment story, so that's already a marked change.

Yep, we shall see.

And unless someone else comes in here that's owned their own company and had to pay employees with a limited budget that wasn't being funded beyond its initial campaign, I don't think anyone here is qualified to talk about the budget.

We'll just have to disagree on this one. Like I pointed out, there are Indie devs on this very site who have put out games that people enjoy more than Subverse and that do romance and intimacy far better than Subverse, and those games had no budget and no list of employees, literally just a dude doing his best on his own, sometimes working a day job initially and working on the game in their spare time until they could build their Patreon enough to stay afloat and become a full-time developer, so if people like that can make excellent games that do a good job with regard to the xxx content and intimacy, then you'll have to forgive me and others who expect a professional animation and pornographic studio with $2M in initial funding to do a better job than they have.

 

[TheUnsaid]

It says they heard people being disappointed with how everything Sexual is in Pandora only. And are planning to integrate that stuff more into the story.

I'm speaking about the game as it is, and with the information I have available.
Technically the main game does already have erotic content.

There's spaceships in the form of a penis.
Killi's costume design has her show a little bit of nipple.

But that's not what people think about when they think adult content. No one's defined it though.
What constitutes as adult content that will be included in the main story?
How will the adult content happen while playing the game?
None of these questions have been discussed let alone answered so I'm speaking from that perspective.

What were your thoughts on other ways they could / should tackle the emotional involvement? I'm always open to hearing suggestions and other considerations as I've certainly not played every game out there.

For me it's complicated.

I think there's a fundamental issue with emotional involvement in the game. The captain isn't designed for it. He's a goofball character who's too distinct a character on his own to make decisions through while also being so much of a joke you can't take emotional discussions with him as a part of it seriously.

Honestly? At bare minimum for me, the pandora scenes should at least have dialogue, as well as insertion and creampie variations. Even if the dialogue repeats it's fine. Writing general erotic scenarios is a skill.
==
1) Fundamental Change:
StudioFOW's history is basically this.
They like older hentai anime that's brutal and aggressive. Works like Kite and Mezzo Forte from Yasuomi Umetsu, and the Taimanin Series from Teruaki Murakami.

I was around when they started and they sold themselves by saying stuff like Teruaki Murakami was going soft making vanilla stuff. Where are all the hardcore hentai going where monsters brutally rape and put girls to tears? Their first public h-animation is kind of their magnum opus of ideals when it comes to this.

Obviously they started bleeding into becoming the thing they hate as they started getting fans and the fans wanted more vanilla because.... well there's a reason Teruaki Murakami tried to make vanilla.

Understanding that about them sexually, personally I think the problem starts with the fact that the captain exists at all. They don't care about emotional involvement. The parts that get them going are the sci-fi political shenanigans and the girls getting dominated by disgusting things much larger than them. This is how I feel about the game anyway. Character motivations and reasoning kind of get glossed over by the larger narrative, and if it exists it feels like you can remove it and the story still work fine.

Imagine if the protagonist was Lily and it was her starship. The game could follow her exploits sleeping around the galaxy with various powerful men trying to get people to approve her xeno research while fucking xenos she makes. In this alternate reality version of the game, merging the erotic content they like with the main game would be much easier as it fits their sexual desire easier and they'd come up with ideas to do it that I couldn't since I'm into femdom.
==
2) Add an SLG.
Games like Teaching Feeling and The Sims 4 w/ mods have taught me a few things. Simulation elements can ramp up eroticism really fast. Just a mode where you look at and manage various stats of the people on the ship and make them do actions to manage those stats would make the erotic elements naturally appear.

Imagine if in-between missions in the hub area, you're in a simulation game (3rd person omniscient) as you have to travel to each mission location. In the in-between sections, everyone's got a horny stat, on top of hunger and other such stats. They move around the ship on their own doing their own things, and their stats change based on what they do. For instance, Lily could be in the medbay and whenever she creates the cell culture for a horrible monstrosity, her horny stat goes up. You can click on her and make her masturbate, go to the captain, or fuck one of her horrible monstrosities.

Not all simulation games play like the sims, but simulation elements are an easy way to blend erotic content into the main game, while keeping the player as an active participant. The player can even "write their own stories" regarding character relationships through their actions.
=====

I honestly don't have any clear and direct answers for Subverse though. The reason I care about about games that do not cater to me sexually at all. Is because I'm curious about how their minds work when it comes to sexual content integration. Subverse is still EA so there are still things it can do to surprise me and I want to be surprised. Even if I don't like the adult content, if I like some design elements then there's something to learn. However... the game isn't really consistent when it comes to sexual content, and the game's design isn't conscious of it in any way.

For instance, I played an NTR RPG a while back. Like.. real NTR, as a developer because I wanted to know if I had built resistance to it, and it had a lot of pages of discussion so I know people liked it. Well, I learned some things and got rid of it tho.

The concept was that a girl needed to go down into a dungeon to save her husband, but it's impossible to make it through on your first playthrough. When you lose and want to get stronger you have to go fuck the asshole to get bonus stats to make it through the game. I imagine that on a design level, NTR lovers like it because of the humiliation the players go through not being strong enough to make it through the dungeon, and needing to rely on an asshole wife-stealer. The more times you go to the asshole changes the ending. The game forces you to go to the asshole at least once so there's no pure love ending.

That method of erotic integration was designed for cucks. It's something that only someone who has that fantasy can really think of, and the way it integrates with the game in a core way that you're conscious of the adult elements is pretty genius. Can't remember the name of the game though... Obviously this thing got yeeted from the harddrive after I learned what I could.

There are maledom games where the heroine cannot defeat monsters easily and needs to rely on equipment to get the job done. Equipment is expensive though so you have to make money by slutting yourself out to people, or fucking the shopkeeper to lower prices. Stuff like that makes the erotic integration of the game increase making you constantly aware of the sexual elements of the game.

Obviously the femdom games I like do the same, but I don't want to get started there. Waay too many good examples for me to choose from.

Subverse doesn't do any of this though... almost like it's embarrassed to be an adult game while also reveling in its adult nature. They're not designing the adult content to be integrated in any way that shows their sexual tastes as developers. Even if the adult content happens in the main game, I doubt it'll be integrated beyond it being a VN scene.

 

[Thrway8113]

For me it's complicated.

I think there's a fundamental issue with emotional involvement in the game. The captain isn't designed for it. He's a goofball character who's too distinct a character on his own to make decisions through while also being so much of a joke you can't take emotional discussions with him as a part of it seriously.

Honestly? At bare minimum for me, the pandora scenes should at least have dialogue, as well as insertion and creampie variations. Even if the dialogue repeats it's fine. Writing general erotic scenarios is a skill.
==
1) Fundamental Change:
StudioFOW's history is basically this.
They like older hentai anime that's brutal and aggressive. Works like Kite and Mezzo Forte from Yasuomi Umetsu, and the Taimanin Series from Teruaki Murakami.

I was around when they started and they sold themselves by saying stuff like Teruaki Murakami was going soft making vanilla stuff. Where are all the hardcore hentai going where monsters brutally rape and put girls to tears? Their first public h-animation is kind of their magnum opus of ideals when it comes to this.

Obviously they started bleeding into becoming the thing they hate as they started getting fans and the fans wanted more vanilla because.... well there's a reason Teruaki Murakami tried to make vanilla.

Understanding that about them sexually, personally I think the problem starts with the fact that the captain exists at all. They don't care about emotional involvement. The parts that get them going are the sci-fi political shenanigans and the girls getting dominated by disgusting things much larger than them. This is how I feel about the game anyway. Character motivations and reasoning kind of get glossed over by the larger narrative, and if it exists it feels like you can remove it and the story still work fine.

Imagine if the protagonist was Lily and it was her starship. The game could follow her exploits sleeping around the galaxy with various powerful men trying to get people to approve her xeno research while fucking xenos she makes. In this alternate reality version of the game, merging the erotic content they like with the main game would be much easier as it fits their sexual desire easier and they'd come up with ideas to do it that I couldn't since I'm into femdom.
==
2) Add an SLG.
Games like Teaching Feeling and The Sims 4 w/ mods have taught me a few things. Simulation elements can ramp up eroticism really fast. Just a mode where you look at and manage various stats of the people on the ship and make them do actions to manage those stats would make the erotic elements naturally appear.

Imagine if in-between missions in the hub area, you're in a simulation game (3rd person omniscient) as you have to travel to each mission location. In the in-between sections, everyone's got a horny stat, on top of hunger and other such stats. They move around the ship on their own doing their own things, and their stats change based on what they do. For instance, Lily could be in the medbay and whenever she creates the cell culture for a horrible monstrosity, her horny stat goes up. You can click on her and make her masturbate, go to the captain, or fuck one of her horrible monstrosities.

Not all simulation games play like the sims, but simulation elements are an easy way to blend erotic content into the main game, while keeping the player as an active participant. The player can even "write their own stories" regarding character relationships through their actions.
=====

I honestly don't have any clear and direct answers for Subverse though. The reason I care about about games that do not cater to me sexually at all. Is because I'm curious about how their minds work when it comes to sexual content integration. Subverse is still EA so there are still things it can do to surprise me and I want to be surprised. Even if I don't like the adult content, if I like some design elements then there's something to learn. However... the game isn't really consistent when it comes to sexual content, and the game's design isn't conscious of it in any way.

For instance, I played an NTR RPG a while back. Like.. real NTR, as a developer because I wanted to know if I had built resistance to it, and it had a lot of pages of discussion so I know people liked it. Well, I learned some things and got rid of it tho.

The concept was that a girl needed to go down into a dungeon to save her husband, but it's impossible to make it through on your first playthrough. When you lose and want to get stronger you have to go fuck the asshole to get bonus stats to make it through the game. I imagine that on a design level, NTR lovers like it because of the humiliation the players go through not being strong enough to make it through the dungeon, and needing to rely on an asshole wife-stealer. The more times you go to the asshole changes the ending. The game forces you to go to the asshole at least once so there's no pure love ending.

That method of erotic integration was designed for cucks. It's something that only someone who has that fantasy can really think of, and the way it integrates with the game in a core way that you're conscious of the adult elements is pretty genius. Can't remember the name of the game though... Obviously this thing got yeeted from the harddrive after I learned what I could.

There are maledom games where the heroine cannot defeat monsters easily and needs to rely on equipment to get the job done. Equipment is expensive though so you have to make money by slutting yourself out to people, or fucking the shopkeeper to lower prices. Stuff like that makes the erotic integration of the game increase making you constantly aware of the sexual elements of the game.

Obviously the femdom games I like do the same, but I don't want to get started there. Waay too many good examples for me to choose from.

Subverse doesn't do any of this though... almost like it's embarrassed to be an adult game while also reveling in its adult nature. They're not designing the adult content to be integrated in any way that shows their sexual tastes as developers. Even if the adult content happens in the main game, I doubt it'll be integrated beyond it being a VN scene.

Appreciate the history lesson regarding the hentai - that's not my area of focus or familiarity when it comes to adult content, but I can absolutely see what you were describing regarding SFow - it lines up.

I also couldn't agree more regarding the captain - it comes back to what we've chatted about a good bit here regarding them trying to do too much. I imagine them having a round table at some point during the game design and people throwing out ideas left and right, and instead of focusing on some specific things and making them exceptional, they just decided to toss in a little bit of everything and hope for the best.

And I remember not being particularly happy when they first announced that the 'tone' of the game was to be like an episode of south park and essentially have it be comedic. A number of people had hoped it would be serious, myself included because as you so astutely observed regarding the captain - he's a goofball that is very difficult to ever take seriously. When VValen posted earlier about the devotion dialogue, I actually went and re-listened to all (3) of them before responding to him and even as I was listening to them, particularly the Demi dialogue since it felt the most emotionally romantic and serious, I even thought to myself 'man, it's tough to take this guy seriously because of the way he acts throughout the game'. In some scenes they make it seem like he's an immature and total idiot and has no idea about the workings of his own ship, and then in others they try to make him seem like an alpha chad doing the girls like a rockstar so again there's just what feels like conflict in the character design.

I guess we'll just have to see what happens with it. The next update is relatively imminent so we will find out in short order if they've improved much.

 

[WSmith]

I thought they said they were going to post a blog post once a month? I already found it typical for FOW that each blog came out a month + a few days later than the one before, but with this time they are stretching it even further. In actuality though, they released most a few days less than the time between the two previous updates, although still more than 30-31 days, but now it took them 44 days and the blog hasn't even posted yet. They also skipped a month. Let's hope that means they are busy with the new content update!

First blog, April 20th, 2021 > Second blog, May 3rd, 2021: 13 days
Second blog, May 3rd, 2021 > Third blog, June 10th, 2021: 38 days
Third blog, June 10th, 2021 > Fourth blog, July 17th, 2021: 37 days
Fourth blog, July 17th, 2021 > Fifth blog, August 20th, 2021: 34 days
Fifth blog, August 20th, 2021 > today, October 3rd, 2021: 44 days (skipped a month)

 

[kasata]

Apparently the new update will release in the next 2 weeks, so that's probably why we didn't get another Dev blog. Really excited to see the new changes though.

 

[Dudeinsomeniac123]

Apparently the new update will release in the next 2 weeks, so that's probably why we didn't get another Dev blog. Really excited to see the new changes though.

For real?

 

[WSmith]

Yep, announced on their twitter

Last tweet 30 September, and it doesn't say anything about the release date. Could you link to where you read that?

Blogpost from August said early October btw, so not saying you're wrong

 

[kasata]

Last tweet 30 September, and it doesn't say anything about the release date. Could you link to where you read that?

Blogpost from August said early October btw, so not saying you're wrong

You sure that you're following the official Twitter account ? cause the

You must be registered to see the links

tweet says early October for the release.

Early October is the first 10 days in the month, give or take, thus my estimated 2 weeks,they didn't announce a set date, they said the time period it can release in..

 

[Gwedelino]

You sure that you're following the official Twitter account ? cause the

You must be registered to see the links

tweet says early October for the release.

Early October is the first 10 days in the month, give or take, thus my estimated 2 weeks,they didn't announce a set date, they said the time period it can release in..

 

[kasata]

View attachment 1435068

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