Lab Rats Current Public Release (v1.0, 27/11/17)

[vrengames]

@Alexandar04
Thanks for the feedback! I agree with all of what you said, and it's on the table for improvement in a near future update (Probably 0.4, which is looking like it will be the quality of life update). I've been prioritizing adding content (major scenes and images) to the game first so that people can see that there's an actual game buried under the neglected UI. I've seen too many projects with interesting and well thought out systems that die because there's nothing to actually do, so I'm going to avoid that and front load the content generation as much as I can.

As for the existence of random events, my goal is to create a game that you don't need a walkthrough because it presents enough easy to reach content that you will stumble into it and end up with a full game experience just by spending time exploring. The night time events with Lily and Mom are an example of that. You're certain to go to bed every night, and it would be a little heavy handed if it showed up all the time until you followed through. Instead there's a minor chance of it appearing, and over the course of a game I can be relatively certain the player will find it and be surprised there's more content hidden in an otherwise simple action. This random chance should only be used for events that are common enough that you do them anyway, otherwise people may take a single branch once and dismiss it. The idea of the character recording information is a good one, I think there's a good chance a system like that will show up in v0.4, because I agree that some events are a little too hard to find and a little too tedious to get.

@Wee
Glad you're enjoying the game so far. I've certainly had a good time making it. Having the girls change and react to the player as their influence score increases is exactly the purpose of v0.3, which I will be starting development on after Christmas. I'm trying to avoid repeatable events that raise influence because I want each major scene to represent a distinct break point in the game, where new events are unlocked suddenly all at once. I don't want the game to devolve into a loop of sleep-talk-talk-talk-sleep until you max out your influence, then roam around looking for sex scenes. I think that style of gameplay breaks the feeling of exploration and progression and replaces it with just a grind of clicking buttons. That's the theory anyway, a few more iterations and refinement will let me know if it needs a major rethink.

Thank you for the offer to help, but for now I'm keeping this an individual project. It avoids any problems of versioning, communication, ect. and lets me take full responsibility for everything good and bad that goes on with the project. My own quick and dirty UI will be added in for v0.2.1 so it's hopefully easier to keep track of what you have on you.

[Wee]

@Alexandar04
(snip)

@Wee
Glad you're enjoying the game so far. I've certainly had a good time making it. Having the girls change and react to the player as their influence score increases is exactly the purpose of v0.3, which I will be starting development on after Christmas. I'm trying to avoid repeatable events that raise influence because I want each major scene to represent a distinct break point in the game, where new events are unlocked suddenly all at once. I don't want the game to devolve into a loop of sleep-talk-talk-talk-sleep until you max out your influence, then roam around looking for sex scenes. I think that style of gameplay breaks the feeling of exploration and progression and replaces it with just a grind of clicking buttons. That's the theory anyway, a few more iterations and refinement will let me know if it needs a major rethink.

Thank you for the offer to help, but for now I'm keeping this an individual project. It avoids any problems of versioning, communication, ect. and lets me take full responsibility for everything good and bad that goes on with the project. My own quick and dirty UI will be added in for v0.2.1 so it's hopefully easier to keep track of what you have on you.

Not a prob, vrengames!

Not sure how many posts one needs for PM's to become available (or if PM's are ever available), but at some point I'd love to share with you what I have anyways (i.e. look over the dialogue and if there's anything you like, it's yours), should something fit your vision at all. As we've both pointed out, your game your vision, which is why I don't want to share publicly (that starts the whole comparing versions thing, which is unhealthy). It's mostly dialogue related stuff, more spice for the major scenes sort of thing.

Also, to be clear I'm not really looking for a project, my attention tends to wander between interests in any case. This forum is for collaboration and sharing ideas (that's what the forum header here says, anyways), so it's appropriate to discuss ideas here (you don't have to like them, and some ideas may just be silly). Mainly as I've been following these games for a while (here and on another forum), sometimes the framework piques my interest for a bit...

I do agree that you wouldn't want to turn this into a grind, but there are a number of trivial events during the game days that you 'click through' to get to the next interesting event in any case. Giving those conversation choices some meaning (after you've been through them already), especially if they do different things, makes the decision making process a little more interesting. I do understand that you are focusing on the main storyline framework right now (there's a LOT of ground to cover/assemble in this game), but once you get down the road a ways... food for thought.

I have some thoughts, such as having fewer dialogue options if you can't help mom out with the bills that week - maybe the internet gets cut off or there's no wine, or if you chip in extra that week you have more fun alcohol choices for major events or some such. And also maybe more tightly interlinking the major events so that they augment each other in some way. Maybe sleep and naps should have a stamina stat associated (i.e. if you've had a busy week, more rest might be nice). But it's really WAAAAY too early to know whether any such ideas may be relevant to your vision, so they can be considered down the road, once you get the main story implemented. Or not...

As I said, I like where you are going with this game, it's a really fun premise!

Just for fun, I did figure out one thing (mostly for my own education) that you talked about in your vision statement. Here's a snippet of code in case you haven't tackled this yet, and were pondering ways to do it (this is one way, there are several of course)...

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Code: Select All Code

image sis casual3 = ConditionSwitch(
    "sis_slut_score < 11", "Lily_Casual.png",
    "sis_slut_score > 10 and sis_slut_score < 21", "Lily_Casual2.png",
    "sis_slut_score > 20", "Lily_Casual_Sexy.png",
    )


This works ingame, although I'm sure you'd have a 'hide sis' or whomever coded at the same place where an event award might be given, as otherwise the outfit switches out immediately (that makes no sense unless she's changing). This of course relates more to 'trivial' appearances in any case, not the event scenes.

I wanted to figure out for myself if there was a clean/less cumbersome way to accomplish this. I like to learn/figure out new things... I'm new to Python (I mainly do web coding using html/php) , so it took me a bit to figure that out, so it was good for me to learn how these switches work with integer ranges if nothing else. I found plenty of examples of condition switches with fixed values/happiness states on the renpy site and associated forums, but I didn't see any that were coded in quite this way, so maybe this will help save someone else some time at some point when they go to design their own game utilizing such a concept.

But, on the offhand chance that you hadn't worked this out yet (I'm sure you already have)...

But enough about that!


On that note, as an idea, having mom dressed for work in the weekday morning scenes might be fun, she looks hot in the skirt and jacket! Or in various states of undress for said outfit!

Essentially, I'm requesting mom work outfit sexy scenes please!


Again, keep up the good work! Looking forward to 0.2.1!

[Alexandar04]

@Alexandar04
Thanks for the feedback! I agree with all of what you said, and it's on the table for improvement in a near future update (Probably 0.4, which is looking like it will be the quality of life update). I've been prioritizing adding content (major scenes and images) to the game first so that people can see that there's an actual game buried under the neglected UI. I've seen too many projects with interesting and well thought out systems that die because there's nothing to actually do, so I'm going to avoid that and front load the content generation as much as I can.

As for the existence of random events, my goal is to create a game that you don't need a walkthrough because it presents enough easy to reach content that you will stumble into it and end up with a full game experience just by spending time exploring. The night time events with Lily and Mom are an example of that. You're certain to go to bed every night, and it would be a little heavy handed if it showed up all the time until you followed through. Instead there's a minor chance of it appearing, and over the course of a game I can be relatively certain the player will find it and be surprised there's more content hidden in an otherwise simple action. This random chance should only be used for events that are common enough that you do them anyway, otherwise people may take a single branch once and dismiss it. The idea of the character recording information is a good one, I think there's a good chance a system like that will show up in v0.4, because I agree that some events are a little too hard to find and a little too tedious to get.

First off happy Holidays to everyone.

Second Great It seems like we're on the same page and YOU my friend have earned yourself a new patreon or patreon subscriber, whatever it's called. Although it's a little weird that the mods here have taken down your patreon link. I would like to suggest you go to another website/forum to talk about your game. A game with this potential can go a long way on patreon with hard work, planning and a little luck

[Borkenone]

I don't know if it's just me,
but none of the naked portrait are showing when the characters are supposed to be naked though.

[Wee]

I don't know if it's just me,
but none of the naked portrait are showing when the characters are supposed to be naked though.

Those haven't been coded in in a few spots as of yet, in the 0.1.1 version. I saw on vrengame's patreon site that v 0.2.1 may be publicly released late today, so some of those may have been coded in since 0.1.1. Gotta luv alpha versions!

Plus, he probably wants to put together some special poses for a few of those scenes, and that takes time...

He has a lot of material to code in, based on his vision statement, so I'm assuming he will get to those loose ends eventually. I"m excited about the new events he's talked about for 0.2.1!

[vrengames]

Second Great It seems like we're on the same page and YOU my friend have earned yourself a new patreon or patreon subscriber, whatever it's called. Although it's a little weird that the mods here have taken down your patreon link. I would like to suggest you go to another website/forum to talk about your game. A game with this potential can go a long way on patreon with hard work, planning and a little luck

Well thank you for the support. I haven't been paying attention to the main post here and didn't even realise the patreon link had been removed. Not sure exactly what rules it violated, because the forum rules posted seem to OK it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Patreon is a gray area for sure. If the project has no playable demo, but a patreon link is posted in the Creative Corner, it's treated like any other paid product being advertised in the CC and its owner is warned, then banned if they attempt more advertising. If the demo provided is termed "alpha" or "beta", and the thread includes pressuring tactics to sell a "full game", then that may fall over the line to advertising paid content. If the game is managed so that patrons get access to content that will become free within a few weeks, then that's on the other side of the advertising line and it's acceptable.

If there are any mod's hanging around that could clear things up I'd appreciate it. I'll leave the link down until this gets sorted out so I'm not stepping on any toes.

Also, I'm hard at work polishing off the last bit of content for v0.2.1, which should be released in a few hours time. Wish me luck!

[Wee]

I just downloaded 0.2.1!

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Here's the free download link I found, from Vren's Patreon site post on the subject:
Lab Rats 0.2.1, mega.nz download

As advertised, lots of new content to work through, and images. The relationship and inventory trackers are also nice additions. Thanks for the hard work you are putting into this game, vrengames! Looking forward to my next playthrough!!!

@vrengames: I sent you a PM.

[KingsRaiden]

Loving the game, and the artwork is very well done. I like the story and the corruption goals. While I understand that certain objectives/scenes are only available once, does this mean the corruption will still allow events to play out between them?

So if I get the sister to give me a blowjob by giving her a serum, and her corruption rises, will she be available for bj's in between major scenes? Or perhaps she comes in on me in the shower and I get her to jerk me off or something. I know there is not as much content in that now, perhaps in the future.

I like the mother's way of gaining additional income, it does seem to come pretty quick, and almost without explanation (or corruption) on my part. Not complaining, it just seems a little jarring in the story.

Thanks for the game, looking forward to more!

[Sonarbliss]

Hi. Thanks for the share , Say, if possible, could you gives us a walkthrough please? Lol. I started over like 4 times and still doesn't have a hint to unlock mom's or Alexia's scenes. Think I'm becoming dumb

[Kaelthas]

@Alexandar04
.......

@Wee
....
I don't want the game to devolve into a loop of sleep-talk-talk-talk-sleep until you max out your influence, then roam around looking for sex scenes. I think that style of gameplay breaks the feeling of exploration and progression and replaces it with just a grind of clicking buttons. That's the theory anyway, a few more iterations and refinement will let me know if it needs a major rethink.
....

Sorry, but now it looks like far worse loop and that is a lot of grinding for the red syrum.

It would be good, if you could at least repeat events with your option, when choosing, what to do. For example, you could go play tennis with stephanie again and she will play with her own initiative, while masturbating for handicap. Or you could watch movie with sister and mother again and they will automatically undress for comfort. Another impact could be that, stephanie and nora will work naked for comfort.

I am sorry, but I played this game for 1 hour and I was very disappointed, because it was too much hunting for events and grinding for money to get red syrum. I had really high expectation from first version, because I used only blue syrum and got a lot of things from the game.

I liked first version of the game, because the images were great, ideas were great, phrases were great and it had great potential for me. Unexpectadly i was really disappointed, when I played version 2.1.

Once again, sorry for the critique and I know that, it is only the starting point in development, but I had too write this, because I was too disappointed in the version 2.1.

Best regards and I am very thankful, that you put your game for public. I really like that the MC is male, because there is much more transformation games and female MC corruption games than normal male MC games and I really appreciate authors like you.

[theredfear]

My existing saves seem to be corrupted in the new release. I keep getting these weird tracing error messages. Rollback does little to help. Ignore lets me proceed for a short while, then the errors become completely gamebreaking and I have to stop. Is there any way to preserve my progress? I don't want to start grinding again.

[vrengames]

@theredfear
Unfortunately I can't guarantee that saved games will end up being compatible between versions, and currently there is no way to transfer progress from one version to another. Too much of the code gets modified and moved around between versions to make save compatibility a realistic goal at this stage.

@Kaelthas
Thanks for the feedback, and don't be sorry for offering honest feedback. Great minds must think alike, because what you've described are the Minor Scenes that are currently being worked on for v0.3. These will be repeatable events that will very based on the influence of each girl, and which will be the main indicator for how corrupted they have become. I'm also not satisfied with how both the Red and Purple syrums are handled right now, and I will be looking into changing that system in the near future (Not sure yet if it will make the cut for 0.3, but if not it will certainly be in 0.4).

@Sonarbliss
Check in with Mom during the evenings on the weekend, maybe she'll want to spend some time together... For Alexia, visit her on campus and ask her out for lunch at the coffee shop. Once you've done that, talk to her again and you should be able to get her phone number. Spend some time texting with her and there are two major scenes to be found. Things are changing too quickly to put time into writing a walkthrough for each version, but you guys are welcome to share information about what you've found so far.

@KingsRaiden
Same response as Kaelthas, v0.3 will have exactly what you're looking for! I'm hard at work right now writing and coding to make it happen! The exact trigger point for Mom's paycheck scene may be tweaked soon, it was set purposefully low back in v0.1 so you could reach it with the limited content available.

[Wee]

@ Vrengames

I PMed you some hot sexy nekkid chicks based on your artwork, with some notes!

I'm liking the new artwork that you are coming up with, and am looking forward to more in the next build!

[KingsRaiden]

@KingsRaiden
Same response as Kaelthas, v0.3 will have exactly what you're looking for! I'm hard at work right now writing and coding to make it happen! The exact trigger point for Mom's paycheck scene may be tweaked soon, it was set purposefully low back in v0.1 so you could reach it with the limited content available.

Oh very cool, looking forward to that. From some of the other placeholder events I eventually came across I did think this was the case, but wanted to make sure. Hard to tell at this point, totally understand about the paycheck event, got to showcase certain points early on, I am sure there will be other tweaking as you go along.

Like the game, concept, and the models are quite attractive. Well done!

[Kaelthas]

....

@Kaelthas
Thanks for the feedback, and don't be sorry for offering honest feedback. Great minds must think alike, because what you've described are the Minor Scenes that are currently being worked on for v0.3. These will be repeatable events that will very based on the influence of each girl, and which will be the main indicator for how corrupted they have become. I'm also not satisfied with how both the Red and Purple syrums are handled right now, and I will be looking into changing that system in the near future (Not sure yet if it will make the cut for 0.3, but if not it will certainly be in 0.4).
....

Thanks for the answer and I really like your plans.
With this, I am sure, that the future of this game will be great and I am looking forward to new versions.
If there will be impacts like this I do not even mind grinding for red serum, because the reward for grinding will be great.

[vrengames]

@ Vrengames

I PMed you some hot sexy nekkid chicks based on your artwork, with some notes!

I'm liking the new artwork that you are coming up with, and am looking forward to more in the next build!

Hey, glad you're enjoying the game and the art enough to want more! The UI example that you sent is great, I've stolen a few things from it that were quick to implement and it's looking nicer already.

PS. 1 more post to go before I can post PM's. I refuse to post extra stuff just to reach the limit! I have principles damn it!

[weenog]

I think this game seems promising and could be a lot of fun. That being said, I don't like how the scenes are unrepeatable. I understand your concerns with not wanting the game to become a cycle of clicking and sleeping to replay scenes for h content. I have a couple suggestions on how you might get around this problem.
When I played the primary reason I wanted to repeat scenes was that I wasn't able to achieve the best of the five options for any event making me feel like I did something wrong. One way to cut this feeling down and keep the scenes unrepeatable is to not have the five options and instead just have one for each event, setting the events to only trigger when you have enough influence with that particular character. This could potentially cut down the content that you have planned for the scenes however.
I think a better option would be to change the scenes to repeatable and make it more difficult to progress in them. For instance, you could make it much harder to get blue serum than it is currently or tie in some percentage chance (maybe 33%) of the opportunity for spiking the drinks to trigger. Throwing a max cap on the influence that a particular serum can get you to would also make the player to work to progress through the game. (eg. blue serum can only get you to 20, while you need 30 to get to tit-job scenes.)

One other thing that I found, I'm not sure if it is a bug or not, while playing missing work one week would impact paychecks for all subsequent weeks regardless of if you showed up the next week or not. If it is intentional you can pretty much never afford to miss work, so I feel giving the option to go somewhere besides the lab in the afternoon could be eliminated by having the player automatically go to the lab.

I hope I don't come off as mean. I think the game has some great potential that's why I took the time to comment.
Good luck with the development.

[Wee]

@vrengames!

Glad that the UI example was useful. Sent you another PM with another idea for later on.

I haven't played through all of the new events yet, looking forward to that.

A couple of thoughts on gameplay (spoilers contained):

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

I did have a thought on the random chance for the lab to be empty. Maybe the chance that Nora and Lily are in should start at 100% (instead of 90), and decrease by say 5-10% per day until they are out, then on the day that they aren't there, but bring you smoothies later, the chance raises back up by some amount (40-50%?). This way, they will be in on Day 1 all the time, but your opportunities to have the lab empty are a little less random. Getting the door lock code is kinda important, so having a chance that increase over time would at least assure that you'll have a decent chance of finding it sometime in the first couple of weeks... An increasing percentage could also be applied to the chance of finding the door code itself, say, if every time you don't find it, add 20% or whatever to the chance of finding percentage .

Similarly, the chance of Nora noticing that you are making serums could increase each time you do so, rather than it being a flat chance.

Keep up the hard work!

[brewkatt]

Vren, thanks for a fun game! I do have to say that I'm having a really hard time with it. I've played about a half dozen times, gotten into 100+ game days, and am having little success unlocking as much of the content as I think I should be. I'm a bit of a novice with these games, but I keep trying different stuff, and am just getting very frustrated to the point of giving up. A walkthrough would be great, but in the absence of that some more significant tips would be really appreciated.

Thanks for all of your hard work!

@theredfear
Unfortunately I can't guarantee that saved games will end up being compatible between versions, and currently there is no way to transfer progress from one version to another. Too much of the code gets modified and moved around between versions to make save compatibility a realistic goal at this stage.

@Kaelthas
Thanks for the feedback, and don't be sorry for offering honest feedback. Great minds must think alike, because what you've described are the Minor Scenes that are currently being worked on for v0.3. These will be repeatable events that will very based on the influence of each girl, and which will be the main indicator for how corrupted they have become. I'm also not satisfied with how both the Red and Purple syrums are handled right now, and I will be looking into changing that system in the near future (Not sure yet if it will make the cut for 0.3, but if not it will certainly be in 0.4).

@Sonarbliss
Check in with Mom during the evenings on the weekend, maybe she'll want to spend some time together... For Alexia, visit her on campus and ask her out for lunch at the coffee shop. Once you've done that, talk to her again and you should be able to get her phone number. Spend some time texting with her and there are two major scenes to be found. Things are changing too quickly to put time into writing a walkthrough for each version, but you guys are welcome to share information about what you've found so far.

@KingsRaiden
Same response as Kaelthas, v0.3 will have exactly what you're looking for! I'm hard at work right now writing and coding to make it happen! The exact trigger point for Mom's paycheck scene may be tweaked soon, it was set purposefully low back in v0.1 so you could reach it with the limited content available.

[vrengames]

@weenog
You certainly don't come off as mean! I appreciate the feedback, without it I'd be flying blind here! I'm currently working on v0.3, which will add a pile of Minor Scenes to the game. These are repeatable (Although not entirely within your control), so there will feel like there is much more content in the game. How serums work and are obtained is one of the major items on the list of things I'll be looking at for v0.4, which is going to be the Gameplay, Image, and UI update. I've got a few different models I'm thinking about implementing, but no concrete decisions have been made so any advice is welcome. I think I've tracked down that bug, but I've had a hard time replicating it consistently myself. I'll do some more testing to confirm, and it will be fixed in the v0.3 update.

@wee
That's a pretty solid way to deal with the random events, so don't be surprised if I steal it for v0.4! I've also considered the ideas you sent me by PM, all good stuff that I might "borrow" for v0.4 as well. As soon as v0.3 gets pushed out and is stable, I'll be able to spend a week or two just refining the gameplay and improving the general feel of the game.

@brewkatt
Glad you're enjoying it! There's no full walkthrough (and I'm not intending to put one together until at least v0.3 is out, so that I don't have to redo it for a few versions of the game). In v0.2.1 each girl is involved in 4 major scenes (Except for Nora, who is in 5), so if you've found them all already you can stop searching. Because each scene only allows one attempt, your best bet to getting access to more options is to rush to using red serum (This will change for future versions, but for now it's just the optimal way to do it.) To unlock red serum you'll to learn about the blue first, so go through the normal process for that. Once you have that, head to the lab in the morning; about half the time Stephanie will be there. She'll be able to tell you how to make purple serum. Finally, meet Stephanie again in the morning again and just chat about the lab. She should confront you about some missing supplies, and at the end of the event she'll be willing to help you as a lab assistant. Now all you need are lab supplies ($100 each, buy them on the weekend) and you can meet Stephanie in the morning before Nora comes in and make a dose of red serum. Do this a few times until you have a good supply (At least two, in case you stumble upon a threesome scene) and then track down the events you've. Using the red serum will let you get higher level events, which gives a larger influence gain at the end, which hopefully snowball into everything being available by the third scene you find with a girl. As for where those scenes are: I encourage you players to share that information amongst yourself!