Well, to be fair using Ren'Py comes with expectations, so you can't really blame him too much. It's a little like stumbling upon an old game that uses hjkl instead of wasd, or finding that a 3D game doesn't have a jump button.
- Thread starter Bob69
- Start date
Interesting. In practice, this does seem to mean that booster points are really only being acquired if you play a specific update beyond the point where you'd still be getting new cards from packs. I guess it does mean if I keep spamming games I'll probably just have enough booster points to buy enough packs to get all the new cards instantly whenever you add to the card pool.
That is probably true, yeah. This whole system will change dramatically in the final version, but for now, feel free to grind to instantly obtain new cards. Unless I decide to reset booster points between updates or something, but I don't know if there's any good reason to do so unless someone convinces me otherwise.
The reason this system even exists is because I wanted to make sure that anyone, no matter their skill level, would be able to obtain the rarest cards eventually, even if they had to play more matches than stronger players would. I imagine most players who ever interact with this screen do it to purchase an epic pack or two at the very end of their journey, but the system is flexible enough to help players of all skill levels and to expand itself automatically as new cards are added.
I should probably look into simply hiding the whole booster pack purchase screen until the player gets their first booster point, though. Until then, it's just confusing noise.
Well, now I'm even more impressed. I have managed to unstuck myself from the main menu and I've got to say that the sound design overall is just superb, not just the music. It's not everyday that a developer pays attention to such things, but I've noticed and I very much appreciate it!
- Jul 1, 2018
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- 699
It's been just a little over two days since I released this, but it already feels like a week. It's such a weird feeling.
Yeah, and that specifically is a mechanic that sucks. Especially since by default Renpy has saving as a built in feature. The dev turned it of intentionally. Sorry if I can't be sure to completely finish an episode before something IRL may come up. Would be less of an issue if the saving was something the dev had to add to the engine themselves but they took time out to disable an existing feature.
Not to mention the dev also turned off the roll back feature. No thanks. If I click by accident and skip the last part of some text, or want to go back because the click took me away from that scene.
Tired of having to fight with devs to turn back on features of Renpy because they turned them off on purpose.
Yeah, each chapter is very easy to finish. It's completely linear too. There's no reason to save, whatsoever (who even saves in the middle of a scene anyway). And you can replay older chapters. And since it's auto-save, you can just quit the game and you won't lose any progress.
The game's structure was specifically designed with this in mind. I write the chapters so that they should take no more than about 10 minutes to play through for the longer ones, 15 minutes tops if you're a slow reader. Say what you want, you're going to play the game for at least 10 minutes before you have to shut it down. If something IRL pops up that forces you to shut down the game ahead of time, then hey, no biggie! Just start the same chapter the next time you have the time and hold down Ctrl (or press the Skip button on Android). You'll be back where you left off in seconds.
Okay, you don't get saves. I argue that you don't need them for this game under any circumstance. But if you still disagree on principle for some bizarre reason, allow me to offer you this little tidbit to make the pill easier to swallow: Due to the way this game is structured, I guarantee, as long as you still have your Persistent file, that you will be able to pick up and continue your old game regardless of what you did before you quit the last time and regardless of how many versions have passed since then (until the final version, anyway). That's more than any Ren'py dev who uses saves can offer. Despite my technical skills and being careful with how I wrote Long Live the Princess, people's saves still broke from time to time through no fault of my own. That will never happen in Supermodel.
Besides the version compatibility issue, there is also the problem of making saves work in a game that has a collectible card game aspect and the card game itself. Saves are simply incompatible with that game genre and cannot be used at all. At best, I might be able to offer multiple profiles, but never saves. This is not only because of the nature of the genre itself but also because, to make this game, I had to implement an enormous amount of highly complex Python code, more than you've likely ever encountered in a Ren'py game on this site (though I'd be very interested in hearing about games that might go further than this one. That stuff fascinates me). Python variables and (in particular) objects can play havoc on Ren'py saves. By using the persistent chapter save structure I implemented for this game, I also guarantee that the Python code will play nice with Ren'py.
Heck, I'll do you a better. If you're a backer of mine and I somehow break your Persistent save by accident through my fault, I'll refund you, sigvar.
This game couldn't have been made in this style without the current persistent structure. You may complain about that as much as you like; it changes nothing. I don't make design choices like that without a damn good reason.
And my reasons are damn good.
I spent a few hours with this tonight. I have yet to get to the card game part.
The story is well written. I am not bothered with kinetic visual novels as the stories tend to be better. It looks great, and the text is a joy to read considering that most visual novels are written very poorly with terrible grammar.
My only real question/critique is that when you go to the deck part there are descriptions for how the cards work, but triggering those descriptions is weirdly mysterious.... one triggered, but getting others to trigger took dozens and dozens of what seems like random clicks... and sometimes I was clicking a bit too fast and when the description came up I just clicked away from it on accident and then couldn't figure out how to get it back.
I am curious about the card game. I hope I get to that at some point. I am very curious how it integrates with the rest of the game.
I thought the story was pretty interesting, but I worry about what will happen when the porn shows up. To be honest I think well written games with good plots/stories often just go to shit once the porn shows up. I will be curious to see how that is handled here.
I enjoyed reading all of Belle's remarks in this thread as well. The amount of stupidity that developers have to deal with always makes me laugh and reading their reactions to it is often just as entertaining as the games they develop.
Incidentally, the developer of Loser made a one-off card game that was actually pretty good.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this "game". I hope the card game part of the game will be good. I like games so hopefully I will like the card game.
Either way it is clear a lot of time, thought and effort has been put into this game already. Impressive.
EDIT: Everything was made clear once I got to the card tutorial.
The story is well written. I am not bothered with kinetic visual novels as the stories tend to be better. It looks great, and the text is a joy to read considering that most visual novels are written very poorly with terrible grammar.
My only real question/critique is that when you go to the deck part there are descriptions for how the cards work, but triggering those descriptions is weirdly mysterious.... one triggered, but getting others to trigger took dozens and dozens of what seems like random clicks... and sometimes I was clicking a bit too fast and when the description came up I just clicked away from it on accident and then couldn't figure out how to get it back.
I am curious about the card game. I hope I get to that at some point. I am very curious how it integrates with the rest of the game.
I thought the story was pretty interesting, but I worry about what will happen when the porn shows up. To be honest I think well written games with good plots/stories often just go to shit once the porn shows up. I will be curious to see how that is handled here.
I enjoyed reading all of Belle's remarks in this thread as well. The amount of stupidity that developers have to deal with always makes me laugh and reading their reactions to it is often just as entertaining as the games they develop.
Incidentally, the developer of Loser made a one-off card game that was actually pretty good.
Anyway, I really enjoyed this "game". I hope the card game part of the game will be good. I like games so hopefully I will like the card game.
Either way it is clear a lot of time, thought and effort has been put into this game already. Impressive.
EDIT: Everything was made clear once I got to the card tutorial.
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It should be a simple double-click using Ren'py standard click intervals to open up the detail view, both in the Deckbuilder and the game itself. The only exception is that you can't do this with the discard pile (yet). Did you try this on PC or Android, and you didn't just click randomly, right? It needs to be a double-click.
That is too funny. A double click. Yeah, that worked. I am on PC.
At first I thought it was a button. It just happened randomly. I am not sure I have ever played a Ren'py game that needed a double click for something... so that hadn't occurred to me. But it is super simple now that I realize what is needed.
Damn. I started playing again last night and finally hit the first card battle chance. i managed to beat brutal twice, but insane is going to take a real think. i will need to unlock more cards and do some analysis.
I definitely enjoyed the card game. At one point I decided to look at the time... and well... uh.. it was 4 AM. Time seems to have vanished. Going to be tired at work today. Ouch.
At some point I guess I should finish the story.
Maybe I missed it, but is there some place that shows the statistics for wins and losses for each level with each character?
I definitely enjoyed the card game. At one point I decided to look at the time... and well... uh.. it was 4 AM. Time seems to have vanished. Going to be tired at work today. Ouch.
At some point I guess I should finish the story.
Maybe I missed it, but is there some place that shows the statistics for wins and losses for each level with each character?
No, not yet. I'm sure I'll add something like that later, but the structure around how these card matches are presented will change a bit as we move deeper into the game, so I don't think I should spend too much time on supporting systems just yet. We'll get to it.
Glad to hear you're enjoying the game. But perhaps you should prioritize sleep.
Don't attack with it. If you do, it just acts like a regular attack card (which can be useful too, especially if you've got very little Usable Heat). Drag it to the table during the action phase like any other Instant card.
i like your games, but the mc design is how do we say this.... femboy af. Like wtf is with that hair... back to the drawing board imo, i guess this is why some devs dont show the MC at all.
- Apr 8, 2019
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Well, another Belle game for me to overanalyze, haha.
Loving the music and the high production values so far. Normally I'm not a fan of ensemble cast stories that you can tackle in an order of your choosing, because most devs seem to have an obvious bias of what order you should play the "chapters" in (which defeats the purpose of even giving you a choice). But this one seems to be well done in that aspect. I haven't encountered a scenario that made me say "oh, I should have played X part before this", etc.
Looking forward to how the rest of the game shapes up.
Loving the music and the high production values so far. Normally I'm not a fan of ensemble cast stories that you can tackle in an order of your choosing, because most devs seem to have an obvious bias of what order you should play the "chapters" in (which defeats the purpose of even giving you a choice). But this one seems to be well done in that aspect. I haven't encountered a scenario that made me say "oh, I should have played X part before this", etc.
Looking forward to how the rest of the game shapes up.