discussion Ren'Py [Koikatsu] Kaedama [0.12.0] [Kaeru]

[i_patchy]

Really really really weird design decision that... that doesnt really have any point and dont add any supposed interactivity. You are just prompting commands that dev expects you to prompt, like in ancient text based adventure games. IMO should be redone with conventional VN choice based interface.

 

[Someoneman]

Cool idea and would work if a LOT of time was put in and a lot of surveys were filled out on what responses people would give to each question. Sadly that is very unlikely. Your easily going to end up geting misunderstood or not being able to say what you want in most situations. For example, Girl asks me if I'm getting a boba tea drink like her. My responce "Never had boba". Her interpriation: "Why don't you like boba".

Again, it would be cool if it was a seamless playthough without weird moments but that would only possibly happen if I was chating with an AI. I also hate missing scenes or choices that I would like to see. I don't like having to replay a game for what MIGHT be something I want to see. Thats just me though.

 

[asdfg-79t]

Cool idea and would work if a LOT of time was put in and a lot of surveys were filled out on what responses people would give to each question. Sadly that is very unlikely. Your easily going to end up geting misunderstood or not being able to say what you want in most situations. For example, Girl asks me if I'm getting a boba tea drink like her. My responce "Never had boba". Her interpriation: "Why don't you like boba".

Again, it would be cool if it was a seamless playthough without weird moments but that would only possibly happen if I was chating with an AI. I also hate missing scenes or choices that I would like to see. I don't like having to replay a game for what MIGHT be something I want to see. Thats just me though.

thats not just you

 

[frees]

I do still want to say that I appreciate the dev trying something new. It's always good that people try something new. Some things work and some things don't, though. And unfortunately this doesn't.

 

[Kaeru]

Firstly, let me thank everyone who has been giving feedback in here so far. Since it wasn't uploaded by me and I only found this place a few days ago, I apologise for not being able to respond to all your criticism and questions. Firstly, it's still very much a demo, so certain inputs aren't going to work, every update, I'll try to improve and add more to the recognized inputs a player might put in.

interesting concept but needs to be deeper than YES or NO

Not exactly sure what you mean here, because every question allows you to say other things than just yes or no. And quite a few questions have different responses to whatever you might say.

so some other things you can do

when kumi visits you you can

Spoiler

hug

or

Spoiler

pat head

not sure if it changes game play at all tho

and the one hidden thing

Spoiler

you can drink the last of the one girls coffee then later at school lunch you can drink some more of her coffee

but again i dont know if that really does anything unless pretendin to drink coffee gets you off

It's definitely a slow game, so your choices don't have a massive impact so far, however as the story progresses, the things you say or do have bigger consequences. Of course, there are only about 3 days in the game, so you're not going to see a massive change in attitude from any character.

after reading the comments above can some one make a multiple choice mod for this ASAP because im not gonna type out answers or questions just to have it not advance because i didnt type the coded options the dev has but refused to display.

I'm sorry if there were any inputs you tried that didn't work. If you could tell me so I can fix it, that would be tremendous. As for a needing a multiple choice mod, I don't ever plan on adding one. Kaedama requires the player to either respond as themselves or answer with that they think a character might like. And don't stress about giving a wrong response, you won't get locked out of a route for giving a bad answer one time.

 

[Kaeru]

Really really really weird design decision that... that doesnt really have any point and dont add any supposed interactivity. You are just prompting commands that dev expects you to prompt, like in ancient text based adventure games. IMO should be redone with conventional VN choice based interface.

Thank you for the feedback, however a conventional VN choice based system is way too limited for this game. Every answer you give will influence the story later on. You can be mean, flirtatious, dismissive, weird, etc. And some questions have 50+ different responses based on what you decide to put in and they all influence the story later on.

Cool idea and would work if a LOT of time was put in and a lot of surveys were filled out on what responses people would give to each question. Sadly that is very unlikely. Your easily going to end up geting misunderstood or not being able to say what you want in most situations. For example, Girl asks me if I'm getting a boba tea drink like her. My responce "Never had boba". Her interpriation: "Why don't you like boba".

Again, it would be cool if it was a seamless playthough without weird moments but that would only possibly happen if I was chating with an AI. I also hate missing scenes or choices that I would like to see. I don't like having to replay a game for what MIGHT be something I want to see. Thats just me though.

Thank you for telling me, I'm gonna put that in in the next update. Of course, it's still early on in development, so yeah, I'm trying to improve wherever I can in terms of available inputs. And don't worry about missing scenes, you're very unlikely going to miss out a massive scene, because you gave a wrong input. However, it's all going to influence the story later on.
Shame to hear it's not for you, but I still appreciate you trying it out.

 

[i_patchy]

Thank you for the feedback, however a conventional VN choice based system is way too limited for this game. Every answer you give will influence the story later on. You can be mean, flirtatious, dismissive, weird, etc. And some questions have 50+ different responses based on what you decide to put in and they all influence the story later on.

- as i said - it reminds me more of an old text adventures currently, as i often got a response - what? As a non native english speaker it could be hard to prompt absolutely correct commands. And as for prompts matter in the long run... well... i remember Dragon Age 2.... similar feature didnt added much to that game... and it was AAA RPG... not an indie AVN. I also remember numerous AVN's with big plans.... that got crushed by said big plans.

What i can say is... good luck with your game, i hope your vision is clear and you will achieve desired results with your work.

 

[Kaeru]

- as i said - it reminds me more of an old text adventures currently, as i often got a response - what? As a non native english speaker it could be hard to prompt absolutely correct commands. And as for prompts matter in the long run... well... i remember Dragon Age 2.... similar feature didnt added much to that game... and it was AAA RPG... not an indie AVN. I also remember numerous AVN's with big plans.... that got crushed by said big plans.

What i can say is... good luck with your game, i hope your vision is clear and you will achieve desired results with your work.

Ah yeah, I remember the dialogue wheel in Dragon Age 2, you are correct there, it wasn't really that meaningful, so much that I only remember small tidbits of it.
Only time can tell whether it's a failure or a success. So far, my plans are clear and I know exactly how the system will work and how it will affect future content.
Thank you again and I hope I'm able to make you change your mind in a future update.

 

[Kaeru]

I'd like to give everyone on here a small update based following all the the feedback I've received on here and a few other sites. I take it all in and I appreciate every criticism I've gotten so far, so thank you very much. Going through all of them, there is a very common theme and the complaints can be boiled down to these three points.

• The player input system is confusing.
  This is the one I've heard most frequently. I've started reworking the tutorial to elaborate on how the system works, how your responses will impact a Love Interest's affection and I'll make it more clear what types of inputs will work in given situations.
  
  
• I'd like a guide/walkthrough or a way to see which answers increase affection.
  I am sorry to announce there is not going to be an easy walkthrough to rush through Kaedama. The game is heavily dependent on a player being able to interpret body language, read between the lines and guess what a character might like to hear, just like in real life. So there is not going to be a clear "Character's affection increased by 1 point" screen. It's worth noting that you are not going to be locked out of a route for saying the wrong thing once either, they're very forgiving characters, so respond as you'd respond in real life.
  However, I will make a guide for one character and release it with the next update that will highlight what to look out for and how to react. Hopefully this will make it more clear how to approach my characters.
  
  
• Inputs I put in give the wrong response or are not recognized.
  I'm going to redo the entire system and recognized prompts to expand the list and make sure characters aren't reacting wrong.

I will focus on these three points and try my best to get a hotfix out there as soon as I possible can.
If you have any other feedback/tips, you can DM me on here or on Discord(I also share screenshots of new scenes and minor spoilers for things I'm working on)

Thank you all again for the extremely helpful feedback and giving Kaedama a chance.

Spoiler

Also, I've got a

You must be registered to see links

for anyone interested in helping out.

 

[cirdon]

Kaedama uses a special player-based input system, where you can respond however you see fit.

Only so many responses can be coded for, so this is a horrible idea and should revert to menus with all the choices that are coded for.

I hate trying to guess what possibilities are coded for in order to advance in a good direction.

 

[Kaeru]

Only so many responses can be coded for, so this is a horrible idea and should revert to menus with all the choices that are coded for.

I hate trying to guess what possibilities are coded for in order to advance in a good direction.

Thank you for your feedback and I'm sorry to hear it's not to your liking.
I believe a menu with choices is too limited and quite boring to be frank. In here you can glean certain information based on their responses, you would not get with a choice menu. And since a lot of questions have a wild variety of answers you can give, it would require a choice menu with 40+ options, which would be rather jarring to look at.
As far as good direction guessing goes, I made the questions rather straight forward and most characters have their emotions on their sleeve, so it shouldn't be too difficult to guess what response they want to hear.

Additionally, Kaedama does not require you to give the perfect response each time, the characters are very forgiving and making the "bad choice" a couple of times will not lock you of any route.

 

[cirdon]

I was more taking it from a coding and more importantly code maintenance perspective.

 

[Kaeru]

I was more taking it from a coding and more importantly code maintenance perspective.

It's honestly not that much trouble coding wise. It works with a basic synonym system, so it's not that intense or anything. Only requires me to pick and choose which words should trigger a similar response.

 

[JAMK]

Every answer you give will influence the story later on. You can be mean, flirtatious, dismissive, weird, etc. And some questions have 50+ different responses based on what you decide to put in and they all influence the story later on.

I don't know if you understand how much of a nightmare that is gonna be in the future, unless this is going to be either a short game or a very linear game where your choices doesn't have that much impact outside of i want this girl in the harem or not

 

[JAMK]

Cool idea and would work if a LOT of time was put in and a lot of surveys were filled out on what responses people would give to each question. Sadly that is very unlikely. Your easily going to end up geting misunderstood or not being able to say what you want in most situations. For example, Girl asks me if I'm getting a boba tea drink like her. My responce "Never had boba". Her interpriation: "Why don't you like boba".

Again, it would be cool if it was a seamless playthough without weird moments but that would only possibly happen if I was chating with an AI. I also hate missing scenes or choices that I would like to see. I don't like having to replay a game for what MIGHT be something I want to see. Thats just me though.

This exactly, it's a very ambitious idea that is going to need a LOT of work and dedication to make the responses not just feel natural but have an impact in the future

 

[Kaeru]

This exactly, it's a very ambitious idea that is going to need a LOT of work and dedication to make the responses not just feel natural but have an impact in the future

All valid points and I understand the point of this seeing very ambitious and perhaps a little crazy for a one-man team. However, so far I know which direction I'm going with, I've got a big list of variables to track everything and by using rather simplistic questions, it's not too straining to difficult to write script/code for.
Thank you for giving Kaedama a chance.

 

[Impregnocon]

so i see there is a dynamic response system but how deep does it go?
And what kind of tags can we expect to see in the future?

 

[Kaeru]

so i see there is a dynamic response system but how deep does it go?
And what kind of tags can we expect to see in the future?

It goes pretty deep and they'll remember important things. For example, if you tell Akane that you've never had milktea before, she'll remember that. However if you tell her something specific like that chai is your favourite, she won't remember the specific flavour, only that you do like it.
I guess the tags here aren't updates well enough, but you can expect things such as corruption, sexual assault/abuse

Spoiler

There's a little of that in there already

, more standard vanilla tags, but nothing too crazy. No NTR, cheating, scat, inflation, impregnation or any other crazy tags like that.

 

[stevetheegg]

Big credit to the dev for trying something different. That being said, this reminds me of those old adventure games where every action needed to be typed in which were very tedious to play. What's more, while there is more freedom in interactions driven by open text, those interactions can seem even more artificial and immersion-breaking when the player runs into "error" responses because the input isn't recognized by the game.

Good luck on the game!

 

[Kaeru]

Big credit to the dev for trying something different. That being said, this reminds me of those old adventure games where every action needed to be typed in which were very tedious to play. What's more, while there is more freedom in interactions driven by open text, those interactions can seem even more artificial and immersion-breaking when the player runs into "error" responses because the input isn't recognized by the game.

Good luck on the game!

Thanks for giving Kaedama a chance. And a very valid point, I can totally see the immersion breaking when it's an input that should work or when a character reacts inappropriately to whatever input you've tried. I try my best to include and fix wherever possible, but since it's all hard coded, there might always be some ones I miss.
If there were any you tried and wanted to see included, let me know, I'll make sure they get added.