fun fact, the R with a circle in it is the "registered trademark icon," "TM" is for unregistered trademarks. those are not the same as copyrights.
a quick search reveals that there is no such trademark, and the results indicate that "town girls" is, in fact, too generic to trademark. all examples have one further description. example: "new town girls."
working through this new patch:
most merchant spots are seemingly fixed, but i still have two hairdressers at the same time.
things seem to be working out better in the strip club, but multiple people still get caught on the stripper poles. also had one NPC "halfway stuck" on one of the sex spots on the side of the stage - their bottom half was stuck, but their top half was in the walk cycle.
i think the NPC is getting pushed slightly inside the geometry of the stage.
the payout from prostitution is still wildly variable, and averaging 12-20 bc, with all upgrades. payouts in the 100-200 range have happened, but not very often.
i have identified the main problem with NPCs keeping schedules: NPCs only fully process while they are within render range. as an example, most of the population was pregnant. it took me two or three days to get over the vendor alley. when i first went there, almost everyone left to go visit the doctor. a huge crowd had to visit her at the same time. also, the vendors near the strip club do not have beds in range, so to get them to come back you have to get within range of their bed, let them sleep, wait for them to decide to go on shift again, and follow them back to their station.
all decorations and lighting for the second floor of the strip club are occluded at the top of the stairs, leaving nothing but mattresses and bare geometry. the player apartment does not seem to be affected, though.
i'll be testing out the army route in the coming days.
just wondering, will the next update contain more than cosmetics?
not that getting more is bad, but we already have perhaps the most flexible character creator in these kinds of games. and new cosmetics don't really provide a reason to play.
i mean, i'll do a level and get the new position, make a new NPC using the new parts, and that'll take all of an hour.
now, take this with a grain of salt, because i personally hate programming UIs, but you are not really limited by the size of the dialog menu. instead of multiple buttons, you could use a single dropdown, for example. or a "slider" with several "notches."
just the two options would be sufficient, though.
not a bad demo, though my tastes focus more on the management aspect than the visual novel (no offense, there are just. so. many.)
i have one criticism in that it's not really fun to generally wake up so early and have to wait one or two time periods. i suggest an option for wake up time when you go to sleep, (rest [current sleep, perhaps slightly shorter,] sleep till morning, and sleep till fully rested.)
i encountered two or three bugs. the possible one is that the talk menu tutorial played for a second time, and the tutorial conversation does not account for returning the earring previously, if repeated.
after completing the tutorial conversation a second time, the dialong box got stuck while empty, and the time of day changed. went to main menu and reloaded for the "oh, it's late" animation and text to play correctly.
after the "reward" scene, and the text after leaving the tent, the presumed end of the demo, another empty dialog box is stuck on screen. reloading from the menu does not fix it, which is why i presume it is the end of the demo.
i'll be watching this as it develops, and providing your steam plans do not preclude selling it here, i'll be buying it here.
some of more bugs:
stairs not inside of "first club" have a high chance to have their collision mess up, such that it becomes very hard to climb them without a lot of running and jumping. this happens most often at the other club.
having body physics enabled during character creation really messes with how boobs sit, making it appear that hardly any changes made have any sort of effect. this goes away once ingame, leading to some very unexpected body stuff.
i solicited an NPC, they led me to a danger zone, then assaulted me before going into the normal prostitution routine. this could be a neat gameplay addition if there were some clue this might happen.
sexual assault on you should not eject random bits of your body equipment. it is incredibly irritating to have to find and reequip everything that might have gotten tossed off.
sure you know this one, but there is no natural end to pregnancy (you must get it removed at the clinic) and NPCs never have an end. oh, and the player does not seem able to impregnate any NPCs. there IS a big in the pregnancy counter, as displayed by the save game menu. i've had two pregnancies, but it's displaying at at least 4 right now.
very interesting concept. pretty solid foundation. first bugs:
time of day, sun position, and NPC schedules seem to get severely desynched with day/ night cycle enabled.
sex spots in the main strip club seem to permanently entrap NPCs sometimes.
the optional "take down" route to complete the army combat tutorial does not seem to function.
multiple NPCs try to be vendors at the same station. i've got like 5 hair stylists occupying the same space, and about the same number across the street at the actual vendor's. only 4 at the spot outside the strip club, but they've vanished as their schedules broke.
a lot of characters never go "off duty," so you can never sex them. vendors are the most egregious, while on duty they ask you to meet them where they live, but off duty they claim to be working.
sarah and the roomate seem to have vanished. war, the strip club owner, and the story character in the slums are still around, though.
there are some spots where loot spawned by searching trash can fall and not be targetable.
next - design choices:
sex skills are slightly backwards. in addition, the fact that most skills are tuned to gain more exp faster is counterproductive. the only purpose for your character to cum faster is gaining exp. what's more, there's a limited number of skills, and having unspent points seems to provide no benefit. currently, once you've gotten all the sex skills, two or three of your skills lose all value they had.
the crosshair is a bit too precise in most instances.
i like the color coded hair thing, but it's more than a bit odd that none of these colors are presets at the stylist.
assets need to be given better descriptive names, especially the hair list. and speaking of the hair list, it is very aggravating to have to click and scroll the dropdown every time. i'd really like the functionality that standard dropdowns have, where when it is the active element, you can change the selection with the arrow keys.
there is no way to see player stamina outside of sleeping. this should be on the hud.
some constraints need to be placed on random NPC body generation. not a whole lot, and not very strict. just enough to stop things short before you get boobs that could function as flathead/ slotted screwdrivers, as an example.
ah, not the title i was expecting for something constantly called "the walkthrough."
having read it, though, the problem remains. the walkthrough simply says to "free slaves." where is this an option? does it mean "eject slave cargo?"
i also glanced through the nimhe section, and the "hacked door" thing i'm missing did not jump out at me.
this topic is not meant to come off as defending the status, more as to inform people as to a workaround. the dev has up till now been fairly consistent with releasing updates every ~3 months for keep her. the exception being right now, as it seems raid her has received most of the dev time this cycle.
this means there's a real chance that barring hotfixes, this version is going to be the version we're dealing with for the next ~3 months.
edit: also, you cannot kill currently, but if you deplete an enemy's mind, they will break and attempt to flee.
masturbate the first chance you get. from character menu -> needs.
the process regenerates your mind points, lifting the status.
there's also an upgrade you can take that passively regenerates mind points, which also trivializes the status.
sex acts with another character also regenerate mind points, but when crying you cannot really initiate those. therefore, you gotta do it manually.
mind should automatically be regenerating. if it's not, you've got someone with the "scary" trait wandering around lowering everyone's mind. or you're in a "stuck pregnancy and people on the overworld" bug.
now, these days there's actually some reason to want characters to have low mind. there's a whole "cry" line of attacks that require ythe user to be crying.
if that's not something you want, get rid of all "scary" servants, and just use mind potions. they're cheap and pop up in the store often enough, and are also craftible i believe, but buying is by far the preferred option.
1) i believe it's the leftmost icon on the bottom right, next to the servant list and inventory/ shop. along with the options to summon either an imp or hobgoblin servant, there's also the option to open a submenu where you get a list of heroes that you can use gems to summon.
gems are the "currency" the altar uses. you can get them as a reward for defeating heroes, by chance when a servant walks into the altar room, and i believe they are an objective you can send servants into the overworld for.
2) what? of course you can. personally, i find that having more than one servant wandering without a job is overkill. the only servant that matters is the one in the chokepoint from the entrance of the dungeon, the one that's going to be actually fighting. you're probably not going to be invaded more than once in the time it takes for an overworld mission to complete. well, unless you instigate the invasion yourself, of course.
everyone else, everyone who actually has a job, is already earning EXP (though at a fairly slow rate unless you happen to have both traits for exp gain on the servant,) and all that extra gold you'll eventually find you have is best spent on buying the exp crystal items. this, combined with sending servants out on missions is more than EXP enough to keep most of the dungeon on pretty even footing. with a steady rate of progress, even.
gotta say, i really like how the last three updates have changed the game together.
an idea for a future improvement: while i do enjoy the way training is actually interactive now, an "auto-gym" option would probably be a good idea. both as a toggle for those who want to skip the "tedium" of the minigames, and as some kind of improvement in the game.
the way i see it, the toggle could give you slightly below average returns, and the upgrade would give average gains. this way it'd still be an advantage for toggle users to buy the upgrade.
