itch.io

Why would you make a game immersive in the first person perspective, but then force the player to not like literature? If it had been left out of the first person I would have been fine with the character being not interested in it, but the moment it became first person it should have been made choice optional whether to like it or not.

As a matter of fact, my personality growing up as a kid more leaned itself toward Yuri's - in that I loved reading and even attempted to become a writer myself. I read through thousands of fiction stories as a kid, along with some biographies, tons of documentaries on the world and various subjects, etc. Thus it completely broke my immersion to be told that I did not like literature and considered it boring...

I am sorry. I tried really hard to overcome the discomfort of the complete opposite "me" personality. But I could only last so long before it popped up again... and again... and again... that the "me" did not like anything about reading other than Manga and that writing was boring and a struggle... which is the exact opposite of who I am as a person.

This looks like it would be a really good game, but I just can not get around this disjointed feeling. I could have easily handled this game's main character not liking literature, but only when it was a normal "Hello, my name is (insert generic VN char name here), and this is my story." It is an entirely different thing if the character is intended to represent me but acts and thinks complete opposite as I do. Hell, the reason I even became interested in this VN in the first place was the word "Literature".

Ah well. Good luck with your game.

I fully agree with you on all of your points in that post. If it was easy to be all star singer / writer / stage performer there would be a lot more of them than the handful of people who can be named as such. Even the most famous generally only get full stardom in at most two of the three fields. And there definitely should be some kind of trade off for those free points gained through buying stuff and hanging out. But, yeah the way the drops difficulty was setup in that version of the game I reviewed was a bit overtweaked, understandably so though with the reasons you explained. xD

As for the code, that is very nice of you to offer indeed! I think I will take you up on that offer, however only under one provision. And that is being if there is any way I can help you out with either development or testing of the game that I contribute there in the future. From the posts I have seen it sounds like you have lost most of your helpers. As such if there is anything I can do to assist I would be glad to be of aid.

My main talents, in my opinion, are in the fields of writing / proofreading / editing and also as posted above game testing / breaking finding things that most people never discover. Partly it is a sense that something does not feel right, and partly a case of my obsessive testing to figure out what triggered that sense.

Regarding the fields of writing, proofreading, and editing, I was an amateur writer when I was younger with my focus on the fields of fantasy fiction and fanfiction. Furthermore, I have served as a proofreader and editor for multiple fanfiction authors, as well as one local club's fliers and newspapers.

I will send you an email using my email haunt (at) nightly (dot) com (grr's at the spambots that make posting emails without censoring a bad thing wish I could just use the @ and . signs.) If you have a use for any of my talents just ask and I will be glad to assist. Especially since I currently experience a gamut of free time anyway.

If I might make a possible solution suggestion that on the surface "seems like" an easy-ish fix? I used quotes around that since it may be easier said than done.

Have you considered gating the maximum available popularity to hard timed multiple tiered events, with a bypass for label-signed bands? In this manner you could both slow down overly fast progress, make the struggle to make it as an indie band seem more real / gritty, and make there be some real visible benefits for signing up with a big name label.

Also, to prevent the huge "in your face" loss of profits from signing up with a label after being independent, it might make sense to stall the ability to "Release Single" in story mode until after the Launch signing and in open mode until after X years have passed or actual label signup.

In its place you could maybe open up a new part of the band site that allows people to purchase special release cd's of the band from the site using songs that have been recorded but not cut to a single or album yet.  By doing this you wouldn't have to adjust the cd sales mechanics and could make a more realistic / slow buildup of sales revenues for early game indie bands.

Simultaneously might I suggest two extra after-gig random "reward" or "event" that increases the cash gains slightly or the popularity slightly depending on which of the two was triggered. The two new add-ons would be either selling a few recorded "demo" / "special release" cd's the band carried with them on hand to the event for extra funds, or gifting them out for extra popularity. 

You could even use that hand-out cd event as your gate event for popularity levels. Maybe one of the people who received a handout "just happened" to have a friend or relative who will the following week let the band play in the lowest tier stage currently locked out by the popularity block. This would be a tentative offer though. Any failure to appear or a bad show result would keep the lock on, but a good showing would permanently unlock that tier and raise the max popularity limit.

That was all my "easy" suggestions for fixing this issue. Now comes the more complicated ones. But I think their potential game values would really make a huge difference in both game replay ability and realism.

Have you considered making the available gigs to play at each weekend on a semi RNG luck / popularity / band quality system? Where the factors for determining whether a particular gig is available that day is the gig quality (ie far more likely for a club gig to be available than an arena stage), partly on the popularity of the band, partly on the average of the 4 band member's total fame (ignoring writing values or music values since those have less draw power for getting people to want the band to come play - even music values only make the actual gig a success or a failure but have a small bearing for drawing in crowds if not famous yet). By making it so a band can't reliably twice a week play at their top value stage week after week I believe it would add more realism, help slowdown out of control fund gains, and add replay ability.

Basically this extra gig rarity code would make it so early game bands would even find the starting gig to be a welcome gig rather than a sure thing - just like that next new bar gig is for any up and coming hopeful band. However, a mid to end game band would almost have it as a sure thing available if they didn't have any better choices that particular day - assuming they wouldn't want to just skip such a low tier stage. On days when the band had no gigs to play they could still using the recording studios or hang out or relax together or just train like weekdays so I do not feel this code would cause any harm to a band merely slow down the out of control popularity and money gains.

Do not get me wrong, for what it does RockRobin is an absolutely amazing and addicting band simulation game. But it has some serious flaws when it comes to how it handles the band management and sponsorships.

Most people reading this probably think I am going to complain about how much the labels take as a cut. And to an extent I see that huge cut as being insane. Yet I am not complaining about them since that is very real to life. 75% to a penny ante company like Piccolo or 95% to a front runner like the story mode company however is still a very painful cut for what 'seems' on the surface of the game to not really be much benefit.

The thing that makes going with a label in RockRobin insane and stupid however is that the game does not adequately put / show the limitations that are in place for indie bands. The limits for indie bands in real life is gig placements, marketing, limits of how popular / speed of popularity gains, along with the expenses inherent to maintaining a band on the road. It can take a real indie band decades to gain enough fame to make enough cd sales to balance out the lost income to their label's cut. Also there are usually real limits to the types of gigs an indie band can play at, whereas in RR it is entirely dependent upon popularity which seems to rise without any blocks or limits for an indie band. And there are never any times where you are unable to get a gig anywhere or have to make do with a place that is dangerous or demeaning to play at.

I do not even really like how Beau's cut in RR story mode was handled at the start. He gives you $500 and in exchange you lose thousands even in the first month and later on lose hundreds of thousands without on the surface seeming to be any benefits. It makes more sense if you think the only reason you're able to play at all those gigs is him behind the scenes working his magic, but that $500 a month budget seems absolutely ludicrous and useless since you can make more than that from one gig very early on. From the way it was worded I honestly wished I could fire him as a sponsor on day one. By the time I had 5 songs for a demo tape I was already 'somehow' making lots of money from my two gigs a weekend and some more from my 50% take of two singles cd sales. The moment the band was signed by the story mode label company I went from making enough cash from cd sales to pay for new instruments, to instantly making basically pennies to the dollar.

So when I played the open mode I deliberately stayed as an indie. As an indie by the time September came along I was making millions from cd sales each month end. Comparatively, as a label band in story mode the only real way I made money was through gigs alone really.

Now I am not saying that the label cuts are too high, because honestly it seems somewhat realistic. But there needs to be harder limitations in place on indie bands to make the jump onto labels something worth aspiring to. Total gigs and total cd sales need to be rarer as an indie. Expenses such as travel, lodging, equipment wear and tear / replacement, and reparations to businesses need to be harsher and more in your face. The only time I even ever really noticed such a bill was once during open mode in which Sebastian got the band a gig at a wealthy person's party. Robin was so happy "at all those zeros" in the original contract. Then after the fact had to pay an $18k penalty for damages yet somehow still slightly made even.

But that is the only time I can even really recall a penalty in the game. Well other than the random after gig-event that caused income loss due to rainstorms or drug raids and that was more a matter of not making as much as expected rather than having an unexpected expense. There were no broken down rides, no busted amps or instruments, no bills from motels, no gas bills, no fines from the police for causing a riot as an instigator, no lawsuits from crazed rival bands who think you using the same one word in your song is an infringement on their song, no paternity suits to band members, no long lost cousins or friends wanting freebies or handouts. It feels so very lacking in that sense. Saner, but lacking all the same. xD

I understand that as an independent game you just really do not have the time and effort which is needed to truly make the game more true to reality. However, without all those numerous checks and balances that label companies manage for their signed performers it ends up making the cuts just too huge / useless. It basically becomes a situation of "do I want to roleplay like a real band, or do I want to just get ahead and make money". It kind of hurts that you have to take such a huge cut just to immerse yourself in the role though.

Am I the only one who has found an issue with star / stat raising? IE that it is impossible to get a single character to 5 stars or even 4 stars for that matter? And that is with a character that specializes in something which makes training a stat easier, the "average" characters seem to have even harder time raising up than the specialists.

The issue that I have found seems to be inherent to 'how' training raises and lowers stats. Instead of having a system where stats drain from lack of training / usage, the game for me at least has a system where when you train one stat it lowers a different stat.

Originally I tried training just one stat per 5 weekdays and swapped out which stat I was training each week. I began to suspect something was off when I realized my only real overall gains were from purchased music store items and even then I was ending up with less than the full value. So I began changing up how I trained to try and find some system that worked.

First I tried training 1st stat on M, Th, 2md on Tu, Fr, and 3rd on W, Sa and it failed miserably to go anywhere thanks to losing points as fast as I made them or even losing faster than I could train them. I next tried dumping one stat and just training 1st stat on M, We, Fr and 2nd on Tu, Th, Sa and it failed miserably as well.

I experimented by using a save scumming method. I had all 4 characters train the exact same stat each day, and just rotated which stat was being trained on different days. Any time one or more of the band members would fail to train up / have the frustration bubble popup I would just reload the save for that day and retry until 4 trained up. After 2 weeks the end result was my band's total number of points across the 3 skills had gone _down_ from non-stop perfect training.

The only training path seem that seems to work for me is focusing entirely on one stat (writing) until it gets to 200 and just using the music store items to get free extra non-droppable 100 music / 125 fame, but even that way leaves you missing 175 points of overall ability.  And the moment I start trying to raise either of those beyond that  revised default point I take huge drops to my main writing stat.

And it isn't just an endgame issue either. Even when you just start out you can notice this declining stats with training issue with characters that start out initially even in their stats such as Robin.

I do not really understand why this flawed stat training issue has not been pointed out before this. Unless I somehow downloaded a flawed copy of the game, or a change was made to the code at some point and no one realized, or people just never noticed that the only real way to gain a higher total points value was to let two stats fade to default and/or buy items from music store.

My suggestion for fixing this is to remove the stat drop from training successes. Instead you can move it to either occur randomly as a penalty for the "failure" days and increase the chance of failure or else have a daily or weekly check for "time since last trained X stat" and subtract points if it has been subjectively too long, and perhaps a second threshhold which makes the drop even bigger if the length of time becomes too large.

I just wanted to let you know that I just encountered this bug myself but at a slightly different time. For me the bug popped up as soon as I finished the "Get Emmitt to 30 music" quest. Other than the difference in timing the bug appears the same. This is with the current beta version v0.852 which I found on itch.io using a Win7 SP1 os.

An exception has occurred.
While running game code:
File "game/code/story_mode/story.rpy", line 1233 in script

File "game/code/story_mode/story.rpy", line 1233 in <module>
TypeError: wrotenewsong() got an unexpected keyword argument 'timbre'
Full Traceback:

File "game/code/story_mode/story.rpy", line 1233 in script

File "RockRobin\renpy\ast.py", line 806 in execute
renpy.python.py_exec_bytecode, self.hide, store=selfstore)

File "RockRobin\renpy\python.py", line 1577 in py_exec_bytecode
exec bytecode in globals, locals

File "game/code/story_mode/story.rpy", line 1233 in <module>

TypeError: wrotenewsong() got an unexpected keyword argument 'timbre'