Unfulfilling Isekai Simulator (formerly known as NPC Sim 2)

[idknw]

Finally the first chapter is released! You can download it on chikin’s post above (if he didn’t do any fuck up.)

For those who don’t know, I’m the editor and the playtester of the game. I should be able to clear any doubts you have almost as good as chikin if we are talking about this chapter (let’s try to not spoil the future chapters ;D )

The intent of this post is to clarify somethings before you guys play the game or while you are at it.

First, my deepest apologies, as chikin said previously I was busy with life and couldn’t playtest the last added content of the game and fixes as thoroughly as I wished. The game was delayed because of that too and if you guys find any bugs and/or grammar mistakes the blame is on me, sorry about that.

About the game

We tried as hard as we could to keep the content of each adventurer as balanced as possible while making them unique. So don’t worry about picking the ‘wrong adventurers’, I’m confident that you guys are going to like all of them.

You guys should have in mind that this is only the first chapter too, it’s only the beginning of the adventure! So the adventurers aren’t able to gain too much weight, each of them can only gain at maximum 20 lbs in this chapter. But do not worry, things are going to pick up going foward.

There are a lot of choices in this chapter, explaining properly, you can choose to do some things or don’t. We tried to make the best choice clear for the players, but you can always make your own mind. I’m not going to lie, some stuff is locked though.

You are going to find some easter eggs about the first game, but we came to the decision of pretending it never ever happened. So if you find something which looks like it’s from the first game, treat it as brand new.

Going forward

As I said, there are some stuff which looks like it’s from the first game, but this chapter is a homage to it. Future chapters won’t look like exactly like this one, meaning they won’t follow the same recipe.

Still talking about how the future chapters are going to look like, we did some poor choices at the beginning of development and in the end we were too deep in this hole to change it. So some systems or mechanics are completely bad or a pain and tiring to work with which means they won’t be there in furute chapters. There is a pretty good side of this, you guys can expect new and better things in each chapter!

If you play the game or played it, you are going to find out the only fetish content in it is consensual stuffing and consensual weight gain(fat). I think it would be best to make it clear we are going to keep this way, given that most of you are into this and there aren’t going to be any other thing shying you away from the game. (With this promise we can force ourselves to not deviate from it too.)

Final note

I’m going to try to stay active to answer any doubts you guys might have here or on private messages.
And good game to you all! I hope you guys enjoy it!

(I know most of you are going to be like this AND YOU SHOULD )

[daftidiot1]

It’s probably a time waste, but is there a way to find the glasses or is she simply messing with the player. I’ve already tried 123, 321, 132, 231, 213, and 312

[WaxeRed]

Any game with an early skyrim meme is off to a good start in my books! I look forward to playing more!

[Chugachugs]

Great work! I think I’ve done everything in Chapter 1 now so I’ll need to go back and make different choices to see all the things I missed.

[Lightning]

Very impressive, well done to all involved.

I hope the multiple characters with multiple states doesn’t become to cumbersome for you to work with, I imagine that it could be very difficult to write and program.

[LeftHandManGary]

Very enjoyable so far. I have the same question about Rae’s glasses, as well. I just can’t find them. Also having issues figuring out how to interact with Sarahy and Amara in town, as their customers never leave.

[Kitsune]

That was really enjoyable! The art, the story, the characters~
Truly great work!

Now some feedback:
Into-Sequence:

• Character Images are too small
• Why are they leaning left? It looks like they are always on a slope.
• Mountain Background makes it look even more like they are standing on air
• Everyone’s feet are positioned differently, making it look weird. That, combined with their size (1/40 of the screen) and the mountain background makes everything look weird.

First Camp Scene:

• Character Portraits change position when expression changes. It’s also inconsistent between characters.
• Character Portraits have different sizes between characters. (Amara’s the best one, centred, exactly the head)
• We don’t know the characters well enough at this point that only being able to select their name with no option to redo or save beforehand is bad.
• The map borders just being black cut-off looks really weird. Maybe add Trees or other obstacles?
• Having neat and evenly-spaced rows of trees in the wild looks weird.

Free Play:

• Some portraits and character images have floating pixels
• Why does Amara spell deity as diety? Is that a persistent typo or intentional?
  Second Camp Scene:
• Dinner: You can walk while no one is talking (Persists among all scenes that have a pause between dialogue windows)
• Why do the images not update in the dialogue after feeding? It would make sense to have the new image there already as the dialogue pertains these changes.
• The effects (Puff of air, stomach growling, etc.) on images are hard to see. It also looks somewhat weird, them being just a white blob of colour with the effect in black on it. Would it not make more sense to constrain the white to the effect itself only?

Images:

• The Sarahy Image where she pats her belly with her hand seems to have her arm cut off? Or maybe I am interpreting that white part of the image over her belly wrongly.

Town:

• Entering Rae’s house the first time teleports you to the pier at the lake. The second time you land in front of the shrine inside. Exiting through the door put’s you in front of your shack, then in front of the bed, then pier again. I assume this is intentional?
• Out of curiosity, why do we not get images here?
• Sarahy town Inn after events - “A hugnry smile plays at her lips.” ← Typo on hungry
• Amara’s events: As listed above, you can move when no dialogue window is open. Should you, which will happen if you use mouse or touch, you will get soft-locked.

[Choak]

Man, if that was only the first chapter then you’ve hooked me for what’s left to come!
I really enjoyed the cast you created for the game, you’ve really sold the feeling that you’ve landed in a group of a sort of dysfunctional family sort of feel going on. I also really like how you added in some choice with the party member and how that affects your foraging and the quips from each of the members while interacting with the harvestable resources.

In terms of bugs I do agree that Rae/Amara’s house has some issue with teleportation once you exit the room, A few times, I got teleported to the docks, but a I also got reteleported to rae’s bed, and also reteleported to the player’s house.

I also agree that the images are too small to really appreciate, so it would be nice to have them up scaled a bit next time. As well as the portraits could use some work being readjusted so they’re more aligned.

But overall, I’m very excited for what you guy’s have stored for the game. This looks very promising for what you’ve got established so far, and I very much hope that you continue to develop this further.

[mythical-chikin]

@Chugachugs

I’ll need to go back and make different choices to see all the things I missed.

There is… alot of dialogue… 15 different unique forager pairs. And a couple different choices to you can make even among those to get different end results. It would honestly not surprise me if there is content people won’t see. But I also know better than to believe everything won’t eventually be found.

@Lightning

I hope the multiple characters with multiple states doesn’t become to cumbersome for you to work with, I imagine that it could be very difficult to write and program.

I’ve got a couple tricks to keep everything manageable. Although I am already aware it will expand as time goes on. As of right now, you’d be surprised how few branches it actually has. The worst part is honestly grammar and spellchecking everything along the different branches…

@LeftHandManGary

Very enjoyable so far. I have the same question about Rae’s glasses, as well

Answered this privately so as to not spoil the riddle.

@LeftHandManGary

Sarahy and Amara in town, as their customers never leave.

Those two are not interactable unless you chose them as foragers. You get some ending scenes when you interact with your foragers back in town. The others? Not so much.

@Kitsune

Now some feedback:
Into-Sequence:

1. Unfortunately, blowing up the images would just result in a fuzzier image. I did my best to strike a balance between size and clarity. Although I could just be too stupid to actually import images properly… Never discount a chikin’s stupidity.
2. Perspective of the artwork.
3. Poor choice on my part, I will see if I can find a better background for the artwork.
   To be honest, the intro was the least playtested aspect of the game…

@Kitsune

First Camp Scene:

That was poor management on my end. The face plates used a different template than the version of RPGMaker I used. By the time we caught it, too much work had already gone in to turn back. Same thing with the different sized heads.
As for the maps, I am aesthically challenged. I will see if I can fix up some of those maps in the future.

@Kitsune

Free Play:

1. Crap… Thought I’d gotten it all… I did say I was incompetent in my defense
2. Because I am illiterate and I only just found out it is spelled deity, not diety…
3. If anyone knows how to fix this kind of bug, please help. There are a few moments after the intro where I know you can walk around. I just would recommend you use as an opportunity to save so that you won’t have to revisit the intro crawl though…
4. I might need some clarity on the image updating when feeding. There is some feeding where it was a deliberate choice to not update the images (i.e. feeding your foragers in the field) so that the player would not miss out on seeing any of the art, or seeing any of the dialogue. But that doesn’t seem to be what you are refering to… Are you talking immediately after you hit the feed choice? I had not thought about doing that, but the image would not be up for very long… Food for thought on my part honestly…

@Kitsune

The Sarahy Image where she pats her belly with her hand seems to have her arm cut off? Or maybe I am interpreting that white part of the image over her belly wrongly.

That is hand blur from her patting her stomach.

@Kitsune

Entering Rae’s house the first time teleports you to the pier at the lake. The second time you land infront of the shrine inside. Exiting through the door put’s you infront of your shack, then infront of the bed, then pier again. I assume this is intentional?

@Choak

In terms of bugs I do agree that Rae/Amara’s house has some issue with teleportation once you exit the room, A few times, I got teleported to the docks, but a I also got reteleported to rae’s bed, and also reteleported to the player’s house.

Rae made me do it…

@Kitsune

Out of curiosity, why do we not get images here?

I had images display at the end of the end content at one point, but that was ultimately scrapped because the adventurers mechanically can be 1 weight class higher than we have images for… And it might prove weird later on down the line if we display pictures of the adventurers at a weight class lower than they actually are.

@Kitsune

Amara’s events: As listed above, you can move when no dialogue window is open. Should you, which will happen if you use mouse or touch, you will get soft-locked.

As a general rule, I advise against doing stuff that will get you softlocked.
Jokes aside, that is something we never found in our playtesting, and I am might need help in being able to fix this issue for all the other cases of this happening.

Thanks for the feedback! Hope none of my responses came off rude. There were just some things will definately take some time to fix, or somebody that actually knows what they are doing.

[namad]

is it possible to earn gold and buy things like ambrosia in town? or is that for the future?

Oh also are there any gifts besides rare ration? I never found any other than that first one (although maybe I was unobservant)

[Sixes]

Hey just popping in to say that I really like the game, but after reading some of this thread I did have some personal criticisms I wanted to hopefully provide solutions to and point out.

1. Unfortunately, blowing up the images would just result in a fuzzier image. I did my best to strike a balance between size and clarity. Although I could just be too stupid to actually import images properly… Never discount a chikin’s stupidity. 2. Perspective of the artwork.

This being my first, I had roughly the same thoughts going into the game. And seeing this response made me want to offer some potential advice and hopeful solutions.

Firstly digging into the games files I do see that Alyna is the only character with a unique resolution and aspect ratio for her images. And that in general there is a lot of dead space in these images, I’d definitely recommend cropping them down, since you’re zooming them in anyway, this is just a personal thing.

But also I do see that these were made in a very low resolution, so I see the aversion to raising scale of the images.
My recommendation then, is to try using a website such as http://waifu2x.udp.jp/ to scale them up, it does great with stylized art like this, and by using that, and adjusting the images just a little without changing resolution or aspect ratio I have some dialogues looking like this.

Personally I think it either looks pretty nice, and puts the characters on greater display. Rotating their images really doesn’t do anything to hurt their composition either in my opinion.

Art stuff aside I think the games really enjoyable, I was a bit hesitant with the writing at first because it’s absolutely frontloaded with memes. And while I wound up enjoying it’s silly tone overall, I was concerned at first that it wouldn’t have any substance, and I was wrong thankfully, despite being non-serious the characters do have some personality and have nice traits! I would’ve just maybe toned it down a little, maybe make the skyrim joke a little briefer, that’s just me.

I am also impressed with the handling of the branches, it really did feel like the choices on the characters mattered and impacted the dialogue, I was surprised how many times unique things happened based on previous events, it was charming!

Apologies for the long writing, but overall I’m really impressed with the game and look forward to seeing more from it.

[Sixes]

A second post with my second screenshot since I wasn’t able to post both at once.

Again just another test to see what some small quick touches would do to the art.

[Kitsune]

I did things a bit differently.
Default Game Resolution (816x624)

Game Resolution set to 1920x1080 (Plugins, Community_Basic lets you set the game resolution)

I just used a basic image viewer and use the scale tool, set to Nearest Neigboor, and had the target resolution be an even multiple of the base resolution (cut empty space so it’s not 397x427 but instead 100x200, then upscale normally to 500x1000).

The image has to be less than the set resolution to fit perfectly.

On another note, The image above by Sixes shows what I mean by hand. That white ‘effect’ does not look like her hand swishing, but like some weird cut-off.

Edit1:
Here’s a direct comparision between Sahary’s W2 Sprites in gif form. Left the normal one, cut, (notice how her feet position is not straight at all, the sprites move up and down), right edited so the feet match up at least somewhat.

Which brings me to the next point, are these the full drawings? They look like they were downscaled heavily. The flimmering on the sides are errant pixels, similar to a bad cut out tool’s remnants. The pixels on the feet do not match up. You can’t put the sprites perfectly over each other as the pixel number between them is inconsistent, despite their parts not changing. Also, she’s still leaning. That’s not perspective.

Here are the geometry lines for parts that are the same height when viewed upfront.

Notice how most of the red lines, other than some errant lines at least, are not straight at all? That’s not the perspective of said character standing slightly sideways, it just looks like she’s leaning left. Combine that with the green line, her direct angle, and she definitely leans sideways. Most others share the problem

Also, what isn’t visible here, as I’ve cut the sprites, is the free floating pixels present in these image as well.

[Kitsune]

Fixed Sarahy’s face:

They are now near perfectly matched. I just used Aseprite, fixed the resolution (from 580x288 to 576x288), then set Import Spritesheet (Resolution per Sprite 144x144), then activated onion skin red-blue to see overlap between frames and aligned everything.

Edit1: Rae’s face

Edit2: Lexi’s face

Edit 3: Jackrabit’s face

This one is somehow the worst. Some parts are blurry, the borders don’t match up correctly and some pixels don’t belong where they are.

Edit 4: Amara’s face

Alyna’s face

On that note, were these images originally on a white background or something? They have a slight border, implying select and cut, as well as some fragments and near-transparent effects.
All in all it looks like they were cut from a white-background image and then somehow downscaled, leading to things not matching up… @mythical-chikin What were the original files like?

Regarding player movement: Stop PC/NPC Movement | RPG Maker Forums

[Zabi]

I did find a couple of the issues mentioned above but HOLY SHIT I LOVE THIS GAME! The storytelling is amazing and funny, as with all chikin games, the art is spectacular and the weight gain is perfect too! I’m a little salty we have to focus on a couple of characters each play through, and I can’t believe you kicked me out bc I wanted to see the blacksmith (lmao) but all in all the game so far is a 10/10 and I absolutely cannot wait for the next chapter. I’m so glad you delayed it to release the first part of potentially one of the best games on this site.

I get that this ^ is a lot, but damn thats a good game. Just wanna be clear how much I appreciate the dev team.

[idknw]

@namad

is it possible to earn gold and buy things like ambrosia in town? or is that for the future?

Oh also are there any gifts besides rare ration? I never found any other than that first one (although maybe I was unobservant)

I answered both in a private message to not spoil things

[mythical-chikin]

@Sixes

My recommendation then, is to try using a website such as

I did not know that was a thing… I have very little experience with image viewers and editors… I had no idea you could do things like that without fancy software or losing clarity…

@Kitsune

Which brings me to the next point, are these the full drawings? They look like they were downscaled heavily. The flimmering on the sides are errant pixels, similar to a bad cut out tool’s remnants.

Yes, I believe they were the full drawings. Of course something may have gone weird with the files when I was sent them. I did not do any down scaling on my part.

@Kitsune

Also, she’s still leaning. That’s not perspective.

Sorry, I do not have a very good eye for things like this. I assumed the answer would be a different perspective, and you know what happens when one makes assumptions. I see the example ya did for the leaning. Unfortunately I do not really understand it (not because it is flawed or a bad explanation, I am just not versed enough in artistic construction to follow…) So please forgive me. I think it makes sense, but I do not know enough to confirm.

@Kitsune

On that note, were these images originally on a white background or something?

All the images when I got them were set in transparent. I cannot say for certain if they were originally on a white background when cj was working on them. But I know when I got them, they were in transparent. When I got the original portraits, they were a weird resolution 860x 427. I resized them, but I probably messed something up along the way. I just had no idea how. So the resizing was definitely me. I don’t know about the background image though.
Just a warning, I will probably end up using your redone character portraits.

Thank you both for the walkthroughs on how to fix up those issues I had with putting the art in the game properly. I am still learning about alot of the finer aspects of RPGMaker. And thanks Kitsune for that link on fixing player movement

[idknw]

@Zabi

I’m a little salty we have to focus on a couple of characters each play through

I’m glad you liked all of them! I hope you have time to at least give each of them some love, you can do it with 3 playthroughs, but we know it can be tiring.
The original idea was to have only one adventurer as a lover but nobody would have the patience to play it 6 times and we would lose a lot of interactions between the adventurers.

@Zabi

but all in all the game so far is a 10/10 and I absolutely cannot wait for the next chapter. I’m so glad you delayed it to release the first part of potentially one of the best games on this site.

Thanks for the praise! The sad part is that we won’t put a deadline over our heads anymore, meaning we won’t know when chapter 2 is going to be released, the good part is that we will be able to deliver good content without anything missing which almost end up happening this time because of the deadline.

@Zabi

I get that this ^ is a lot, but damn thats a good game. Just wanna be clear how much I appreciate the dev team.

Whoa! You are going to make us blush! Jokes aside, we appreciate you guys taking time from your busy life to play and enjoy our game

To @Sixes and @Kitsune

I do not mess with artwork stuff, but I would like to thank you both from the bottom of my heart for taking time and showing us how to improve and even doing our work for us.

[Zabi]

Yeah honestly I respect not setting a deadline. I’ll be looking forward to the next chapter, but it’s far more important that you take time for yourselves and that you make the story the way you want it than that you get it done before a specific time.

Having through about the game more now that the afterglow has faded a bit I would say it might be nice to have more of an intro into the characters before we need to pick two. Also, if y’all ever need someone to help playtest or check grammar, I’d be happy to help!

[Kitsune]

Not to sound presumptuous, but could I get the original files you were sent to see if I could increase the portrait or character image quality? Mainly for arrangement and to check scaling and resolution.