Ren'Py Abandoned The DeLuca Family [Season 1] [HopesGaming]

[Rocket007!]

Any one having recommendation for similar games like this having mafia or underworld content?

 

[Jimayo]

Any one having recommendation for similar games like this having mafia or underworld content?

Hard times. Alexandra. Pale Carnations.

 

[Impurity2937]

I just started playing and wanted to point little bug. First freeroam around Lucania and at the last south-east dot I met man called himself Gravekeeper. During dialogue he said "...and your name is Peter," which is not MC's name so is hardcoded.

Not sure it was mentioned already so yeah, just letting you know since I saw dev being active here.

edit: Damn... During freeroam I cannot save, a bit pain but ok. Finally after checking all places I came back to residence and bang, error... I rolled back but it gave me scene with inside doors but bugged (on the right side still got north/east buttons and "Abort mission" above). I went north which gave me freeroam again but this time there was no "Return" above but only "Abort mission". I clicked it being on DeLuca residence field, it gave me "FAILURE" screen and black screen where clicking only prints MC's response to exploring... At this point I have to load and go through ALL THIS SHIT AGAIN, STARTING FROM TALKING TO UNCLE... through tavern and roaming all map... What a crap...



edit2: I loaded save before asking Uncle about work (so triggering freeroam) and this time there was different kind of bug. Everything the same as before up to the FAILURE screen. Then I got MC saying "It is too late, will do it tomorrow" or something like that and "Quick Menu - Available Contracts" popped up. I clicked leave and it resulted with black screen and rooms to choose. I clicked on my room which gave me:


Actually MC saying it is too late gave me hint to make another, 3rd attempt and it went smoothly. Why was that? Because I didn't talk with Uncle about work at the Noon like previously. Instead I went to sleep and talkied with him again at the morning. After comming back from freeroam I got Contracts screen (which I suppose is the correct one) and the time is Noon. The problem is related to time then and is messing A LOT. Weird that such a thing was not diagnosed and fixed already but I hope it will soon, especially that game is on Steam now.

 

[HopesGaming]

I just started playing and wanted to point little bug. First freeroam around Lucania and at the last south-east dot I met man called himself Gravekeeper. During dialogue he said "...and your name is Peter," which is not MC's name so is hardcoded.

Not sure it was mentioned already so yeah, just letting you know since I saw dev being active here.

edit: Damn... During freeroam I cannot save, a bit pain but ok. Finally after checking all places I came back to residence and bang, error... I rolled back but it gave me scene with inside doors but bugged (on the right side still got north/east buttons and "Abort mission" above). I went north which gave me freeroam again but this time there was no "Return" above but only "Abort mission". I clicked it being on DeLuca residence field, it gave me "FAILURE" screen and black screen where clicking only prints MC's response to exploring... At this point I have to load and go through ALL THIS SHIT AGAIN, STARTING FROM TALKING TO UNCLE... through tavern and roaming all map... What a crap...

View attachment 3416991

edit2: I loaded save before asking Uncle about work (so triggering freeroam) and this time there was different kind of bug. Everything the same as before up to the FAILURE screen. Then I got MC saying "It is too late, will do it tomorrow" or something like that and "Quick Menu - Available Contracts" popped up. I clicked leave and it resulted with black screen and rooms to choose. I clicked on my room which gave me:
View attachment 3417043

Actually MC saying it is too late gave me hint to make another, 3rd attempt and it went smoothly. Why was that? Because I didn't talk with Uncle about work at the Noon like previously. Instead I went to sleep and talkied with him again at the morning. After comming back from freeroam I got Contracts screen (which I suppose is the correct one) and the time is Noon. The problem is related to time then and is messing A LOT. Weird that such a thing was not diagnosed and fixed already but I hope it will soon, especially that game is on Steam now.

Really nice feedback! Thank you, impurity.
To clarify tho. The game on steam is 1.0
In 1.0 Lucania freeroam is not enabled due to this bug. So all the events are given automatically until it has been fixed

 

[Impurity2937]

Really nice feedback! Thank you, impurity.
To clarify tho. The game on steam is 1.0
In 1.0 Lucania freeroam is not enabled due to this bug. So all the events are given automatically until it has been fixed

Oh, I see... At least it is something already known and I am not such unlucky to be the only one who got it. Implementing freeroam with different day periods is tricky, you are not the first dev to have problems with that and Desert Stalker is the first one that comes to my mind but there are more. Wish you best!

 

[HopesGaming]

Oh, I see... At least it is something already known and I am not such unlucky to be the only one who got it. Implementing freeroam with different day periods is tricky, you are not the first dev to have problems with that and Desert Stalker is the first one that comes to my mind but there are more. Wish you best!

Yeah, that is indeed true
Thank you !

 

[Impurity2937]

After "The Bonanzo Meeting" I'm unable to save game. Either clicking on new slot or already occupied one, result is the same.

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Whatever causes this error, the solution is to go sleep, clicking "Continue" (story), it pushes me to evening and I can save again. Now I just scroll back to evening after mission and it works just fine.

 

[PickerLewd]

I think instead of black circles and a dark background, each waypoint in travelling Lucania should have an image showing the landscape (even if it's AI-generated) .

 

[HopesGaming]

I think instead of black circles and a dark background, each waypoint in travelling Lucania should have an image showing the landscape (even if it's AI-generated) .

Yea have thoughts about adding some images for important locations.
Tho AI generation can be a bit tricky legal wise. It's still not 100% clear and don't want to risk it, yet. But could've been a nice alternative for non-important landscapes

 

[Rocket007!]

Yea have thoughts about adding some images for important locations.
Tho AI generation can be a bit tricky legal wise. It's still not 100% clear and don't want to risk it, yet. But could've been a nice alternative for non-important landscapes

Maybe you can fill colours in some dots like green colour for market place , Orange colour for church etc.

 

[Impurity2937]

Personal thoughts up to Story 5.
There are my loose thoughts and suggestions. Mind two things tho:

• That I said "my" so do not take it personaly if I do not like something.
• Currently according to journal I'm at Story 5 so many things I'm pointing here may be already improved in game. If that's the case I will probably mention it at my final conclusions if I ever write ones

Actually most of the things I put in here are somehow critical but it means I enjoy your game as a whole and would love to see it just a little better here and there (it also means I have far more important things to do and I found playing this game and giving such extensive feedback will be great procrastination occupation). You mentioned that you like feedback so yeah, here you go lol.

Self-voicing

• Many devs does not pay attention to fact that some people can use self-voicing in theirs games. It really pisses me off to be honest since I use it all the time but I get that probably I'm not in majority. By that I wanted to point things on the screen added by dev for some kind of better experience but that are readed aloud - in this case it is "Money: xxx" and "Morning/Noon...". I can live with the second one since it is visible only when choosing rooms but the first one is visible even during dialogues(sic!)... Like... why? Good thing is that we are talking about RenPy here and beside looking for it in files can be pain in the ass, it is still doable to get rid of that.
• On the contrary, MC's thoughts are implemented well since there is just blank space in character's name instead of "Name's thoughts" reading all the time. Probably this was not made intentionally like that for better self-voicing experience but still... I hope more and more devs will pay attention to that.

UI related stuff
Others

• There is a scene where guy with mustache and bindi tortures another man hanging on chain. I know at this point all present characters are unknown but they should be better described like "Unknown man 1/2/3..." or "Hanging man/Man with mustache" or whatever, just to dialogue be more readable, without overthinking who said what since they are all "???".

Freeroam
Don't get me wrong here, I know how hard it is to design and code something more than just dialogues with renders, I really do. But I'm perfectionist and feel obligated to point some of the non-perfect thing lol.

I think instead of black circles and a dark background, each waypoint in travelling Lucania should have an image showing the landscape (even if it's AI-generated) .

• Exactly my thoughts during freeroaming thrugh the city. I was kinda amazed by how fruitful descriptions of locations are, it really put my imagination to work. But at the same time I saw lost potential in there...
• Map as dots are okayish but how about geting a pencil to your hand, drawing some simple curvy shape, dividing it into sections and putting little sketches of market/grain fields/buildings/church to it? I know you(dev) are not Ubisoft so dots are fine, but it is just a simple idea of how to improve it for better experience.
• What was really annoying experience was not being able to save/load/get to menu... during city roaming. Forcing game to stop and launching it again is an absurd way to get to options. And save/load? I guess it can be related to malfunctioning day phases thingy but it should be redesigned immidiately... Some events are quite long and being unable to save/load/back is a no-go solution, sorry.
• My OCD gave me pain seeing text not being aligned to background frames lol. I know there are no "frames", it is just a render, but figuring out a way to put it in one that does not violate it's borders would be nice polish.

Characters
Database

• Many devs have different approach to it and my humble opinion is that DPC in last episodes of BaDIK achieved perfection of how it should look like. I'm not saying that you should copy his solution (not saying you should not lol) but info about characters in DeLuca are just simply not enough imo.

Interactions

• And to expand my thoughts from above, I think that there are too little interaction with people... At the beginning I was hyped to see there are 3 guys fighting in the garden, visiting tavern or brothel, being able to "roam, know the city and help its people" so database like that would be much appriciated right? After couple hours of playing I feel scamed. Girls and Wilfred are the only people I can interact with and after basic few lines that's it... What's with the dancing stuff? I completed mission to learn dance, made one attempt to dance with Gracie, all seems promising and the next thing I can do is saying "Dancing?" each evening with dialog the same as at the beginning... All dialogues with rest of people are the same and it does not have any sense, they are not acting like a people (they should), not taking into account that we already know each other quite good (compared to first day in house) but all we got are the same, emotionless responses.

Renders
Locations

• Overall they are designed "well enough". What I hate (in any AVN) is when dev implements some unrealistic and dumb concept. If game tries to be realistic and mature it should be like one. If it wants to be funny and comic, that's fine too, but please be consistant with your idea. Putting all kind of guns/rifles in Luna's room is the issue I'm pointing here - why? Do not treat player as an idiot, we can already know from interactions with her that he like weapons right? So you do not have to put it on her floor too, besides the fact that she prefers small guns/knifes and she would have these weapons nicely ordered, not trashed around...
• In-house render with fireplace is "from" DIK's mansion, park scenery is from every other game (lol) but at least you deleted tunnel, dinner room looks awesome, living rooms looks mediocre, MC's and office room looks good.

Avatars

• These little avatars next to each room picture are awesome! Whoever did this, surely knows what he/she does and you should ask him/her about overal UI design improving.

"Characters moving"(?)

• Not sure how problematic it is to implement, the fact that people we are talking to sometimes(?) are moving a little but personally I didn't like it. And the reason of that is related to render quality overall probably? I mean the background render is meh and then you got Luna and Gracie somehow polished in front... The distinction is to great I think and them moving a little just makes it "worse", not to mention that their movement is not smooth. Perhaps you did it to reduce rendering time? Surely one background render and then "moving" character takes less time but at the end it also takes a lot of game experince.

Mechanics
Overall

• Obviously you have problems with design/integrity of code in matter of day phases implementation. As I mentioned in previous posts, I had A LOT of bugs related to it. Mostly it was caused by triggering events at the evenings and it would be the first place to verify if I was dev. I pressume some events adds pre-assigned quantity of time "units" and there are lack of if-else safety conditions and some dialogues are available when they shouldn't.

Save/Load

• I already mentioned it but didn't want you to forget about it lol

Equipement

• I like concept of equipement. I would love to see more choices there (money-based, not story-based) and that whatever I bought has any impact to dialogues/story, not just stats. Like me having a gun but in dialogues MC still acts like he never hold one or there is no way for me to go to shooting range to train. Or Gracie mentioned about buying better clothes to train dancing, or MC having own car/bike, or basicaly anything really but meaning more than just stat change and look but only in equipement screen. There is just no interaction between that and the world

Stats

• Firstly I was in love of that - I was promised freedom (freeroam), money, mafia stuff, training camp (wow) etc and at the end hm... One or two missions like bring wine or learn ballet gave me one or two points to skills and that's it. In the meantime I had to make missions requiring me to have high stealth for example and... It felt linear. I know it is AVN but I hate when devs comes with ideas they cannot handle properly. If we are implementing stats here - give me chances to improve them. If they even matter - give me different content according to them. Clothes changes stats? Ok, but give me choice of making money which is not story-related. If everything is story-driven anyway then there is no point in implementing RPG elements in the first place.

Personality/Dispassion

• It is nicely described in "Help, tips & event" tab but in reality there is no such a thing or at least it is not visible at all for a player. To this point of the game my only choice was to either watch Luna killing mercenary or not and to look at dead traitor (forgot his name) or not... And it doesn't matter anyway since result is all the same and there are no stat related to it (at least yet)

Lore

• First thing I find stupid was this whole hitlerjugend soldier theme. I'm okay that it is kinda of dev's art of concept but it doesn't have any sense for these people to wear clothes like that in daily basis like we could see in tavern.
• Money is another thing. It is nicely implemented, I love having "RPG elements" in AVNs but at the same time I'm there couple days/weeks and I feel like I'm the only one having money.

This could be a little chaotic from my side, I wanted to polish it a little more at the end but then I noticed that I'm not even close to the end but at the same time I didn't want my current thoughts go to waste lol.

 

[c3p0]

First vast critical review. As agreed by everyone, JJJ will take that blame, especially for this one:

Many devs have different approach to it and my humble opinion is that DPC in last episodes of BaDIK achieved perfection of how it should look like. I'm not saying that you should copy his solution (not saying you should not lol) but info about characters in DeLuca are just simply not enough imo.

 

[JJJ84]

Here's a review of season 1 from Adult Games Reviews (I think his youtube channel probably is leading in terms of youtube and google search algorithm when it comes to Adult VNs reviewers):

 

[Impurity2937]

First vast critical review. As agreed by everyone, JJJ will take that blame, especially for this one:

Being imperfect is not something to take blame for, we all are. Getting constructive criticism/suggestions and learning from it is what gives us chance to improve

To be honest I'm not sure how to read your comment lol And I have no idea who JJJ is and why "agreed by everyone ... will take that blame". Or is it something I'm wrong about than you are free to disagree and write your view on that

 

[c3p0]

To be honest I'm not sure how to read your comment lol And I have no idea who JJJ is and why "agreed by everyone ... will take that blame". Or is it something I'm wrong about than you are free to disagree and write your view on that

Inside joke.
Yet, hi's trying to ignore it. Looking at you Mr. two post above this.

 

[sahadeva]

Here's a review of season 1 from Adult Games Reviews (I think his youtube channel probably is leading in terms of youtube and google search algorithm when it comes to Adult VNs reviewers):

Actually, this channel:

You must be registered to see the links

has a higher subscriber count. Excellent channel, but has not reviewed DeLuca yet, which IMHO is downright criminal

 

[JJJ84]

Actually, this channel:

You must be registered to see the links

SexPositiveGaming has a higher subscriber count. Excellent channel, but has not reviewed DeLuca yet, which IMHO is downright criminal

Sex Positive Gaming may have the higher subscriber numbers, but in terms of search algorithm, youtube and google always puts Adult Games Reviews and his videos first.

Cause I should know; Hopes asked me to search for youtuber channels to possibly promote his game with reviews, and I found the following Channels and recommended them to him:

- Adult Games Reviews
- Spicy Gaming
- Sex Positive Gaming
- Gaming Only

Hopes tried to contact all 4 youtubers (iirc) and only Adult Games Reviews responded, hence the review.

 

[JJJ84]

I'm certainly no HopesGaming, but let me see if I can answer at least some of them, heh.

Many devs have different approach to it and my humble opinion is that DPC in last episodes of BaDIK achieved perfection of how it should look like. I'm not saying that you should copy his solution (not saying you should not lol) but info about characters in DeLuca are just simply not enough imo.

As you said, many devs approach character database differently.
But if you're citing an example, it's best that you provide a visual example using screenshots of the said game.
Otherwise people may not know what you're referring to despite you citing the game (heck, I don't even remember what the database of characters for BADiK looks like )

And to expand my thoughts from above, I think that there are too little interaction with people... At the beginning I was hyped to see there are 3 guys fighting in the garden, visiting tavern or brothel, being able to "roam, know the city and help its people" so database like that would be much appriciated right? After couple hours of playing I feel scamed. Girls and Wilfred are the only people I can interact with and after basic few lines that's it... What's with the dancing stuff? I completed mission to learn dance, made one attempt to dance with Gracie, all seems promising and the next thing I can do is saying "Dancing?" each evening with dialog the same as at the beginning... All dialogues with rest of people are the same and it does not have any sense, they are not acting like a people (they should), not taking into account that we already know each other quite good (compared to first day in house) but all we got are the same, emotionless responses.

I think you're misunderstanding couple of things with this part.

The game has events which occurs in small steps such as the following;

- Wine event with Isabel
- Yoga event with Isabel
- Dance event with Gracie

etc etc

And with this, there's bound to be a little bit of conflict between a pure VN approach & exploration gameplay approach.
Girls freeroam content is a bit of mix of both.


I'll try to explain it using Uncle Wilfred.
In the beginning there's a tons of new dialogue options for him; such as "Tell me about yourself" "Tell me about this town" "What is Consigliere" "Why do people call you Uncle?"

But every other dialogue choice other than that is completely situational and dependent on the event triggered:
e.g. "Do you have Luna's knife?" will only be available when Luna's Knife Knife is triggered, & "I'd like to talk about Luna" dialogue option is only available when My name is Luna is started.

Hence Hopes only put essential dialogue choices which triggers events with these characters (not just Wilfred, but all the girls in freeroam).
If the game was just 100% only VN mode (with zero freeroam), then I'd say your critique here would be very valid, but given Full Experience mode and Just Story mode have got a mix of exploration gameplay in them I wouldn't consider this to be a fair criticism tbh - cause otherwise, Hopes will need to create meaningless new banter dialogues for everytime player's MC interacts with the characters (which would be tons, esp in Full Experience) just to give them something new to say for every instance.

I like concept of equipement. I would love to see more choices there (money-based, not story-based) and that whatever I bought has any impact to dialogues/story, not just stats. Like me having a gun but in dialogues MC still acts like he never hold one or there is no way for me to go to shooting range to train. Or Gracie mentioned about buying better clothes to train dancing, or MC having own car/bike, or basicaly anything really but meaning more than just stat change and look but only in equipement screen. There is just no interaction between that and the world

Uhhh...... I'd hate to break this to ya, but I just don't see this happening.
The only thing the Wilfred's contracts & the Main Story content shares is the narrative and the characters.

Everything else, like the equipment or feats that happen in the contracts, are either just not applicable or overwritten/determined solely by how the main story dictates it (with main story linking the said contracts event to be canon; like the characters of nuns Amita, Amata, Lelianna).

e.g.

- MC in my playthrough has not just the gun, but bulletproof vest, Holy Pants, Lock Glasses and more, with some of them even being Legendary equipment. It is (and I mean absolutely no offense by it) implausible to expect all these to reflect on the main story; if Hopes allows one item such as gun to show up on main story just cause player MC obtains it or used it once during Contracts, he'll need to allow it for basically everything else, opening a huge can of worms.

- Every time when player MC gets something new; like a new item; like your example of car or bike? That's gonna change or impact the game.
And Hopes already has an outline/plan of how things will progress set up - equipment from Wilfred's contracts gameplay impacting the story could have consequences of conflicting with his already set up narrative.

- The game isn't a AAA game (like Witcher 3, or Baldur's Gate 3).
If Hopes had a huge team behind it (as well as the money), perhaps it could be done.
But he's a solo dev who only recently launched his season 1 on Steam.


Oh, and don't get me wrong, I like the equipment and the customizing of the MC. But I just don't see what you're hoping happening.

Firstly I was in love of that - I was promised freedom (freeroam), money, mafia stuff, training camp (wow) etc and at the end hm... One or two missions like bring wine or learn ballet gave me one or two points to skills and that's it. In the meantime I had to make missions requiring me to have high stealth for example and... It felt linear. I know it is AVN but I hate when devs comes with ideas they cannot handle properly. If we are implementing stats here - give me chances to improve them. If they even matter - give me different content according to them. Clothes changes stats? Ok, but give me choice of making money which is not story-related. If everything is story-driven anyway then there is no point in implementing RPG elements in the first place.

Skill points can be increased in following ways;

- permanent increase by going through girls events (+1 per each relevant event)
- gear providing different increases

With "give me choice of making money which is not story-related." perhaps you can give an example/s?

And tbh, not sure why you'd want further increase in stats anyway (on top of methods already provided).
If you wish to make the MC basically Superman, there are mods out there by some people that does that; though I really wouldn't recommend them.

It is nicely described in "Help, tips & event" tab but in reality there is no such a thing or at least it is not visible at all for a player. To this point of the game my only choice was to either watch Luna killing mercenary or not and to look at dead traitor (forgot his name) or not... And it doesn't matter anyway since result is all the same and there are no stat related to it (at least yet)

This one, Hopes will need to answer himself; don't think he made his position clear about dispassion yet.

First thing I find stupid was this whole hitlerjugend soldier theme. I'm okay that it is kinda of dev's art of concept but it doesn't have any sense for these people to wear clothes like that in daily basis like we could see in tavern.

Uhhh....I'm confused at what you're trying to refer to here (you'll need to clarify this one).

Money is another thing. It is nicely implemented, I love having "RPG elements" in AVNs but at the same time I'm there couple days/weeks and I feel like I'm the only one having money.

If you're referring to the girls wearing same clothes throughout season 1 (hence it feeling like they have no money to you), Hopes said before that all the main girls (Luna, Gracie, Isabel, Cordia) will be getting an attire change for season 2.

Not sure for the men (Wilfred, Antonio) as well as other non-main LI girls (like Eiza, Elektra, Siobhan, Amita, Amata, Caterina, Onorina etc etc) though.


I answered, what I could, but I guess HopesGaming can better answer your critique.

 

[Cartageno]

Inside joke.
Yet, hi's trying to ignore it. Looking at you Mr. two post above this.

Yeah, it is pretty obvious how he uses wordiness and shiny videos to distract from his complete and utter failure to compile a compelling background - because he never cared for background and lore now, did he?

(Gotta admit, I also do not get the "Hitlerjugend" reference.)

 

[JJJ84]

Yeah, it is pretty obvious how he uses wordiness and shiny videos to distract from his complete and utter failure to compile a compelling background - because he never cared for background and lore now, did he?

Spoiler: Who says I'm sweating? These are tears I tell ya, tears of joy!

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