VN Ren'Py Completed The Symbiant [v1.1.7] [HeartCoreDev]

[hcdev]

I think of this comment on the SMB itchio page every day.

 

[missmerize]

Hi!
I just wanted to say that the game looks beautiful. I haven't played it yet (I don't like getting hyped up by demos and then having to wait for months until I can continue playing). I will do that as soon as the full version is available - it's quite likely I'd like to buy it afterwards.
I also have a question: Is it possible to combine the English voiceover with the German text? There are so few visual novels in German, which is why I would love to play it in my first language, but I don't want to have to do without the voices.
Also, I'm quite appreciative that the game can be found on itch.io, so that countries with more restrictive laws regarding the consumption of "more adult games" can access it. For too many Steam games I've bought before the law, I can't even look at the shop page.

That was the reason I specifically pirated the sequel to Beyond Eden - at release, the full version only came out on Steam, and adult games are blocked in my country. I still think that's a shame.

I like that the dev of the game plays such an active role here.

 

[hcdev]

Hi!
I just wanted to say that the game looks beautiful. I haven't played it yet (I don't like getting hyped up by demos and then having to wait for months until I can continue playing). I will do that as soon as the full version is available - it's quite likely I'd like to buy it afterwards.
I also have a question: Is it possible to combine the English voiceover with the German text? There are so few visual novels in German, which is why I would love to play it in my first language, but I don't want to have to do without the voices.
Also, I'm quite appreciative that the game can be found on itch.io, so that countries with more restrictive laws regarding the consumption of "more adult games" can access it. For too many Steam games I've bought before the law, I can't even look at the shop page.

That was the reason I specifically pirated the sequel to Beyond Eden - at release, the full version only came out on Steam, and adult games are blocked in my country. I still think that's a shame.

I like that the dev of the game plays such an active role here.

Hi Prototype_up77!
Our current builds on f95 and patreon don't have the German version past the demo yet, because we have yet to implement other languages. However, I'm happy to inform you that last night I sent a complete build with full German language to our German translator, Marcel Weyers, for testing!

So to answer your question: for the full release the German version will be there with English voice acting, it's just a matter of time.

I'm surprised you managed to buy the first Beyond Eden (or did you?), because as far as I remember, that game is 18+ right off the bat on Steam as well.

 

[missmerize]

Hi Prototype_up77!
Our current builds on f95 and patreon don't have the German version past the demo yet, because we have yet to implement other languages. However, I'm happy to inform you that last night I sent a complete build with full German language to our German translator, Marcel Weyers, for testing!

So to answer your question: for the full release the German version will be there with English voice acting, it's just a matter of time.

I'm surprised you managed to buy the first Beyond Eden (or did you?), because as far as I remember, that game is 18+ right off the bat on Steam as well.

Hey hcdev!
Thanks for the good news, I'm very happy about it. I've got English pretty well figured out by now (even more so as a reader), but since I hardly ever have the opportunity to use it in my everyday life here, it's still something quite different from German to me. That's why I feel it's special to play a text-based game in my mother tongue. Anyway, I guess Marcel Weyers is having a great time now (although that's not the main focus, of course, hehe).

Yeah, that's one of the few games I managed to buy before the adult games meltdown. See, the law has only been enforced since the end of 2020. We lost access to the games' store pages overnight, but all the ones we already bought remained with us. That should have been a bigger scandal than it was, really, but since most were thinking of all the hentai puzzles rather than anything else, no one bothered either. The fact that it hit a whole bunch of really deep games that don't want to keep sex or dark themes quiet is apparently irrelevant. Actually, Steam would just have to install a passport control to be able to show us the store pages again, but that doesn't seem to be financially worthwhile. The market probably is too small, and Steam itself has a somewhat ambivalent history regarding this kind of games.

I think it's especially sad for the indie devs, but whether the few sales from Germany really matter is another question ... All the more I'm thrilled for this release

 

[hcdev]

Small achievement but I'm pretty proud of it!

 

[KopretCZ]

Ah i really fallen in love with this one. Even if usually i dislike scifi this one is just... Aaaw.

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[KopretCZ]

Just offtopic question - why are VNs always voiced? Like seriously. It´s not like it´s in my language. Well usually it´s not even voiced in english. And lot of pple just play games with muted sounds. So.. why? It costs a lot and in the end it dosn´t make such difference if it´s voiced or if not.

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[hcdev]

Just offtopic question - why are VNs always voiced? Like seriously. It´s not like it´s in my language. Well usually it´s not even voiced in english. And lot of pple just play games with muted sounds. So.. why? It costs a lot and in the end it dosn´t make such difference if it´s voiced or if not.

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I don't know for other genres, but for BL games a lot of players enjoy the voice acting as having the sentence said out loud makes them not fall asleep reading all that text, and adds to the immersion. Good voice acting can also make a sex scene even sexier, as I found out in a survey about BL games.

Another possible reason is that the presence of voice acting makes the perceived value of a game higher, and as more and more mainsteam games and visual novels get voice acting, more and more players expect it and see the project as more legit.

 

[Kujhen]

Current version 6.4 is getting an error. I redownloaded and it still happens so I'm assuming it's the file itself?

```
I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
ScriptError: could not find label 's15_nsfw1'.

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
File "scenes/scene_15.rpyc", line 636, in script
File "renpy/ast.py", line 1974, in execute
rv = renpy.game.script.lookup(target)
File "renpy/script.py", line 927, in lookup
raise ScriptError("could not find label '%s'." % str(original))
ScriptError: could not find label 's15_nsfw1'.

Windows-10-10.0.19041 AMD64
Ren'Py 7.5.3.22090602
TheSymbiant X-0.6.4
Tue Oct 11 20:02:03 2022
```

 

[Jiffie]

I don't know for other genres, but for BL games a lot of players enjoy the voice acting as having the sentence said out loud makes them not fall asleep reading all that text, and adds to the immersion. Good voice acting can also make a sex scene even sexier, as I found out in a survey about BL games.

Another possible reason is that the presence of voice acting makes the perceived value of a game higher, and as more and more mainsteam games and visual novels get voice acting, more and more players expect it and see the project as more legit.

I agree with this, for all visual novels, I personally just enjoy hearing voices as it makes it feel more "alive" (I can do voicesless, too, but voice is always the better option); every media's goal is always to entertain the consumers' five senses; no one is going to say "no" to pleasent visual, sound, touch, taste, and smell perception if ever offered, unless that person just have some sort of weird condition for refusing such an immersive experience?

Just offtopic question - why are VNs always voiced? Like seriously. It´s not like it´s in my language. Well usually it´s not even voiced in english. And lot of pple just play games with muted sounds. So.. why? It costs a lot and in the end it dosn´t make such difference if it´s voiced or if not.

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I always play with sound on in my VNs (in all my games, actually, even the foreign, non English ones, especially the foreign ones, because I feel English speakers don't take voice acting seriously, and always want to sound like Goofy as a clown, when other cultures, especially Japan, treat it seriously... sometimes.); I'll especially use sound if they're voiced, gotta hear those breathy moans! I literally only turn the protagonist voice off (particularly the female), because I'm immersing as myself in my game play experience, and I use my own "voice" (in my head) when MC talks. Yes, half the time the female voices are very annoying, especially protagonists (especially Japanese/Asian, they love the wailing mice), but I won't turn them off if they're supporting characters, just the protagonist, and just because I want my own voice, instead, nothing usually against the voice actors or Voice VNs in general.

 

[hcdev]

Current version 6.4 is getting an error. I redownloaded and it still happens so I'm assuming it's the file itself?

Thanks for the notice! Somebody reported the same issue a few days ago. I will try updating it this evening after my dayjob.

I always play with sound on in my VNs (in all my games, actually, even the foreign, non English ones, especially the foreign ones, because I feel English speakers don't take voice acting seriously, and always want to sound like Goofy as a clown, when other cultures, especially Japan, treat it seriously... sometimes.); I'll especially use sound if they're voiced, gotta hear those breathy moans! I literally only turn the protagonist voice off (particularly the female), because I'm immersing as myself in my game play experience, and I use my own "voice" (in my head) when MC talks. Yes, half the time the female voices are very annoying, especially protagonists (especially Japanese/Asian, they love the wailing mice), but I won't turn them off if they're supporting characters, just the protagonist, and just because I want my own voice, instead, nothing usually against the voice actors or Voice VNs in general.

While English voice acting has been historically pretty hit or miss, I've seen some good improvements over the years. For example, in Fire Emblem Three Houses I like to play Blue Lion with JP voice acting because I'm not too big on Dimitri's English voice acting, but I always play Golden Deer route with English VO because you can tell Claude's voice actor is passionate and did a great job making Claude's outwardly easygoing but also calculating personality pop out. Other characters in his route like Ignatz sound much better in English as well.

Japanese voice acting as I found out can easily let the voice actors just follow a voice archetype and trope, such as the "~ara ara~ motherly type with a suave voice, or the smart guy with a serious attitude. I've seen multiple voice actors just follow that archetype and basically just imitate the tone of more established actors in the anime industry. Once you notice that pattern, you hear them everywhere, from video games to anime to Drama CDs. That isn't to say I don't enjoy JP voice acting, it's just that I find this particular phenomenon less common in English (and French 'cause I'm French) VO.

So when I see a game, or series that offers voice acting in multiple languages, I test them all to find which voice acting I like best and sometimes switch mid-game between English and Japanese.

 

[hcdev]

Kujhen here's a quick fix:

You must be registered to see the links

Hope you don't get any more errors.

 

[Eragot]

Kujhen here's a quick fix: Mega

Hope you don't get any more errors.

Link don't work

 

[hcdev]

Link don't work

Try the ones in the OP, those should work.

 

[hcdev]

So, we like to call SMB fans "Alien lovers" over on itchio/kickstarter/patreon. How about I pick another nickname for you guys? How about "space pirates"?

Also, me and my associate wonder how many of you joined our Discord server and stayed silent, for fear of admitting to discovering SMB in a pirate site and getting jumped by our more conventional players. Or perhaps I'm just overthinking, and it's just a "only 10 people are really active on any Discord server no matter its size" thing.

 

[ejmuerte]

So, we like to call SMB fans "Alien lovers" over on itchio/kickstarter/patreon. How about I pick another nickname for you guys? How about "space pirates"?

Also, me and my associate wonder how many of you joined our Discord server and stayed silent, for fear of admitting to discovering SMB in a pirate site and getting jumped by our more conventional players. Or perhaps I'm just overthinking, and it's just a "only 10 people are really active on any Discord server no matter its size" thing.

perhaps on discord stuff just keep promoting your discord server(to all your sites like twitter, itchio, kickstarter, patreon and etc.)... it grows really slow most of newly created discord server

as for nickname?? i dont know what nickname to pick on...

also do you plan to add more BL characters?

 

[hcdev]

perhaps on discord stuff just keep promoting your discord server(to all your sites like twitter, itchio, kickstarter, patreon and etc.)... it grows really slow most of newly created discord server

as for nickname?? i dont know what nickname to pick on...

also do you plan to add more BL characters?

It is decently active already, but the sentiment that "pirates are thieves who don't care about developers" appears to be shared among some of our more active members, as well as certain players on itchio. As it is now, it's not really safe for someone who discovered SMB through F95 to come forward as a pirate in our Discord. Me and my associate are cooking up something that will hopefully help.

The Symbiant is a short game, so while there will be another route to the game where Danya and Brahve's relationship turns out differently, there won't be any more love interest as it wouldn't make sense for the story. There will however be 2 new NPCs who will appear in our DLCs. We have sprites for them and we finished writing one of our two DLCs.

If we ever make another game after SMB, we do plan on having more routes.

 

[ejmuerte]

It is decently active already, but the sentiment that "pirates are thieves who don't care about developers" appears to be shared among some of our more active members, as well as certain players on itchio. As it is now, it's not really safe for someone who discovered SMB through F95 to come forward as a pirate in our Discord. Me and my associate are cooking up something that will hopefully help.

The Symbiant is a short game, so while there will be another route to the game where Danya and Brahve's relationship turns out differently, there won't be any more love interest as it wouldn't make sense for the story. There will however be 2 new NPCs who will appear in our DLCs. We have sprites for them and we finished writing one of our two DLCs.

If we ever make another game after SMB, we do plan on having more routes.

on the pirate part, you can just pick some feedbacks here as to improve your game because this will grow a good reputation to both pirates and supporters when it comes to gathering feedbacks(so this is a highly advantage usually because some pirate players or supporter players do end up putting their feedbacks in a forum like this f95zone).

as for the new content will added to your game, interesting and sad cause its a short game to be made, i can understand that if that is your goal of your game.

you can also advertise your next new title game here in f95zone if some pirate players willingly to support your game, so this can attract more supporters to your game titles.

 

[hcdev]

And Where compressed video?

I don't understand your question.

 

[hcdev]

You wrote about the fact that it is better to wait than to download a game with compressed sounds and videos, and I had a question: where are the compressed videos in the compressed versions? If only images and audio are compressed, then only up to 80%, which does not affect the image quality that much.

I don't know if my original inquiry from a while ago was read as passive-aggressive, but that's not the case: I was genuinely wondering how many people would rather download the compressed version of my game. Please don't see it as me disapproving you compressing my game, on the contrary, I find the subject fascinating, even though my game isn't that heavy compared to some 3D games with lots of animation.

I did not de-link the link in the original post, by the way. Perhaps the mods removed it because it was too old?

Anyway, the video thing was an example. Don't take it as face value.