Neon Dreams

Got it - good point. Still - if I move the point back at least there will be randomization? I don’t know - at that point, I see the value of a story mode where you assume Lynx is a 1337 hacker and can just breeze through it all for the sake of narrative. Do I choose to do that or do a balance?

That’s a hypothetical question - I genuinely think games are rewarding when they’re balanced and reward effort with result. Due to the genre, I think I’m failing as a dev if people feel like they have to save before a minigame, but also think I’m failing if it’s so easy it’s boring, making balance difficult. The games are supposed to be fun and lighthearted, not some crazy intense must-memorize-pattern-to-succeed type thing.

All that said, I am glad you didn’t have to upgrade hacking to succeed. I’m feeling like I’m crazy sometimes because of all the difficulty issues. Honestly, I tuned it back for the release and thought it would be easy - I thought it was. But I’m trying to balance to an audience of varied reaction time and coordination level. If I were a genius, I could correlate skill during the games to dynamically adjust difficulty, but I’m just one anonymoose doing this for fun! :rofl:

As someone who also didn’t have difficulty issues, would the game being too easy have been a detriment to your experience?

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No, but I’m not really playing the genre to be challenged, although I don’t mind it as long as the challenge wouldn’t become cumbersome. It wouldn’t matter the difficulty to me if it was not overly restrictive.

If you want to offer the players a way to be challenged in this format on genre I think it’s better to have difficulties or challenge modes. A “hard mode” could be added to make the deadlines tighter and the games harder if that’s what you want to do but you won’t please everyone with one approach. I think a lot of players what to experience the narrative and are okay with moderate difficulty in the minigames.

If choose to go in a way to try to make sure the games have a certain challenge it would be best to offer an alternative to skip the mini game or “story mode” setting for people not wanting that in my opinion. With all that said it’s alot of work maybe more work than trying to find the right balance for the difficulty of the mini games to please the most people.

“Save scumming” or using a save to a players advantage happens in a lot of games and you can discourage abusing saves or other factors to try to deter players but I honestly don’t think it’s worth trying to make a player, play a certain way personally.

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I mean, the main PC isn’t voiced (unless he’s really fucking quiet), so it’s not like there isn’t precedent there. If you just wanted voice Iris, I think it would work just fine as is. But I also think that most of these other voices could work in some capacity or another if you really wanted to put the work in.

To be honest, I didn’t even realize there was voice acting in this game during my first playthrough, since I usually play these with the sound low and read pretty quickly. Looking back, your Iris comes off as perfectly fine and your voice for Genesis is distinct enough for them to both work in the same scene together. Celeste is somewhat similar to Genesis, but since they don’t share any scenes together it also works as is.

Ember is just… off somehow. She’s obviously meant to come off as intimidating at the beginning of the story and your definitely trying to go darker with her voice, but there just isn’t any real… menace to her. I think she comes off as trying too hard to be actually threatening. I wonder if you might want to try a different accent with her, both to distinguish her from the other characters and give her a bit more to grab onto in terms of character. I don’t even think it needs to be a good accent, since I think it would fit Ember’s character to fake an accent to uphold her multiple identities as an upstanding businesswoman for the public, a motherly caretaker for the brothel and a unfeeling crimeboss for the Council.

And the less said about the Bouncer, the better, in my opinion. It sounds like you used a voice modulator to try to artificially deepen your voice, but it makes it sound like a little kid trying to act tough over a phone call. I’m wondering if you might want to try talking normally but with a bit of husk in your voice, like if you tried to go for a Butch Biker Chick rather than Pete Clemenza.

Now, a big problem with one person voicing everyone is that it is much more difficult to react to the other character’s performance (unless you’re some kind of Freak like Billy West who can switch between a bunch of distinct voices on a dime), which I think is a major factor in what makes acting “work”.

The main problem I can think of with the voices is the volume balance, not just in Mic Gain, but also in how the characters are actually speaking. Human beings will always subconsciously try to find an optimal level of how loud to talk depending on their environment and try to match the energy who they’re talking to. Ember always speaks like she’s whispering, so it would make sense for Iris to lower her voice slightly when talking to her. Celeste is bright and bubbly, so it would make sense for other characters to talk slightly more loudly and appear slightly happier when interacting with her. Again, hard to do with just one person.

Apart from that, all I can really recommend is keep practicing different voices. The best VA’s steal judiciously, so try impressions your favorite actors and cartoon characters and see what your voice is doing when you try to imitate them. Don’t be afraid to cross gender lines when you do them either. Remember that it doesn’t have to be a pitch perfect impression. In fact, it’s probably better if it’s not, because then it can just be a “completely original” voice you can use when you want to.

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For the first time i think that the voice acting wasn’t so bad and that it was better compared to the silent version

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try by adding more difficlties for the minigame?
easy(maybe half speed and bit requirement)
medium(mantain the game as it is right now)
Hard(if someone actually want’s to have to upgrade linx you add ~+30% on the bitrate, or even more if it’s neded)

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This is going to be quite long (I think) so I apologize in advance if I don’t understand, I’m using the translator.
What I mean by different is that despite being a work done by one person, nuances are heard in the voice, which makes it really look like different characters made by the same person with little experience, but if you keep trying, you could manage to make a very good job.

Regarding when I mentioned that the voices were flat, you could tell that you were nervous as if you were reading a script but with a little practice you can overcome that. but other than that it’s a very good job

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Iris is the main love interest, so in a future game I think just voicing her would be fine? If you only have finite time, I’d rather the main love interest get’s as many voice lines as possible. Personally.

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I had another quick go, turns out I can get past the third stage without upgrades, although the margin for error is very small. I did make a few more discoveries and guesses on how the minigame works though. Holding a direction does nothing for directing the bits once they’ve passed the third bottom ring (or at least not once they’re moving at that speed), I’m guessing they have to be pressed a certain number of times to go in a certain direction? If so then holding might only count as a press every few ticks/frames/however its calculated, and holding a direction once the bits are that far down mustn’t give enough presses so the bits go straight down the centre. I’d try to look in the code to find out for sure but my Python knowledge is laughable at best.

Another thing is there seems to be a randomised gap between when each bit spawns. This is probably what screwed me the last time as I had a 0-1-0 combo falling in rapid succession, so the last two just went straight to the centre. This time around I didn’t have any 1s and 0s straight after each other so I was able to get through it just fine.

Conclusion: just upgrade Lynx and save myself the headache. But maybe there could be something in the game requiring Lynx to upgrade? Not a forced upgrade before each stage because that would effectively eliminate any increase in difficulty, but maybe some other task/minimum level every few stages? Or perhaps rework the minigame so it only matters which way the player is holding when the bits reach the junction, and Lynx’s upgrades can remain as they are. Or if I’m completely wrong in my assumptions on how the minigame works (as I’m often known to be)… idk just disregard that last point I guess.

Some minor typos I found:

  • In the introductory scene as you’re being walked around the UI you’re told you can “increase Iris’ gainining abilities”
  • Iris tells you to skim 3000LUMS from the store but you can only take 2000
  • After the third stage Celeste says Iris is “adorbable”, and the voice clip seems to say “adordadable”
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I’ve gotta be honest the minigame just feels bad and unresponsive, I tried it on mobile and with keyboard and either way sometimes it feels like you just miss bits even if you are spamming. With how tight the money timeline feels it makes it feel like savescumming is necessary and the whole thing is just tedious. On paper it’s a fine minigame mechanically, maybe it’s just renpy things idk

Also, at the beginning it’s not clear that paying the debt before the end of the week actually locks you out of time you could have had.

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I found that out the hard way too that if you pay the dept it just ends your week, I found you can kind of get 8 days in income if you wait until the very last chance to pay the dept which scores you enough to buy both upgrades for Lynx and Iris and some food for Iris each week

For the mini-game I found that spamming or clicking don’t work and are not worth it, its better to time one button press at the right time easier and more responsive then spamming. The trick is to wait for the number to enter the intersection and just before it leave it at the bottom, if you push too soon you’ll throw off your groove and miss that input

After know that there is no sizes after size 5 at this time of 0.5b, I was able to bank Lums to get hacking up to level 9 and it made the mini-games easier to grind, the problem is that the speed is now slow enough that the mini-game actually takes longer to clear then if I just re-rolled and save scummed it

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have you ever been so mad your face does this

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“At age six, I was born as just a face”

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LOL! Yeah. I fixed that and the typos @Wulf_Diomhaireachd pointed out… But I’m going to wait to include those in the next release.

I’m pausing development of Neon Dreams for now. I plan on picking it up (and finishing it) later this fall after Chapter 2 of Housewife Simulator is released for Patrons late this month or in October. Ch1 is out for Patrons if you want to check it out!

I went ahead and made a Discord channel for discussion and bug reports for Neon Dreams here: AnonymooseProductions - Join if you want to discuss the game on Discord!! :sunglasses:

I finally got through to the end of this, it doesn’t normally take this long for me to finish games I promise. Character models are great, I like how they’re not all just the same clothes with bigger bodies too. The story’s great, I was hooked throughout. The ending of "and then they were free from the council and lived happily ever after the end did feel a little rushed, but hey it’s a game jam, everything’s rushed haha. How you managed to cram everything in in just 2 weeks is beyond me. I ended up managing to get Iris to level 6 and Lynx to level 9, made everything much easier (water is also wet).

Couple more bugs I found:
(might not get the exact lines right, my notes are really vague for some stupid reason)

  • The line “don’t be disturbed, keep reading” is attributed to Lynx when Ember should be saying it, no voice clip either
  • The line “I think you’re onto something” is attributed to Lynx when Iris should be saying it, no voice clip either
  • The phone doesn’t leave the screen after Ember asks for the 100k increment
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I’m glad you enjoyed it! It was a rush to finish, I pulled a couple of all-nighters to get it done. :sweat_smile:

I found both lines - they will be fixed for the next release. I found the phone issue too - thanks for the bug reports!! :sunglasses:

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For the admins… Is it best for me to make a new thread for this in #projects or can this be moved or copied?

Progress on Housewife Simulator has been going well and I’ll be back to working on this game again before the end of the year! :sunglasses:

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Best to make a new thread in the #projects section.

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Ok thanks! I’ll do that once I start work on Neon Dreams again. :wink:

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