Absolutely fair, hopefully we can produce a finished product that you'd be willing to try out in a few years. As for ATU, I may come back to it every once in a while to do some minor clean up on some parts, like making certain scenes more grounded but I highly doubt I'll have any drive or motivation to actually improve it in a noteworthy way. Nothing that requires a replay of the whole game.
To me, I'd rather spend my time working on the NEXT great project instead of trying to salvage (in my eyes) a big mess of scraps, clunkily put together with super glue and glitter. I'm happy just having it sat in the garage as an occasional reminder of where I started from and that it gave me the experience to create better things.
I think most people, if asked to instead of working on a new, exciting project that would be better than the last, they should try and improve the work they did 10 years ago when they were fresh faced, green, and learning the fundamentals. They'd scoff at the idea, it just doesn't have a single appealing aspects to it. And that's not towards you specifically, I just mean in general, we sometimes forget how soul-sucking backtracking is, in art, games, work, life, whatever. Everyone wants to feel like we're moving forward and not back.
I appreciate you having ranked ATU so highly on your personal favorites, I wouldn't even rank that game in my top 20. Which is good for me personally, it means my standards for a game I can create is still sky high.
Valid take. A Town Uncovered was a game I've started 9 years ago and it was the first ever project I worked on. I knew nothing about the importance of planning a project, feature creep, and I was literally learning how to do things as I was making it. Cool ideas were out of my wheelhouse and by the time I knew how to code it, there was too much content for it to be feasible.
It was the singular project that made me hate being a game dev, the only reason I didn't "abandon" it sooner was because I felt like I owed people to continue working on it. Most of it, especially the last few years were mentally painful. Until I finally decided to finish the game as best I could do without having to commit to something I hated for another x amount of years.
Yeah, it's not a perfect ending and the me from 9 years ago would've hated it too. But I believe it was the right decision for myself as a game dev and it's at least something rather than ACTUALLY not having a conclusion. THAT would be the definition of abandonment.
It was one of those "can't people tell I really hated developing for this game, why are they still supporting it". I was pretty vocal and it wasn't a secret that I really just didn't wanna do it. So yeah, I'd rather pursue something I'm super excited, passionate, and proud of, like Sugar Service than some amateur project I made 9 years ago that so happened to find some luck and success within the community.
I acknowledge that without ATU, I wouldn't be able to make Sugar Service, so I thank it for that but I'm not sorry that I decided to call it quits earlier than it needed. I've taken all the mistakes I've learnt from ATU and have and will continue to put it into Sugar Service's development. I've planned the game out and designed it in a way that makes me motivated and has a clear end game.
I'm sorry for not giving the ATU that we envisioned together but I'm putting my happiness and mental health before that.
Appreciate the feedback, I've given a long reply to the OP about the decision on why the game it is at the moment. Long story short, it's rock-paper-scissors with a little twist. It's meant to be on the more accessible side, everyone knows how to play RPS and everyone understands how the odds work in RPS. With the addition of the Ultra-Sense, Bird cards, and consumables, it goes from complete RNG into mostly RNG with a bit of strategy.
For 0.14, we've overhauled the consumables so instead of 3 crappy items that feel wasteful when it doesn't trigger. We have 10 different items that have instant-effects, passives, cooldowns, and card manipulation.
It will do both depending on what it is. If it's a whole H-scene that doesn't have an alternative, it'll just give you a message saying that you've unlocked a new scene that you've opted out of. If it DOES have an alternate version and it doesn't include anything you've toggled off then it'll show.
If it's dialogue stuff, there'll be an alternate line usually. There is a Netori toggle in 0.13B that'll change Maggie's 'husband' into 'ex-husband' and make it so they've been divorced for a while.
TLDR, we're working on updating and reworking the consumables for Version 0.14 but I'll explain why they are the way they currently are.
The Ultra Sense is the 'when you know what's coming', that's usually the best time to use them. Otherwise it's a hail-mary play which usually is the kind of play that could win you the game.
During playtest, if allow players to use it after a card is selected, they essentially become invincible if they have the right consumables because it's a get out of jail free card; the answer to that would be to lessen the amount of consumables you get, which then makes it very valuable and would end up never being used (like item hoarders in RPGs, only using their items at the final boss).
We want to provide players a way to mitigate attacks against them without it being a no-brainer way of plowing through matches that are way above their level. There's a satisfying feeling when your consumables does land and reflects damage or activates ultra-sense but we do understand it's also a bad feeling to use one and waste it.
We're looking into adding passive activations where it would provide you protection for multiple rounds of a match in exchange for health or ultra-sense activation or something. There's not a lot of variables that can be changed so we'll try our best to come up with something within that realm.
The final version of ATU will be released in a few weeks. It has been in development for long enough and I'd like to put an end to that era.
There will be no pregnancy for both games, I personally don't really like putting it in my own games mainly for the logistics, it'll literally put storylines on hold and bring the flow to a stop until they're available again. And with the plans I have, they affect other characters too.
Yeah, definitely. At it's core, rock-paper-scissors is RNG no matter how you twist it. I've thought about providing the player more information like knowing what their next card/action will be always like slay the spire but that'll just turn into a 'click the correct card' simulator, which is pretty mundane. Or maybe giving them a R/P/S count so they have an idea what the probability is and make an informed play based on that but renpy RNG is a little weird and that information will be more of a bluffing/deception game against an AI who has no tactic.
Ultimately, consumables will get a great overhaul in 0.13/ 0.14, we're looking into making them provide passive protection and other effects. It'll take some iterations as well but we hope that greatly improves the card game.
Hey, thanks for the feedback. We're always looking for ways to better improve the card game. Check back in around Version 0.13 or 0.14. We're looking into doing a whole consumable upgrade to put more decision and strategy into the player's hands, there'll still be RNG but it'll be minimized further with these changes.
All characters have 2x masturbation scenes, so make sure you got both. And some characters have post-story h-scenes. Sex in front of others doesn't count as another scene.
As for the CG thing, it may be a bug that I've already fixed I believe, just an inaccurate count bug. Clicking the 'update old save' button in the in-game settings might fix that.
