HTML Java [WIP] Dream Academy [v0.020] [Mantis]

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

a few thoughts:
1. remove the java prefix from the thread. javascript is not java.
2. i think your automatic image tuner makes it look worse in the examples given. i rather have the girl pic look a little unnaturally bright (but looking good) than a darker, lower quality look.
3. no one wants to click on a girl and then wait for a second or two while the view zooms in and bobs. it may look cool once or twice to some (i just find it annoying), but you'll soon get tired of it. it's not even realistic. we dont see things move up and down as we walk.

overall impression is that you are too in love with implementing technical features to see whether they are actually a positive to the player experience. if player experience is important to you, leave your coder mindset and put yourself in the players' shoes.

Hi Peterppp,

1. Java is not a mistake, I’m using an unusual stack: Java Spring + Thymeleaf.
2. You’re right about adjusting the image quality to the background, it doesn’t really look good and I’ll remove that option.
3. The current approach animation won’t make it into the final version either.

The reason I’m focusing on technical features right now comes from my modular approach. In both backend and frontend I’m building blocks that will later allow me to add new content much faster.

Thanks a lot for your feedback, honestly it’s the most valuable comment I’ve had since the start of this thread. I’ll definitely take it into account as I continue development. What do you think would be the best way to handle the approach effect? Should it just be made much faster, or should I replace it entirely with a smooth zoom-in?

 

[peterppp]

Thanks a lot for your feedback, honestly it’s the most valuable comment I’ve had since the start of this thread. I’ll definitely take it into account as I continue development. What do you think would be the best way to handle the approach effect? Should it just be made much faster, or should I replace it entirely with a smooth zoom-in?

maybe skip the zoom completely, or just a quick, smooth zoom-in. personally, i value saving time over nice effects. it depends on how much you want to give a sense of moving around in the world, but if you click around a lot in the game, even small delays will stack up and risk feeling like unnecessary time wasters to many players.

and kudos for taking my reply as the constructive criticism is was meant to be.

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

maybe skip the zoom completely, or just a quick, smooth zoom-in. personally, i value saving time over nice effects. it depends on how much you want to give a sense of moving around in the world, but if you click around a lot in the game, even small delays will stack up and risk feeling like unnecessary time wasters to many players.

and kudos for taking my reply as the constructive criticism is was meant to be.

In about a week I’ll bump the version to 0.030. By then there should be enough content for roughly 30 minutes of gameplay. I’ll also try to get your suggestions in by that time and cut down on the time-wasters like transitions and animations, keeping just the bare minimum needed for a bit of immersion.

Because of the modular setup I can adjust any animation for a specific scene in just a few seconds. The project isn’t far enough yet to really test how these transitions feel for players in practice, though.

This kind of feedback is way more valuable to me than just a pat on the back. I want to deliver a solid product for the community, not just enjoy the fact that I’m coding something. I’d appreciate if you drop by from time to time and let me know if you think the project’s going in the right direction.

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

I’m working on a relationship system that goes beyond simple “affection points.” Every interaction between the player and girls is shaped by four variables: Affection, Trust, Fear, and Hostility. Together they always add up to 100, so if an girl starts trusting you more, they might fear you less - and if hostility rises, affection drops. Relationships aren’t black and white anymore, but full of tension and contradictions.

This is the pure emotional layer, while girl decisions will also be influenced by things like hunger, fatigue, wealth, personality traits, ambitions, and desperation. The aim is to create not only believable behavior but also the simulation of a living, breathing world.

(Illustrative photo only)​

 

[plastic-fantastic]

I don’t have a clear idea yet, but I know it won’t be easy. Right now I’m just making a poll to see if people might like it. I haven’t seen any HTML game with this feature, so maybe there’s a reason. Does anyone know what usually goes wrong?

I've attempted it on a discontinued project of mine. Not for every time a girl was on screen, as that was a LOT of work. The difficulty for me was erasing the bckground on multiple frames of the animation.

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

I've attempted it on a discontinued project of mine. Not for every time a girl was on screen, as that was a LOT of work. The difficulty for me was erasing the bckground on multiple frames of the animation.

I’ve already made a script that wipes the background. Did you run into any other issues besides that? Like matching it with the background, or moving around with changing areas? Would be nice to know what kind of fight I’m walking into

 

[plastic-fantastic]

The only other thing that was messy was making the animation loop perfect. If the last frame didn't loop well to the first frame then I would spend a lot of time making sure it did. The frame skip was jarring.

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

The only other thing that was messy was making the animation loop perfect. If the last frame didn't loop well to the first frame then I would spend a lot of time making sure it did. The frame skip was jarring.

I'll start working on it once the poll ends, and if I manage to fix all the issues and everything works fine, I'll send you my solutions and the code on Discord. Maybe you can tweak it for your game, and that way I can help out a bit.

 

[plastic-fantastic]

Thanks, that's very kind of you.

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

Imagine an interactive dialogue system where the left panel bursts with community-created conversations while the right panel always gives you access to built-in navigation and standard events, no limits, just pure freedom; anyone can write their own dialogues in a few minutes with simple YAML files and make sure that every girl has her own unique set of conversations, and that’s only the beginning because upcoming updates will also bring fully moddable events that naturally connect with dialogues, where a girl can use a conversation to hint where an event can be triggered, pulling the player into her intrigues, schemes and the pursuit of her own ambitions and goals, turning the game into a living and unpredictable world built together with the community of players and modders

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[mynameiscoollook]

Imagine an interactive dialogue system where the left panel bursts with community-created conversations while the right panel always gives you access to built-in navigation and standard events, no limits, just pure freedom; anyone can write their own dialogues in a few minutes with simple YAML files and make sure that every girl has her own unique set of conversations, and that’s only the beginning because upcoming updates will also bring fully moddable events that naturally connect with dialogues, where a girl can use a conversation to hint where an event can be triggered, pulling the player into her intrigues, schemes and the pursuit of her own ambitions and goals, turning the game into a living and unpredictable world built together with the community of players and modders

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Looks good, I'm waiting for the first release

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

Wow! Turns out the feature that adjusted image sharpness to the background was messing things up. It's gone now

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

After 12 hours of non-stop work I finally wrapped up the new modular interaction UI – and honestly, this feels like a real milestone for the project. The whole interface now works as a multi-panel system: each panel acts like its own page, while the center panel is a dynamic renderer that serves content on the fly.

The left panel is a fully moddable dialogue engine powered by YAML files. You can write and expand dialogue trees without touching a single line of code, and modders will be able to drop in their own interaction paths. That means total flexibility and an endless potential for new content.

The right panel is the functional zone - icons auto-arrange two per row, no labels needed, and everyone instantly knows what they represent. This is the gateway to dynamic modules like inventory, outfit management, and more.

The bottom panel is simply the conversation with the girl - now three times larger than before, making it way more comfortable to follow the dialogue and enjoy the flow of the scene. The full conversation history scrolls in real time, so nothing slips away.

But the real magic happens in the center - it’s a dynamic view renderer that pulls data directly from the backend and displays it instantly. Which means there’s no more jumping into separate menus just to check things like inventory, quest log, or character stats - everything is served seamlessly inside the same interface. It basically works like a full page system, but all within a single, unified UI.

This is no longer just a dialogue box - it’s the foundation for an open interaction and modding system that can keep expanding without limits.​

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

Added Inventory System
Every character now has their own personal inventory – not just the MC, but all NPCs as well.

The system is fully responsive – the slot grid automatically adapts to the screen resolution and always fills the available space.

This new inventory really boosts immersion and lays the foundation for an advanced life-simulation engine.
In the future, girls will place their items in their homes in specific spots – opening up new possibilities like robbing them on their way back from shopping, or sneaking into their houses while they’re away.​

 

[6ft3btw]

Interesting start. You're using ChatGPT to write at least some of the changelogs and update posts, right? Personally, I think this is a bit of a red flag (you can spend twelve consecutive hours writing code, but not ten minutes to write a forum post yourself? Not to mention the risk of AI hallucinations) and makes your project stand out less because of how generic and ubiquitous the ChatGPT accent is. That said, if English isn't your first language I can't fault you for using it.

Regarding GIFs, I'm not fussed about them being used for things like standing around. They'd have to contribute to the porn part of a porn game for me to be interested - for example,

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.

Provided that what you're suggesting for the future are real planned features and not just AI-generated waffle, this could be a very good game. Features like stealing from houses combined with the corruption tag could lead to fun interactions like forcing a girl to leave the house in skimpier clothes because all her normal ones have "gone missing". This may be limited by the choice to use real porn - look at Corrupted Academy and how most girls don't have even a single image for many of the possible clothing options or sex interactions. Unless you're commissioning models yourself, you just can't get every image you're going to want, so be prepared to compromise or get creative with editing. The developers of Invasive Species 2 have had to photoshop pregnant bellies onto almost all of the girls in their game. I've used Stable Diffusion to get similar results.

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

Interesting start. You're using ChatGPT to write at least some of the changelogs and update posts, right? Personally, I think this is a bit of a red flag (you can spend twelve consecutive hours writing code, but not ten minutes to write a forum post yourself? Not to mention the risk of AI hallucinations) and makes your project stand out less because of how generic and ubiquitous the ChatGPT accent is. That said, if English isn't your first language I can't fault you for using it.

Regarding GIFs, I'm not fussed about them being used for things like standing around. They'd have to contribute to the porn part of a porn game for me to be interested - for example,

You must be registered to see the links

.

Provided that what you're suggesting for the future are real planned features and not just AI-generated waffle, this could be a very good game. Features like stealing from houses combined with the corruption tag could lead to fun interactions like forcing a girl to leave the house in skimpier clothes because all her normal ones have "gone missing". This may be limited by the choice to use real porn - look at Corrupted Academy and how most girls don't have even a single image for many of the possible clothing options or sex interactions. Unless you're commissioning models yourself, you just can't get every image you're going to want, so be prepared to compromise or get creative with editing. The developers of Invasive Species 2 have had to photoshop pregnant bellies onto almost all of the girls in their game. I've used Stable Diffusion to get similar results.

My goal is to create a truly faithful life simulator with the highest possible level of immersion. What you see in my posts are real, working features, just still at early stage of development. At the moment I’m gathering information about the strengths and weaknesses of this type of game so I can deliver the best possible product to the community with opportunity to grow and improve it together in the future.

It’s true that I used ChatGPT for some of the longer messages - my English isn’t the best and I wanted to make sure I was understood clearly. Thank you for explaining to me what it looks like from your perspective. I won’t be using this tool for posts anymore. Sorry about that

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

Added outfit interface!
You can display her current outfit in the interaction panel. Outfit panel will be used to talk with her about her outfit, suggest something or demand things! When you stole all her outfits from wardrobe when she's at work - she will have to be confused!

 

[6ft3btw]

It’s true that I used ChatGPT for some of the longer messages - my English isn’t the best and I wanted to make sure I was understood clearly. Thank you for explaining to me what it looks like from your perspective. I won’t be using this tool for posts anymore. Sorry about that

You don't have to apologise, as I said in my comment you have a respectable reason for using it. I would just be aware that the tone is noticable and may raise other people's eyebrows too.

Added outfit interface!

Looks good, but as I mentioned in my last paragraph, this may cause issues when combined with real porn. Not every model will have been photographed wearing every combination of outfits that may be possible in your game. Do you have a plan to deal with this? If not, it may be worth investigating a paper-doll system of some sort later down the line (for the map- or room-based scenes, not sex scenes), or implementing clothing icons to the display you've made just to make sure we know that the character's inventory may not match the image being used - for example, the image may be a crop-top and jeans but the character may actually be wearing a t-shirt and trousers. Similar levels of "lewdness", but extra icons could help avoid confusion.

All that said, it's not a game-breaking issue. Just a nice bit of polish.

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

You don't have to apologise, as I said in my comment you have a respectable reason for using it. I would just be aware that the tone is noticable and may raise other people's eyebrows too.

Looks good, but as I mentioned in my last paragraph, this may cause issues when combined with real porn. Not every model will have been photographed wearing every combination of outfits that may be possible in your game. Do you have a plan to deal with this? If not, it may be worth investigating a paper-doll system of some sort later down the line (for the map- or room-based scenes, not sex scenes), or implementing clothing icons to the display you've made just to make sure we know that the character's inventory may not match the image being used - for example, the image may be a crop-top and jeans but the character may actually be wearing a t-shirt and trousers. Similar levels of "lewdness", but extra icons could help avoid confusion.

All that said, it's not a game-breaking issue. Just a nice bit of polish.

I know, but I understood that the community feels like it is writing with AI instead of me. Your perspective helped me realize that.

I have some ideas. I’m thinking about an advanced JS script that could solve this problem by using three versions of the images (clothed, underwear only, and naked). Another idea is just to use Photoshop/AI to prepare every combination of nudity, but that seems time-consuming. Maybe I’ll try one of these ideas, or I’ll just try to stick clothes to the naked body dynamically.

 

[Mantis - Dream Academy]

You don't have to apologise, as I said in my comment you have a respectable reason for using it. I would just be aware that the tone is noticable and may raise other people's eyebrows too.

Looks good, but as I mentioned in my last paragraph, this may cause issues when combined with real porn. Not every model will have been photographed wearing every combination of outfits that may be possible in your game. Do you have a plan to deal with this? If not, it may be worth investigating a paper-doll system of some sort later down the line (for the map- or room-based scenes, not sex scenes), or implementing clothing icons to the display you've made just to make sure we know that the character's inventory may not match the image being used - for example, the image may be a crop-top and jeans but the character may actually be wearing a t-shirt and trousers. Similar levels of "lewdness", but extra icons could help avoid confusion.

All that said, it's not a game-breaking issue. Just a nice bit of polish.

I just realize where is the problem, I will drop update here later if I manage to fix it in way what is most atractive for you guys (this is picture from current work xD)