Post by The_Don in Ginas Gym comments

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Many thanks for the kinds words. I'm glad you enjoyed out little game. And I don't mind long ass rants; shows people actually care a lot. So I'll say thanks for the input and I HOPE to get another one😁

Let me see. Some simple things first:

- Music volume is already lowered as a default, but I can lower it more (no specific LUFS in Renpy available though 😅)

- Thank for bringing the high-striker thing with Jade to my attention. I thought I made the event inaccessible if Jade left with Xici already, but apparently I have to check it again.

For some content stuff:

- Lvl 2 was supposed to be the "just slightly bit stronger than a normal guy"-Level 😅We gotta progress, if Lvl 6 means breaking the human limit.

- Shakes are OP 😅Chars without them can only progress to Lvl1 in the span of the game, but I could make this clearer by tweaking some numbers. Same goes for the requirements. It was mostly balanced around the fact that most quest-goals and side activities can be completed while training on the side, but ofc Lvl.4 with double goals broke that (since we wanted Gina to only surpass Stella after the lab assault).

- The feel of pacing is vastly different from the effectiveness of the playthrough ofc. Some min-maxers reached Lvl4 before the executioner appears, so stuff like weeks or months is more a "middle"-ground thing. The general time-frame is more or less set in the skip functions, so reaching Lvl.5 took Gina canonically 4 months (ofc. then she gets some new bonuses to speed things up 😁)

Oh, just to be clear, I value your input A LOT. Me explaining is not meant as a defence or to debase valid critique. I just like discussing things and give insight in our process.

Vaughnfor36 days ago

Oh no worries, I can’t see the progress behind the scenes. Thanks for clarifying some things a bit.

I am used to having my ears blown up by these itch.io games. But this one was so loud it was literally painful. Loudness Units are used in studios. Really, it’s just a fancy way of saying dBs. You can measure it in Audacity in Amplitude Statistics. Measured the Gina’s Gym.mp3 file, it’s -12.35 dB (flexing my college skills, I know), or roughly 3.5 times the volume of a podcast.

I actually thought you would shift all of the stages a bit. More stages, same size, same story. Just gameplay changes to give the player some feeling of progression. You probably wouldn’t even need to generate more pics tbh, but it would be nice.

And I know shakes are OP. I can see it in story. What I meant is some actual written number to make the player realize just how busted they are. Gina grows about 4x as fast anyone else, so imagine just a simple text under the shake of “quadruples your strength gain”. It doesn’t need to actually do it, just make the player think it does it.

“middle”ground risks half of the people feeling stuck behind the schedule. Say “shouldn’t be more than a month” instead of “a couple weeks”, “not even half a year” instead of “a couple months”. It means the same thing, but gives the player wider time frame.

(Also, “our little game” is like Bobby saying “little Gina” lol)

The_Don35 days ago

Think I will reword some time paragraphs. You're right there, feeling behind in progress is not appealing.

More stages without visual growth might upset other players though 😅 Can you imagine people's reaction when I said in the early stages of development that I only envisioned a visual growth every second level? Oh boy...
But we kind of want to rework the training function to show some numbers on the lifts, so there would be noticeable improvement even inside of the same level as the weights on the lifts would rise.

Vaughnfor35 days ago (1 edit)

Yeah… you’re right. They wouldn’t. I am just throwing out ideas. You don’t need to make the change at all if people wouldn’t like it.

I felt like a stage was missing, so I thought an entirely new stage would be good, but realized it would be too much work. A fake stage, as you said, wouldn’t work either. Maybe a checkpoint system? Dunno how you would implement it, but it would be perfect for squeezing in more requirements (not the stage 4 “checkpoint”).

The_Don35 days ago(+1)

You're not wrong there with an additional stage, but current focus is mostly on pushing forward the story and only rework old material where it is needed and within the scope of our timeframe. I currently have two of my cute lil helpers rework some old images, but most of the effort goes into creating new content for act3.