The Legend of Krystal, Version G (Finished)

[Zeus Kabob]

---- You must use all 30 days before locking
----- Later I might add the ability to just fill out the remaining (3 days left in the season, work 3 days)
------ Right now, though, the numbers must fit the 30 day template
--- When you start the season, it will cycle all 30 days instead of returning to home between weeks
---- After a town visit or cut scene, Krystal will pick up on the next day's activity
-- Please provide feedback on the new mechanic; better or worse than the old method?

Here's the feedback: kill it. Allow assignment of job(s) on a daily basis. You might consider allowing two tasks per day- sort of morning/evening- but the entire 'lock into a month's schedule' doesnt' play right. It also makes the "tedium of long-term waiting for rescue/fitting in slowly" go way too fast and makes the game feel much, much shorter than it should. Just an opinion.

Oh, and if you currently do roll visits to town over in sequence, the usual chat/info/etc doesn't show up. That's rather disconcerting.

Other than the above- good work! (And that's high praise from me).

Considering slow progression I'd say keeping things down to a week at a time might work better, and allowing you to choose your jobs and resting on a daily basis would suffice for me.

[trunks2585]

I forgot one thing I wanted to mention. On walking around the town, it takes a while to say get to the temple or some other areas since you half to wait on Krystal to walk across the whole screen before transitioning to the next screen. This is really annoying on laggy computers (like mine). I can tolerate it or I obviously would have said something sooner, but I suggest adding in a form of quick travel.

The simplest way I can think of to do it is if you click anywhere on the screen you walk there/talk if you click on one of the gems. And if you click on either of the arrows that auto takes you to the next screen.

[Omega2501]

The newer system is different (also it's an 8 day week, work for 6 the 2 day weekend) but it makes checking to see if you have the stat levels to warrant a town visit restricted to the start of the week. Also (and you may have already answered this), but is there or will there be a point to the money Krystal earns?

[GoRepeat]

Hmmm I would need to think about how to rearrange the interface if you wanted to return to Kari's house after every action. My reasoning for the locked monthly schedule was to smooth out the gameplay so you didn't spend half you time loading. Maybe I could allow partial schedules instead of locking (you can schedule and start whatever as long as the current day has an activity assigned it it), then just returns you home when it hits a "blank" day and you have to finish scheduling.

My only thought against this is that I want people to have to think ahead and plan out their actions instead of going piece by piece to min/max everything. It kills some of the re-playability and lets people try to make the "perfect game" instead of just playing and learning as they go. Obviously, as the players you want as much control as possible; but as the game designer I don't want it to become about the math instead of the game.

I will do something thinking on it.

Oh, and if you currently do roll visits to town over in sequence, the usual chat/info/etc doesn't show up. That's rather disconcerting.

You mean if you visit town two days in a row, the dialogue triggers don't work on the second day? Maybe a variable being reset when you return home isn't being reset since you sequence back into town. I will take a look, thanks!

The simplest way I can think of to do it is if you click anywhere on the screen you walk there/talk if you click on one of the gems. And if you click on either of the arrows that auto takes you to the next screen.

At some point I will probably add a world map so you can either walk the loop or just go to the map and select the location you want to travel to

oh and btw. is the virginity thing in the information actually working?

No, it is turned off right now; Virginity, Sensitivity, and Temperament currently don't do anything. When I do the stat update, they will come into play, however. Right now I am just pushing through content

[Anodorhynchus]

You mean if you visit town two days in a row, the dialogue triggers don't work on the second day? Maybe a variable being reset when you return home isn't being reset since you sequence back into town. I will take a look, thanks!

I think what he is trying to say is that when you've started the season you're not able to look up your stats and chat with kari. That's only possible between the seasons right now...
buuut maybe i'm wrong, just what i think he/she means.

[king_kombucha]

The new schedule seems to increase the "flow" of the game, but ultimately I don't like it. Two biggest problems to me are that you likely will end up with about five hanging days at the end of the month that are pretty much wasted on bulk rest / town visits since the new rest is sufficient at a 1:1 ratio with a week of work. Getting away from the week of rest makes sense and I like the idea, it just doesn't work out correctly for a full month unless you double rest or take largely pointless town trips (maybe as the non-stat town events are expanded they won't be so pointless?). Second problem is that without the break between each week I can't check my stats before a town visit, so if I figured wrong or just got unlucky on the number of double ups, I may waste time going to an event that isn't active yet.

The new schedule has promise and makes a lot of logical sense, but needs some work before it's as solid as the original.

[Lucky777]

without the break between each week I can't check my stats before a town visit, so if I figured wrong or just got unlucky on the number of double ups, I may waste time going to an event that isn't active yet.

This

[JustDoug]

Hmmm I would need to think about how to rearrange the interface if you wanted to return to Kari's house after every action. My reasoning for the locked monthly schedule was to smooth out the gameplay so you didn't spend half you time loading. Maybe I could allow partial schedules instead of locking (you can schedule and start whatever as long as the current day has an activity assigned it it), then just returns you home when it hits a "blank" day and you have to finish scheduling.

That's even better, and closer to being what was actually on my mind, now that I think about it: the ability to be able to react to the unexpected and a changed situation by altering the schedule at will rather than being locked into a single course for some arbitrary period.

Let 'em revisit the schedule at the end of every day, unlocking and altering it if they see fit or just letting 'em get on to the next day's itinerary.

I thought it would be easier to code if things were kept on a once per day basis, but as author you'd know best how hard it would be. Again, this is only opinion. I'm not the one expending the effort on this.

My only thought against this is that I want people to have to think ahead and plan out their actions instead of going piece by piece to min/max everything. It kills some of the re-playability and lets people try to make the "perfect game" instead of just playing and learning as they go. Obviously, as the players you want as much control as possible; but as the game designer I don't want it to become about the math instead of the game.

The problem with making the player plan everything out in excruciating detail in advance is that you turn it into something where a spreadsheet would be the handiest tool- especially if you make them plan for many, many turns in advance. It would lead to planned min-max approaches and perfect schemes of approach plotted out beforehand. Games- the best ones at least- are supposed to encourage experiment and learning-as-you-go. Seat-of-the-pants is a lot more fun than instrumented mechanically assisted. Also, there's a lovely Math.random() in as... Again, this is more opinion, so take that as you will.

[trunks2585]

The scheduling is already kinda down to a repetitive formula, if that's what you're worried about the game becoming. "Work, work, rest, work, work, rest, town town" I've found that's almost what I put in every time to make sure I can do the quest events. I suggest adding in some more stat boosting events, except they'd be for stats that'll shake up how you plan your schedule, "I suddenly got 5 more strength do I really need to work another week before the event will trigger?" stuff like that. I dunno what you have planned, but I'd do something to get people to break away from their current scheduling plans since you do the same thing almost every time and it usually works. Make people gamble and choose on visiting the town more often to see if it pays off better than work.

[ArdenWolfwatcher]

Maybe if money became something that was useful in that we could use it to actively change our base stats through certain items. Right now, however, I'm not sure on the purpose of the secondary stats except for libido, which is used in conjunction with the RNG to determine whether or not Krystal fucks opposed to works when she gets a little (or a lot) stressed out. I'm sure that Gorepete has something in mind for them later, but right now I can't see them really offering anything to the table. Loyalty might be used to determine whether or not Krystal stays with the village after the three years, or if she's found a place by getting all of the events for a certain job.

Unless the three secondary stats are used after the three years and her friends arrive and are trying to persuade her to leave and she's trying to persuade them to stay here in the village? That'd give additional gameplay and options after the first three years are done.

[FuzzFace]

I noticed that when doing the 30 day scheduling instead of the weekly schedule, I can no longer chat in-between weeks with the liz girl (Kari). Before, I could chat with her in-between the weeks, reducing stress levels by 15, (this would work once per week, accumulating 75 reductions of stress for free in a month) However, chatting is now only permitted once a month, only allowing 15 free levels of stress reductions.

As far as what I prefer for the new scheduling system, The weekly system is more streamlined, and simpler. While the 30 day system is more tactical and gives the player options to be more flexible with the schedule, I am unable to check stats and stress levels in-between weeks to adjust accordingly what combinations are needed for the following week.

So worse, or better; A matter of perspective. If there were a way to check stats again, it would make the 30 day system more robust, I think, as the player can see what effects what, and at what points in the near future to react based on accumulated informations.

[trunks2585]

One last thing I wanna say about the scheduling system. Regardless of what you do or don't decide to do with it, I'd like to see messing with it get put on the back burner. I can't speak for everyone, but I can work with the system as it is, and would prefer to see fresh content such as the stat quests an ending (or 10) more stuff to do in the village, etc.

[ArdenWolfwatcher]

I agree with Trunks on that point.

[GoRepeat]

Thanks for the great feedback all, I will most likely go with my proposed flex schedule where you can either do all 30 days or just go activity by activity. So if you want to blow through a month to stat boost, you can; or if you want to go piece by piece you can as well. Since the schedule is a "main" mechanic that actually impacts everything else (not just gameplay wise, but actual code wise behind the scenes), I usually make changes to it before adding more content because it is kind of a domino effect thing where it makes more work for me to change it later.

As far as future development (if I decide to finish this), current schedule is as follows:
- Finish Primary Cutscenes (10 of 15 complete)
- Update Stat gain/values
- Add Endings
- General Clean-up
- Add special events as I have time

The reason special events will be tacked on last is because if I end up getting bored or whatever, I can still release it as a "full" game with the current content (31 sex animations, 5 story lines, 50-some endings... come on!). It is easy to add events later as the way I set up the game engine, cutscenes and the like are pretty "plug and play" - just define the trigger and the game is good to go.

Right now, however, I'm not sure on the purpose of the secondary stats except for libido, which is used in conjunction with the RNG to determine whether or not Krystal fucks opposed to works when she gets a little (or a lot) stressed out.

Secondary stats will effect gameplay mechanics and the ending you receive
Loyalty - Impacts ending at certain values
Morality - Impacts ending at certain values
Libido - Impacts stress/sex animations
Sensitivity - impacts stat gain from work
Temperance - impacts stress gain from work

An example ending example would be if you took control of the guard through the STR events and ended with a low morality and high loyalty, you would get like a "General Krystal" ending where you become the next Scales. Having a high morality would be like a "Queen Krystal"; low loyalty would have you leave the planet and get a "Space Pirate" or "Space Police" depending on morality. Branching around like that.

There are 10 story endings, with 4 options each is about 40 endings, plus 4-8 misc/secret ones. Let's just say 50. The ending will most likely just be text blurbs not full on cutscenes because 50 of those would make me slit my wrists.

[Lucky777]

I will most likely go with my proposed flex schedule where you can either do all 30 days or just go activity by activity. So if you want to blow through a month to stat boost, you can; or if you want to go piece by piece you can as well.

Excellent.

Secondary stats will effect gameplay mechanics and the ending you receive
Loyalty - Impacts ending at certain values
Morality - Impacts ending at certain values
Libido - Impacts stress/sex animations
Sensitivity - impacts stat gain from work
Temperance - impacts stress gain from work

An example ending example would be if you took control of the guard through the STR events and ended with a low morality and high loyalty, you would get like a "General Krystal" ending where you become the next Scales. Having a high morality would be like a "Queen Krystal"; low loyalty would have you leave the planet and get a "Space Pirate" or "Space Police" depending on morality. Branching around like that.

There are 10 story endings, with 4 options each is about 40 endings, plus 4-8 misc/secret ones. Let's just say 50.

Brilliant.

The ending will most likely just be text blurbs not full on cutscenes because 50 of those would make me slit my wrists.

That's a shame, but who can blame ya?
Fuck if I can.
Animating all dat shit could get pretty tedious.

[trunks2585]

With all the work that's already going into the animations I can't blame ya either. We could always have someone else that likes to animate make the scenes for ya if they felt like it, but good luck getting someone that wants to make 50 or so ending cut scenes.

Because of how you have the endings and stuff planned out, I have to ask, is it intended that you can only finish a few of the story quests on each play through or is is possible to do 2 or even all of them in one run, and how would that impact the endings? Currently I think it's set up that you can do two story quests per game.

[GoRepeat]

Because of how you have the endings and stuff planned out, I have to ask, is it intended that you can only finish a few of the story quests on each play through or is is possible to do 2 or even all of them in one run, and how would that impact the endings? Currently I think it's set up that you can do two story quests per game.

Probably still 2-3. I am still against the "Perfect Game" and want there to be some replayability where players can do events they missed in a different game. The ending will be triggered by the story event with the highest primary stat at the end of the game; if there is a tie, I will probably just have the game randomly choose between the two.

[Yawg]

Just played through the new <75 Flexibility Ending, and I think that might be my new favorite! VERY nice work on everything you've done so far, GP!
And I do mean everything- you've done a much better job at fleshing out the Saurian Village than I did; I really do regret that my comic is moving beyond the village now. I guess.

Hurry up and do something with the Dark Wolves so I don't have to think about that section too hard D:

[moltake226]

Love the new flex sequences, hope to see more

[Zeus Kabob]

Tip: your button still reads "Start Week" even though the time frame is a month now.