Advanced Rogue Intelligence Assault (ARIA)

[Vortex00]

it might be a little tricky putting this on NG since it is multi part with external voice files. when I tried it in a preview, it worked but the voice didn't work and loading the external swfs seemed unreliable at best.

I got the 2.3 walkthrough proof read a little bit so hopefully it at least gets the idea across.

also as note:
the being raided click shooter part is supposed to be super hard. The idea is to avoid being raided early on in the game. later on in the game it is much easier to to deal with or avoid completely.
you can avoid it by not spending more than 7 days in a area. there are also way to reset the counter without leaving the area.

[PrinceShadoon]

I actually love this game, i finish it over and over again in all difficulties, it's a lot of fun

[Lucky777]

Just as good as I remember, with some improvements to boot.
My only complaints would be that the gather minigame isn't accessible, and that the tutorials don't actually cover all mechanics.
Well, there are some other oddities as well, and some UI issues; more on them later.


As to the positives:

Porn:
- The porn's as great as it was before, and it's nice that Remi's cock cums now.
A shame she doesn't seem to have a vagina, so she's some kind of scientifically modified shemale/new half kind of thing and not a futa, but eh.
Not everybody's into the same thing, so one person can't expect to always win 'em all, whatever.

- There's more scenes too, so that's great.

Tutorials:
This game's most tremendous problem has always been the difficulty involved in figuring out what the fuck is going on, so tutorials are a massive plus.
The level of clarification provided in-game and in the downloadable folder has increased tremendously from the last time I looked.
The persons involved in making that happen deserve some serious kudos.
The game's takin' strides in that "professional quality" direction like a boss.
...And I'm glad that's happening, too, since you can pay actual money and get a version of the game on patreon as a reward, and all.

- There's even some mention made of why blowing up random energy-beam-emitters destroys a ship, and even small things like that do improve my enjoyment.

- Of course, as mentioned earlier, the tutorials aren't perfect, and even in the little time I've spent with the game I've seen some clear omissions.
But it's a DAMNED sight better than what was there in the first place, and it's wonderful to see some optional detailed tutorials in the in-game experience as well.
For the most part the tutorials get the job done and the people involved with them should feel good about their work.


Gameplay

- The minigames are still fun.
The space one has gotten more varied, too, and there's an awesome new defensive raid minigame, very nice indeed.
A shame the gathering minigame's gone, but more on that later.

- Shop:
Cool that there's a point to buying bombs in the space station, since they're cheaper there.
(I'm not sure WHY they'd be cheaper there, but ... still a cool little thing, I guess.)

Nice that you can get the benefits of training without spending an action in there too, by dropping 2000 resources to fuck with your team's genes.
(... I hope nobody grows extra heads or arms later, because of that shit.
Or conventional cancer.)


As to the negatives:

User interface issues.

- I do think that you should be able to see your raid bombs from more places than just the upgrade screen.
Having to go to the upgrades screen every time is too much clicking; taking that out would be a nice quality of life fix for the user.
Adding at least the main screen and ESPECIALLY the Map screen, just before raids, would be better.
Of course, if a person is too scatterbrained to remember he needs bombs to blow up (well, gently ease open) doors in raids, he might forget to check even on the map
or raid screen. But being honest, at that point it's just entirely his own fault, and in no way a UI design problem, if you ask me.

- ...DO You have to CLICK the mod boxes that you can find after battle, or else you don't get what's in them?
DA FAAAAAAAQ???
That's pretty unintuitive, and it doesn't serve any purpose whatsoever that I can see, either.
... Well I mean.
It IS pretty fun to click things and see them opening like treasure-chests, I guess... but either get the stuff ANYWAY, or tell us we miss out if we don't click.
If that's actually the case, anyway.
I'm not sure.
(Also, was it the case that you HAD to click on it in order to even progress, so you were bound to get the contents?
Full disclosure I actually fucking forget. If it is the case that you have to click, though, then this is a non-issue. 'Cause you can't miss out.)

- The interface should show which part of it you're currently looking at.
If you're looking at "mission", then "mission" should be lit up or greyed out or something, and if you're looking at "mods" the same applies.
This goes for every clickable interface-VIEW choice there is.

- The mod system display is also quite unclear.

-- The first thing that should take place is that the symbol for an equipped mod should be different from the symbol for a mod that isn't
even possessed in the first place.
As an elementary rule, one state of an icon should not EVER signify two completely different things.
Maybe the button could have an "E" when the relevant item is "equipped" or something.

-- Secondly, as above, there should be something that indicates which section of the interface is being used at the relevant time, eg if you're looking at hull 2, you should have something on the hull 2 interface which shows that you're looking at it, instead of having to click around and see what changes on the display, to figure out where you're looking at.
So if you're in "hull 2", the "hull 2" section of the interface on the top of the screeen should be lit up or greyed out or something like that.

-- Thirdly, the numbers under the mod buttons don't make much sense to me.
It MIGHT be "the number of this mod that is available" but that doesn't seem to apply to "hull default".
...Actually, it's probably just "hull default" that is the entire problem.
The number doesn't show zero when all the ships have default hulls equipped.
And the light stays on when the default hull is equipped.


-- "Hull default" probably shouldn't even be a mod on the same line as the other mods.
But if it is, then it should function by the same rules, and the "equipped" symbol should be applied to it when it is equipped.
That'd bring consistency to the UI.
PROBLEM NUMBER ONE in this game has always been the difficulty involved in figuring out exactly what the rabbit-eating monkey-fuck was going on.
Inconsistency is one of the banes of communication, and it doesn't assist with the situation.


Gather minigame being gone

Well I mean, that's both good and bad.
It got boring soon enough, back in the day, so its absence is fine, but it also used to be fun for a while, and very pleasantly atmospheric, so its absence is a problem.
It would have been good if we could choose whether to play it or not, with playing it probably giving the possibility of better rewards.

That way the problem would have been solved and a cool part of the game would still have been in there.


Ordinary Bugs, errors and Omissions

- Something seems clearly to be wrong here, either a bug or an omission:

Enemy nodes are getting shields when there is no shield ship in play.
Surely that should be impossible.
If not, one wonders what the use of shield ships is - but much more to the point, it should be mentioned in the tutorials.
So either there's a glitch...
Or there's a vital omission.

(Of course, via the power of figuring things out, it seems that when the yellow bar on the right fills, something happens that is randomly chosen out of 3 outcomes.
They appear to be
1; enemy ships get shields regardless of the presence of shield-ships,
2; lightning appears over your main ship and puts all your powers on max cooldown, and
3; reinforcements arrive.
The fact that shields can be applied regardless of shield ships basically makes getting explosive attack ships either your second or your first priority, unless you use a
laser-happy support.)

- Omission: The effects of the bar filling should be mentioned, even if the shield thing isn't a bug, (and if the shield thing is a bug that should be fixed).

- Omission: It isn't mentioned in the tutorials that having sex with Jeo raises girls' charisma.
(Of course I don't know the actual fluff explanation for that increase, really... but it's certainly nice to have a stat bonus from sex.)

- Error: Although food convert lets you make +50 additional food per cook order per upgrade level, some of the girls don't make even 50 food when ordered to cook.
Like Phia, at food upgrade level 5, she makes 35 food from 100 resources.
It's fine for some chicks to be poorer cooks than others etc, but it's not fine for the food convert description to be outright fucking wrong.

(Also I mean it's a little odd that food comes from spacerocks and minerals and junk, but I'm sure some kind of handwaving explanation can be found for something
like that in there, so that much doesn't really matter. Maybe the resources are fuel for the ship's techno-magical food synthesiser or some shit.
It's no biggie.)

- Bug: The Kim scene resets the number of days you've spent in the area.
So does the Kim scene in the holodeck.
But if you don't reset the days you still get raided in Kim's neck of the woods, although Kim's told her agents to stop.
(Also, the Kim scene in the holodeck resets the days spent in the system even when you're not in Kim's area.
Yoooooooo that's... a lot of different kinds of busted.)

- Bug: Your lasers in the attacking-enemy-ships raid still move with you.

- Bug: Hitboxes still seem slightly janky: I think the beams passing overhead still hurt you even though they don't touch you.
Perhaps they WOULD, lorewise, there could be an invisible area of damage around the massive beams.
But for gameplay purposes I think that invisible area should be made visible.

- Gameplay problem: I've never actually TESTED this but it seems that if the girls always disobey when hungry, then you could get into a situation where there
are LOTS of resources but there's no food, and... the girls won't fucking OBEY THE COOK ORDER to turn the resources into food, so you'll all be starving in the presence of plenty, for absolutely no fucking reason.
If Jeo could cook that'd solve the issue.
He mightn't be particularly good at it, but he could at least feed TT enough to get her off her ass and into the kitchen, maybe.

Next time I get a chance to really sit down with the game I'll go through the rest, but for now that's as much as I'm up to.

Story-telling quality is a different discussion for a different time, and I don't really give that much of a shit anyway.

Game's still some good shit, though.
If I had to rank it numerically it'd be an 8 out of 10, with all the problems I could find just knocking off those 2 points.
Hey, what's fun is fun.

[Vortex00]

Thanks for the very detailed feedback and sorry for the delay in my reply.

porn:
Thanks, Remi has a vagina also.


Tutorials:
Thanks, the tutorials are just me lol. However I have had help with the walkthrough.


GamePlay:
The exploration minigame is fun at first but since it doesn't change or become more difficult I felt the need to take it out.

they have a stockpile of bombs in the space station. supply/demand makes it cheaper.


User interface:
I can add bomb tally to the main and main screen thanks.

yes you have to click the creates to get the items. It is just easier for me to code it that way sorry heh.

hmm I can see about greying out buttons when looking at missions vs mods screen.

Not sure what you mean by E symbol or symbols at all. when you have the mod equipped it appears on the slot on on screen as the indication that it is equipped.

I can add when screen you are on for hull1,2, and laser.

the way you describe hull default might be a bug so I will check it out.


Gather mini being gone:
I plan for the gather minigame will be accessible through custom scenarios from the custom scenario editor.


Ordinary Bugs, errors and Omissions:

enemies how have abilities that are executed when their bar fill up. I forgot to add this to the walkthrough.
gaining shields is on of the abilities. along with EMP to prevent use of abilities, and a ability to call in support ships. along with some other abilities as well.
Things were added into the game to slow down enemy ability use and to ways to overcome it.

I'll see what is going on with Phia's cooking. Not sure if I did that on purpose or not. I'd have to look at the code.
yeah "resources" is a generic term. you can imagine it how you want it to be.

yeah the holodeck is designed to replay scenes, but that is indeed a bug thanks.

I not fond of the side scrolling minigame in general it has a lot of issues.

yes it is possible you can get into what I call a game over situation by forgetting to have food and none of the girls will cook anything.
It doesn't make sense irl, but for the game mechanics I left it in there intentionally so players will not be able to casually forget or ignore the importance of having food.

Story telling it not perfect but it at least get the job done I feel. there are obviously better ways to do it.

Thanks

[Lucky777]

Hahaha, no problem at all, man, no pressure.
It's a post from some random guy on a forum, not an email from your boss.
You 100% don't have to apologise for taking your own good time to reply - hell, you don't even have to reply at all, though I certainly appreciate the fact that you did.

Also, sweet, glad Remi has a vagina.

I prefer futas without balls, but for my own fetish purposes, I'll take futas WITH balls over shemales anyday.
EDIT:
The vagina isn't visible in her threesome scene with Jeo and Phia though, and from that angle it REALLY should be.

UI

Mod screen/Mission screen/Hull screens etc
- Now, the greying out buttons thing was just an example.
You already have a perfectly good way to do it in the options screen, with the little white dot on whichever button is active.
I like changing the whole button, but the specific way of indicating which screen is active isn't important, as long as the player can tell which is active at a glance.

Mod Screen, symbols and buttons
- What I mean about the symbols is just that at the bottom of the mods screen, you have a bunch of button-like icons.
If you don't have the mod, the buttons have no light on them.
If you have equipped the mod, the buttons have no light on them.
That's the same state of the button icon representing two completely different things.
From a UI perspective I'm suggesting that's confusing, although you're right that you CAN look and see what is equipped because it's shown in text on the right.

What I was suggesting is that the button-like icons should in themselves also be altered so you can see at a glance what is going on with the mods.
So maybe when a mod is equipped, you could have a lit up "E" on the button.
It's just an example, really, it could be almost anything, as long as it's a unique icon status, to represent a unique equipment status.

As a further example, for even better clarity, you could have 4 rows of buttons instead of the 1 row you have now.
1 row per pilot.
At the bottom of the columns, you'd have the number of available (ie, unequipped) mods, like I think you already do now.

To put something on Phia's ship you'd just hit the relevant button, on the row with Phia's name, and it'd go from the "available" button status to the "equipped" one.
The number representing the free mods at the bottom would go down by one, because that's one less free mod.
(And that bottom line with the numbers could be labelled as well.
So just as the top line of buttons would be labelled "Arielle", if you're naming the pilots in alphabetical order, the line with the numbers would be labelled "Available mods remaining". Or, well, something like that.)

Everything else could stay pretty much the same; specifically, when you look at the mods screen with Phia selected, you'd see what mods were on her ship from the text.
The difference would be that you could also see immediately by looking at the line of buttons. Just minor quality of life improvements, really.

Gameplay

Raid enemy ships minigame
- I'm pretty fond of the side-scrolling minigame, just not fond of those issues I mentioned.

Gather Minigame
- Glad to hear that gather'll be available in the custom scenarios.
...Speaking of which, I have absolutely no idea how to use that thing.
Maybe later versions of the walkthrough could contain a reference to it.

Food
- So about the food thing ... it makes sense for players to need to pay attention to that; it's a perfectly legitimate gameplay-mechanic consideration.

But it'd be cool if you come up with a way to service the game-mechanic requirement while avoiding stuff that breaks immersion by just not making sense.
I mean, even if Jeo could cook, he'd still be screwed if he had both no resources and no food.
And running out of food while you have abundant resources to make food ... really has no reason to be a problem, far less a game-over scenario, yeah?
The trouble is, if you go by that logic, you're still going to run into the same sense problem eventually - "But why can't Jeo just go out and gather the spacerocks then?"
I'd love to suggest a way to service both the gameplay and the immersion requirements but I haven't come up with anything at this point.

Anyway, on that note, I'm pretty glad the girls just get annoyed rather than slowly starving to death, though.

Yeah it doesn't make sense, sure, but there's no need for something as grim as death by starvation in this game.

( Although I mean ... it's already kinda grim to consider that when you raid and destroy reinforcement ships you might potentially be killing thousands of agents, or to consider that when you send kamikaze ships you might be killing all of the occupants of those ships, etc ... but ... eh. OH WELL.
*Shrugs* )

Miscellaneous

...Oh, right, I did have a couple other questions.
Is the RemiXPhia scene still in the game?
(EDIT: Yeah, I guess it is; for some reason she didn't show up as an AGENT even after she was in my crew as a pilot.
I think you have to leave her area first?
That bears some investigation, it's like she was in my ship but not in my ship, at the same time.)

And where's the gallery in this version?
(Is there one in this version?
Typing in the code didn't seem to produce any buttons to show it.)

Anyway, take care of yourself; if I come up with anything else, I'll leave it in the thread.

[Vortex00]

please excuse the delay. also it quite a lot of read so let me know if missed anything.

I will add the vagina to the remi animation and the bullet for the ship mods.

organizing the screen is a issue. I have also had issues with people not finding all of the screens. since I am also working on a different ARIA game I decided to change the layout also.
Has three major sections that should hopefully be easy to both explain and to figure out. Thoughts?


yeah I need to make a tutorial or something for the custom editor.

there is no gallery, took it out to make the game smaller size, and various other reasons.
most sex in the game you can view from the character in-game, anything else is in the holodeck. all of it can be unlocked from a save code.

yes the game can get very grim if you think about it too hard heh.

[Biles]

I'm curious as to whether or not you would get to work on improving the character animations for the side-scroller scenarios such as better running animation and adding the ability to crouch down for example.

[Vortex00]

I'm curious as to whether or not you would get to work on improving the character animations for the side-scroller scenarios such as better running animation and adding the ability to crouch down for example.

It's not on the docket atm but I can try it later.

That and all the other minigames after the space battle was originally added because the space battle was fairly repetitive and lacked variety. Instead of just adding more and more other minigames, I finally started focusing on the space battle. So now there is ship customization, different strategies using support characters and agents, and enemy ships having their own abilities.

I did plan to fix the issue with the laser moving with the player thoguh. And the issues with the sentinel shooting the laser when the character is not really in the line of fire.
I know people like side scrolling but it's not really my cup of tea. I see from your signature that is your area of expertise. I saved your gynoid to have a look at later thanks.

[Lucky777]

- The division of the screen into pilot information, ship information, and planet information seems pretty clear.

- I like the placement of the "Support" screen as well; it seems to make it clearer than before that the "support" is completely separate from the main pilot.

- You might want to consider putting a separate heading for the home-ship or base information (food supply etc).

- You might also want to consider placing the pilot's ship information directly by the pilot information,so pilot and pilot's ship are shown close to each other, without anything in between. It's not mandatory at all; when changing pilots automatically changes the ship as well, people will understand.
But it's something to consider.

- If you have captured agents who can join your side as supports in this one too, I feel like the "Free" order for them should somehow more explicitly be shown to be a "free time order" or something.
Right now in Aria 2.3 it is ambiguous as to whether it means that or actually means "free this agent and release her from your ship".
It's true that people will only ever get confused about that once, and they'll know what's up after they click that "free", but I do think it should be made explicit so they don't get confused about it at all.

- I'm excited to see what you do with the planets, though I sort of feel like having thousands of areas to explore is a bit ambitious.
Sadly, I assume they'll be in text or some kind of rpg-style, since you said you didn't like side-scrolling.
I prefer action games myself, but I'm still looking forward to it, definitely.

- Good luck with the mods thing, it's not only you who has had problems with making "mods" sections completely self-explanatory.
It's a bit hard to figure out exactly what's going on with the mods in, for example, "Starwish" on Newgrounds as well.
I'm sure you'll figure something out.

[Vortex00]

- The division of the screen into pilot information, ship information, and planet information seems pretty clear.

- I like the placement of the "Support" screen as well; it seems to make it clearer than before that the "support" is completely separate from the main pilot.

- You might want to consider putting a separate heading for the home-ship or base information (food supply etc).

- You might also want to consider placing the pilot's ship information directly by the pilot information,so pilot and pilot's ship are shown close to each other, without anything in between. It's not mandatory at all; when changing pilots automatically changes the ship as well, people will understand.
But it's something to consider.

- If you have captured agents who can join your side as supports in this one too, I feel like the "Free" order for them should somehow more explicitly be shown to be a "free time order" or something.
Right now in Aria 2.3 it is ambiguous as to whether it means that or actually means "free this agent and release her from your ship".
It's true that people will only ever get confused about that once, and they'll know what's up after they click that "free", but I do think it should be made explicit so they don't get confused about it at all.

- I'm excited to see what you do with the planets, though I sort of feel like having thousands of areas to explore is a bit ambitious.
Sadly, I assume they'll be in text or some kind of rpg-style, since you said you didn't like side-scrolling.
I prefer action games myself, but I'm still looking forward to it, definitely.

- Good luck with the mods thing, it's not only you who has had problems with making "mods" sections completely self-explanatory.
It's a bit hard to figure out exactly what's going on with the mods in, for example, "Starwish" on Newgrounds as well.
I'm sure you'll figure something out.

Thanks for the feedback.

planet exploration will be similar to the being raided thing where you need to click and shoot enemies.
http://spiralvortexplay.com/svp/2016/02/22/new-aria-game-updates/

I also have a tactics game I might try out that I never really used effectively in anything.
There are just plenty of existing hentai platform games, and most were made from a engine that supports making it fairly easy to create where you aren't necessarily working from complete scratch, flash has no built in anything for it.
Also I've never been inspired on making more of the same, infact the opposite effect happens. idk it's just not my cup of tea, there seems to be plenty already, my inspiration has always been to make something not common.

no regular support agents planned in this one. at least not at the start.

it is not thousand different areas heh. it probably will only be like X/50 or /100 tbh.
it represents completing X amount of the repeatable minigames on that planet, they ideally only take a few seconds. but get increasingly harder. idk if I like it, but we'll see how it works out. if it is balls I will try the tactics game.

[Biles]

Does the password thingy at the main screen work at all? When I typed in the password, it says "correct" but I don't really see anything else to indicate that I've unlocked a character.

[Dead2112man]

Does the password thingy at the main screen work at all? When I typed in the password, it says "correct" but I don't really see anything else to indicate that I've unlocked a character.

Look at the clothes the girls are wearing while you play the game.

[dndman997]

also gives you high stats for them as well

[Biles]

Does the password thingy at the main screen work at all? When I typed in the password, it says "correct" but I don't really see anything else to indicate that I've unlocked a character.

Look at the clothes the girls are wearing while you play the game.

Actually I was expecting the code to unlock Remi

[musical74]

I know I'm late to the party, but I do love this game! However, there is one problem...

Running out of food! If you run out of food and they don't have any for themselves, they complain about not having any, not wanting to do anything. It creates a problem when I want TT to make the food but she's too annoyed so won't make it, and then complains again, and so forth, meaning if you run out of food it's essentially game over because all they do is complain that's there no food and won't let me remedy that situation...

BARRING that, I really enjoy it. Even though Phia's not the *best* battle pilot I seem to do the best with her, because of her *betrayal* tech... not to mention she is the most eager for a little loving! TT's best for making food, Bri's best for getting resources... not sure where Ari and Phia are the best (sex doesn't count, even though Phia loves it immensely)

[LMJD]

Running out of food! If you run out of food and they don't have any for themselves, they complain about not having any, not wanting to do anything. It creates a problem when I want TT to make the food but she's too annoyed so won't make it, and then complains again, and so forth, meaning if you run out of food it's essentially game over because all they do is complain that's there no food and won't let me remedy that situation...

I had the same issue as well, i had forgotten to make food a couple of times and it gets a little annoying, i had to often reload a saved game to fix it. One other thing is when your ship is being raided, it could be that i just suck at the game, but at times it a bit to difficult and sometimes i don't even realize that i am being raided and have all my resources stolen.

But other then those two minor things, this is a great game. I love it. I love the sex scenes and the story is great, i even love the soundtrack during battle, every time i go in battle an hear it, i get hyped. Awesome work. (I wanna put a thumbs up but this site doesn't have one, i don't think)