Graphical Glitches and Some Other Stuff

[masterspanker]

Hello,

I wanted to point out some of the things I was talking about in my other post. This doesn't include everything and I will update it when I have more.


Natty Lite bottle on the middle right side is clipping the back side of the cabinet. Also Natty Lite's inside this cabinet are fake unlike every other Natty Lite in the game, which is confusing. I honestly thought my save file got bugged at first. Fake bottles should either be removed, or replaced with real ones (that you can pick up and use)

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This picture speaks for itself, but allow me to summarize. Both of her feet is clipping trough the floor, her arms clipping both trough the floor and trough stairs, she is waving her right hand in the air for some odd reason (I know, I know) and there is this thing about her skirt... there are holes in it.
Except the holes, it isn't any different even when she is naked. Also, this isn't exclusive to Ashley, it seems most characters prefer to do it on the floor even when there is a bed right next to them, which doesn't help either.
(By the way, during the "remove my slippers" scene with Ashley, she jumps up in the air as soon as you remove her slipper, I thought I would point that out.)

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Your hand just floats in the air like this. It is the same for NPC's. I thought I would point it out.

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This isn't a glitch per se, but every other closet in the game except these two is real. If these could be utilized, they could be used in custom stories and it would help with the consistency. Same could be said for the kitchen cabinets.

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This isn't a graphical glitch either, but the picture above the bed in the master bedroom and the picture near the garage door is exactly the same. I would consider it a great favor to all of mankind if the one near the garage door could be replaced with something else.

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When you talk with Britney while she is sitting in her chair upstairs, she suddenly starts to wave her arms and hands and they clip trough the chair. And trough her breasts as well. Other characters don't wave their arms and hands like that while sitting, but the breast thing applies to all of them. (it is just most obvious with Britney, do to... how well well endowed she is)

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Sometimes NPC's will go back of the house and stare at the fence at either side of the house. (I didn't take a picture of the other side because it is a bit too dark) This isn't exclusive to Ashley.

I suppose it is a nice enough fence, but frankly I don't see the appeal.


This is it for now. I will post again when I have more.

[peter980]

Regarding Ashley scene something to point out:
When that piece of content was done, her ready pose was looking like cowgirl ready (kneeling with spread legs).

But few patches later intimacy animations got changed, and that pose, which was originally used for cunnilingus was replaced and laying down cunnilingus, getting this weird pose for Ashley start.

I do not know, why this was never replaced with some other pose. Maybe there was no time to touch this up, while it was worked on other content in the game.

Sometimes NPC's will go back of the house and stare at the fence at either side of the house. (I didn't take a picture of the other side because it is a bit too dark) This isn't exclusive to Ashley.

I suppose it is a nice enough fence, but frankly I don't see the appeal.

I think this is just side effect of NPC AI. They have waypoints they can roam to, but that just means getting to the location, not changing facings, if it would look silly.

[masterspanker]

Regarding Ashley scene something to point out:
When that piece of content was done, her ready pose was looking like cowgirl ready (kneeling with spread legs).

But few patches later intimacy animations got changed, and that pose, which was originally used for cunnilingus was replaced and laying down cunnilingus, getting this weird pose for Ashley start.

I do not know, why this was never replaced with some other pose. Maybe there was no time to touch this up, while it was worked on other content in the game.

It is strange to be sure. I am sure they will improve it in the future though. I just thought I would point it out.

I like the fact she doesn't outright remove her clothes and gives you an option to undress her though. Maybe they should just change the animation and keep that in.

I think this is just side effect of NPC AI. They have waypoints they can roam to, but that just means getting to the location, not changing facings, if it would look silly.

The fact that they would roam there for no reason whatsoever, with nothing and no one around is just weird. I just had a thought though, it wouldn't be as weird if they were going there to smoke, away from people. (Maybe Madison doesn't allow smoking in the house)

[eekdon]

We're aware of, well, all of this. They're just polish items that we have not had time to get to yet, or in 1-2 cases, intended. Opening up a closet, especially a small one for instance, may not be as easy OR as useful as you anticipate. The presence of space (assuming there is even usable space inside that any asset/model could utilize) does not mean it would be viable in a custom story. Same thing with the liquor bottles; they can't just be added into the Original Story on a whim. A lot of content is based around their scarcity as a resource, although yes, those may in fact be more easily enabled for custom stories than environmental changes.

Remember, there are 5-6 people that directly work on the game's content, art, writing, code, or development in Unity in general. *If* we can get to something, we will.

The animations we definitely intend on tweaking; it's a tedious process to get ALL of them tailored for individual characters.

And as for movetargets, as I believe Peter980 mentioned, they do not determine rotation. When a character reaches one, they will cease motion based on the direction from which they approached the movetarget. If there is nothing around to distract her or no NPC to talk to, she will not change her rotation. If you pushed Ashley to the corner of that fence so that she faced the firepit/dance room in the house, and then used the console to walk her to the outsidedarkrearcornerleft movetarget, she would stop at that same spot but face the firepit/dance room.

[masterspanker]

I understand and I honestly wouldn't blame anyone involved. It is a good game and I know lots of hard work is involved. I am just bringing up my thoughts here.


But I would like to argue on a few points if you don't mind. Ask yourself this; it is a party, does beer really need to be this scarce? (since most characters will not even drink them even if you give them)

Not to mention how random it is as a resource. You can collect 6 bottles of beer around the house, you can give them to Frank to earn his trust and when you loot his body later you either get a few back or none at all. (which was why I incorrectly stated that the bottles will be missing when you loot him, since I didn't know it was random) If it would be game breaking, why is it random in the first place? Why have those fake bottles there in the first place? Wouldn't it be better to have no fake (static) bottles there instead making it so that the player inexplicably unable to pick them up? (not to mention one of the bottles is placed halfway inside the wall)

Also about the movetargets, what I was talking about isn't a rotation issue at all. (though that would have helped) I am asking, why would they go there in the first place. There is absolutely nothing there. (though I just realized that would open up a whole new can of worms like why would they stand all by themselves in the garage doing nothing and why do they stand around doing nothing in the art room, so nevermind)

[masterspanker]

I have noticed another issue, I am sure this is already known and will be improved along with all other animation, but I just wanted to point it out. There is a weird clipping issue with some characters while doing cowgirl position.

Their heads will actually turn sideways in a weird way and their heads will clip trough their necks way up to their cheekbone. Probably because instead of bending their necks, they will bend their heads instead. Meanwhile their necks will be stiff and wont bend in any way, it almost looks like they are dolls with their heads attached as an afterthought. Looks incredibly weird.

I will post a screenshot when I can.

[eekdon]

Frank gathered up all the booze before you got to the party, and now he's guarding it. This is explained in the story by multiple characters. Frank will attack you any time you try to grab the "enabled" bottles and the player is too afraid of him to try and be sneaky about it unless he knows Frank is out of commission. So, prior to completely "disabling" Frank, that's a moot point, as they might as well be inaccessible. Their visible representation is confusing, but initially irrelevant. Now, afterwards, OR whenever Frank gives you permission to take them...sure, their inaccessibility makes a lot less sense. If and hopefully WHEN there is time, we can set up those bottles to be fully interactable, so a more cohesive treatment can be given to them.

If you haven't played around with how stories are made yet...it's all by hand. Re-imagining how all the alcohol in the house is handled, tweaking the existing stories around those changes, and getting that new system in a place where it can be easily expanded upon for future stories isn't a quick change. Especially while we're working on other content.

About the movetargets in the corner, they don't always go alone. There is an InviteToHang functionality built into roaming, so sometimes you will see two NPCs (who have built a good relationship based on backend coding and personality traits like "Nice" etc.) go off to talk. Sometimes this happens and those spots are nice departures from the crowded areas of the house. There are also situations in which certain characters roam but have a "WantsToBeAlone" state active, meaning they will roam around UNTIL alone, and such spots need to exist for this purpose.

Yeah, there are a number of unresolved minor clipping issues with intimacy animations. We'll have to tackle things like that later on.

[masterspanker]

Forgive me for saying so (seriously, you are one awesome dude) but your initial argument is both irrelevant and kind of ridiculous. I know how the story goes but when it comes to these stuff it makes absolutely no difference if it is at the beginning, middle or end of the story.

Timing of it is not in any way relevant because one way or another player will get access to those bottles. To give an extreme example (and these are completely made up), it is like saying "Sure, interacting with Vicky might crash your PC and brick your hard drive but it is initially irrelevant and a moot point until you text her." or like saying "You may get random crashes if you pick up the penguin, but it is initially irrelevant and a moot point until you get to that part of the Madison's story." (I did say these were extreme examples.. Especially the first one.)

Fact of the matter is, sooner or later the player will get to that point, be it texting Vicky, reaching a certain point in Madison's story or knocking out Frank to get to those bottles. When any of that happens makes absolutely no difference. Now I do realize we are not talking about a bug here, instead it was intentional. But think about it this way; you are playing a FPS game, one without regenerating health and you have to pick up health packs instead. (I am sure you played a similar game in the past, say Half-Life 2 for instance.) You have only 2 HP left, you direly need a health pack, you look all around and by chance you find one just in time. You try to pick it up and what is this? You can't, no matter what you do. It has to be a bug, right? The developers couldn't possibly have made the terrible decision of using a normally intractable object as a prop, as something a part of the scenery, right? I mean, wouldn't that piss you off, even if it is just a little?

It is somewhat the same with House Party, you are trying to find some alcohol to give one of the characters in the game, it is already a limited resource, you can see them in the cabinet, you finally manage to knock out or convince Frank, and you realize you can't because those bottles are not intractable. It has to be a bug, right?

This gets especially bad because sometimes even bottles that are supposed to be intractable can bug out. I know because the one on the shelf in the master bedroom became static (or rather stuck in place) after not picking it up for a while.

As I have never looked into how stories are made, I honestly do not know how difficult it might be to fix this, but if nothing else, can't you simply disable/delete them completely? (not that reducing the number of bottles would be a good idea when it is already too low for a party, but at least it would be better than as it is now.)

Anyway, I might be getting annoying at this point. I will not write about this any further to prevent that. Thank you for humoring me.

[eekdon]

It's neither of those things if you take what I said for what it is: a subjective way of interpreting a temporary, relatively minor situation caused by the shifting of development priorities, not a treatise on why their current state is "okay". Hence why I wrapped up that first paragraph by mentioning we'd like to make them interactable. Worst case, of course they can be disabled or just swapped out for more plates or empty bottles. The presence of a health pack, while not more or less complex in terms of placement or impact, is not the same as a plot item that's interwoven into multiple dialogues, quests, and between all six *already existing beers*, 140+ interactions. And yes, if someone used a prop model to also represent a health pack in a *finished game*, that would be ridiculous.

And it's not like we haven't already thought of this or had it brought to our attention ( https://imgur.com/ZhGNzQx is the first time I logged this in our newer QA system), it's just a) we got feedback some time ago that the cabinet looked stupid and so it was fluffed up a bit, and b) we have had much, much bigger fish to fry for some time, and still do.

[masterspanker]

It's neither of those things if you take what I said for what it is: a subjective way of interpreting a temporary, relatively minor situation caused by the shifting of development priorities, not a treatise on why their current state is "okay". Hence why I wrapped up that first paragraph by mentioning we'd like to make them interactable. Worst case, of course they can be disabled or just swapped out for more plates or empty bottles. The presence of a health pack, while not more or less complex in terms of placement or impact, is not the same as a plot item that's interwoven into multiple dialogues, quests, and between all six *already existing beers*, 140+ interactions. And yes, if someone used a prop model to also represent a health pack in a *finished game*, that would be ridiculous.

And it's not like we haven't already thought of this or had it brought to our attention ( https://imgur.com/ZhGNzQx is the first time I logged this in our newer QA system), it's just a) we got feedback some time ago that the cabinet looked stupid and so it was fluffed up a bit, and b) we have had much, much bigger fish to fry for some time, and still do.

Thank you dood. Sometimes I can't help but write walls of text about some.. shall we say "less than important" stuff.

You know, it is always good to know about these stuff.