A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

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masterspanker
Posts: 47
Joined: Fri May 10, 2019 8:34 am

A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

Hello,

I came back to this game after a long break and holy crap I really am impressed with some of the improvements. But I was a bit disappointed because I expected Vicky's content in the original story to be complete by now. (Which is the most important content for me) While the features that was announced with 0.16.x is nice, it isn't what I wanted.

Some of the new lines added sounds bad. It is like they do not even belong to the the same person. (even though it is obvious that they are) They have incredibly high background noise and some of them sound like they have a higher or lower pitch.

I had not noticed this before, but it appears all of the girls have exact the same body (with small changes to their boob size.) And they have exact the same sex animations. I kind of expected better especially from Vicky. She is a professional after all.

Vicky's content is still exclusive with Rachel and compubrah VR will still not offer anyone else other than Patrick depending on the circumstances (your choices), which makes it really useless. Mostly because I haven't been able to find out how it scans people, even though I slept with half of the party goers. It still offers only Patrick.

No matter where you used it, VR puts you behind some bushes and there is a chance you will get stuck there, unable to move. It happened to be and I forgot to save my game for an hour or so. It was painful.

There is a path you can take which completely breaks Madison's prank quest, even before you start it. I played it twice and I could not find what caused it the second time, so there is that.

After finding out how you can invite her to the party, Lety appears right in front of the front door, but unlike Lety, Vicky appears far left corner of the map instead of the front door. Also there is a chance she will get stuck there. (When she gets stuck, she makes it impossible to continue the quest)

Sometimes when you invite a character to sleep with them, they will not like the spot (because there are people around) and they will walk away instead of fallowing you. When that happens, you will be unable to talk to them, because they will keep repeating the line "there are people around" or something like that. And because they will not fallow you, you will not be able to sleep with them, or initiate any conversation with them. This happened with Stephanie. Now I am unable to even talk with her.



This is all I can think right now. Maybe I will add to it when I have the time.
peter980
Posts: 1601
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:50 am

Re: A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

masterspanker wrote: Tue Nov 05, 2019 6:29 pm Vicky's content is still exclusive with Rachel and compubrah VR will still not offer anyone else other than Patrick depending on the circumstances (your choices), which makes it really useless. Mostly because I haven't been able to find out how it scans people, even though I slept with half of the party goers. It still offers only Patrick.
Actually Patrick and up to 3 girls are available there.
masterspanker
Posts: 47
Joined: Fri May 10, 2019 8:34 am

Re: A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

So I have heard, but I have no idea which 3 girls those might be.

I am sure one of them is Rachael, but like I've said, depending on how you unlock the compubrah you might not get her at all.

I am pretty sure other two doesn't include Vickie, Ashley, Stephanie, Katherine or Madison. (Because unless it is a bug, I have tried all of them and none of them worked on my last playtrough.)
peter980
Posts: 1601
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:50 am

Re: A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

Even if you unlock Patrick, you will get Rachael option. You just need to select Patrick and refuse. It will not be the same as full Rachael experience, but that is on you, due to way you solved Patrick/Rachael spat.

Other two are Leah and Lety, and you need to progress through their quests to get them available.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

masterspanker wrote: Tue Nov 05, 2019 6:29 pm Hello,

I came back to this game after a long break and holy crap I really am impressed with some of the improvements. But I was a bit disappointed because I expected Vicky's content in the original story to be complete by now. (Which is the most important content for me) While the features that was announced with 0.16.x is nice, it isn't what I wanted.

Some of the new lines added sounds bad. It is like they do not even belong to the the same person. (even though it is obvious that they are) They have incredibly high background noise and some of them sound like they have a higher or lower pitch.

I had not noticed this before, but it appears all of the girls have exact the same body (with small changes to their boob size.) And they have exact the same sex animations. I kind of expected better especially from Vicky. She is a professional after all.

Vicky's content is still exclusive with Rachel and compubrah VR will still not offer anyone else other than Patrick depending on the circumstances (your choices), which makes it really useless. Mostly because I haven't been able to find out how it scans people, even though I slept with half of the party goers. It still offers only Patrick.

No matter where you used it, VR puts you behind some bushes and there is a chance you will get stuck there, unable to move. It happened to be and I forgot to save my game for an hour or so. It was painful.

There is a path you can take which completely breaks Madison's prank quest, even before you start it. I played it twice and I could not find what caused it the second time, so there is that.

After finding out how you can invite her to the party, Lety appears right in front of the front door, but unlike Lety, Vicky appears far left corner of the map instead of the front door. Also there is a chance she will get stuck there. (When she gets stuck, she makes it impossible to continue the quest)

Sometimes when you invite a character to sleep with them, they will not like the spot (because there are people around) and they will walk away instead of fallowing you. When that happens, you will be unable to talk to them, because they will keep repeating the line "there are people around" or something like that. And because they will not fallow you, you will not be able to sleep with them, or initiate any conversation with them. This happened with Stephanie. Now I am unable to even talk with her.



This is all I can think right now. Maybe I will add to it when I have the time.
Hey, thanks for the feedback! We may take a pass at audio processing again later on, prior to leaving Early Access. As for the body shapes and intimacy positions, from a technical perspective it's just easier for us to work with similarly sized characters and a limited number of intimacy positions. We're going to finish Vickie's story as one of the final content updates before we start working on the female playthrough.

Can you provide any more details on the other bugs you reported? Any debug logs, etc.?
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masterspanker
Posts: 47
Joined: Fri May 10, 2019 8:34 am

Re: A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

Dear erasmus, I just wrote two pages worth of stuff and because this site automatically logged me off after.. what? 10 seconds, it was all gone when I pressed submit. ALL GONE. This isn't even the first time this happened. Why does it log users out so fast? For what possible reason? Please tell whomever is in charge of the forums design that I think really nasty stuff about them right now. I simply do not have the energy to write all that bug related stuff again.
erasmus wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 11:02 am Hey, thanks for the feedback!
Thank you for always replying.
erasmus wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 11:02 am As for the body shapes and intimacy positions, from a technical perspective it's just easier for us to work with similarly sized characters and a limited number of intimacy positions.
I understand where you are coming from. I really do. Faster the game reaches to a more finished state the better. But there must be a way to do this without making things too difficult on you.

Only reason I can think of why you couldn't have more body types is because of the animations. But in most games where you can actually change the height, weight and body shape of the characters, every character still use exact the same set of animations. So it must be possible somehow. Some slight variations between characters could make them feel a lot more human like without breaking anything.

Also, at least Vickie should have a unique animation given her profession. I hope you get what I mean.
erasmus wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 11:02 am We're going to finish Vickie's story as one of the final content updates before we start working on the female playthrough.
I can hardly wait. Please make it fun. Vickie's story is one of the biggest reasons why I bought the game.
erasmus wrote: Sat Nov 09, 2019 11:02 am Can you provide any more details on the other bugs you reported? Any debug logs, etc.?
Sadly I didn't save any debug logs. Next time I will do that for sure.

I tried to give all the information I have on these bugs when I first tried to reply to you, but I do not have the energy to write it all over again.

One thing I will point out, I think the down stairs bathroom might be the cause for some of the bugs. If you try to initiate something with someone while being locked there will teleport you out of the bathroom. (at least when you try to change positions) VR bug also happened in the same way. Right before Vickie tested me again, I was locked in the bathroom and I was trying to raise my stamina, I tried to use VR and seeing how my only option was Patrick, I backed out. I found myself behind some bushes, I was able to move the camera, but all I could see was some bushes and I was unable to move. I could still hear the other party goers.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

I'm not sure how the post-deletion would be possible:

Image
Only reason I can think of why you couldn't have more body types is because of the animations. But in most games where you can actually change the height, weight and body shape of the characters, every character still use exact the same set of animations. So it must be possible somehow. Some slight variations between characters could make them feel a lot more human like without breaking anything.

Also, at least Vickie should have a unique animation given her profession. I hope you get what I mean.
We'll definitely do what we can do ensure Vickie stands out ;)

Not sure which games you're referring to, but a LOT of time probably goes into configuring animation offsets, collision code, and a host of other possible solutions. Even AAA studios do not accomplish this easily; the best AAA games just have large amounts of money, the best industry talent and tools applied during their development process, excellent and abundant QA, and as everyone knows...no small amount of "crunch" time. If all of that wasn't necessary to make character work well, darling places on the web like this wouldn't exist: https://www.reddit.com/r/GamePhysics/ It's also one thing to make characters register hits, fight, bump into each other, etc., but it's a vastly different thing to make them repeatedly come together very closely to represent an act(s) that...well...everyone has..."heated expectations of". And as for other games that DO portray sex, are those sex acts occurring in a truly real-time scene? Can you get up and walk away from the sex scene in a matter of a second or less, attach items, have someone come up and start punching one of the participants, knock them out, and/or everything else we need to allow ourselves and CSC users to do?
One thing I will point out, I think the down stairs bathroom might be the cause for some of the bugs. If you try to initiate something with someone while being locked there will teleport you out of the bathroom. (at least when you try to change positions) VR bug also happened in the same way. Right before Vickie tested me again, I was locked in the bathroom and I was trying to raise my stamina, I tried to use VR and seeing how my only option was Patrick, I backed out. I found myself behind some bushes, I was able to move the camera, but all I could see was some bushes and I was unable to move. I could still hear the other party goers.
This might actually be the issue; not the bathroom itself per se, but a combination of the warp/recovery system AND being currently "engaged" with yourself while those systems are doing their thing, on top of the other events that take place when moving to the VR world. I'll look into it. Thanks again!
Image
masterspanker
Posts: 47
Joined: Fri May 10, 2019 8:34 am

Re: A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

erasmus wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 8:44 pm I'm not sure how the post-deletion would be possible:
I am not saying my post was deleted or anything like that. I am saying it logged me out before I could post it. When I pressed submit, it asked me to login again and when I did everything I wrote until then was gone. (It was a long list of bug related stuff. Since I never took a debug log, I tried to describe any possible bugs that I encountered.) Now if I remember to press "remember me" while I log in this doesn't happen, but every now and then I forget to do that and I end up losing whatever I wrote.
erasmus wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 8:44 pm We'll definitely do what we can do ensure Vickie stands out ;)
Music to my ears :D
erasmus wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 8:44 pm Not sure which games you're referring to, but a LOT of time probably goes into configuring animation offsets, collision code, and a host of other possible solutions. Even AAA studios do not accomplish this easily; the best AAA games just have large amounts of money, the best industry talent and tools applied during their development process, excellent and abundant QA, and as everyone knows...no small amount of "crunch" time. If all of that wasn't necessary to make character work well, darling places on the web like this wouldn't exist: https://www.reddit.com/r/GamePhysics/ It's also one thing to make characters register hits, fight, bump into each other, etc., but it's a vastly different thing to make them repeatedly come together very closely to represent an act(s) that...well...everyone has..."heated expectations of". And as for other games that DO portray sex, are those sex acts occurring in a truly real-time scene? Can you get up and walk away from the sex scene in a matter of a second or less, attach items, have someone come up and start punching one of the participants, knock them out, and/or everything else we need to allow ourselves and CSC users to do?
I understand where you are coming from, but we are taking about small but noticeable differences here. (With emphasis on small, nothing too drastic) A little shorter, a little taller, a little skinnier and so on. This shouldn't be any different than a set of clothing on a character, some clothing could be bulky, while some are thin, but both could still use the same set of animations.

I will admit that I am not an expert on this, I am a modder of sorts but I have relatively limited knowledge when it comes to developing a game, but because I am a modder, I at least know how animations and meshes work.

Games like Fallout 4 uses similar body altering techniques. You can create a character who is bulkier or thinner, you can be short or tall. But animation set is not any different between your options.

Most MMO's work similarly. For example SWTOR, where you can pick from different body types, some taller, some thicker, some thinner but all still use the same animations.

Perhaps these games are using some advanced techniques that are not fully possible for you. But even taking some of the older games into account, for example Dragon Age Origins, there is only one set of animations for all humanoid characters. While humans are tall, elves are a little shorter and thinner and dwarves are a lot shorter and bulkier, they all still use exact the same set of animations. As far as I understand, it has more to do with the way it was rigged and configured than anything else. Now, House Party doesn't really need this much diversity (maybe leave the dwarves out of it) but a similar thing should be possible.

Heck, even in older games like Half-Life and its DLC's, all NPC's use exactly the same bones and animations. Even characters like Otis who is significantly fatter than anyone else (which was the joke I suppose) use exactly the same set of animations. Consider that in Half-Life games there are no cutscenes, any sequences you see are made out of proper animation sequences. (There was a scene in Blue Shift where a few NPC's running and a train crashing. All made using animations)

I realize House Party is somewhat more involved than some of these examples, but it should still work in a similar way given that it is still made out of a mesh.

As for "heated expectations" about House Party, point of contact or rather interaction as it were.. never exactly changes. So characters being slightly different shape compared to each other wouldn't or at least shouldn't effect much. Maybe it would be too much work when House Party is so close to the finish line, maybe you would find it unnecessary, but just thinking about the possibilities it opens up I am certain would be worth it in the end. Even CSC would benefit from it considering you wouldn't be stuck with the single body type you have now.

All I am saying is, please look into it. Even if it isn't fully possible for House Party, maybe it will be possible for Office Party.
erasmus wrote: Thu Nov 14, 2019 8:44 pm This might actually be the issue; not the bathroom itself per se, but a combination of the warp/recovery system AND being currently "engaged" with yourself while those systems are doing their thing, on top of the other events that take place when moving to the VR world. I'll look into it. Thanks again!
Glad I could help, even if it is in a small way. :)
peter980
Posts: 1601
Joined: Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:50 am

Re: A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

masterspanker wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 4:58 pmGames like Fallout 4 uses similar body altering techniques. You can create a character who is bulkier or thinner, you can be short or tall. But animation set is not any different between your options.
But the main difference with the House Party is that those anims need to synch when characters are in intimacy. Have some character taller, or gils being in high heels and you already have problem and characters are clipping over each other.

Fun fact:
Do you know that girl characters grow for around 5-10% during Make Out animation?
This is a kind of ugly hack that game uses so that kissing is correctly aligned and to solve issue with girl characters being smaller than men.
Unfortunately, it is also used during make outs between two girl characters, where it would not be unnecessary. Hopefully, that could be fixed in the future. But my guess is that is a single set of anims is used for both m2f and f2f make out, thus requiring such hacks.
masterspanker
Posts: 47
Joined: Fri May 10, 2019 8:34 am

Re: A review (kind of) and bug report for 0.15.5

peter980 wrote: Sat Nov 16, 2019 6:22 pm But the main difference with the House Party is that those anims need to synch when characters are in intimacy. Have some character taller, or gils being in high heels and you already have problem and characters are clipping over each other.

Fun fact:
Do you know that girl characters grow for around 5-10% during Make Out animation?
This is a kind of ugly hack that game uses so that kissing is correctly aligned and to solve issue with girl characters being smaller than men.
Unfortunately, it is also used during make outs between two girl characters, where it would not be unnecessary. Hopefully, that could be fixed in the future. But my guess is that is a single set of anims is used for both m2f and f2f make out, thus requiring such hacks.
Please refer back to my point about points of contact being the same no matter what. (Of course I was talking about intimacy.) Due to how bones, joints and animation works, no matter how tall a character is it should always match up. (Unless it is an extreme case of course. Just think about two bones, two pelvis bones coming together. Or a pelvis bone or some other bone. If you know what I mean.) Not to mention we are talking about a limited number characters here. It is not like there are two separate animations syncing and working together to create an intimacy scene, it is a single animation, just with different characters, so some additional trickery like you mentioned could be used for certain characters who's features are too extreme to make them work better. (Too tall or too short, that sort of thing. but you probably wouldn't even need that.) Also as I mentioned, I am not talking about anything too extreme here, just some small adjustments so not all characters have exactly the same body type. Nothing too game breaking. Which allows for more trickery like you mentioned without being too noticeable. As it is now, all characters have exactly the same body, only difference being their boob size, which makes exploring them all tinsy bit pointless, because what you are going to see is pretty much the same.
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