Succubus Stories - Improvements in 2021

Happy New Year, everyone! 

You know, 2021 wasn't a whole lot better than 2020. I'm sure for a lot of people it was the same or worse. It was worse for me, personally, as some of you likely know. We've gotta be almost out of this thing, though. Hang in there. I don't know what it is, but since about mid-November I've had an optimistic feeling. That's really not indicative of anything; I'm not one to get premonitions or anything like that, but I hope we'll be out of this thing soon. Maybe by summertime this damn virus will be nothing but a wretched memory. Anyway.

In January of 2021, I made a "postmortem," a critique of my own game, along with a list of items that I felt could be improved in the game in the future. We will do another similar postmortem in a couple weeks, but before that, I wanted to look at the conclusions I reached in January 2021, and compare them to how the game looks now, a year later in January 2022, and see what changes were made and whether we managed to improve in some of these areas.

Let's see what I've managed to accomplish.

The encounter interface could be improved, particularly the placement of buttons.

Off to a great start. No real improvement was made the UI of the encounter system. Yikes. This is something I still want to try to address, though. Hopefully I'll have good news to report on this front in 2023.

The interface lacks color and texture, though is very readable and clean.

This was addressed. The interface is now much more colorful; the colors are muted, but there. And I have added some much needed texture to it as well. I'm rather pleased with the overall look in terms of color and texture, and I don't think I sacrificed any readability, either!

The game’s art could be improved through better lighting and framing, but these are skills I need to develop.

I think realistically the second art set is the solution here. It is simply not worth my time to go back and re-render all the 3D art at this point. I'll continue to try to get better at making renders for the sake of future artwork, but I don't have any intention to do any more big overhauls when it comes to art. However, the old art was all run through a denoiser and upscaled and otherwise improved. 

Remember this comparison from June?

Random events and scene content in encounters can grow repetitive. The brute force solution is to have more content by hiring additional content writers. I can also make system-level improvements to prevent some repetition.

Content writers are not happening. I could write an entire post about how that situation went, and I may. I did try to hire content writers, but it wound up being a huge waste of time.

Hopefully mods will help add more content to the game. I also hope to commission some modders from the community and pay them to make new game content in the form of mods, though I'm not committing to that course of action. Something like a mod jam or contest could be fun too, if there's enough interest in mods.

As far as system-level improvements or random events, this may not be needed anymore. I've actually moved away from random events as the primary means of content delivery; activities have largely replaced events. Activities feature a great deal more user control, and so aren't subject to the same issues. Events do remain in the game and some new playlists for events will probably be added in the future, so I may yet add the discussed improvements, like repeat protection, but for now, I think the game is in a good place in terms of content; both in variety of content and in how much control players have over the content they want to experience.

Partners in sexual encounters should have more personality and uniqueness in their preferences and actions. Some dynamic elements could also help spice up encounters.

Some progress on this has been made. Crowds were added this year as an actor during sexual encounters; new traits and special abilities were added, and sex acts chosen by the player now have basic properties that can help in future system improvements. Further changes will be made to make the upcoming brothel mode function, like giving NPCs special powers and abilities. I also intend to try to make partners that have more personality in what they like and don't like, and I'd love to make potion use and other options possible in the encounter system in some way.

So this is a mix; some major changes and improvements have been made, but I'd say I still have a lot more work to do.

Character progression for traits and social skills is a bit boring and maybe a bit too under-the-hood. Possible solutions are to improve the UI for traits and lay them out like a proper tree. For social skills, I could let the player have more direct control and input on their development.

I think the introduction of advanced traits largely fixes this. In v0.12, trait progression will also be made faster and the UI for traits will be improved (though not laid out in a tree structure). 

Social skills continue to be an issue; I feel that they often aren't as useful as potions, and exist in sort of a weird place in the game. I want to try to improve how they work so they'll be a more viable and interesting option, but I'm not sure how.

Character progression with regard to alchemy needs a total redesign. I may make a post dedicated to just this topic to collect feedback sometime in the future (probably for $10 tier patrons).

This was done this year, in v0.9. Shaper-tier patrons were indeed polled, and chose between a system where potions had different XP values based on how hard they were to make, with simple potions eventually being worth less and less XP (even reaching 0 XP eventually) as you advance, or a system where potions existed in different "classes" and each class of potion had its own independent XP level. Ultimately the former was chosen and implemented into the game.

I want to improve the presentation of the player character in the story to walk the line between acting as an established character and providing player agency. I think right now the player is leaning a bit too hard toward the former, with too many stretches of content with little interactivity in some more recent story segments and requests.

If I'm perfectly honest, I feel like this situation has not improved. I am constantly finding myself in situations where I feel I have to railroad the player into the next event. An improved level of flexibility and interaction is something I still want to strive for.

The story itself is fairly non-linear, but there are stretches where the player just follows a set path with little actual interaction, even if their choices are being accounted for. It's harder than it looks to keep the level of interaction high, and I will continue to try to improve in this area.

How do I feel about the game now?

The 2020 postmortem was a way for me to critique my own game as it existed in January 2021. I think what we have now in January 2022 is a vastly different, and vastly improved, game. It's not perfect, though--far from it. I will be releasing my 2021 postmortem in the next few weeks, and in that post I'll critique my game again and make a new list of things I want to try to improve in the future.

Before I do that, though, I want to get the modding documentation finished and get some patrons working on mods to test mod tools! I've mentioned it before, but if you want to be involved or help out, join the discord and send me a direct message or ping me on the server!

I also didn't update the task board during the development of v0.11 because I changed my plans at the last minute, focusing on the masturbation content instead of the Rais romance and chapter 4 story content because I wanted to try to get it out before the holidays. I intend to update the task board for v0.12 soon, so expect a post about that soon as well!

Talk more soon!