RPG NTR [Makura cover soft] 魔剣士リーネ２/ Leane of Legitimate Crown (RJ194521)

[veraleth]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

It's like that old programming adage: Fix one error, ten more pops up.

I wonder though, did they bite off more than they can chew? I mean, at its core, it's still the same gameplay as their earlier games, so I guess all the new features are jumbling up their coding.

having looked through the code myself i can say there are at least a dozen stats that change the way you, the king, each girl, and each enemy general all interact with eachother in terms of dialogue and gameplay behavior.

and keep in mind there are quests and events, good and bad, that influence these stats, whether it's a flat number or a permanent rate bonus/penalty, AND these stats influence eachother. i'm less than a novice when it comes to these things but i would confidently use the term spaghetti code here.

the result is a more complex and dynamic game compared to the first one where everything generally played out the same every time. the trade-off here is that bug checking is probably a complete nightmare and just thinking about what he/they have to deal with gives me a headache.

that's probably why the last sentence in the update ponders simplifying things. hopefully they can get everything sorted because "simplifying things" would probably entail reprogramming everything.

 

[habisain]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

I did crack open the game a while back, and I wouldn't call it spaghetti code - spaghetti code is more to do with code structure after all, and what they have is pretty well structured. The actual issue is an emergent behavior one, and basically it appears to be that they didn't consider how the stats influence each other with regard to the H-scene unlock criteria, and how that makes certain requirements for scenes very hard to get.

So, for example, the King is most likely to request Ares's (the protagonists) love interest for Harem, and whilst in Harem, girls love for Ares is reduced and duty to the King increased (which is probably the main way to increase duty to the King). Further, note that the King's anger increases if a girl has high love for Ares, and that when the King is angry he may increase the number of concubines he requires beyond the maximum amount that can be supplied by a single location.

The combination of those rules means that any scene requiring high love for Ares is very hard to get. Once a girl gets high love for Ares, the King gets angry, increases the amount of concubines so that he hunts down one of the female generals, picks Ares's love interest, and shoves her in the Harem, thus reducing love for Ares. And I suspect that this pattern would repeat itself quite shortly after the girl is released from the Harem, making it hard to get high love to unlock scenes with Ares. This example doesn't even go into any potential scenes which require both high love for Ares and high duty to the King - these might even be impossible to get!

Or to put simply: what MakuraCoverSoft is trying to do here is procedurally triggered NTR. And the method which they've used has ended up having emergent properties which are unhelpful for an H-game.

 

[Gyron]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

These guys really need a producer.

 

[Merrill]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

I did crack open the game a while back, and I wouldn't call it spaghetti code - spaghetti code is more to do with code structure after all, and what they have is pretty well structured. The actual issue is an emergent behavior one, and basically it appears to be that they didn't consider how the stats influence each other with regard to the H-scene unlock criteria, and how that makes certain requirements for scenes very hard to get.

So, for example, the King is most likely to request Ares's (the protagonists) love interest for Harem, and whilst in Harem, girls love for Ares is reduced and duty to the King increased (which is probably the main way to increase duty to the King). Further, note that the King's anger increases if a girl has high love for Ares, and that when the King is angry he may increase the number of concubines he requires beyond the maximum amount that can be supplied by a single location.

The combination of those rules means that any scene requiring high love for Ares is very hard to get. Once a girl gets high love for Ares, the King gets angry, increases the amount of concubines so that he hunts down one of the female generals, picks Ares's love interest, and shoves her in the Harem, thus reducing love for Ares. And I suspect that this pattern would repeat itself quite shortly after the girl is released from the Harem, making it hard to get high love to unlock scenes with Ares. This example doesn't even go into any potential scenes which require both high love for Ares and high duty to the King - these might even be impossible to get!

Or to put simply: what MakuraCoverSoft is trying to do here is procedurally triggered NTR. And the method which they've used has ended up having emergent properties which are unhelpful for an H-game.

This is interesting. So could these issues be fixed by simply nerfing numbers or would it need to be rewritten?

 

[habisain]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

Swapping around numbers might help. If I recall correctly, the Kings anger goes down more when he sleeps with girls with a high love for Ares, which I think was intended to allow you to get girls out of the Harem easier (by lowering the Harem requirement). But I don't think that's working as intended because in the demo the King hardly ever changes the Harem requirements.

However, I do somehow doubt that changing the numbers will be enough. Obviously I don't know what the actual requirement numbers are, but emergent systems are hard. Maybe if one of the devs has a good grasp of Maths and Programming they could implement the required simulations needed to find the proper values, or someone with a good grasp of AI could try an AI storyteller system, but given time constraints I have a strong suspicion that simplification will be the name of the game.

 

[tanto]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

How long would it take fix the coding?

Did they make a big mess?

From what I understand the game can run but the H events don't trigger as often as they like it.

 

[lazycat]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

How long would it take fix the coding?

Did they make a big mess?

From what I understand the game can run but the H events don't trigger as often as they like it.

Fixing it - depends on what they do, but it's not a simple "change the number" sort of fix.

It's not a big mess, but it's something that they need to sit down and think on what to do.

Basically:
The more a girl love MC, the more likely the king will take her into harem, which drop the girl's love.
This makes trying to get the scene with high love very hard, because as you try to raise it back up, the king might pull her in harem again, causing a loop.

But it's not like there's any quick-fix solution either.
Reducing the point where the king get angry would either extend the problem to higher level scene, or if it's too far the king became negligible as NTR threat (because the love value is unlikely to get high enough to matter)

Making the love value not drop in harem would be somewhat against the point of it being NTR mechanic (also might cause different problem elsewhere)

So yeah, they need to find something to make the king still relevant as NTR threat, but not causing another one of these loop.

 

[moogles]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

Fixing it - depends on what they do, but it's not a simple "change the number" sort of fix.

It's not a big mess, but it's something that they need to sit down and think on what to do.

Basically:
The more a girl love MC, the more likely the king will take her into harem, which drop the girl's love.
This makes trying to get the scene with high love very hard, because as you try to raise it back up, the king might pull her in harem again, causing a loop.

But it's not like there's any quick-fix solution either.
Reducing the point where the king get angry would either extend the problem to higher level scene, or if it's too far the king became negligible as NTR threat (because the love value is unlikely to get high enough to matter)

Making the love value not drop in harem would be somewhat against the point of it being NTR mechanic (also might cause different problem elsewhere)

So yeah, they need to find something to make the king still relevant as NTR threat, but not causing another one of these loop.

Don't think its too big of an issue...

could just make the king, move around slower so he doesn't capture a girl as fast. so that later in the game, you can just move your girl far off remote place, and move her/them around to avoid the king.

That way someone can't just rush the cg at the start, and at the same time, later in the game they aren't panicking to move their girls around while fighting and still able to get the cg's.

 

[lazycat]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

Don't think its too big of an issue...

could just make the king, move around slower so he doesn't capture a girl as fast. so that later in the game, you can just move your girl far off remote place, and move her/them around to avoid the king.

That way someone can't just rush the cg at the start, and at the same time, later in the game they aren't panicking to move their girls around while fighting and still able to get the cg's.

Then you still run into the problem of not being able to raise the girl's love because you have to keep her constantly on the run, and you can only interact with the girls at the same node as you.

 

[Mikufanboy]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

The very first demo had it so the king would move slowly after a girl. It made it possible to perform loops in a circle so he would never catch your girls.

Personally, I think they should just remove the higher and lower difficulties and keep it at a moderate setting. Many games do that for a number of technical reasons, and since this is an H game there's always going to be a need to see Hentai above just playing a challenging game. They can always make a harder difficulty option in a later update or in a New game+.

 

[habisain]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

you can just move your girl far off remote place, and move her/them around to avoid the king.

As well as what Lazycat points out, with it making it hard to raise Love for Ares, when the King sends out guards for a girl just running away doesn't cut it. There's actually been quite a lot of thought put into the AI, and they're fairly good at blocking all routes of escape, and so will normally manage to catch the girl they're after.

The best you can do I think is sending a female general on an infiltration mission makes them an invalid target, so you could do this whenever the King goes hunting for a victim. But that pushes you into capture-by-enemy NTR, especially for the female generals which are no good at infiltration. In some ways it's a fairly neat system, or at least when you think about it on paper.

In practice however, it just looks like it wasn't working in the way that they thought it would. I do hope they can get it sorted out though. I've always been curious about complex system H-games, and Leane 2's mix of the complex systems and general H-scenes is something I would like to see work.

 

[tanto]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

I see so the delay would be mostly due to them needing to discuss which direction the gameplay should go.

Fixing or changing the parameters wouldn't actually take that long.

Been three years since the announcement of this game. Didn't realise it has been that long.

 

[habisain]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

I see so the delay would be mostly due to them needing to discuss which direction the gameplay should go.

Fixing or changing the parameters wouldn't actually take that long.

Did you not read the previous posts? They know which direction they want the game to go in. The problem is that what they've implemented doesn't work, because the systems have ended up with an emergent behaviour that prevents getting to the H-scenes. This constitutes a hard design problem, and depending on what they decide to do to fix it, could cause fairly hefty delays.

 

[tanto]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

I did and to my understanding based on their decision it could be a quick fix if they choose to simplify things or a difficult long wait.

 

[itzaguy]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

New postscript up, its pretty funny. Says yeah that problem i reported on is not as bad as I thought it was. So please wait until I contact you again.

*SLOW CLAP*

Dis guy wins the blue balls boy who cried wolf award for the century.

Also banner on the main game page is changed to January. But no day.

 

[habisain]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

Eh, I've been in that situation before myself, where a bug appears really bad but the fix turns out to be easy enough. So barring any other bugs, it looks like some tweaks to the parameters were enough, and there wasn't anything fundamentally broken with the system that needed huge effort to fix. If time permits though, I probably will crack it open when it's released to see if anything changed since the demo, because I'm like that.

As to my earlier pessimism, while it was unfounded in this case, I still think it was warranted. With what I knew and what was being described in the original blog post, it certainly sounded bad, and given this dev's history all the pessimism in the world is justified. I still wouldn't believe the "January" claim until it's actually released.

 

[Merrill]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

Hahah, after that last update I was like "Oh god if they have to change the systems around we won't get another update for weeks if not months."

 

[batto0]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

It tells it all I tell You...

 

[vera12]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

It tells it all I tell You...

seems legit

 

[dartred]

Re: [Makura cover soft|SLG]Leane of Legitimate Crown

leane was advertised in decembers 2D dream comic magazine.

it says it's a special event. with what i think may be a guide on how to get it, but i can't read japanese.