Nightgames Mod (v2.5.1.2) updated 2/11/17

[nergantre]

I found the drained message bug (it was stacking onto the other drained status effects). Pretty easy fix.

Also, found the repeating level up bug. This one was my bad, I used the Global.gui().combat, and clones of the player were leveling up and writing to it. Fixed that one now too.

I still can't find where the reyka bug is coming from, could you just upload your save in its entirety if you don't mind? I can't seem to reproduce the problem. (Also, paste the logs for this, since looking at the previous logs it was from the previous version, and that one had nothing to do with Reyka, that was a crash related to Airi's cock re-slimifying which was fixed in this version)

Not sure what you mean by change the delimiters, json format is pretty standard so I don't think you can really change much without breaking all the tooling for it. I'd recommend getting a text editor that supports collapsing if it's hard to work with, (try sublime text).

 

[LogicalKink]

By the way, if anyone has any stance images they think would be better, feel free to suggest them. I tend to pick pictures where I don't see anything too recognizable, but there are a lot of missing ones right now.

My repo has a few (mostly threesome) (control+f "days ago").

The main problem with power at the moment is that being on top just isn't... all that amazing.

Maybe every time your stamina is depleted the stun is one turn longer?
Alternatively, one of the main benefits of being on top is more move choice- maybe some edits to staleness? Lower max (30 isntead of 50) if you are in a submissive position and staleness happens 1.5x faster?

 

[megahellreaper]

How about taking bonus arousal damage when in a submissive position and even more when winded. Also, perhaps taking stamina damage when already winded could apply as willpower damage. That might mean you'd need to re-balance willpower as well though.

 

[MotoKuchoma]

Maybe Power should get access to more powerful variations of Pin then? I'm thinking right now of Jewel grabbing Cassie by her feet and just holding her upside down. Likewise, Power could give you resistance to certain sexual skills to make it more defensively good (if you have a lot of muscles, gentle touches are less noticable). Finally, I would increase the power/probability of counter moves when used from being on top.

 

[DarkSinfulMage]

It's already rather boring to hit struggle or escape and get any sort of reward within 2-3 turns. Any of the downed states really mess up action economy for the person that's downed, but the tradeoff is in builds or archetypes that don't mind the willpower loss, don't mind getting fucked, casually arouses or drains, etc.

 

[nergantre]

@LogicalKink



Thanks, I'll take a look. I tend not to use recognizable images though, so we'll see what I can import.

I'm not sure what you mean by if your stamina is depleted, your stun is longer. If you mean stamina depleted again after getting stunned, you technically don't take more damage after getting stunned, and you have 0 stamina anyways. Staleness might work, but the builds that have seduction usually just tempts and handjobs for like 100+ anyways right now and by the time staleness becomes an issue the dom probably came twice already. Maybe arousal damage is just too strong right now.

@megahellreaper
So being more seductive as the dom is already one of Jewel's traits. Maybe it should be just true in general, and Jewel gets a bonus to that. It doesn't make too much sense to take more arousal damage while stunned though, since well... you're stunned

Willpower damage while stunned seems interesting, and that was what I was already thinking about for drain overflows. The issue I have with that is that it leads to a pretty annoying play style where you just beat someone to a pulp repeatedly and they're just stunned all the time.

@MotoKuchoma
There's some stances already that require more power (like the upsidedown sex stances), but right now it's not too much more helpful, just a bit harder to escape from. If you have a lot less power than the opponent, it's already pretty hard to break grapples through struggle. The problem here is escape kind of bypasses it, by checking cunning against cunning instead of power against power. So if your grip is very strong on a power side, cunning/seduction contestants just break out of it in a turn or two if you're not cunning at all. And if you are power/cunning, then you do no arousal damage. Maybe the fix here is to make escape and power both check against stance difficulty, which is a combination of cunning/power of the holder.

Another issue is that people like Angel, Cassie, Reyka, and worst of all, Kat all can just win while never ever being in a dominant position because their seduction/arousal damage is just super strong in the first place. Also, if you have low seduction, sex is pretty much never recommended, since even if you manage to pin someone down, they'll just do way more damage than you even while you're in control. Not to mention tighten is a pretty broken move if you're fighting a girl. Maybe sex moves should also gain bonuses from power as well as seduction? So if you're built to force someone down and fuck them silly, power synergizes with itself.

Maybe
Power = Ease of knockdowns through stance reductions, willpower loss through stuns and holds, arousal damage and staying power while fucking someone. Weak to temptation, medium vs foreplay, strong vs fucking.
Cunning = Ease of getting into dominant stances WITHOUT stunning someone, arousal damage through foreplay. Weak to getting fucked, medium to temptation, strong vs foreplay.
Seduction = Small arousal damage increases, much higher arousal damage through temptation. Weak to foreplay, medium vs fucking, strong vs temptation.

The higher attributes may be utilities that may combine a few of the basic ones or improve on a basic one. If I were to rework the attributes, this could be something that's possible:

Dark = Mainly Power/a bit of Seduction, focused on stamina with drains and fucking and temptation. Weak to foreplay and stance changes (Dark skills should all not be usable in a submissive position)
Arcane = Mainly Cunning, focused on binds and debuffs with some foreplay. Weak to being fucked.
Science = Special, focused on raw arousal through toys that doesn't take into account seduction. Not strong or weak against anything (maybe weak against people with a lot of willpower, since batteries are limited).
Ki = Mainly Power, focused on enduring arousal and temptation and straight willpower losses. Weak to foreplay and being fucked.
Divinity = Special focused on foreplay and fucking, without stance changes. Weak to being in a submissive position/getting beat up and straight willpower losses.
Animism = Mainly Power/Cunning, focused on ignoring stances? Should be very weak to temptation.
Slime = ...? not sure where this falls, since mimicry kind of makes stuff moot.

Just some ideas, nothing is set in stone of course.

 

[jskil5]

you kinda left out submission

 

[megahellreaper]

you kinda left out submission

Kinda obvious what that's about though.

 

[MotoKuchoma]

~stuff~

The issue with currently strategy setup in the game is that its mostly aggressive plays. Aside from very few moves (counter, namely), there is no point in trying to think about what the opponent will do, you just want to pull of your strat as fast as possible. Power needs defensive tools to be able to combat the other strategies. Mainly, I'm thinking of a power-scaled move that greatly reduces your arousal but makes you very vulnerable to seduction/status effects/etc. for a turn. The idea is that Power uses stamina damage as a tool to get free turns to heal off arousal and tries to slowly grind out the opponent (figuratively or literally). Also I think Tighten deserves a nerf. It should be a low-power alternative to thrust moves that is supposed to be used from a submissive position where thrust/ride is unavailable. Right now it's the skill of choice regardless of the situation for a female character IMO.

 

[dumbfrogposter]

Is there any place where I can find a guide/walkthrough?

 

[DarkSinfulMage]

Power move = Cockbat - requires high arousal and large size. LOL

Anyways, I don't wanna keep retreading the same stuff, but I'm glad we're trying to discuss the fundamental mechanics.

I agree that making a read on the opponent isn't really worth doing with the exception of using counter, but there are several varieties of counter now, and they kinda blur together and don't pay off later on when you have a very solid sequence. We can't add all sorts of defensive skills, though. Defenses should be passive by stance or by mitigation via stat or trait.

We shouldn't ask one thing or another about Power/some other line until we get a better handle on where the fundamentals need to be in order to enable different strategies.

Some types are fundamental (Power, Cunning, Seduction)
Some types are hybridized (Dark, Ki, Technique, Bio) and sometimes break fundamentals.
Some types are highly specialized (Slime, etc) and don't fit well.

I think the key to balancing the game out and adding to its depth is going to be looking at these in a way and fitting them into both the fundamental game and the progression 1 to 50. This means figuring out how the fundamentals types and styles interact with mechanics through each move.

We have a:

Map
Clothes
Stances
Willpower
Arousal
Stamina
Speed
Combat order

Those are the elements.

 

[DarkSinfulMage]

Seems that Angel has a similar hard lock to Reyka. This happened during a fight when she gave herself a divine succubus Vagina and a blessed incubus cock. Pressed next during a lot of resolution, No log was written, so I don't have an error. Had to CTRLShiftESC to stop the process.

Also:

Spoiler: Negative arousal value?

You are holding Angel's legs across your chest while grinding your soaked cunt into her pussy.
You use Kiss of Baptism.
You pull Angel to you and kiss her passionately, sending your divine aura into her body though her mouth. You tangle your tongue around hers and probe the sensitive insides of her mouth while mirroring the action in the space of her soul, sending quakes of pleasure through her physical and astral body. As you finally break the kiss, she looks energized but desperate for more.
Angel built 50 mojo.
Angel was healed for 100 Angel lost 3 willpower.
Angel resists Lovestruck (Skeptical).
Some leftover divine energy is rampaging through your body, leaving you incredibly sensitive. As your mouth touches hers, you draw large gouts of life energy out of her mouth which is greedily absorbed by your demonic mouth.
Since Angel is already down, there's not much to take.
Angel was drained of 205 stamina by you Angel's drug-laced saliva leaves your entire body tingling with arousal.
You were aroused for 5 Angel's slippery oiled form makes her all the more sensitive. Angel's mouth was pleasured by your demonic mouth for 976 base:45.1 (26.0 + 19.1) x multiplier: 21.63 (1 + sen:-0.2 + ple:2.6 + per:9.0 + stage:9.32 )
Your demonic mouth was pleasured by Angel's mouth for -476 base:-132.0 (6.0 + -138.0) x multiplier: 3.61 (1 + sen:0.2 + ple:1.2 + per:1.2 + stage:0.00 )
You spent 30 mojo.

Angel uses Nothing.

 

[instant_noodles]

This game's UI has gotten a lot better since the last time I've played it, which is great and the new starts are more fun than I thought they would be.
But, as others have mentioned, the late game is pretty uninteresting because right now, there is mostly one optimal build that works really well and plays out the same each time.

I do think that fundamentals would be convenient to design around and have more coherent viable strategies and counterplay.
I might get around to trying that (yay source code).

@nergantre
I like that you have overarching themes per attribute, but something that wasn't written about in the post about what attributes is how many attributes a character might specialize in.
(To be clear that I'm phrasing this correctly, it is questions like is seduction only a build that should be viable? Is a combination of any two attributes a viable build? Is one main attribute and one higher attribute a viable build?)

@DarkSinfulMage
I would add status effects, mojo, and cooldowns (either implicit in the ability or externally, like how after stuns, a buff is usually added to prevent the stun from working for a period of time) to the list of elements.

What ideas do you have for how attributes (and combinations of attributes) should play as?
(If you've already posted about it a while ago, sorry; there's a lot of pages to scroll though, especially because most posts are bug reports.)

 

[nergantre]

Balancing will take a while, and I don't think there' any way of getting around it. I think the patch after this next one will take a serious look at balance and see what we can do.

That said, I'm planning on doing a release tomorrow. This build will have some more UI fixes and bug fixes, along with the final character rework (Reyka), courtesy of dndw. Plus, it makes the addictions system more generic, and applicable to NPCs. For now, this will only work with Reyka's corruption, but we'll see what I can do in the future.

It's kind of interesting to see a bunch of mini-Reyka's running around, since the Corruption addiction "corrupts" all your attributes into Dark, and turns your body parts into demonic versions. It was interesting fighting Angel with full demon wings/spade tail, and a divine succubus pussy + a blessed incubus cock...

 

[DarkSinfulMage]

It's kind of interesting to see a bunch of mini-Reyka's running around, since the Corruption addiction "corrupts" all your attributes into Dark, and turns your body parts into demonic versions. It was interesting fighting Angel with full demon wings/spade tail, and a divine succubus pussy + a blessed incubus cock...

It's fun. I can't wait to corrupt them all into my service.

 

[DarkSinfulMage]

@DarkSinfulMage
I would add status effects, mojo, and cooldowns (either implicit in the ability or externally, like how after stuns, a buff is usually added to prevent the stun from working for a period of time) to the list of elements.

What ideas do you have for how attributes (and combinations of attributes) should play as?
(If you've already posted about it a while ago, sorry; there's a lot of pages to scroll though, especially because most posts are bug reports.)

I'm not entirely sure myself, as there's quite a mixture of core fundamentals and gimmicks. I like gimmicks, but I also understand how they tend to break systems or not mesh well with them.

If you to ask me what I'd do to balance out the game right now, I would say that depends on what the content is currently designed around, and right now the game has no means of delivering the kinds of content I'd personally want to see.

As I've said, I still wanna be able to individually duel any of the girls for a time in a confined area - I could win things from them, including elimination from the games and/or special scenes. (The dream of robbing angel of all her divinity and taking her place as an incubus god! AAAAAA! !) This would require the means of telling when I've defeated her and drained her of divinity lessthan 0. Does that exist? do the other components exist?

I tend to want to see things change as I progress. Characters open up or relationships change, my more powerful or changed nature opening up questions about the world and what's going on, how do I fit into new tiers of games and society, etc. Balance doesn't relate strongly to this, but I'd want a balanced game to achieve it.

The Map -

The map should be able to be played much like it is now, but with more careful attention to detail and strategy. The way the combat sequence goes, you use the map to find people or to attack or surprise them via hiding or traps. I think hiding is somewhat weak right now, but playing the map should always be a legitimate strategy no matter what stage of progression you are at. Cunning currently opens up pathways that were hidden, but I think that there should be other options, if anything legitimate or balanced can be thought up to leverage the map into general nighttime strategy. Perhaps addictions and other things will open up new possibilities.

Clothes

Clothing is very simple right now, and I think that there's only really two states late in the game - on or off. Some mods/transformations make you permanently clothed in a sense, so this is good - otherwise clothing seems to be a space for improvement since it's so fundamental to sex combat.

Stances

There are a variety of stances, and while most of the ones invented have a lot of relationships and impacts, a lot of us agree that they are sometimes bugged, don't impact situations enough, or are difficult to understand to be used effectively and strategically. This is a good opportunity.


Willpower

I'm not sure what should be done about willpower, but seeing as its so important, care should be given to anything that increases or decreases it, of modifies a character's maximum value.

Arousal

This stat could use some attention, as there are so many moves that impact it in such strong amounts in a single turn that the only mitigating factor is Willpower. I think that tempt is very strong and perhaps shouldn't be included in so many places. Tempt shouldn't be damage, but perhaps tempt should impact behavior or character options in terms of nominal access or strength.

Stamina

Stamina, as I've said before, is doing double or triple duty. I don't have many ideas about it, but we can see how important it is early game. When you can do a LOT of stamina damage, things get a little crazy or you stop caring about what it even does.

Speed

Speed was never meant to be modified, but as such a core stat to the combat order, I think it needs to be paid attention to, especially since you can drain it.

Combat order and Action Economy

Since every sex game involves two principle sides, the back and forth really gets messed up with the inclusion of pets or allies that take turns. These non combatants aren't involved with the games at all, yet they exhibit abilities and skills? Angels followers really do bother me, and I'd either want them as new contestants or more simple assists because of how many "turns" angel's team gets. I also don't want this to turn into pages of pokemon being spit out during a match.

Those are my current thoughts on fundamental elements of the game. There's a lot to think about but I don't think changes to power, cunning, or whatever are warranted until we get changes into these elements first. Then the styles and stats can be adjusted and designed around that.

 

[bobman]

I've always thought it would be cool to have some kind of clothes specific skills, like a hypno bra or something or the ninja clothing could be used for an advanced escape during holds/pins

 

[crazylobo]

Hi Nergantre,

I greatly appreciate this game and all the people investment and work performed to improve it.

I would like to send you some bugs or glitches or ideas below, about Nightgames mod.

I hope a next version can handle all of them ;-)


First, the UI bugs:

• Fix long time expected about buttons overlap

Seen very early in the game, first day, first move. My character is located in the quad, the buttons "Move(Dorm) [Q]", "Move(Engineering) [W]", "Move(Student Union) [E]", "Move(Liberal Arts) [R]", "Move(Dining Hall) [T]" are displayed on a single row. Behind this row, a button is almost completely hidden, I guess this is the "wait" choice. This is worse later in the game as the player is given more and more choices.

I suggest 2 reserved areas should be defined for previous / next buttons to scroll within the choices to avoid this UI behavior.​

• Fix also expected about auto.sav setting

This setting never works. For an autosave option, the user expects two saves per day, one before the matches, one after the matches. The game creates an "auto.ngs" save only once, after the first night matches.​

• Normal / easy mode and NPC bonuses setting on start page

The setting can be performed on the page or with the option menu. But the update is shown only where the user has clicked. The user must perform both updates to be sure the game is correctly settled.​

Then, the glitches (small bugs):

• Character status window: the body description changes without apparent reason

My character is waiting somewhere, the stamina, arousal, mojo, willpower gauges don't change. Each time my character waits, the description alternates between dick / phallus / shaft / cock. Even this is a small bug, the effect is great. As the description changes each time for no reason, the user doesn't pay attention to it. Because of this game behavior, the status window becomes useless for user point of view. As a status window, the user expects to see / be alerted of real changes as soon they occur.

​

To finish, some ideas:

• Highly wished: except move buttons, every button should have an info tip displayed with a mouse over.

The tip should provide info about resource consumption, duration turns before deactivation/reactivation, positive and negative effects. The amount of info can be depending on the perception or cunning stats.​

• Character status window

It could be more useful if a color / visual effect is used to show a change status from the previous state.​

• Inventory window

It could be more useful if it can be stacked on right side, below the status window, with content dynamically refreshed. Idem, a color / visual effect can be useful to show changes from the previous inventory.​

• The NPC bonuses option meaning

It needs more information to be selected / deselected by casual players. What are the effects in game? Does it trigger additional abilities for opponents? ...​

• Chart for end match stats

The stats should display a chart with wins / losses counts for each opponent with all other opponents. This could help to tune the strategy and for example, target next time a given opponent.​

• Day/time data

The game should display a day counter with day of week. Also the game should display the time remaining until the end of the night games.​

• Competition/body info

The game should display body data with the same order for everyone, the competitor and the player's character (from head to feet for example). This information should also be consistent with data displayed during a match. As example, the game displays "modest boobs" for Cassie with competition info, and "modest C Cup" during a fight.​

 

[Dark Ether]

Hit a bug - new character and was close to leveling up, so I did the "play video games", and got enough xp to level. The buttons to improve stats popped up as normal, but after selecting which stats to increase, there was no "done" button (or any other button) to let me get back to the daily stuff.

 

[dndw]

@crazylobo

The overlapping buttons are definitely a bug, but it only seems to occur for some people. If you could be so kind as to run this jar and post or PM the resulting sys-info.txt file, that might give us a clue.

Autosaves do work, but it's a 'rolling' autosave. The game only creates a single save file, and updates it before and after every match. If that's not the case for you, that would be very weird.

The start page settings also work, but they are only applied once you start the game. It doesn't matter what options you set in the options screen before you start, the choices on the start screen will override them.

I get your point about the status screen: if the descriptions did not randomly change, then any time something did change that would mean something meaningful has happened. (By the way, the random variations are intentional.) I think this is offset by the fact that most meaningful changes will also have text associated with them in the 'main' screen. Additionally, any changes to traits or statuses are further down the status screen, so those can easily be distinguished from the variation in body descriptions.

Tooltips for every button: sure, I could see that. For some it would be pointless, like Wait, or the movement buttons, but in some cases I suppose it could help new players. ('What does showering do? Oh shit, I just got ambushed naked.')

Inventory window: what you describe is the old layout, but the problem with that is that there wasn't enough space to fit everything. Granted, the current situation is far from ideal.

NPC bonuses: True. The 'mainly XP' part is also outdated, unfortunately. Instead, with NPC bonuses ('hard mode'), everyone but the player gets character-specific bonuses to Stamina, Arousal and Willpower (usually 1 or 2 extra points per level). Another, minor effect is that level drainers also drain stamina with bonuses enabled.

End of match statistics: It wouldn't be too much trouble to add this, I suppose.

Date and time: We could add a day counter, but it's not that important. There are only two things which look at the date: You get three more daytime hours every seventh day, and Maya appears every thirtieth. The time is already displayed, and an additional timer is not needed because matches always end at 1 am.

Ordering of body info: It wouldn't be hard to do (I think), but I don't really see the point.

@Dark Ether
You probably hit a bug. Could you upload your log file?

 

[Dark Ether]

Hope this is the one you need - it seems to be the one with yesterday's date:

 

[crazylobo]

The overlapping buttons are definitely a bug, but it only seems to occur for some people.

Even if the game is not in responsive design, it should work properly on a screen with 1280 pixels width ;-) I hope this can be fixed.

Autosaves do work, but it's a 'rolling' autosave. The game only creates a single save file, and updates it before and after every match. If that's not the case for you, that would be very weird.

So we have a typo in the option, the real file name is "auto.ngs" and not "auto.sav". The game should explain when this save is performed.

The start page settings also work, but they are only applied once you start the game. It doesn't matter what options you set in the options screen before you start, the choices on the start screen will override them.

The normal/easy mode and NPC bonuses options displayed on the start screen (or new game screen) should be removed. They are all included in the option menu. And keeping both sources of options without reflecting changes applied to one source to the other one is very confusing for the user point of view: what is the option really settled?

NPC bonuses: True. The 'mainly XP' part is also outdated, unfortunately. Instead, with NPC bonuses ('hard mode'), everyone but the player gets character-specific bonuses to Stamina, Arousal and Willpower (usually 1 or 2 extra points per level). Another, minor effect is that level drainers also drain stamina with bonuses enabled.

Great info, thank you Hope to see this explanation in game.

Date and time: We could add a day counter, but it's not that important. There are only two things which look at the date: You get three more daytime hours every seventh day, and Maya appears every thirtieth. The time is already displayed, and an additional timer is not needed because matches always end at 1 am.

Unless by naming explicit saves, the user has no information about the day counter and day of week. And because some events are specific to given day of week or day counter, the game should provide this data.

 

[nergantre]

So it turns out I didn't get a chance to finish up the new build. Should be some time next week. What ended tripping me up was adding a system to get the NPCs to decide whether to remain addicted, overload their addiction or try to ween themselves off it. I decided to make it based on affection for the player vs affection from the addiction cause for now, and see how that plays out.

As to the balance changes and UI changes, they're something that I'll try to put into the game as I get the chance. I already fixed the body parts sort order and description randomness for the next patch, but the rest will have to wait. You may ask why not focus on these QoL and balance improvements first, and my answer to that would be basically time and effort. NGM is a fun project for me to work on when I get the chance after work, but when I spend the day coding and thinking about coding, sometimes I just don't want to wrangle with swing any more ya know? Or with balancing stuff, that usually results in me sitting in front of a spreadsheet for hours trying to figure out at what level and what attributes, each competitor should be able to do what. Decidedly unsexy unfortunately.

A lot of the suggested changes would be a ton of work to implement. Like tooltips for each button, if we include the day time stuff, that's a ton of possible buttons. They would to change too every time the actions changed. A character status window that changed colors on refresh would also be something that would be pretty difficult to hack in, if only because of how the game engine is already done. Other changes suggested like

I tend to want to see things change as I progress. Characters open up or relationships change, my more powerful or changed nature opening up questions about the world and what's going on, how do I fit into new tiers of games and society, etc.

would be awesome to have, but would add a TON of extra messages for the game. It would also make adding new content much more difficult, because for every new element added, you would need to add new lines, new interactions, new reactions for every existing interaction. I don't disagree this is important, but it's equally important to make sure that the complexity for new stuff doesn't grow quadratically vs linearly. I honestly do find a lot of times when I'm working on NGM I want to add something, but then I just stop because I realize I would need to do 20 different things in addition to the original idea. Maybe it's just a result of having less time than before.

I know that being a dev isn't all fun and games, but I do have to balance personal energy with the project. I can't really compare with someone like FC dev who can write code and put out weekly updates :/

That said, I'll try to sneak in some QoL changes every patch. When the game is in a stable state after the final specialization updates, I'll try to rip apart either the UI or the combat elements and see what we can do.

Spoiler

There's an attribute overhaul I've been wanting to do for a while now, where each point in an attribute makes it cost more points to get to the next attribute point.

Like if you had 0 seduction, each point would cost 2 points of attribute points. At 10 seduction, each point would cost 3 points, and so on. With this change, the attributes will be a lot more compressed, and easier to balance around. Also, it would make it so that if I gave clothing flat attribute bonuses, it would be a lot more valuable (rather than useless when going from 200 seduction to 202 seduction). This should also make it so some of the advance skills actually doesn't unlock for someone because not everyone can just dump 50 points in each stat and get every skill in the game. You can choose to specialize, or choose to be a jack of all trades master of none.

That said, there's a lot of work in doing that, as a lot of skills and status effects needs to be rebalanced. Draining attributes in particular would be incredibly strong, which may need some work.

Well now that I typed all of this up, I realize it makes me sound a lot more bitter than I actually feel. I'm not really saying that working on the game has become a drag, or that I wont be working on QoL/balance. It's just that change in this case will be slow. Once again, I'm quite happy to review pull request, and I think I've been doing pretty well on that front. So if you feel like helping out, feel free to sync the code and make the changes you want to see.

 

[DarkSinfulMage]

@nergantre

I feel that - it's one of the reasons I'm not a programmer despite having some qualifications and why I don't work on my own games very much anymore. I see it as a hobby - a potentially useful and profitable one - but fueled only by my own interest and fancy. I'd rather contribute than try to do the grindwork, as I've already made my own engine with LewdChaos - it took two years, and I've been playing with eclipse recently and examining it again...I'd rather not do it over and I'd love to fix a lot of things wrong or old with it. HAH!

If I was better at using GIT and eclipse, I'd probably be fine contributing, but I have my own style and practices. My first action would be to start the JavaDoc implementation.

Spoiler

I like the idea. Just make it a function that progresses correctly (make a graph!) - I'd caution that I'm unsure what problem this solves - can you take me through the problem solving steps for that solution?

 

[Vintrion]

There's an attribute overhaul I've been wanting to do for a while now, where each point in an attribute makes it cost more points to get to the next attribute point.

Like if you had 0 seduction, each point would cost 2 points of attribute points. At 10 seduction, each point would cost 3 points, and so on. With this change, the attributes will be a lot more compressed, and easier to balance around. Also, it would make it so that if I gave clothing flat attribute bonuses, it would be a lot more valuable (rather than useless when going from 200 seduction to 202 seduction). This should also make it so some of the advance skills actually doesn't unlock for someone because not everyone can just dump 50 points in each stat and get every skill in the game. You can choose to specialize, or choose to be a jack of all trades master of none.

That said, there's a lot of work in doing that, as a lot of skills and status effects needs to be rebalanced. Draining attributes in particular would be incredibly strong, which may need some work.

Unspoilered. You scare me, this tends to make stat systems a lot more annoying then it needs to be, if you wanted to average out stats to prevent people from scaling to the level of gods, then just use soft-capping or hard-capping on certain aspects. Weighting players towards jacks late game seems fine, but it's already fully achievable anyways through training a throw-away character on top of skills from either power or cunning being useless for each other, assuming you're using something like a masochism/tickle monster combo. If there was a more proper relationship between skills and trash attributes merging together I wouldn't be bothered by it, but it would just stack in more skills I never use or have to avoid because it just adds more trouble clicking the utility skills I do in fact need. Also, Flat bonuses are never useful unless you're trying to reach a low-level skill, everyone always gets a hard-on for percentage bonuses however. Delicious Scaling.

It would also gimp the sandbox nature slightly, but if anything you need to cut down on training abuse by giving one preferred stat to every other NPC if you don't already, I haven't bothered to test this.

You had to do this anyways under said overhaul, but I'm mentioning it anyways: Training mechanic would have to be gutted or replaced because unless you gimp NPCs with this too, players will instead use their level attributes on sub-stats, while training would be used on their main stat, circumventing the need for saving up points and instead taking a shortcut to overpower others.

The main bit I hate about this it's basically taking what experience mechanics exist for, then doubling it and calling it something new. Feel free to disagree random lurkers.

 

[dndw]

I don't think the problem is so big as we are making it out to be. The main issue, in my view, is that the disparity between attributes (esp. Seduction) is causing issues. Rebalancing the whole thing would probably solve that issue, but it would be difficult and time consuming (not to mention terribly annoying). I also don't think nergantre's proposed solution would work that well, either, basically for the reasons Vintrion gave.

What I would do is, rather than cap the attributes themselves, to cap the effect a large disparity can have. Define a diminishing function which will determine the scaling factor, much like what is already done for the Charisma bonus but for getOffensivePower and getDefensivePower. For example:

Spoiler: Current Situation

Reyka has 30 Seduction, Jewel has 20. Both are level 20. No status effects are in play, for simplicity.
Reyka uses Finger, and would hit for 50 arousal before applying the Seduction bonus.

The maximum damage = baseDamage * 2 * (1 + .03 * getLevel()) = 160
The minimum damage = baseDamage * .5 * (1 + .03 * getLevel()) = 40
Reyka's offensive power for pleasure is defined equal to her Seduction: 30
The same is true for Jewel's defensive power: 20
Which makes the formula for the damage multiplier: (1 + .1 * offensivePower - .05 * defensivePower) = 1 + 3 - 1 = 3
Resulting in a final damage of 150. Which is a lot.

Spoiler: Proposed Situation

Reyka has 30 Seduction, Jewel has 20. Both are level 20. No status effects are in play, for simplicity.
Reyka uses Finger, and would hit for 50 arousal before applying the Seduction bonus.

Reyka's offensive power for pleasure is defined equal to her Seduction: 30
The same is true for Jewel's defensive power: 20

Now, we define the final damage thusly:
Let k be the largest attribute difference we want to consider. Larger differences will have no further effect on the numbers. Say 20.
Let d be the clamped difference max(min(offensivePower - defensivePower, k), -k). That is, the difference between the two powers, limited to the range [-k, k]
Let m be the maximum multiplier we want to apply when 0 < d =< k. Say 2.5, for example.
Let n be the minimum multiplier we want to apply when -k <= d < 0. For example, 0.5

If d = 0: finalDamage = baseDamage (also if you want to watch the world burn and set k = 0)
If d > 0: finalDamage = baseDamage + baseDamage * (d * (m-1) / k)
If d < 0: finalDamage = baseDamage + baseDamage * (d * n / k)

Plugging in the numbers above, we get: d = 10, finalDamage = 50 + 50 * (10 * (2.5 - 1) / 20) = 50 + 50 * .75 = 87.5
Trying some different values for d:
d = 20, finalDamage = 50 + 50 * (20 * (2.5 - 1) / 20) = 50 + 50 * 1.5 = 125
d = -5, finalDamage = 50 + 50 * (-5 * .5 / 20) = 50 + 50 * -.125 = 43.75
d = -15,finalDamage = 50 + 50 * (-15 * .5 / 20) = 50 + 50 * -.375 = 31.25
d = -20,finalDamage = 50 + 50 * (-20 * .5 / 20) = 50 + 50 * -.5 = 25

It would need some tweaking, but I think this would solve the main issue at hand.

 

[DarkSinfulMage]

@dndw
That's definitely a good fix for values that allows them to be controlled and mitigated.

Over range k we define a scale from n to m, which gives us a reasonable scale multiplier for damage based upon the difference in Type values

Mitigation does not change, but this scale is controllable at various levels if we want it to. The easiest is at the Damage Type level, but this can be customized move for move (with a lot of work....)

 

[DarkSinfulMage]

I haven't done this before, but how do I update the current in Eclipse when I already imported the master branch?

Also - If I am starting over I guess it's about time I made a new github account and properly forked. I can all this without VIM and stuff ,right? I don't know Eclipse procedure to request or commit.

If so - I'd like to start implementing JavaDoc across the project. What would be the most critical areas to begin?

 

[dndw]

@DarkSinfulMage
if you have the project in Eclipse already: right-click the project, then go to Team>Pull. If you are working from your own fork and want to pull in someone else's changes, use merge instead.

If not, start by downloading git: https://git-scm.com/download/win (you don't absolutely have to, but I persoalnally hate Eclipse's interface for git) On github, create an account and fork nergantre's (or my) repo with the appropriate button. Now open up a command prompt/shell and navigate to the folder you want the code to live in. 'git clone https://github.com/<username>/nightgamesmod' In Eclipse's menu bar: File > Import > Projects from git > Existing local repository > fill out the form. It should show you three projects, you'll probably be able to guess what each is. Congratulations, you are ready to go.

For JavaDoc, or any other process where you need to come to understand code, I always prefer to start with the simpler components, and work my way up. Do base classes first, though. Other people like to start with the most central components (Character, Global, Match, Combat), but if you start simple you will have a good understanding of the peripherals when the time comes to tackle the more complex parts. Still, it's completely up to you. It's not like the Star Wars movies where there is obviously only one proper order superior to all the heretical others. *cough*.

 

[DarkSinfulMage]

@dndw
Thanks - I just wanna hit the more important areas first - so I would like to get the central stuff first. This will, of course, introduce a lot of "STUFF" to look at when anyone works but the cool thing is that once you do it both Eclipse and JavaDoc become more powerful. It might help take the heat off, as well. I'll probably do it this week depending on how bored I get.