Ren'Py Abandoned Vis [v2.0] [Mad King Games]

[Deleted member 416612]

In addition to this, Mad King, it appears there's a slight discrepancy in the points awarded when you spend the night with Morrígan before the battle. When you are given the option to have Darya join for a threesome or to be with Morrígan alone, the stat indicator in the upper left shows +5 to the relevant Morrígan stat. However, after the fact when I check the current stat levels for her, it has increased by 10. I don't know whether the upper left indicator or the current stat level is in error, but they do not match right now.

Some additional bugs I found (which may or may not have already been reported):

Spoiler

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Additionally, I would strongly recommend that on the sandbox you have tooltips when someone hovers over an icon so they can be reminded of what that represents. For example, hovering over the day would give the common equivalent for players (the display may show "Jove" but the tooltip would read "Thursday"). Better yet, in this specific case, have the day be clickable, and have the position in the week laid out for the players; something like this (but with your designed icons, of course), where the current day is highlighted:

S L M M J V S​

In addition to this, Mad King, it appears there's a slight discrepancy in the points awarded when you spend the night with Morrígan before the battle. When you are given the option to have Darya join for a threesome or to be with Morrígan alone, the stat indicator in the upper left shows +5 to the relevant Morrígan stat. However, after the fact when I check the current stat levels for her, it has increased by 10. I don't know whether the upper left indicator or the current stat level is in error, but they do not match right now.

Some additional bugs I found (which may or may not have already been reported):

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

Additionally, I would strongly recommend that on the sandbox you have tooltips when someone hovers over an icon so they can be reminded of what that represents. For example, hovering over the day would give the common equivalent for players (the display may show "Jove" but the tooltip would read "Thursday"). Better yet, in this specific case, have the day be clickable, and have the position in the week laid out for the players; something like this (but with your designed icons, of course), where the current day is highlighted:

S L M M J V S​

Thank you for the highlights.
A part of what you've said, it was sent to the dev to take a look at it and the other part, to the proofreader.

Thank you for heads up!

 

[JohnPaxson]

how can I use slave labor? it always says I dont have enough resources. I guess its because I dont have slaves but how can I get slaves? I already bought slavery.

 

[Deleted member 416612]

Mad King
Let me start off by thanking you for the wonderfull game and your invitation to have a constructive discussion about your sandbox choice. I personally feel that more "player choice" and "decision impact" are very good goals to aim for and i think your game would profit from them immensely. However i also share the sentiment of many others who got burned (on other games) by sandbox features.

Not because the feature in itself is bad but because it often is implemented lazily and developed in a way that derails the story.

For me there are 4 lessons learned / fears from that i would like to share with you so you can reflect or dismiss them if you already found solutions we have yet to see.

1.) Spreading out development ressources
As the title says, so far you were 100% able to develop your game and the main story with as much details and length as you want it to be. Having a sandbox system usually results in a "main storyline" which will be progressed in every x-monthly update and a bunch of sidestories often locked behind sandbox features. I.e. the scenes with the priestess locked behind level 2 temple as a random example. This leads to half of the development ressources (your updates usually have only 3-4 scenes) to be split both towards the mainstory and justifying the sandbox feature. This often ends up feeling like the sandbox is just tacked on and stretches the mainstory thin.

2.)The illusion of choice
Like i initially said more choices empower the player to have an impact on the story. While a sandbox might have this vision for a player who picks up Vis 1.9 in a couple of years and who can readily choose to upgrade the festivals first or the temple and so discover all your content at his own pace the reality is that this is for us, your existing playerbase, an illusion. Limited by your workhours your future changelogs will most likely look similar to something like this: "Mainstory progresses by talking to Morgana, added a sidestory at the temple with the priestess (temple lvl 2) and added another sidestory for the harvest festival for this update." This means every current player will play through the newly available content. Without choice. In short despite the sandbox every update will be linear since its size is limited by its content and ppl generally unlock all scenes before the next update hits.

3.)Its either or, delayed progression
Having the sandbox taking up development time will mean that many of our favourite girls will probably get much less screentime overall. Afterall what kind of sense would it make to limit morganas or moms story by upgrading our farms? This leads to a dissapointing predictability of your future updates for your audience. If you know this update is about morgana, there will not be much mom or lil sis content and vice versa. So far all your updates were big black boxes for us "where will he take us with x character". The sandbox quickly gets the short end as either a wasted opportunity (because it does little for our main girls) or if it does it feels tacked on and just a chore.

4.)Chores and Featurecreep
Many other games use sandbox features to stretch their content. An update might just have 30 min texts and scenes but by making you grind or unlocking features/currencies the playtime gets stretched to 1.5h because you need to cycle through 5 weeks to get all the tuesdays or currencies covered. This is very very boring and sadly ive not seen many sandboxes which work well with grinding. Not to mention that sandboxes are not unlimited property. If you dont want to add just 1 new Building at a time (which would defeat the sandbox idea and make it just a linear click and forget) you soon run into the end of the expansion cycle which means you need to add other additions to the sandbox (like upgrading buildings, upgrading other areas etc) which leads to more and more featurecreep (star citizien 2.0).

Just to mention something which is already in your game and has little to no air-/devtime (yet): My choices with the girls so far seem to have no impact outside of the direct scenes themself. So it does not matter if Morgana has 35 Lust or 5 if i click in this particular scene the lust option. The same applies to our hero himself. I made my choices but warrior or seducer give no additional benefit and often enough i wasnt even able to go a different route, i.e. i am not even able to go full warrior in every conversation or full corruption with every girl. Adding a new (sandbox) feature ontop of that will in the longrun mean that you will have very little time to work on these other existing features because there is only so much time "behind the lewds" you can work on in every update and sandbox is especially development heavy since it needs constant tweaking and readding of stuff to stay relevant. You might run in a situation where you simply abandon old systems because you find no time to come back to them, someting i personally would find sad since you initially thought of various paths and choices in your base design.

I hope this input helps and you can find some solutions to it, i have read above that you want to create 2 versions running alongside each other and i do not think that this is the final solution for you. Afterall you closed origins down for the exact same reason. To keep 2 (at a later stage) independent from each other games updated simultaniously basically would mean 125-150% workload compared to your current updates for very little gain. Concentrating on a good, not grindy and not overbearing sandbox could be a way to appease everyone. Noone complains about changing rooms or small freeroam scenes in most games even if that is the same thing as a sandbox just under a different label.

Hey there,

First of all, thank you for your words and for playing the game. Also sorry for the late reply.

I will address each point from your post, according to my point of view, in order to debate or to understand the topics.


1) Spreading out development resources.

I understand this point and it's a valid one. Each time we invest time and money to add something to the game, at some point the development will be in a bottleneck. Now, for the sandbox, I won't create side quests, like in the Rise of the legend edition. There it was truly a problem. Somehow I will connect the sandbox events to the one from the main campaign (the one that will be present in the VN). Of course that in the Sandbox there will be scenes where we get to know certain characters, or we are going to have different animations, places to visit, and interactions to make, but I won't implement a different points system for the characters relations but it won't be a quest of the size of the game, at least not for now. Players should trust that they won't get bored during the sandbox.

2) The illusion of choices:
As for the story goes, we can the common ground and say that there are paths unlocked by player behavior, even if those are not highlighted somehow in-game.
Related to the fact that I am delivering alpha builds in comparison with players that are going to download the game from version 1.9 (as an example), and therefore inherit what the current player fan base didn't, I can say that you are right, but you are at the beginning of implementation and your feedback, can shape how the game looks, and that is an opportunity that players from 1.9 won't get.
I would like to add another thing. As I said before, I think that this site and Patreon are meant to connect aspiring developers, writers, etc, with a community. In the case of development, either there are people that benefit from extended resources and then they release major features at once, or there are people that even if they have somehow limited resources. In the last-mentioned category, there are people that are going to stretch their resources even further in order to make a big leap in terms of gameplay. Should we sacrifice quality over resources? Also, I know that there is a third category, of people who can deliver a game at once, but I think that those are on platforms like Steam.

3)It either-or, delayed progression.

I think it could increase the delivery time but that is why I am using a part of the Patreon funding, to pay for a developer to help ease the burden, reduce the delivery time, and create the features I want, that require more technical thinking.

4)Chores and Feature creep

The idea behind the sandbox is far from grindy. I mean the only two main resources are money and happiness. Instead, what I wanted is to create an opportunity for players to shape their own kingdom/society as they see fit. I know that now it seems like an empty screen where you need to wait in order to get some coin, but when all the features are going to be implemented, players are going to have plenty of things to do or see. Related to the main girls, the story will unlock certain actions that will be available in the sandbox. That was one of the main reasons I wanted a sandbox in the first place.

Related to the choices, there are scenes that are automatically triggered according to your stats and your choices but are not highlighted as so. Some choices will trigger outcomes later.


I thank you for your words, and you truly have brought valid points, that are now on my watch list and I hope that for some I did my best to express my intention to walk on a different path.

Thank you!

 

[Deleted member 416612]

how can I use slave labor? it always says I dont have enough resources. I guess its because I dont have slaves but how can I get slaves? I already bought slavery.

With the next update there will be the option to raid and take slaves.

 

[Deleted member 416612]

Not sure about new sandbox mode. Seems like it might kill this amazing game that is barely starting.

Advancing and slowing time seems like it doesn't work so well. Not me for anyways. Maybe it's the buttons on Android not sure.

Also unless you are in dialog with someone, there isn't a menu option so we can save the game or reload. That is a huge issue for me.

Finally, is the start of the sandbox the end of the current build? Before we got told that was end of the current update and to save our game. Now do we just guess?

Hey there,
You can use [ESC] to access the menu. With the next update, I will add a shortcut to the UI.

 

[JohnPaxson]

With the next update there will be the option to raid and take slaves.

thank you

 

[Syngames]

This game was so good then you just get thrown into the sandbox and it sucks so bad.

 

[HolyLucker]

Will there be a Option to ignore the sandbox mode in the next upate?

 

[Deleted member 416612]

Will there be a Option to ignore the sandbox mode in the next upate?

Hey all,

Since I want this game to reach as many hearts as a badass brunette named Morrigan would, I will make this announcement.
When we first started developing the sandbox part, before the 1.4 release, I talked with the developer about the effort to implement a one-time option in-game to trigger on and off the sandbox. Basically, for the players to choose if they should play the game, including a sandbox system, or only VN.

I came to this resolution. With the next release, there will be two builds. One that includes the story + sandbox, and another one that only has the story (VN). Why two builds?! Because the story + sandbox build will be bigger than the VN-only build. So players that will choose the VN will have smaller-sized builds, as many of the sandbox features, won't be present.

 

[Ssato243]

okay cool

 

[Rory Smith]

Can't understand why players are eager to avoid sanbox mod. I guess they yet to play sandbox games having good quest logs.

 

[mrmcfappen]

Mighty king of blowjobs and foreplay.
His every other thought, his every other sentence might be about how he's unbelievably full of animalistic lust ready to erupt but in the end, he will settle for a blowjob. Even with a prostitute.

 

[DickoNicko]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't the making of two version just to have this sandbox in one of them means the story will take longer to progress because such addition will take time that can be spend on renders, writing, etc? Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy this game and the way it gets you immerse on the story, but this... I feel this sandbox may cost the game more that it could add to it. Of course this is a mere personal opinion from a rando player, I may be wrong; I hope I am.

 

[johnelros]

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Hey mates,
This is my first modern themed wallpaper with Morrigan, and I think I will make one more before advancing to Lilith.
I hope you will enjoy it.
Yours,
Mad King

 

[shubhrai12]

With the next update there will be the option to raid and take slaves.

plz add an option to keep female slaves in a personal room

 

[Sancho1969]

SanchoMod - Multi-Mod

Good morning. I posted the initial release of my multi-mod in which the OP of this thread will soon be updated if it hasn't been already.

I have not fully fleshed it out as I (like the everyone else) have no idea how this "sandbox" mode will playout. Currently it only has one brothel "scene" so we must wait unfortunately to see how the dev progresses. Current mod has complete ingame walkthrough choice guide, color-coded, and a comprehensive stat screen (so you don't have to poke around multiple OEM screens to get info quickly). Again, I'll add more features as they become beneficial and once the many variables in the code show purpose (many are only used once and seem to have no bearing on future content, but who knows).

Regards and be well.

 

[YurenoSakura]

here is my unofficial android port of Vis v1.4.

• Download

Spoiler: touch screen usage

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from now on my android ports of Ren'Py games have a 2nd, persistent save location like windows. if you uninstall an app, the save files and persistent data remain intact.
therefore the app needs the permission to access the public external storage (or a new one on Android 11 ), because it has to read and write outside its own external storage directories.
you have to grant the permission or the app is shut down.

have fun and please report problems (you can reach me

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).
updated: 12.07.2021 (now same textbox functionality as usual)

I don't't see save button

 

[the66]

I don't't see save button

but you see the spoiler "touch screen usage" in the quoted post?
enlightenment is inside or the help tab of the game menu.

 

[RustyCooter]

Yeah the sandbox feature has just let killed the game for me. Such a shame. I liked it before that.

 

[matthewrealfan]

Yeah the sandbox feature has just let killed the game for me. Such a shame. I liked it before that.

Then you will be playing the version WITHOUT sandbox. Problem solved.