Ren'Py Abandoned Where I Belong [v0.1.0 Beta] [Elementario]

4.00 star(s) 1 Vote

Elementario

Member
Game Developer
Nov 11, 2017
252
312
I really liked both most of the models and the sci fi / Mass Effect'y vibe the intro has given off. I think those two are strong foundations for your game.
I really wanted and still want to make it more sci-fi oriented while also having a non-sci-fi tone when the MC is just living his life with his friends and family to give it more dual tone, dual live kind of vibe, but...sadly due to my limited skill in this things its hard to pull right now, I will definitely try to learn and improve myself, glad most models are to your liking I will try to improve on it more.

Don't worry mate. It's not like the renders look bad, my criticism was more based on something like "this looks awesome but I'd love to see it in even higher res". You could either resharpen the stuff via Photoshop of use the following advice which helped me alot: > Using this, you could still have great sharpness even though you're going the 720p route.
Believe me, I'd like to see them high rez too.
I already used photoshop to sharpen all the pics a little, but I will definitely check out this link and try to make the renders look better.

It wasn't that bad and the good render quality helps. Just maybe think about someone on Fiverr a few bucks to proof-read and correct your stuff once you got a few more versions done and (hopefully) made some cash through Patreon. :)
I hope so too :)
Once I can afford someone to proof-read I will definitely make sure that the English in the game is top-notch. But for now, please bear with it for a while so I can fix it.

That's just my personal taste. Like I said, I think Elaine is really hot, her model just speaks to me, fits my taste. There might be people who don't like her but prefer Adrienne, so don't focus too much on the opinion of a single player.
I am glad you like you liked Elaine I tried very hard to make 2 models really good, one is Elaine and the other is the girl on the menu, I really hope you like her too.
About Adrienne, I will still try to make her look better if I can. Even if there's a single player dissatisfied, it means there's still room to improve. :)

Sounds good. :) To me, it was just a bit too much. UI-heavy games kill the fun for me, even though the rest of the content might be great. That's why I could never play Superpowered, despite it being such a hit around F95.
I agree, it is a tad too much, I personally enjoyed SP and thought this was a good idea, but I believe I have overdone it even by SP standards. :ROFLMAO:
Don't worry, I think everyone agrees that this UI is bad so I will try to limit or completely remove this UI if I can.

Or maybe just limit it a little? You could still have a Town map. My main criticism is that a complex UI just makes more work for a dev, slows updates and makes the game more prone to bugs and continuation / variable problems under its Renpy hood.
It really does increase my workload by a lot, but I sincerely believed that players would enjoy it and that's why I made it.
But since nobody likes it, I guess it works out for both the players and for me.

Thank you for your well-worded and complex reply! Really appreciate a dev reacting to criticism in such a manner.
Words can't express how glad I am to see such a detailed and sincere feedback for my work.
It makes up for all the hard work and time I put in and gives me more of an incentive to do better.
Sincerely, thank you very much.:)
 

Elementario

Member
Game Developer
Nov 11, 2017
252
312
do not change the story you want to tell though..always stay true to that..ya just gotta make it accessable to as many as possible..then those big porn bucks will roll in and you can buy hookers and blow..or RRSP's
Yup definitely, I still do want to keep the story same.
The story was the one thing I wanted to deliver on the most.
There are some hurdles yes, but I just gotta find a way to tell the story in a less complicated way.
Hope, it works this time.:)
 
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ZagorTeNay

Well-Known Member
Jun 28, 2018
1,196
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Seems promising. Agree on UI clutter, it could be a lot less "invasive".

- "Gift" button is imo unnecessary..why not use classic Inventory/drag item action?

- Use classic M key for accessing local Map. Transition to other area, by simply clicking a door ( it's already highlighted on it). This is a lot easier than WASD navigation.

- I'd personally remove Large day/time/money indications in upper left corner ( you can already see this on your phone) and replace them with Health/stamina/number of actions icons ( possibly colored, for better distinction, visually). Something simple, unintrusive through just one icon like Red Heart for Health ( that is gradually depleted, in stages ), similar for others.

- When you click on Npc to interact with, different options show up right next to him/her ( Greet, apologize, specific topic, etc), instead of another "box" of options ( on the right)

- Some kind of different coloring for important npc and those with no relevant dialogue? ( When you highlight them, in different color)
 
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Elementario

Member
Game Developer
Nov 11, 2017
252
312
Seems promising. Agree on UI clutter, it could be a lot less "invasive".

- "Gift" button is imo unnecessary..why not use classic Inventory/drag item action?

- Use classic M for local Map. Transition to other area, by simply clicking a door ( it's already highlighted)

- I'd personally remove Large day/time/money indications in upper left corner ( you can already see this on your phone) and replace them with Health/stamina/number of actions icons ( possibly colored, for better distinction, visually)

- When you click on Npc to interact with, different options show up right next to him/her ( Greet, apologize, specific topic, etc), instead of another "box" of options ( on the right)
Thanks for checking the game out :)
UI clutter, noted again.
This is a Beta build, most button may have similar response for now, some of the buttons I just added are mostly useless for now.
I thought M is still far, and since I wanted to use WASD I thought Shift-v would fair better for map. About traversing through map, is a feature I wanted to add and will be added in the future versions.
I am planning to trim down the UI and remove it completely, so I hope that looks better.

And I am sorry, I don't understand what you mean in the last line, can you elaborate?
 
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Agrik

Member
Sep 15, 2018
482
2,149
UI clutter, noted again
You are the main thing do not take it all too negatively.
You have a good story and characters.
Just people from games of this genre are waiting for simplicity: read, looked, excited, and suffer from finding the right places and lack of time, this is a completely different genre of games.
 

Elementario

Member
Game Developer
Nov 11, 2017
252
312
I smell incest family type with mother and sister question is how dev will delivery the story?
I will looking forward on this game.
I am glad to hear that I do have the story in mind I hope its execution is satisfactory to players.
 
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Elementario

Member
Game Developer
Nov 11, 2017
252
312
You are the main thing do not take it all too negatively.
You have a good story and characters.
Just people from games of this genre are waiting for simplicity: read, looked, excited, and suffer from finding the right places and lack of time, this is a completely different genre of games.
I understand, I am trying not to take it negatively, almost everyone is being nice by giving me advice and ideas on how to improve the game.
So, it is still kinda nice.
I am glad you like the story and characters.
I will try to remove the cluttered UI and maybe soon release a non-sandbox version of the game and see what people think about it.
 
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passiveDragon

Newbie
Aug 28, 2017
80
41
as a lewd game this should be playable only by mouse so the other hand is free to do something nice.. ;)
You can play with just your left hand. Honestly i prefer it that way around, my right hand is the more dexterous afterall ^^


Also, I am glad you liked the shortcuts, that was a pain in the ass to figure out too :LOL:
About why WASD doesn't work sometimes is because in some locations, if there's a wall on the left or moving back doesn't make sense, I disabled those button in locations like that.
Other than that I extensively tested it out, WASD works every place that it should, but I will still see if there's any problem with it.

About the English, for now I need to focus more on the game play elements of the story, when I start working on the story elements maybe I will let you know. Still, thanks for asking :)
It's not in some locations, it's at home WASD-navigations randomly stops working... After a day at the college it mostly gets back to working...
Polish the UI a bit, refine the WASD-navigation and lemme do more chores! (never thought i'd ever say that in my life...)

Ppl will come around to liking it, i'm sure.
 
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Dependable_223

Engaged Member
Jan 3, 2019
3,043
4,913
The game was great till freeroam part was introduced ?? can someone explain in plain English how to navigate ?? This is the first freeroam that made scratch my head on how to read and navigate with the UI ??
 

meigame

Engaged Member
Dec 2, 2017
2,257
1,672
well started playing. gave up. seemed too much hassle. if you are having quicktime events and what not you might want to explain the process. game was way too much hassle to deal with for porn. though from what i could see the renders were nice. But from what I scan here other people have voiced opinions and you look to be making changes. I'll try again further up the road. Thanks, good luck.
 

Elementario

Member
Game Developer
Nov 11, 2017
252
312
You can play with just your left hand. Honestly i prefer it that way around, my right hand is the more dexterous afterall ^^



It's not in some locations, it's at home WASD-navigations randomly stops working... After a day at the college it mostly gets back to working...
Polish the UI a bit, refine the WASD-navigation and lemme do more chores! (never thought i'd ever say that in my life...)

Ppl will come around to liking it, i'm sure.
I am glad you liked the WASD-navigations, I literally spend so much time figuring this out. Glad to see someone likes that :giggle:

I didn't have any problems with WASD-navigations in all my testing, but I will try testing it again and figure out the problem with it.
And yeah I will try adding more chores :ROFLMAO:
 

Elementario

Member
Game Developer
Nov 11, 2017
252
312
The game was great till freeroam part was introduced ?? can someone explain in plain English how to navigate ?? This is the first freeroam that made scratch my head on how to read and navigate with the UI ??
I am sorry if that was a bit confusing, it was my fault I made it more complicated than necessary.
Anyway, as for your question, to navigate you simply have to use WASD, like in any other free roam game, but you can only only do that when you are not interacting with someone and when you are not in middle of a scene.
You can use ZXC to open doors, Z and C can open most doors but if there are 2 or more doors, Z opens the leftmost door, X opens the middle door and C as you might have guessed by now, opens the rightmost door.
You can use Q to quick save and E to quick load.
You can open Save menu by Shift-Q, Preferences by Shift-W and Load menu by Shift-E.
and lastly, You can use Shift-Z to pull up your Phone, Shift-X to pull up your To-Do list (Quest log), Shift-C to pull up the Calendar and lastly Shift-V to pull up the map.
Also, make sure to use the skip button in the game UI (The one that is displayed when you right click) from day 2 on wards so you can enjoy all the story bits without getting bored.

Hope that explains everything.

Since a lot of people are having problems with the "Free roam" I plan to make a version which is a Linear VN with choices soon,
So, if free roam is not your cup of tea, please wait a while and check that one out.

Thanks for checking out the game :)
 
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Elementario

Member
Game Developer
Nov 11, 2017
252
312
That's alright. Shit happens. My post was meant to point it out for you to check. It might be an issue only on my rig.
Thanks for understanding, I did try playing it a little in my free time, I haven't encountered that problem yet, but I will test some more and let you know.
 
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Elementario

Member
Game Developer
Nov 11, 2017
252
312
well started playing. gave up. seemed too much hassle. if you are having quicktime events and what not you might want to explain the process. game was way too much hassle to deal with for porn. though from what i could see the renders were nice. But from what I scan here other people have voiced opinions and you look to be making changes. I'll try again further up the road. Thanks, good luck.
Thanks for the feedback,
I have noted the problems and I will try to solve them all, with some time of course.
For now since many people have said they don't like the sandbox element in the game, I will try to make a version which is Linear VN with choices.
I hope you will try that one.
 
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4.00 star(s) 1 Vote