Still working on stuff for the next update, to tide you over, here's a map, since "Mutant Minx Meltdown Map" seems to be one of the most common searches. It's possible I forgot or messed something, is so, let me know. This just shows the way the areas connect, and the sub-locations in each, not necessarily the geographic layout of areas. If you want to see how the town is physically laid out, check TDM's map in the "errata" link on the side bar. There's a few things that I might change in that, but it's pretty solid, and is what I used for reference when I was mapping out the sewers.
The other thing people seem to search for a lot is "Mutant Minx Meltdown Wiki". We're probably at the point where one might be useful, but I really have no idea about how they work. I take it if I just set one up on wikia or somewhere, everyone can dive in and add stuff? 'Cause most of you probably know how they work better than I do.
A few gameplay balance questions, if you'll indulge me - not relevant if you play as the Test Character -
*Are you maxing out your stats? If so, about when?
*Any character seem under/over powered?
*Are you finding enough money to pay for injection and stuff, or too much?
*About what day can you enter the library?
Working on the next build, keep bug reports and things coming. Thanks to Fenoxo for the link (Hi Fenoxities!) Donation drive still in effect. Thanks for all the support and feedback, it's real encouraging, and we're really happy you're all enjoying the game. ^_^
22 comments:
I generally don't play past day 30 give or take a few days, so I might max out one, maybe two stats, but not most of them.
I play Theology Student 90% of the time when not playing a test character, since picking up Meditate early is so useful. It feels like it's somewhat balanced though, since the first several days involve a lot of fleeing since your starting physical stats are so low.
Money has never really been too much of a concern. Of course, I don't buy a ton of infection reductions, so that might be why.
I can generally head into the library around day 25 or so, depending on how lucky I've been so far.
Finally, is there a chance of us seeing a Girl Next Door ending at some point in the near future?
*Are you maxing out your stats? If so, about when?
There is a statcap? (This should be an answer)
*Any character seem under/over powered?
I think the Theology student is rather weak, because Intellegence has very limited use and you're better of with a higher lust limit or more brawn. I'd vote for a character creation system if that's doable though, with a set amount of points to buy starting stats, to suit individual playstyles.
*Are you finding enough money to pay for injection and stuff, or too much?
Money is more than abundant. I sometimes finish the game with almost 10000 spare money, even more at times. Maybe because I spend time searching a lot.
*About what day can you enter the library?
~20
I tend to max skill (16) by day 10-15 or so depending on how lucky I am in terms of finding a Dartboard early; it's consistently my first priority. Depending on when I find Dumbells and Video Game Mat I max those next; generally takes until sometime in the day 30s to max both, or 20s to max one and start on the other. Really depends on when I FIND the stupid things. I've found very little actual need for Intelligence, frankly, or characters dedicated to it - Selena is present to cover infection issues until when you can easily max a stat and come close on another, meaning you can overpower nearly any enemy, and IF you do need infection coverage after that Darlene is crazy easy to get around 15-20 and she pops up ALL THE TIME so I've literally never had any trouble at all with infection past day 20-25. One time I maxed it to 99% around day 25 and just farmed Darlene until it was 0 within two days. The high-int do-it-yourself injections seem unreliable even with close to max int, whereas Darlene is highly available... and has an amazingly cute scene attached to it.
Over/underpowered: revisiting the int issue, any sacrifice in the name of int makes a starting character weak. I won't necessarily say the athlete or mechanic are OVERpowered, but currently the game seems to reward physical excellence (especially skill/strength) a bit too much. Lust is really easy to boost so starting with meh lust isn't THAT bad, but poor stats just makes you unable to farm XP which means minimal growths which means... yeah. Kinda screwed.
Money is not an issue if you actually search for supplies... ever. I managed to fund a constant wanton orgy of Japanese Girls and Bossy Redheads (me? anon5 again? nahhh... well yeah maybe) for like 15 days before I was low enough on money that I couldn't afford more injections, and if you're actually playing to win I find that rarely are more than 1-2 injections needed to keep you <30 by the time Selena runs off, which is day 22-25 iirc, and by then if you've been training you can beat down anything except those bloody centipede girls. ...Speaking of which, those ladies are whack. Even with speed/strength/skill/health maxed they still effortlessly melt through me like no other enemy I've found even by day 40.
Library entry: that is a two-answer question. I find that it's relatively -safe- with about 12-14 skill and preferably a bit of strength (so in theory pretty doable by day 15, 20 at the worst), but the head librarian is absolutely brutal even with 12-14 all stats so honestly I'd want to max str/skill/speed and have meditate before fighting her. Hate to say it but I honestly do feel like she's maybe even TOO strong, especially given that you need to fight her before Selena's disappearance (22-25ish), and since Selena wants a few days to READ the book, you'd really want to do it by 17-20 if possible to give her plenty of time. The biggest problem I've run into with her is Lust; unless you purposely lose to one of the library enemies just before getting to the entrance your lust is probably going to be up there before you fight her unless you have Meditate, and she hits HARD and has a really really really long and involved scene.
One minor complaint: Clarinet takes a LONG time to max (I think I heard 10 days? can't confirm) for how hard it is to find and how useless it is. Does it actually -do- anything, or is it just there for once you don't have anything else to spend XP on?
@Eleiryn:
if you go to the right section of the library, you can fap out that excess lust...
Of course, I still lost to the head librarian after that, but it's closer to that tale about the scorpion trying to cross a river than anything.
Also a few other things in terms of balance:
Darlene is currently showing up too frequently. Currently you can pretty much go wild fucking the mutants as soon as you find her without too much concern for becoming fully infected.
Whipporwills seem pretty absurd statwise for how early they show up. Average hp, high skill, hard to run from and very powerful attacks (not only do their attacks do 4 or 5 damage, they don't have (m)any low value attacks, so their average attack damage is much higher than a girl that can hit for 5 but will often hit for 1). Compared to the Mushmouths and Snapjacks that show up at about the same time, they're absolutely ridiculous. Maybe tone them down a bit or have them show up a little later?
Girls Next Door don't scale with time particularly well. When they mutate to Dick Girls it seems like they get a much smaller power boost than other girls that mutate (compare it to Business Woman->MushMouth), and they don't scale much as time goes on and their cock gets bigger.
Wanted to offer an interesting alternative to the current experience/stat system that would make more use of stats throughout play. Not sure how feasible/difficult it is to code in, but it is something that occurred to me while playing.
Instead of (or along with) stat-training items, having it where you can spend excess experience to do special actions while you are exploring, such as "Learn something about the infection (+Int) 50xp" or "Catch a girl unaware (+Skill) 50xp" Where you spend experience to, on purpose, encounter a girl, but in the process, you increase your stat, and get a special effect/bonus during the fight. Examples:
- (Int) First Resolve: Start a fight with less accumulated lust, based on current Intelligence
- (Skill) First Strike: Cancels their first strike at low skill levels, and gives you first strike at high levels.
- (Str) First Blood: She starts off with fewer hitpoints.
- (Spd) First Sprint: Better chance of evasion if you do it in the first round.
- (Hp) First Breath: Start the fight with recovered hp.
- (Lust) First Desire: Surrender to a girl immediately, but with reduced infection.
Each option would cost experience, increase the stat by 1, and immediately trigger an encounter.
This would allow people who accumulate more xp than they can spend to spend it more effectively in less days.
If there could also be locations or random encounters where you could get/lose stats based on choices you make, that would also be great, but I figure that's more "content" than "mechanics".
Anything to spend XP faster would be nice. I tend to end up with 300-500XP or more by day 40 even blowing 50xp a night.
I've got an error in the latest build:
After getting an infection rating of 104 and losing again, I got a crash. Bug report says that 'litmontat' is not defined.
Full Traceback:
File "/***/MMMRMG-0088-all/renpy/execution.py", line 261 in run
File "/***/MMMRMG-0088-all/renpy/ast.py", line 1366, in execute
File "/***/MMMRMG-0088-all/renpy/python.py", line 1015, in py_eval
File "game/endings.rpy", line 24, in
NameError: name 'litmontat' is not defined
Darwin-12.2.0-x86_64-i386-32bit
Ren'Py 6.13.7.1646
In regards it stat maxing, I tend to run low on food before managing to max everything. Skill is always the first after 10-all stats, as aside from HP / Lust it has the most visible effect, and is generally done by 17-18. The rest each take about another week apiece after that, and I run out of food around mid-intellect.
Theology student feels underpowered, but I'm really not sure how the stats really affect things anyhow. HP / Lust are obvious, as is STR, but Skill and AGI look like they would cover the same things, and INT seems useless after 10.
Money? Generally, I don't run into much that would take money.
I enter the Library sometime around day 22 as Mechanic and Athlete. I don't play the Playboy, and the Thoelogy Student never gets strong enough to feel secure running it.
Latest anon - thanks, the errors caused by me mistyping a call command. I'll have a build up later today with a fix, but if you want to do it yourself open the file "endings.rpy" and on line 24 change litmontat to litwomtat .
Thanks for the feedback and suggestions guy, all good stuff. Things I'm thinking of changing Darlenes frequency, add a stat rewards for escaping, and have a look at the stats for a few of the enemies.
Idea for the money - what if you lost all money on you when you lost a combat, stored it in your base, and had to decide how much to carry on you when you were around town? It'd make money more precious, but adds micromanagement and makes things annoying to weaker players.
too-much-xp problem - two obvious solutions are more minor stats, or probably better, having stat upgrades above a certain level cost more.
Anons "sta/xp bonus ideas are interesting, definetly going to consider these.
Thanks for the feedback guys, nice to get some dialouge going here. ^_^
Having to manage your wallet vs. bank just seems fairly microey and I don't think it'd add too much. Reducing money drops would probably be better. The $1000 event seems way too common for instance.
I like having stat upgrades start to be more expensive as you increase them more. In the lategame I often end up with an ever growing bank of exp because I'm raking in more than 50 exp a day and can't spend my exp fast enough. More minor stats seems to aggravate that problem, while scaling costs solves it nicely.
Also I'd second Intelligence needing a bit more use beyond 10 points to unlock Meditate (what does it even do otherwise?)
I think the only other int use at the moment is that players with int of 12+ can reduce their own infection in the pharmacy once Selena has gone.
I guess I could a meditiation upgrade at 14 or so, so you can use it more often - but how often do people use it every day to begin with?
Working on a commission bit at the moment, hope to have a new build out tonight, so I'll try the increasing-upgrade-cost thing in that, and we'll see how it works.
After a few suggestions, and watching the PieWife play, I've added a small xp bonus for successfully escaping, hopefully that dosen't compund the problem.
A few ideas, as far as finding stuff and stats go
I tend to have problems finding money, I'm more apt to find food than money - maybe that's why I wind up with food for 27 days (before I'm *robbed*) and still only have starting money. Other times I'll find lots of money...but food's hard to come by. Maybe balance those out a bit? Sure, you can get money in the village green, but make the amounts less for pilfering the store (instead of 500 you get 150?).
Regarding stats, I agree with the others that strength/skill is favored far more than intelligence is. I'm not sure if agility really does anything outside of *lightning strike* - which I don't use anyway. Having a *thanks to your speed you dodge the attack* would be useful. And having some reason besides meditation would cause people to want to increase the int stat. Generally, I start with skill, go to strength/lust/hp next, sometimes do agility, and say *heck with int*.
Skill is your main combat.. skill. At the moment speed is just used to calculate your odds of escaping from combat. I suppose it should effect dodging too, yeah. I will look into this.
Hm, I wonder if I can work in an int attack to make that more usefull.. you can distract enemies by reciting polemic mid battle maybe :P
What if passing an Int check at the start of combat could stop a girl from getting their free attack before you can act, or even let you act first if you beat them by a large amount?
Some combination of perception/quick thinking/tactics/ etc.
*Are you maxing out your stats? If so, about when?
--I max out my first stat (skill normally) at about day 12 and just play it by ear after that
*Any character seem under/over powered?
-- not really! though a point-buy custom character creator would be nice
*Are you finding enough money to pay for injection and stuff, or too much?
-- I'm fine in the money department, but I would really like an option of "search for food" or "search for money" for when things get a bit too close for comfort
*About what day can you enter the library?
-- I can enter by about day 15, but because of the insane boss fight I generally wait until the 20s, which doesn't seem to give selena enough time to research afterwards...
*suggestions*
like may others would like skills to play a bigger role. Some thoughts are: speed effecting who strikes first, Int effecting how successful scavenging is (or letting you choose what to look for? food vs. money vs items?)
Also I do tend to accumulate more xp than i can spend. I propose maybe letting you train skills an extra time if you stay at home for the day? that way you can use more xp, but also help prep yourself for the library or hard fights sooner.
Thank you for making this great game! I am really enjoying it and can't wait to see it finished someday!
Let us start as a girl.
Let us start as a girl.
Let us start as a girl.
Thanks.
Most recent anon, please read the FAQ.
It seems like the Girl Next Door is currently giving the love bites that flag you for the Chav ending. Just played a game to test it. Submitted to a Girl Next Door and got the "neck covered in angry looking love bites status". Went to Lancaster Lane (since it has no Chavs)and submitted to every enemy I found. Once I hit 100 Infection I got the Chav ending despite not encountering a single Chav all game.
Thanks for the bug reports, not sure why GND is doing that, I'll look into it.
I got no problem with a lady PC, but literally EVERY combat and sex scene in the game assumes the player has a cock. It would take a huge amount of work to re-write what really amount to pretty much the whole game. So, it's not impossible, but it is pretty unlikely. If I make another game after this one, I will be sure to have gender options available from the beginning.
Good suggestions on uses for skills in combat, like avoiding *first strike*, that totally makes sense. (I honestly can't remember why I set up the combat to give the girls a free blow that way).
Maybe I should just bite the bullet and give the combat system a complete overhaul. It'll be a pain, but it'd be easier now than any later, I guess.
I'd say the faster of the two characters should get the first action. If you are going to rework the combat system, now would be a good time to put down the framework for special enemy traits (say regeneration or always attacking first without being impossible to escape from) as well as status effects for the PC (greater lust building over time or temporary stat reductions).
I actually think it's a good idea that the girls always get the first move, that way, you really have to think about "should I look for more resources or retreat and rest up"? rather than "I am faster than anything and can evade all encounters anyway." It also makes sense in-story, as the encounters are usually you being ambushed (especially the bossy Redhead).
Interesting how few of the commenters play to lose...
Post a Comment