Ren'Py Completed SuperPowered [v0.45.02] [Night City Productions]

[Lirix]

I had been kicking around writing a breakdown of the game as is. Detailing what I see as flaws, potential oversteps, horrible nuances, and just huge freaking mistakes. But I didn't want to say any of that without proposing some kind of fix, and I'm with Baal7334 on this one: It can't be done.

The other reason I wanted to write that breakdown is that despite all those issues I wanted to know where the actual story of Billy was going to take him. The world is a little awkward, but you try to legislate powers in a bottle(or syringe). But getting to see a naive young man jump into being a superhero half-cocked(pun intended) and watch events shape him into the hero(or villain) he would eventually become was interesting and I wanted to find a way to encourage its development not criticize it into oblivion.

Thanks for the heads up. And I'll survive if you drop Ren'py immediately rather than try to put out one last update to put a bow on it. The sooner you get back to being excited about development, the sooner we'll see more exciting games.

 

[BeeGee]

My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined, but maybe it's for the best.
Thank you for your game, Baal.

 

[fake.name.again]

Superpowered is one of my favorite games. One of the main reasons for it is how well developed and complex system are, how much actual exploration of different mechanics you have to do to discover all, and how much progression ther actually is in the game. But as someone who just is thinking and planning his own game (to which SP is one of the inspirtations, especially when I dream what I would like to achive system-building wise) I can totaly see how creating very procedural-like model for interacting with girls, that REQUIRE you too fill ALL of this interaction can and will be a burden. I will say (even tho I enjoyed it as is to large degree) the system is both a bit bloated at one side and unflexible and lacking variety on another. It's fantastic (and something sorely lacking in most games of this type) that meeting a girl you really have a range of options, and you progres story using these and unlocking new ones. That's actual game in this game and again kudos to author. But story and girls personality could maybe be better expresed in interacions themselves if the ware more flexible and less procedural-like.

So I can totally see the problem author is facing, and mostly just wanted to voice my support. I trust He will not give up on system altogether, but will build smarter and more manageable (for him).

My sugestion will be to create some short but dramatic ending for SP. Billy revealed and captured by authorities or something. Or framed. Something that will explain story-wise proces of rebuilding, that will be happening. That would end one chapter and will be basis for new progression in next one. And possibly limit amout of variables that need to be caried.

 

[Pankajkumar9631@]

compressed version
????????????????????????

 

[dexxinax]

man that Sucks hard, He just started doing the 1 hot chick i liked to. the blonde sisters friend. Sigh I really liked this game... wish him all best on SP2

 

[the Morrigan]

I actually consider this good news, not bad. Why? Because though I love the game's story, I find its implementation flawed at best. The endless and ultimately tedious clickfest before you can even begin getting into the story. The endless scrabbling after resources. The incomprehensible and nearly indecipherable methods needed to unlock the girls' kinks that essentially require a walkthrough. And most of all, the endless and ultimately tedious clickfest.

Let me tell y'all something: I cheat like a bastard at this game using the Radioactive mod. This is the only game I use cheats on, and I'm glad I do. I use nearly each and every one offered. Why? Because it allows me to bypass the endlessly boring clickfest required to acquire resources, and allows me to concentrate my activity on the endless clickfest required to actually advance the story.

So: I hope Baal is well and that moving over to Unity makes things easier and re-inspires him. I truly want to see more from this creator ... in this fictional world. But I also hope he rethinks some of the truly tedious, tendonitis-and-carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing clicking that's needed for every bloody interaction in this game.

 

[sillyrobot]

I actually consider this good news, not bad. Why? Because though I love the game's story, I find its implementation flawed at best. The endless and ultimately tedious clickfest before you can even begin getting into the story. The endless scrabbling after resources. The incomprehensible and nearly indecipherable methods needed to unlock the girls' kinks that essentially require a walkthrough. And most of all, the endless and ultimately tedious clickfest.

Let me tell y'all something: I cheat like a bastard at this game using the Radioactive mod. This is the only game I use cheats on, and I'm glad I do. I use nearly each and every one offered. Why? Because it allows me to bypass the endlessly boring clickfest required to acquire resources, and allows me to concentrate my activity on the endless clickfest required to actually advance the story.

So: I hope Baal is well and that moving over to Unity makes things easier and re-inspires him. I truly want to see more from this creator ... in this fictional world. But I also hope he rethinks some of the truly tedious, tendonitis-and-carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing clicking that's needed for every bloody interaction in this game.

Meh. This'll be the third engine the dev has moved to. At one point, you have to recognize the tool isn't the issue when you experience similar problems with wildly different tools. Especially as the primary point of failure (writer's block and anxiety dealing with the large conversations) isn't confined to the language and the secondary complaint (the massive number of renders required per character) had passed the hump of dealing with all the school characters and only had a handful of undeveloped obvious characters remaining in total (Sophie, the scientist, and the Logistics admin).

There's some chance a SP2 will be decent (in a few years' time anyway). There's at least as great a chance it will more closely resemble Loser which is a game I do not enjoy no matter how many times I go back and give it a try.

 

[esoom]

aaaaand another game that will never be complete...

And it kinda sounds like SP2 will be a DOA as well, part of the charm of SP was the interactions and stuff, if you strip that out it will be like that loser game he makes which is just bad.

I don't even mind the grindyness of it as long as it has progression, although some of it needed balancing, some of the random events were too rare. Oh well I hope it goes well for him but I doubt it.

 

[Strec]

Will he remain with the same monkeys patreons or will he start with new ones?

 

[sillyrobot]

Will he remain with the same monkeys patreons or will he start with new ones?

By and large, patrons abandon devs. Devs don't abandon patrons.

 

[Jash83]

I actually consider this good news, not bad. Why? Because though I love the game's story, I find its implementation flawed at best. The endless and ultimately tedious clickfest before you can even begin getting into the story. The endless scrabbling after resources. The incomprehensible and nearly indecipherable methods needed to unlock the girls' kinks that essentially require a walkthrough. And most of all, the endless and ultimately tedious clickfest.

Let me tell y'all something: I cheat like a bastard at this game using the Radioactive mod. This is the only game I use cheats on, and I'm glad I do. I use nearly each and every one offered. Why? Because it allows me to bypass the endlessly boring clickfest required to acquire resources, and allows me to concentrate my activity on the endless clickfest required to actually advance the story.

So: I hope Baal is well and that moving over to Unity makes things easier and re-inspires him. I truly want to see more from this creator ... in this fictional world. But I also hope he rethinks some of the truly tedious, tendonitis-and-carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing clicking that's needed for every bloody interaction in this game.

Makes me glad I gave up on this game the last time an update killed my saves YET AGAIN- I was going to wait for it to be either finished or abandoned, and I was betting on the latter.

I said it myself about 100 pages or so back: the gameplay concept is interesting, the cast of girls is appealing and the graphics are good, but the gameplay is and has always been TERRIBLE. Every single thing has been made several times more annoying and inconvenient than it needed to be solely in the name of creating "gameplay", which is why the majority of actions have an entirely random chance to fail (and PENALISE you for failure!) AND Ren'py rollback was disabled so the only way to avoid being screwed is to manually save scum every single action, and everything takes literally 10 times as much grind as it needs to. Seriously, you could slash the endless spamming of job actions to grind up cash and faction points in this game to 10% of what it is and it would only improve it immeasurably. And there was NO balance. The only thing that made the grind bearable was the fact that your ability to chat, flirt and sext with girls on your phone was so completely broken that it completely trivialised developing a relationship with them, but this also rendered almost all direct interactions with the girls (e.g dates) completely worthless, since they took more actions (and often time segments) but generated drastically inferior results to just spamming them with texts.

The gameplay was not irredeemable, it could have been easily fixed with a number of judicious tweaks, but it was apparent that the insufferable things about it were acting as intended, which meant Baal WANTED you to have a frustrating and boring time grinding up forever and being screwed by RNG in the name of "challenge". Right, because what I want from a porn game is a sense of pride and accomplishment. With there being no intention of fixing the game's massive problems because he thought the problems were good, this game never really had a chance anyway.

 

[Cartageno]

While I agree with much what you wrote (OP phone/texting, too much work to get resources - though I would not say tenfold) I heartily disagree here

in the name of "challenge". Right, because what I want from a porn game is a sense of pride and accomplishment. With there being no intention of fixing the game's massive problems because he thought the problems were good, this game never really had a chance anyway.

There's different strokes for different folks. First, games here are adult games. That includes porn games but is not limited to it. It can also be games with pornographic elements.

And yes, a sense of accomplishment in a game is very welcome. If I have to do nothing to just watch the scenes I'd be better off watching real porn. Better produced, infinite variety freely available at my fingertips.

And to me, these "problems" you mention in the end were one of the reasons I liked this game and spend more time here than with many a more refined program. It was a game, I could try stuff, I had loads of approaches, I needed to work to get these approaches and not just a "choose your scene" prompt. With all the faults it has in balancing, as said I agree there, it was fun to me.

That doesn't mean that you're wrong with what you feel. Your taste versus mine is undecidable. However, to me the "problems" you mention indeed were "good". And there are others like me. So this game had a chance. And the conclusion is somewhat strange anyway since "nobody played it" was not the reason for its end.

 

[esoom]

I agree, what made this game interesting was the progression combined with things like mind control, making choices and managing energy usage and willpower,

I actually wanted a game with more mechanics in it, why I'm sad he's gonna opt to throw it all out and start a new game with less. I was hoping there would be more things to do with the mind control ability, perhaps even having one girl as your own slave, make another ability where you can remotely control a girl (lots of willpower usage or something) get them to do jobs and other things.

Some features were broken / never finished, like the rent stuff and cleaning the house which was pretty much pointless. I guess the college is also pointless as well now.

 

[fake.name.again]

Yeah, I already said, that I liked the game and I strongly believe that systems are a strong point in general. But there is also a lot of criticism that you are rising here that are very valid. I did play with guides provided here and Radioactive, tho I didn't do that much direct cheating other than applying mod rebalancing and save scumming. When exploring different options of interactions was fun mostly; hunting different story and character triggers, worrying about consequences of decision, that can very arbitrarily cut you out of desired outcome; and a lot of unnecessary randomness of interaction did bring experience down. And some stat combinations for every particular girl, to randomly trigger scenes, is straight up ridiculous to even consider making that much effort to unlock every one of them in one semi-natural playtrough.

And I consider very few games really replayable. Even less so in porn space. Even In big AAA titles, I mostly tend to strive to complete as much as is possible in one go. And where in this big titles being able to access some special places or events can be cool and define your class and skill set in fun ways, I tend to prefer the ability to unlock it in different ways depending on my class/gear etc. In situation of content scarcity, that affect practically all porn games without single exception that I can think about, locking people (and creators themselves, that need to support it) in different paths or requiring to hunt this slivers of content behind some silly conditions and numbers of repetitions/time-cycles/stat-configurations is not something I find appealing or consider good decision and design. Yes, give me some flavour based on my choices, I absolutely appreciate it, and even crave more, but don't content-lock me in porn game please?

As I already said, I liked interacting with systems a lot in general, and the sense of progression. And even "working for it". But RNG is mostly a waste of time here. Some games lock your progress in week-cycles to progress just a tiny bit a when you realize how little you can possibly progress and get rewarded in each cycle and how much chore it is to play the whole cycle it becomes mind-numbing and boring instead of enticing (and enticing is kinda whole point in porn game). And I think SP is not all that bad in this regard (not counting unlocking random scenes that I mentioned before). Not perfect, but mostly actually giving you a sense of progression, giving you new possibilities.

OK, I have written a lot again, to sum it up I will say that IMHO the formula is not all that bad, but can be improved in very specific ways:
1. Give player more feedback/clues about where he is and how to progress.
2. Don't create an overly complex matrix of triggers depending on myriad stats, just make it part of progression and let it unlock sequentially. Better yet, give the player more agency and make it less random.
3. Really think hard about RNG and what purpose it supposed to serve. I don't want to assume bad intentions, but in most instances randomness seem pointless and almost always punishing, almost never rewarding.

 

[Cartageno]

1. Give player more feedback/clues about where he is and how to progress.

Absolutely.

Also "clues about things you know" would be welcome - once you've shown by some metric to be decided you know what a girl likes for a date give little pointers - in real life it may be two weeks until I next come around but in game I should just know by now.

Also more clues about the mindbending options. Yes, it should be "try around what works" from an in game story point of view. But in games with many options some tend to fall under the table, so players miss out on the possibility to reach content entirely. Think of how many players will use only fireballs in fights in RPGs. First spell you learn, it works, why bother with ice magic? At best a bigger fireball may take its place.

2. Don't create an overly complex matrix of triggers depending on myriad stats, just make it part of progression and let it unlock sequentially. Better yet, give the player more agency and make it less random.

I'd be more in favor of - in the line of point 1 - help players find out about the stats needed. Making it a sequential progression in my eyes is the exact opposite of what you say, it gives less agency. "Just roam around until you hit the love score" works perfectly fine in many games and is nothing to sneeze at but this game had more. And after all: agency also is the agency to fail, or to run around for hours without achieving stuff. You don't want that so help the player find out how to avoid it. But don't take this agency.

3. Really think hard about RNG and what purpose it supposed to serve. I don't want to assume bad intentions, but in most instances randomness seem pointless and almost always punishing, almost never rewarding.

I like me some randomness and also think it adds to the experience. Of course it needs to be done well. Prepare for an hour and then just roll a die? Annoying, to say the least. Hope that I will finally get the one scene during my job? Yeah, nice suspense. Generally the less accessible stuff is, the less randomness should occur.

 

[fake.name.again]

I'd be more in favor of - in the line of point 1 - help players find out about the stats needed. Making it a sequential progression in my eyes is the exact opposite of what you say, it gives less agency. "Just roam around until you hit the love score" works perfectly fine in many games and is nothing to sneeze at but this game had more. And after all: agency also is the agency to fail, or to run around for hours without achieving stuff. You don't want that so help the player find out how to avoid it. But don't take this agency.

I'm not sure if you ever tried to unlock all the scenes for all the girls in this game - the random ones you get at school? You practically can't without a mod like Radioactive to keep track what scenes you've seen, and even then It's like I said this crazy matrix, because one stat have to be at this level and other on different, so in my experience it just couldn't be done however carefully, and systematically, I tried to play. Like really micromanage stats, and rise one stat when letting other fall, when constantly struggling to even meet her and then hoping for the best to trigger scene itself.

But yes, giving player agency would be best, especially in later stages (and progression arc from the just witness to guy in control would be fun IMO) and I feel the need to acknowledge and point out, that there is something to be said of things just happening in the world, outside our control, that makes the world more alive. But then again, as a player you are actually purposefully looking for them and try to trigger and there is discontent here. So maybe giving full agency isn't always the answer, so just don't make it an absolute nightmare for completionists like me, who would like to see all the scenes without the need to create an Excel spreadsheet for each girl.

I like me some randomness and also think it adds to the experience. Of course it needs to be done well. Prepare for an hour and then just roll a die? Annoying, to say the least. Hope that I will finally get the one scene during my job? Yeah, nice suspense. Generally the less accessible stuff is, the less randomness should occur.

I don't mind SOME random chance as a rule, love me some X-Com and tension of taking that 50/50 shot. But then of course you position yourself better, improving gear and skills to minimize reliance on chance. To make them more reliable. I don't think here the balance is right, and there is practically no in-game mechanism that let you manage chance-reliance in SP. If you do the job and don't have luck, you've mostly wasted time. Action economy in this game just don't seem to make sense, does not lend itself well IMO to this kind of playful experimentation. With constant failures and lack of ability to naturally focus on girls that you need/want to focus on. At last, it didn't really work for me. At failure or even upon meeting the wrong set of girls, I just felt the need to reload, to not waste my time.

 

[Cartageno]

I'm not sure if you ever tried to unlock all the scenes for all the girls in this game - the random ones you get at school? You practically can't without a mod like Radioactive to keep track what scenes you've seen, and even then It's like I said this crazy matrix, because one stat have to be at this level and other on different, so in my experience it just couldn't be done however carefully, and systematically, I tried to play. Like really micromanage stats, and rise one stat when letting other fall, when constantly struggling to even meet her and then hoping for the best to trigger scene itself.

Don't get me wrong, I am one of those players who strive for 100% completion as well. There is a chest unlooted? Let's slay 1,500 orcs to get there!

However I do think when it comes to "bonus stuff" like seeing every possible random scene - well, that's up to us. Do not hide anything major behind a RNG barrier, but seeing everything minor? Well, I want it, I gotta work for it. (Even if "work" means save scumming.)

It may also be that my completionism fails at a certain stage. Getting all the "regular" scenes of a girl? I want that. Understanding the effects and seeing the results of the various "broken" scenes? Sure, here I am. But there's a limit to what I need still, despite being a 100% guy. I will go for it, sure, but sometimes you just can't have everything (or have to luck your butt off).

I don't mind SOME random chance as a rule, love me some X-Com and tension of taking that 50/50 shot. But then of course you position yourself better, improving gear and skills to minimize reliance on chance. To make them more reliable. I don't think here the balance is right, and there is practically no in-game mechanism that let you manage chance-reliance in SP. If you do the job and don't have luck, you've mostly wasted time. Action economy in this game just don't seem to make sense, does not lend itself well IMO to this kind of playful experimentation. With constant failures and lack of ability to naturally focus on girls that you need/want to focus on. At last, it didn't really work for me. At failure or even upon meeting the wrong set of girls, I just felt the need to reload, to not waste my time.

This of course is true. The ability to learn, to slightly guide the RNG towards favoring you, that is nice and is missing from this game.

 

[fake.name.again]

Don't get me wrong, I am one of those players who strive for 100% completion as well. There is a chest unlooted? Let's slay 1,500 orcs to get there!

However I do think when it comes to "bonus stuff" like seeing every possible random scene - well, that's up to us. Do not hide anything major behind a RNG barrier, but seeing everything minor? Well, I want it, I gotta work for it. (Even if "work" means save scumming.)

It may also be that my completionism fails at a certain stage. Getting all the "regular" scenes of a girl? I want that. Understanding the effects and seeing the results of the various "broken" scenes? Sure, here I am. But there's a limit to what I need still, despite being a 100% guy. I will go for it, sure, but sometimes you just can't have everything (or have to luck your butt off).

This exactly. I think we are at very similar boats after all, just maybe came to slightly different conclusions. Both completionist. And I similarly as you came to the realization, that I don't need to unlock/see everything after all, so I gave up/ decided that effort required is not worth it especially for the minor scenes. But that's my point exactly: games like this are notoriously starved for content. I would like it to see it. Happy to "work for it". Just make the effort somewhat reasonable compared to reward. Because the other thing is, where any given game here is very content limited, there are just so many of them to try, so much content to discover.

 

[T.Geiger]

Alas, the game is now effectively dead.

Not terribly surprised by this outcome. The writing has been on the wall since the first announcement of Loser. What I am surprised by is how long it took.

As someone who has spent a lot of time with Baal's code, his issues with his Ren'Py code-base are not insurmountable. But they are far from insignificant either. The only likely feasible way to resolve these issues while keeping the lights on would be to have someone else rewrite it while he continues to add content (a difficult prospect at best).

Anyway, I wish him the best of luck on his new project.

 

[Strec]

So you consider the anouncement of of SP2 (in reallity SP3) as the end of Loser?

I follow Baal since the Rags version and the reason of the the end was the difficulty and time needed to find real porn images corresponding to the story.
This was solved in the Renpy version but resulted to having some sparse scenes every 2 months.

And it also resulted to free some time to add a lot, a lot, of new features and chars. But without never finished ones... and finally the crash.

The problem is that Baal seems working instinctively (or it is the Patreon system whic conduct to this, don't know) jumping from an idea to another resulting in a situation where finishing the previous feature become boring because the new one is far more interesting for the dev.

It's a so a classical trap when the one who does the job is also the one who find the ideas and the one who decide of the next content.