Post by Synthoel in The Girls of your Dreams comments

Viewing post in The Girls of your Dreams comments

First of all, I am deeply, immensely thankful for your feedback! I started this project with no particular goal in mind, mostly as an excersize for myself, but seeing how it evolved, and knowing there's someone (even if its one person) who likes it - this means a world to me. Thank you!

Now, I'll try to give you some responses.

Introducing concepts that you never really hear in other sexual fantasy media, like the crystals that gets absorbed by your skin that rejuvenate you and allow you to last longer

I can't help but tease a little bit, I have so much more of these things planned xD. It takes a lot of time to add them though, cause while I have the ideas, I'm bad at words (especially in English), so I have a wonderful writer who brings these ideas to life, and it takes a lot of iterations to achieve what I want.

The music choice is great too, it's very happy music sometimes ^^ (maybe hololive bgm?) it can feel awkward when it gets quiet sometimes though.

I can assure you that the final version of the game will have music on all levels. Currently special encounters don't have it, cause I want them to have not just some generic music, but something that matches the atmosphere properly, which again, takes time.

Speedrun strat: Strafing = more speed. Press both right and up and you'll move faster for example.

Technically, the game registers each keystroke separately, so under the hood the character actually moves right first, and then up - so its two turns actually, but usually it will happen quick enough to create an illusion of going diagonally. To really move diagonally in one turn, you can use 1-3-7-9 buttons on NumPad, if you got one, or clicks. Just thought it might be important to note, cause it clutch situations spending extra turn to move might matter.

Using an autoclicker or key macro may be recommended if you find yourself having to move so much your hand hurts.

Autoclickers might suffice as a workaround, but make sure the click rate is not too high, cause if you set it to click like 10 times a second, the game might struggle to process it and freeze (I'll talk more about this later)

Items dissapear when you try to pick them up with your inventory full. If this is intentional, I don't like it. I could had made space for the item instead of having it dissapear

This was intentional, cause in the early stages the game wouldn't let you step on a tile with an item if your inventory is full, and if the item happened to be spawned in a corridor, you could be trapped (unable to go through the corridor). I can see now it was not the greatest solution, so as an alternative, I think about implementing a mechanic that if you're about to step on a tile with an item, and your inventory is full, you would push the item (Sokoban style). So you would see you can't pick it up immediately, and won't lose the chance to do it later.

The quit button doesn't work. This is likely an error on my end

I saw this issue before, and I thought it was fixed... Are you using the latest version of the game? I'll investigate this more.

There's a delay when I press the x in the gallery. It takes a few seconds too long to close.

Hmmm, haven't seen this one before, might be system specific. Will investigate too.

It needs more mechanics and incentives to add replayability and make the runs feel more different.

Definitely. I hope to solve this by adding more items (will be my next focus once I'm done with random encounters).

Better item descriptions

Yeah, probably, will reiterate on those. One note though: the description given to you is based on character's Intelligence stat (e.g. with low Int the character will look at liquid soap bottle and be like "yeah its a bottle", and with higher Int the game will give more details, but still not tell you exactly what it does)

A way to move without having to spam the same key repeteadly may be important health wise, maybe shift+walk?

Yes, you are 100% correct. Sorry for your hand xD. The more I test the game, the clearer I see walking is tiresome. I keep shelving this due to the complexity of the proper implementation for this (I'm not the best programmer in the world, and I might've made some poor decisions when laying down the architecture for the game, which now holds me back). I will still return to this problem, as it definitely requires some solution.

I want more girls for each species. Girls that are recognizable, likable, and have unique behaviors and dialogue. Just like the Yuki Onna or the Succubus

Absolutely, I have more in the works.

Game over scenes, more incentive to lose but also more incentive to win small encounters. This game has gameplay that is engaging, but the sex isn't engaging because you end up seeing a lot of the same encounters and scenes and they all start to look similar

I'm not a fan of game over scenes, cause it gives me two contradicting goals:
(1) I want to progress the story / beat the game, so I should do my best.
(2) I don't want to miss out on content, so I should lose to see the scenes.

I remember playing MGQ and constantly saving before each battle, losing intentionally for the first time to see the scene, then reloading and actually put up a fight. And I didn't like that loop, it broke the tempo of the gameplay.

At the same time, I surely understand that once you opened all the illustrations (which will happen rather quick as there isn't a lot of them at the moment), it will become quite repetitive. I hoped to solve this with extra illustrations that you open with shards in the gallery, and then see in game. There's only one right now, so it doesn't really work, but I've added 9 new illustrations recently (not published yet), and in the final version of the game each girl will have at least 3 illustrations to unlock (not only with shards, but also by meeting certain requerements, like achievements).

Some secrets and easter eggs, a rare combination of things that you can do with the girls that could lead to a different outcome

Sure! There are some already (have you tried reading any spell scroll while being drunk?), and I have more planned.

Would be nice if some of the monster girls were helpful instead of being a threat

Actually, one of the main characters (Kitsune) is gonna be pretty much that, although not exactly. I'll think about this more.

Better visuals for your equipment. Instead of having it in text on the side have it on a window

Yeah, this was brought up by other people too. Long story short, this is a result of my original intent to create "true Rogue-like" experience. I consider changing the UI for this completely, but this has to be thought out carefully and will require a lot of work, so I gave it a lower priority for now.

Being able to have a pet or companion would be a great way to build a story based on a relationship.

One of the ideas I had is when one of the main characters joins hero's harem, or when their attitude grows to a certain level, they would travel with the hero, acting like a helpful NPC, or maybe you would meet them during your runs more often and they would give you some aid or power you up a bit. Not sure how its gonna work in the end, cause all of these ideas are quite complex, but I'll cook something.

Corruption kink? Getting a character that isn't open to sex to become open to sex. Hypnosis kink? having your body controlled by something else. Illusion kink? Nothing you see is what's actually happening. Space and sci-fi elements, space is weird so it fits in a dream scenario.

I have something in the works for one of these kinks already (won't tell you which one yet xD), and I can see others fitting well into the game too. Thank you for the suggestions! I will explore more territories in the future.

Physical combat. This is a mechanic that is discouraged in the game, but combat can be used to lead to a sexual situation if for example the girl likes it.

Are you reading my mind or what? xD

Allright, I'll give it away: besides goblins and harpies, there will also be orc girls in the desert one day, and they might like it when you're rough with them... But its gonna be more like an exception to the rule, cause I want the main focus of the game to be different.

An android version would be convenient for me.

Currently, browser version should be playable on mobile (although I'm sure there might be issues, please let me know if you find something specific). I can't promise more unfortunately, cause making a proper Android version is a huge commitment.

I don't see a way to use my items against the monster girls.

This is underdeveloped at the moment, but the girls will use the items you give them. So you will be able to give the blindness potion to a cowgirl, for example, she'll drink it and become disoriented for some time. It won't work on everyone though: for example, phoenixes will be smart enough not to drink it. None of this is currently implemented, but I have a huge document where I put all such ideas, and there's a lot of interactions planned.

By the way, about the restoration scroll. All the spells you cast by reading scrolls can fail. This depends on Int stat too. If that happens, the either the effect will be the opposite of intended (restoration scroll actually damaging you), or just nothing will happen. The game will highlight this with "You probably misread something" message.

An item to increase your inventory.

While this is basically a rudiment from the times when the game was controlled with keyboard only (I was too lazy to implement pagination, so I limited contextual options to 10), during the testing I found out that I enjoy this limitation. It gives you some challenge by making you constantly think "do I really need this?", and as your experience with the game grows, you'll know better which items are actually worth keeping. I also like this as a compromise between realism (giving each item some weight and limiting the max weight you can carry) and game convention (if Doomguy can carry a BFG in his pocket, I can carry these 50 leather shirts no problem).

Anyways, as I said, its not certain, but I might revamp the UI for inventory completely one day, so this limitation will go away.

***

Phew, this turned out to be a hell of a wall of text xD. Just felt like I need to share some thought process and plans. Sorry if I missed something crucial. And thanks again for all your impressions and ideas. This makes me a bit nervous, as it reminds me how much work still lies ahead. But it also makes me excited, cause when I visualize the game in is final form, its damn beautiful xD. So thank you, I will surely not give up, and I'll do my best!

Techno King269 days ago (7 edits) (+1)

I can't help but tease a little bit, I have so much more of these things planned xD. It takes a lot of time to add them though, cause while I have the ideas, I'm bad at words (especially in English), so I have a wonderful writer who brings these ideas to life, and it takes a lot of iterations to achieve what I want.

I really want to see them! There's so much you can do when you have all the freedom of a dream world. I hope you don't slack off on the writing despite having a writer, it's important to learn especially the small things, like punctuations and properly spelling words, and avoiding bad writing habits. English is also not my first language, but it's through practice that I have a lot of confidence in my english nowadays! (I am also aware of my weaknesses, like vocab, but I am working on it. The clumsyness though is hard to avoid :P)

To really move diagonally in one turn, you can use 1-3-7-9 buttons on NumPad, if you got one, or clicks. Just thought it might be important to note, cause it clutch situations spending extra turn to move might matter.

I am probably going to be the first to get a speedrun record on this game. That's such a great advice! I wish I thought of that

I think about implementing a mechanic that if you're about to step on a tile with an item, and your inventory is full, you would push the item (Sokoban style). So you would see you can't pick it up immediately, and won't lose the chance to do it later.

I think the player can get stuck if you do this and you implement doors / narrow pathways. It's easy to imagine with zelda games and super mario odyssey since these puzzles are supposed to get you stuck if you don't think about it. Since the player can drop and pick up items, it might be easy to not get stuck but it might come at the cost of a valuable turn and it would force the player to drop the item.

I really wish you could walk through it instead, but if you can't, are you able to instead whenever the player interacts with the item, make it so the player doesn't move towards the item (action is blocked). Instead, it prompts the player if they want to discard the item, take it, push it, or ignore it. If they ignore it, nothing happens, they don't move forward they just stay where they were.

It would be great if that's possible. If you can't prompt the player before taking an action, and an action has to be taken, then I think pushing it is better since the alternative is a lot less frustrating.

I saw this issue before, and I thought it was fixed... Are you using the latest version of the game? I'll investigate this more.

Nope, I included the version I played at the top of my comment. I haven't played since December, but I tested the new version just now and it's fixed now

btw, if you want me to test the game any time let me know. I can't really play the whole game because I want to be able to see a lot of new things once the game is finished and also write freely about it, but if you tell me where to look I'll look there (example: new experimental level, testing if the game works on linux or android or browser, thoughts on new mechanic or difficullty, etc). I'll try to pay attention to your discord if you ever make announcements asking for help, but I am bad at keeping up with discord, I am trying to be better at it.

Definitely. I hope to solve this by adding more items (will be my next focus once I'm done with random encounters).

That's a good idea too, try to add traps too. You already have some, but I mean traps that work like puzzles. I think they work really well when combined with new items. Making a game replayable is a true mistery, I was thinking of Pixel Dungeon here and how they do it (not the best example since a big appeal of it is the difficulty, it would be tragic if people lost their fapping privileges because the game is too hard).

I think you already know this since you already do this: The player learning something new through their runs is something that can really help make the game replayable. I just hope you don't say too much when you male that encyclopedia. There's things that you can exclude, because for example "Sarah loves ice cream" is a detail that might be too personal to find in a bottle or a book. It's nice if the player can get rewarded with knowledge for making the right decisions in these dreams or for being very perceptive.

One note though: the description given to you is based on character's Intelligence

Oh! that explains it

The more I test the game, the clearer I see walking is tiresome. I keep shelving this

I hope you don't shelve this so much that you accidentally create a mechanic that relies on your current walking mechanics, might be better to work on that before trying to balance the difficulty

I'm not a fan of game over scenes, cause it gives me two contradicting goals:
(1) I want to progress the story / beat the game, so I should do my best.
(2) I don't want to miss out on content, so I should lose to see the scenes.

I can see that, and I agree! It's true that it really kills the pace and it lowers the quality of the gameplay, they are only good as a fetish. I just want to see more content and more scenes, even with text alone, give me a satisfying reason to not ignore the text after the first succesful encounter.

Are you reading my mind or what? xD

Cultured minds think alike~

Currently, browser version should be playable on mobile (although I'm sure there might be issues, please let me know if you find something specific). I can't promise more unfortunately, cause making a proper Android version is a huge commitment.

That's understandable, just running most android nsfw games on itch.io is already a challenge and I tend to find more bugs on mobile. Maybe someone can make it for you, maybe a volunteer or if the game makes enough profit you have some money to spare, that seems like the best outcome. I think if you tried to do it that would take a lot of time away from developing a lot of features in the game, and it will suck that the mobile version will often break when you update it

The game will highlight this with "You probably misread something" message.

Any time I read that, I always assumed that is what's just always meant to happen regardless.... I don't know if that's my fault. I think it would be more obvious if it said "uh oh, you misread something" because it's no longer a probability and no one can assume the game is just (trying to tease?) or even more if it says "ah! I misread something"

I have bad habits with english like dismissing things I shouldn't, because english doesn't make sense and is often not literal, it's a song. My teacher agrees with me. Also focusing too much on some words or sentences. What I said here should be taken with a grain of salt.

I might revamp the UI for inventory completely one day, so this limitation will go away.

Interesting.... so the hoarder will eventually be allowed to exist. I think this could change gameplay drastically, so it would be interesting to see the result

Here are my outdated abandoned music playlists, use what you can

Name is self-explanatory https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR5PeFLFNCySNYtI5_03brarTi2rqC-9m

I made this with the goal of finding music that you can use while reading, with mature text in mind (I guess sexy, but not mostly sexy). Some of them only to fit the personality of my blog. It was made for my blog that I privated because I wanted to revamp it https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR5PeFLFNCyRgimIo8Ai3_4YQ5glIlfAV

Also, look into hololive bgm mixes! I played those at work all the time

lofi & chill

Jazz

Bosa Nova & Chill

I think gacha games also have a lot of great music, Blue Archive has the best music. Arknights is also pretty good. Dova Syndrome is your friend.

If you can't use them, hopefully it helps as an idea!

I hope that the final product is so beautiful it makes me explode, I like that you are thinking big like me, I imagine this game being so much more, it's exciting.

Synthoel265 days ago(+1)

I think the player can get stuck if you do this

I really wish you could walk through it instead

Well, actually, now that I think of it properly, it shouldn't be too hard to do this. Maybe not with the prompt for now, I can start by allowing two entities in the same cell (player and item). I'll see what I can do

btw, if you want me to test the game any time let me know.

Oh, thank you for the kind offer, I can certainly use it one day!

I think it would be more obvious if it said "uh oh, you misread something" because it's no longer a probability

My reasoning for not telling this directly was that the character can't tell whether they read the scroll properly or not. The game kinda says "well, shit happened - maybe cause you misread something, maybe cause it was just an ass scroll, who knows". Its the player who should conclude, based on the end result, if the action was a success. But I'll think more about this wording

so the hoarder will eventually be allowed to exist. I think this could change gameplay drastically, so it would be interesting to see the result

That's not 100% decided yet, only a possibility

Here are my outdated abandoned music playlists

Thanks for this, I only listened to a couple of tracks so far, but I like what I hear xD. My goal is to use the music composed specifically for the game in the final version, but to achieve that I have to make a lot of planning to give the composer clear requirements, which I struggle with as I'm not particularly versed in this field. So your playlists are a great sourse of inspiration!

Techno King260 days ago (2 edits) (+1)

Great, best of luck in working on the game and I am glad you are looking into fixing the issues and taking the suggestions! The one about the failed scroll can also be solved if the game told you about how a scroll may not work if you misread it! Like a person or a book in a library, "make sure to read scrolls properly!" "careful reading random scroll you find lying around" maybe there are other paths you can take too, but you know if the character also doesn't know it shouldn't be called "scroll of regeneration" (unless the character is that stupid that they knowledge the title of the scroll and decided to ignore it, definetely a possibility). This could be more complicated though if the titles are adaptive, since it would at first say "scroll of death" and once the character reaches a higher intelligence stat after reading it would have to say "scroll of regeneration".

I just rambled off there into a train of thought :P I didn't mean it as a feature suggestion I guess but you can do that if you want to. I think scrolls work fine as they are now, even if it's not evident and I never found out on my own it's just another layer of difficulty and learning curve to the game, and like I said there's many different ways to communicate that better if you want to make it easier to understand

I am very glad the music serves as inspiration. I'll definetely post a song in the comments here if I feel like it clicked perfectly while I am playing.