Ren'Py The Null Hypothesis [v0.7b] [Ron Chon]

[ShinyBoots1993]

As much as I love RL:E, I hope to GOD that the devs for this game don't take inspiration for Emma from that game.

We've actually had several conversations about that and in my personal opinion I think the characterization of Emma and Storm got reversed.

I have no idea what Oni was reading that made him go "Emma definitely cares about student/teacher ethics."

I didn't even know there was a closed beta?

Closed alpha.

I have to say though... 6 Chapters feel short...

Chapters 2 through 5 are covering 30 years of comic books. Chapter 1 is purely world introduction.

Honestly, if Chapter 6 ending is 'open-ended' or at least provides a 'play forever' option, I'm probably gonna be happy.

Chapter 6 is post game. Stories that don't fit within the timeline and previews of potential sequels. It'll be a much purer sandbox.

So I'll also add there's 15 primary girls. We do plan on adding girls in retroactively because in certain chapters there are more than 3 characters that would make sense but we don't want to overwork ourselves.

I'd feel FOMO about missed content...

There will be content for exclusively dating one person.

Or specific combinations of people.

There will be content for a Null who doesn't date anyone until chapter 6.

Going 100% harem is only one route of many.

There's also quirks which effect routes. Each girl reacts noticeably differently throughout chapter 1's main story and side content depending on if you activate their quirk.

And speaking of FOMO of missed girl content... Every girl will have 4 distinct different feels.

1. Platonic

2. Romance

3. Platonic + Quirk

4. Romantic + Quirk

Which to my knowledge is already in the game for all three girls, with plans for expansion.

We're basically a completionist's wet dream with plans of expanding. You should see the things we have planned for the Achievement Shop.

Although speaking of 18 girls, I would suggest a way to have multiple dates in a single day... Maybe more on the weekends, less on the weekdays? Or Group dates.

Yeah we're working on this. You can extend your actions during time periods by getting your stamina up.

Ah... I can imagine it now, Null going broke. Nobody talks about the costs, logistics and accounting involved in a harem. It's gonna be fun is what I'm saying.

We actually joke and talk about this in the discord quite often. There's a channel devoted entirely to fanmade text conversations between characters and most often group texts.

I'm kinda hoping this game becomes moddable/modular now...

It's currently moddable. We're just waiting for chapter 1 to wrap up before we make a super big deal about it.

Although I guess I'm picturing what is air-dropping girls into the game which I guess yeah, kinda dampens that idea.

I believe if someone wants to mod in girls to be air dropped... that's doable. Someone already used Jean's assets to make her look a little like Emma. Take that and make an Emma mod.

 

[TeeEight]

That's why you let the girls invite you sometimes, it does wonders to your finances.

Yeah, my Relationship I side quest was completed by just studying, working and danger room-ing.
Jean, Laura and eventually Anna invited me.
I managed to save up money... Until i splurged on their favorite items.

Or specific combinations of people.

So like, certain contain would be locked out if I go full 100% harem? Or does those combinations basically stack?

Combination Event: Rogue + Kitty
Combination Event 2: Rogue + Kitty + Laura
And so on?

Going 100% harem is only one route of many.

We're basically a completionist's wet dream with plans of expanding. You should see the things we have planned for the Achievement Shop.

Wet dream... Or Nightmare...

It's both for me, my need to 100% a game is too strong... But god, I don't think I've ever actually replayed a game to visit other routes once i finished and got 100% on a game on a single run.

And speaking of FOMO of missed girl content... Every girl will have 4 distinct different feels.

1. Platonic

2. Romance

3. Platonic + Quirk

4. Romantic + Quirk

Tbh, that is really intriguing... I'm definitely playing it Romantic + Quirk. I don't expect the difference to be that big but I still like that there are Options

But yeah, from what I understand, you guys are reworking the Quirk system right? The current system is basically like a taste.

I also noticed the intro felt very different compared to I think version 3b? 3c? Maybe 3a... For some reason, i vaguely remember Storm being a bit antagonistic to Rogue...And Rogue coming off way more touchy than she does now. In the prologue. Or I'm just misremembering stuff.

We actually joke and talk about this in the discord quite often. There's a channel devoted entirely to fanmade text conversations between characters and most often group texts.

Hah, is that the patreon only discord or the public discord?


Given all those scenes where they're chatting in the rooms. I like the idea of the characters having a group chat that Null doesn't have access too.


By the way, is the reason the phone broke because somehow Null... Nullified whatever makes it unbreakable. Somehow he got a cheap knockoff
Or Xavier was just exaggerating and/or back to option 2, has been slowly phasing out the actual indestructible part of the phone for a cheaper model

 

[hrmf]

I have no idea what Oni was reading that made him go "Emma definitely cares about student/teacher ethics."

I 100% agree with this, but in fairness to Oni, Emma definitely does care about status and what other people think about her. So you could read that stuff in RL:E as not so much "Emma is dedicated to her role as an educator of young mutants" as "Emma doesn't want the other actual X-Men to talk shit about her for messing around with/catching feelings for a student, and she expresses it in terms of student/teacher ethics in order to retain plausible deniability."

 

[Dazzier31]

Hah, is that the patreon only discord or the public discord?

Unless Shiny is keeping more secret, there is no such thing as a patreon only discord... and even if there is, he is talking about the one linked in the game.

"Emma is dedicated to her role as an educator of young mutants"

Not really of any opinion regarding the rest of the comment, but Emma is dedicated to the role of educator of young mutants, the woman loves being a teacher and it's one of the reasons she leaves the Hellfire Club to join the school.

 

[ShinyBoots1993]

So like, certain contain would be locked out if I go full 100% harem? Or does those combinations basically stack?

Combination Event: Rogue + Kitty
Combination Event 2: Rogue + Kitty + Laura
And so on?

You'll be able to romance everyone and combination events will still trigger, however tonally the story will be different.

Say down the line, if she were added, you're in a relationship with Kitty and if Rachel or Magik, two girls she had things for, the context and reactions would be different if you're dating JUST Kitty or if you're dating the entire cast to that point.

Wet dream... Or Nightmare...

It's both for me, my need to 100% a game is too strong... But god, I don't think I've ever actually replayed a game to visit other routes once i finished and got 100% on a game on a single run.

Yeah we're making this game for replay ability. The intro has like 10 variations taking your chosen scholarship, character customization, and dialogue choices.

Like the tone of certain conversations is outright different depending on your previous answer.

I should have Ron put a page about that because people are oddly against having more than one save.

Tbh, that is really intriguing... I'm definitely playing it Romantic + Quirk. I don't expect the difference to be that big but I still like that there are Options

Dude it's big.

Jean can go from a college girl with anxiety to a twitchy neurotic obsessed with you being her little brother.

Rogue goes from determined if a tad insecure to deferring most of her life choices to you.

Laura either learns to respect boundaries... or outright annihilates them.

It bleeds into sandbox randomness, conversations between the girls, and the main plot.

So basically every scene in the game has minor to major differences depending on if the girls had their quirks encouraged or not, whether you stick to one of the three archetypes, or if you were random with your dialogue choices.

If I do the math...

That would mean every scene that includes all three girls would have... 81? potential variations?

Although if we're counting significant differences then it's more like... 9? It's 2AM for me right now I'm gonna be off by a number or two.

But yeah, from what I understand, you guys are reworking the Quirk system right? The current system is basically like a taste.

We're not reworking it drastically.

It currently a binary. With our plans it has more like three segments.

1. Bedroom

2. Narrative

3. Interactions

An example: So 1. Jean has a big sister complex and will 2. dom you in the bedroom and 3. try to control your life choices. The new rework will allow you to choose which parts of the quirk you want activated. We're putting in the effort because we want it to feel like you're setting boundaries... like actual relationship building.

I also noticed the intro felt very different compared to I think version 3b? 3c? Maybe 3a... For some reason, i vaguely remember Storm being a bit antagonistic to Rogue...And Rogue coming off way more touchy than she does now. In the prologue. Or I'm just misremembering stuff.

Yeah we tweak dialogue here and there based on feedback.

Hah, is that the patreon only discord or the public discord?

It's public. You can get access to it in the game's main menu.

Given all those scenes where they're chatting in the rooms. I like the idea of the characters having a group chat that Null doesn't have access too.

Oh yeah. There's a lot of fun speculation on what's going on. It started as just the first three but now the list is like 20 girls long, including ones that are confirmed to not show up until a sequel or a very special DLC at the end of chapter 6.

By the way, is the reason the phone broke because somehow Null... Nullified whatever makes it unbreakable. Somehow he got a cheap knockoff
Or Xavier was just exaggerating and/or back to option 2, has been slowly phasing out the actual indestructible part of the phone for a cheaper model

This has been hotly debated since the first beta release and I'm genuinely not permitted to give you the answer.

 

[ShinyBoots1993]

"Emma doesn't want the other actual X-Men to talk shit about her for messing around with/catching feelings for a student, and she expresses it in terms of student/teacher ethics in order to retain plausible deniability."

She doesn't act that way though and when she reveals she caught the feels... it still doesn't seem that way.

It's a straight up ethical line she refuses to cross and I always felt like that should have been more of a Storm thing.

Unless Shiny is keeping more secret, there is no such thing as a patreon only discord... and even if there is, he is talking about the one linked in the game.

We have a patron's channel and they get builds and previews earlier than the others but that's just standard fare.

Not really of any opinion regarding the rest of the comment, but Emma is dedicated to the role of educator of young mutants, the woman loves being a teacher and it's one of the reasons she leaves the Hellfire Club to join the school.

That I didn't mean to imply.

I just think it's weird that she was just so... normal about turning down a student. No snarky comments, no haughty tone, not even offended disbelief if it was something she considered sacred.

 

[Epigonid]

TeeEight I read your review and I want to address some questions and points since it was so nice and detailed.

1. I'm sorry if I came off as abrasive. Sometimes I do get sassy with people.

2. We're not out of Beta. We're still EARLY beta. We did have a closed Alpha, which may be the cause of confusion. Everything is so polished because we were having it cook for awhile. However some bugs and features still feel like beta because it still is a beta.

3. We've been working on this for a little over a year. There's no doubts, sense of burnout or anything. We aren't reaching for the moon like some over eager people do, we're just very careful in our planning. Trust me we talk over potential features and inclusions to make sure we don't bite off more than we can chew.

4. Storm will be in chapter 2 and yes each chapter will come with 3 girls.

5. Rogue, and the other girls, will continue to get character development as time goes on. However this is just chapter 1 of a 6 chapter narrative. We're also tweaking her and the other girls' quirks.

6. Kurt will be getting more interactions and Colossus is going to be a sandbox NPC as well. There's story reasons for him not being in the sandbox for chapter 1 that I can't spoil. Hanging out with the bros is going to be optional content that you can do and every girl will have a fully platonic version of their route.

There's talk of making Juggy a bro in some capacity.

Thank you for the update, although not story update, it's still nice tweaking with the costumisation to make our ideal outfit and look for the girl's

 

[ShinyBoots1993]

Thank you for the update, although not story update, it's still nice tweaking with the costumisation to make our ideal outfit and look for the girl's

We have a lot of projects when working on the game.

While we are working for the finale of chapter 1 so we can finally get to the nitty gritty of chapter 2, we don't just want to sit on the other things we complete.

Expanded friend system between girls, reintroducing cut clothing from the list we had to remove because of the animation update, the remastering of existing sex scenes, the addition of sex positions such as cowgirl and footjobs that we cut for time. Not to mention bugfixes and finetuning to make things flow better.

I have a feeling that people complaining about frequent updates don't know what they're asking for. I'd assume you'd want all this content sooner rather than us just sitting on it for half a year.

 

[FacelessVixen]

We have a lot of projects when working on the game.

Expanded friend system between girls, reintroducing cut clothing from the list we had to remove because of the animation update, the remastering of existing sex scenes...

I don't listen to Nine Inch Nails as often as I listen to Revocation and Vildhjarta, but...

...namsayin'?

 

[RoadWulf]

6. Kurt will be getting more interactions and Colossus is going to be a sandbox NPC as well. There's story reasons for him not being in the sandbox for chapter 1 that I can't spoil. Hanging out with the bros is going to be optional content that you can do and every girl will have a fully platonic version of their route.

That makes me think we'll be getting Magik and he's going to threaten to crush our fun berries if we go near her...
I actually kind of thought that girl during the Sentinel attack might have been her (blonde girl).

 

[BigAlzBub]

That makes me think we'll be getting Magik and he's going to threaten to crush our fun berries if we go near her...
I actually kind of thought that girl during the Sentinel attack might have been her (blonde girl).

Colossus has always struck me as being kind of mellow and cool, so as long as you don't hurt Magik and make her happy, he would be okay with you?

 

[hello.jpg]

Already really enjoyed a first playthrough, and now I'm way more excited after reading the plans over the last two pages. This could be an all-timer.

I only hope the team can pull it off - that number of girls is a very ambitious, and unfortunately there's a long history of games just adding more and more characters and getting repetitive. I'm a quality over quantity guy.

 

[HBKTheIcon69]

Can anyone help. Playing this for the first time. I got through with Rogue and Laura but for Jean the first date won't trigger. I text and then wait until evening but nothing. Could the main be affecting it? I havent completed the remaining three training or two optional.

For me currently it's the opposite, I've progressed past 3 dates with both Jean and Laura got them at relationship part 2, but Rogue is still at dating and I'm on winter season for chapter 1, got majority of side quests done...what have I missed to trigger it as I keep studying and training with Rogue to get her xp up in each as that could be a factor that she isn't even at level 2 yet lol.

 

[Buttholder]

I don't listen to Nine Inch Nails as often as I listen to Revocation and Vildhjarta, but...

...namsayin'?

I'll say that the NIN shirt was actually a suggestion I made to the team way before I was added as a writer (go back far enough in this thread and you can see me talking about the kind of music Rogue would be into and explicitly saying we needed an NIN shirt) and long before I was even aware of L&S. And, let's be honest, it's basically the go-to reference for 'this person listens to music that would scare the normies', not much of a surprise that two games with a similar character archetype would pick the same reference.

I have to say though... 6 Chapters feel short... Although, that's just me and honestly that's... 18 girls? That's way more than a lot of harem games. Honestly, if Chapter 6 ending is 'open-ended' or at least provides a 'play forever' option, I'm probably gonna be happy.

Something I'll add as well: while we haven't gone in-depth on chapter 2 yet (our main focus has been on chapter 1, adding new stuff, adding the systems for later use, etc.), at the rate we're going, it's entirely likely, that each season - as in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter - will probably wind up being close on as content-rich as this entire opening chapter. While the focus of each new chapter will typically be on the new girls, one of our key goals is to make sure the older ones don't get left behind, so they'll be getting new scenes and events every so often too. Plus, as we're adapting new storylines, different characters will rise to prominence at different times, so neglecting anyone is counter-intuitive.

On paper, yeah, six chapters sounds like nothing, but if you break it down and look at what's being offered... it's a lot.

 

[kryanBR]

this goes beyond my knowledge. It would be better to do apply the code then patch the game for android

In some games it is possible to open it if you turn the top right part of the phone to the bottom, sometimes it opens the command or some random window (rougue-like: Evo from Oni opens a cheat window for emma or console). If the game was compatible with serious joyplay, it would even be easier because the apk steals a lot of memory to the point where the cell phone says "system, system interface has stopped working". Unfortunately, even if they added a mod injection I wouldnt be able to play...

 

[Evil13]

I'll say that the NIN shirt was actually a suggestion I made to the team way before I was added as a writer (go back far enough in this thread and you can see me talking about the kind of music Rogue would be into and explicitly saying we needed an NIN shirt) and long before I was even aware of L&S. And, let's be honest, it's basically the go-to reference for 'this person listens to music that would scare the normies', not much of a surprise that two games with a similar character archetype would pick the same reference.

Not to mention that many artists have almost universally decided that Evolution Rogue would have listened to Nine Inch Nails, posters of the band on her bedroom wall, t-shirts and so on.

 

[Dazzier31]

That makes me think we'll be getting Magik and he's going to threaten to crush our fun berries if we go near her...
I actually kind of thought that girl during the Sentinel attack might have been her (blonde girl).

I see you are unaware of the joys of Colossusposting, sad state of affairs.

 

[Eadoras]

Will it be possible later to name the game saves.
I've seen in it in other Ren'py games (Four Elements Trainer).
That would make it easier to see in which saves you only go a certain route.

 

[sztrb]

Genuinely surprised by how good this game is, most of these "inspired" by types of games generally just go for fan service and the story lines generally get pornified to the extreme or have incredibly poor writing.

The art is good too.

 

[Poker_king70]

There will be content for a Null who doesn't date anyone until chapter 6.

Chapter Six: Null quits the Xmen and joins a monastery