Lab Rats 2 v0.8.0 is Live!

This is generally a really solid update, and gives people a reason to play for longer, especially with goals. That said, this is the early beta part, where we Patrons tear into the early product to find holes and bugs and other problems for Vren to fix for later.

Thanks for all the feedback, it's a lot to respond to but I've read through it all. The progress of the R&D department in particular is something that I feel I need to address at some point in the near future, either by giving them more to research or a different task to perform while not researching stuff. I've considered having serum designs de-value over time after you introduce them, so your R&D department might have to perform research and create "new" designs to refresh the timer. I'll give it some thought, you've given me a few good ideas to throw around.

Vren

Also if there is a way for us to add mods or comunitee content that would be great, I considered just hacking in a mod to add buying and selling abilities in the stores, or a maid role in the main characters house, but without a clear api Im not sure what the best starting point would be, nor how stable my insertion point would be

FooLord

Yes for my part also, I'm not trying to be negative. Love this game! Bugs are to be expected during development of course. And everyone reporting them is a big help in sure. Keep up the great work, Vren! This is shaping up to be a great game, and its super fun in its current state, too.

Tim R Mercado

Also as an additional note, I know there was alot of criticism here, but I really did enjoy this update and I feel it's a massive move forward

FooLord

Love the update, really good progress, but I have some feedback. 1) When I try to assign a girl an outfit I get a exception screen, I can 'ignore' it and continue, which always results in a rejection message. 2) Love that the girls no longer work weekends, feels more natural. However early game there are severe balance issues due to the cost of paying the girls when the business cant make enough money. That coupled with gating around the research to slow down access to more profitable options makes the start painfully slow. 3) Love the xp system, however the balance is off, for example the tongue tied and the blow job options take a hell of allot more work than the flirting and orgasm options. More advice is take the D&D style xp amounts for level ups and then weight the quest rewards arround that. 4) With the level ups it unlocks kissing as the most effective way to make girls orgasm. My suggestion is to set diminishing returns for both main character and girl arousal and caps on actions, seriously there is no kiss in the world that can make someone cum. 5) The test subject research gate is bugged: Firstly despite having the int, slutiness and obedience my head researched was unable to meet the requirements of the gate, I had to reassign head research to another girl, Then following that despite having a pile of girls with full corruption and over 200 obedience I have been unable to unlock the gate for the 3 girls to experiment on. 6) In insult girls work, if you get your stats high enough the modification of happiness becomes --, that is for example --1 meaning the girls actually gain hapiness for insults. This is either a display bug (it should be 1 not --1) or a logic bug (it should stop reducing once it becomes -1 or something)

FooLord

I had to give her an intelligence boosting serum. But even after that, the game can't seem to believe I have 3 employees with 50+ slutiness and 140+ obedience

I have no idea on why I can't seem to advance the special research options. I have Stephanie way above the minimum requirements, but the option's greyed out.

Also the last R&D quest seems bugged. I have ooodles of employees with with 50 + sluttiness and 140 + obedience and the thing wont trigger.

blakeness

Balance issues with the level up. My character has 25 Charm 16 int 16 focus, But the tasks for the other 2 domains take way longer. With out a way to improve stamina, the sex skills take forever.

blakeness

Also noticed that if I worked weekends with no one there, Stephanie got experience. That's a bit odd to say the least.

ajacksonian

So PH pretty much beat me to it, but I'll post this anyway as it led me to go off on a tangent on stats, R&D, and long-term game balance. Overall the new additions of Goals and Head researcher are a great improvements to the game. The addition of Not-Stephanie and her role's story arc as you progress along the research tree is rather compelling and a great main drive for the story. I can only speculate that other "head roles" will bring further complexity and and draw the user further in. Excellent progress Vren! The goals system, while in it's infancy really do give the feeling of growth while playing the game. I'd expect over time that further development in this area will lead to some great organic character development. It's a great step forward indeed. Though these great features do kinda bring to the forefront some of the game's current weaknesses, namely in the areas of the character stat and research in general. Addressing the character stats is tricky because I both love it and find it horribly wonky. Player min-maxing mixed with the stat gain from the goals system leads to Morrowind-scale game breaking. Simply put, you can become a god pretty fast if you follow the right meta. A thing that may have to be done is for Vren to look as to what the end-game character should look like and place the stat caps there and provide smooth scaling to reach that transition. Figuring out end-game in a sandbox game is not an easy task to be sure, but even a roadmap as to how far the player is expected to progress in 'x' days is really handy. Right now the game handles about level 5 in any given stat before either breaking (in the sense of becoming boringly easy) or becoming pointlessly redundant. Even starting with everything in 0 that's not long before the player skips the bounds of mere mortal and becomes a min-maxed demigod. Possible solutions: - Give the player 1 character stat to invest in Charisma, Focus, or Intelligence. Make the rest quest unlockables (think Head Researcher quest as opposed to complete simple random goal). If we treat 5 as the cap that gives 14 main quests in the game before the player reaches max cap. That could translate to 1.5 in-game years if spread out right. Likewise give the character only 2 work skill points to invest in at the beginning. All other work points earned are done so via the goals system. Besides, as soon as you begin hiring for any given department those skills become completely redundant as you can hire girls to do it better, and the point of the game is to collect as much girls as is sustainable. Finally the character gets 1 point for sex stats. The goal of the game is to become a sexual tyrannosaurus. Have the player work their way up the food chain using the goals system. Possibly even have it so that you can't gain skills in acts you haven't yet performed. -Make skill checks more difficult. Not impossible, not even Nintendo-hard, just more difficult. Throw in a bunch of easy and moderate ones that look like the hard ones so as to make things a bit unpredictable to boot. Since the player will be growing those stats and skills over completing gameplay there's always going to be the need for another challenge to overcome. -Completely overhaul main character work skills. I was originally going to suggest getting rid of the whole thing altogether since you can just hire a girl for any of those skills and have more fun, but there is another approach: Main character skills should be boss skills. Though some bosses will do the general work of their staff, most in departmentalized companies (such is yours in LR2) do not. That's because they have their own set of specialized work that needs to be done. Since there's 5 work skills in LR2 heres 5 boss alternatives: -> Budgeting: Each rank reduces company expenses by 2% (Caps at 25) -> Oration: Each point increases the amount of times you can speak with your employees per day (Caps at 10) -> Crisis management: Each point negates negative effects from crises by 3% (Caps at 20). -> Networking: Each point increases the likelihood of a special contact opportunity. -> Team building: Each point raises the base happiness threshold of employees by 1 (Caps at 30) The research problem is a tougher nut to crack. As it stands the game is orbiting the sweet spot in terms of economy. The user can generate steady, but not outrageous, income so long as they keep their staff productive and balanced. R&D really does not sit will in that mold, and with the introduction of a Not-Stephanie head researcher (and the excellent quest system she brings) it is cost-prohibitive to hire any researchers. Especially considering there will be periods of no research happening while you work up to unlocking the next tier. And eventually the last tier will be unlocked and the researcher's days will be numbered. Any hiring of R&D staff only rushes things to that conclusion while eating up a good chunk of profits. Possible fixes for that could be: -Greatly crank up the RP needed to unlock stuff. This is the least elegant solution but it would at least justify hiring multiple researchers to reasonably progress in game. -Make more research topics. Boob scaling potions is a thing, why not character height, weight, hair colour, skin tone? And that just the stuff currently in game. Fertility scaling serums could be a thing if and when pregnancy becomes a thing. Special quest serums could be research topics as well. -Make the effects of serums scaleable with research. Say you make a serum that does 'X' and 'Y' and costs 'Z' you could have a research option to raise or lower any of those variables by a small amount. This could be extra handy if certain serum combos come with drawbacks that this would then mitigate. -Have random failures/setbacks. in R&D lot of drawing board solutions do not manifest themselves well when brought into the real world. The more cutting-edge the project the more this seems true, so a little failure now in then within the game's setting would not be out of place. Your head researcher's skills could help mitigate these events. I've said more on the R&D issue and possible solutions before in previous posts (and a hastily assembled Ren'py program) so the above is the best of those. Still, overall the game is progressing nicely and it's been great to be able to watch as it has grown to it's current state. You've done marvelous work Vren, and you have done well in tackling the challenges while only being a one-man operation. It will be interesting to see where the game will progress.

For the record, I'm having this exact problem.

HighGrove

Hey guys so what's the trick to get the requirements for the 3rd research unlock? The one that needs values of core 55 and obedience 130? I have the obedience, and it SEEMS LIKE I have the core, as I have 3 girls with 3 yellow hearts. But my head researcher keeps telling me I don't have anyone in my company that meets the test requirements. Kinda confused and need help please :)

Tim R Mercado

Having also tried to follow the evolution of DAZ's tools... I blame DAZ. The new models have a polygon count out of the stratosphere, but the tools for doing anything meaningful with them require a Ph.D. And to add insult to injury, everything you finally get working gets thrown out when they bring out Victoria++. Also: I hate, hate HATE with a passion that DAZ still doesn't provide a decent scripting language. (Pick one: Python or Tcl. Something that actually allows you to interface with external data sets. DO NOT GO OFF AND INVENT ONE FOR FECK'S SAKE!)

I use an easier system: acos(1-rand())*2.0/pi() It's not a perfect uniform distribution, but you would be hard pressed to say it didn't get close. I slapped it together as an answer to one of those problems that was supposed to stump undergrad engineering students. I'm not sure if my professors were impressed or annoyed at my answer. Probably a little of both. It only works for numbers from 0.0 to 1.0, but that is all that you are going to get out of your random number generator!

I love the new story mode with Stephanie. It's nice to have to jump through a few hoops to unlock serum effects. Having a researcher for the early parts of the game also moves the business along much faster. (I was usually taking a week to bootstrap the company properly, now it's a day or two.) I'm also enjoying the new quest system. It's amazing the power of having a goal. And you selection of quests is very well balanced, and is encouraging the player to build up all of their attributes and skills. I also like the "meh, next" button for those times when I really don't feel like grinding in one particular area. While I'm enjoying the effect, Charisma may be a little overpowered. Though, if your goal is to give players a no-brainer attribute to bulk up on early in the game, it's myriad of effects are spot-on. The trick of re-assigning a person outside of office hours hand getting them to work nights and weekends seems to be partly fixed. I can get them to do it for a few days, but one or more game events is causing them to go back to normal. (Naturally I'm trying to figure out which ones ;-) I also echo the cries of why are you billing the company for hours that employees aren't working? It may be better to do what real companies do, and pay employees either weekly or bi-weekly. I think it would be a fair trade to swap the 2 day grace period the bank gives you with automatic desertions if you miss payroll. Also, instead of simply maintaining a daily balance > 0, you could have a finance charge that the player has to come up with once per week. Failure to do so is automatic foreclosure. You provide enough in the way of information during the nightly report for a player of average intelligence to be able to project if they are going to meet their obligations or not. (All things that will probably require re-structuring your cash system, so probably not going to get fixed in 8.0.1, I realize.) All in all, the game is coming along great!

I'm probably repeating others, but here are my complaints thus far: If employees aren't working on the weekend, they don't get paid on the weekend. That's just how reality works. Having to eat two days worth of salary can easily end the game early, before you get up to speed. And since you have employees from day one now, that's not as easy as it was (when you could research your way to a profitable potion before hiring anyone). If employees aren't working on the weekend, they shouldn't show up in random events on the weekend. If I'm working a particular job, I get first crack. I'm the boss. So when I'm producing, I use up the supplies first. If I'm doing marketing, I sell first. I shouldn't have to reassign employees just so there will be work for me to do in order to meet a particular goal. The girls' smiling faces have got to go. They look like the Joker without makeup. Surely whatever you're using for the modelling has better options for making an attractive smile. Beyond all that, it's nice that it's starting to feel like an actual game.

Thanny

ok what am i doing wrong I research a serum buy raw resources and then create a production line. when i produce the serum i use raw but when i look in the serum inventory there a no serums i don't understand

John

is it just me, or are the new character models....not as great? I'm guessing that this is due to still being in development process?

"hey Step- OH GOD KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!"

Um, it WILL be nice seeing Stephanie again, once she's... Stephanie again.

TextileMonster

regarding the Face of Business goal, it worked for me, kinda the thing is that it seems, at least in my case, that your marketing employees sell serum before you do, so one solution is to complete this goal on weekends when you are alone at work

retchedegg

Yeah, min-maxing seriously breaks this game. The sex system is also in the need for a little more attention.

First Thoughts: -Ummmm did you lose the rights to the original Stephanie model? Or was she caught up in a scandal and that's why we now have her played by Christopher Plumber in a red wig? -New UI is looking nice. -Testing on worker update is a great improvement. -New outfits are looking good. -"All of the testing that I've been doing so far focuses on not getting people killed" OK, That is a loaded statement. I'm expecting that taking a more cavalier approach to testing comes with the risk of permanently losing workers or legal repercussions. -The test new serum on an employee option really should not be available until after completing Stephanie's quest. -Goals (at least the skill ones) should require direct user actions. It feels really cheap to have them completed by employee actions. -Work-a-Day Goal...Yeah, I really hope that's just a placeholder. its less satisfying than when a game gives you an achievement for starting the tutorial. -Complement Outfit no longer OP, woo! Flirt can be used again. -Considering the nature of the game, the goal: Shiver should be way higher than just 2 (considering I managed to complete that in only 1 sex session) consider raising that to 10-20. Yes, it does slowly scale, but that scale is really tiny. -The new backgrounds are a nice add. Will we be seeing more visual inteactivity between the character models and the environments (currently 'floor sex" in the office looks almost perfectly like you are doing the girl on the conference table., it woudn't be too far of a stretch to apply that to wall sex being on one of the walls, or the bed being used as a bed by the models)? -Oh my Nora, the weekend is so boring. Worst part is working is the only way to advance time. I really hope v0.9 brings in mall activities or at least introduces a skip to the next day option. That aside, I'm glad I'm no longer running a dictatorial sweat shop. Possible bugs and minor issues: - Test on employee menu only shows Stephanie as a potential subject despite having multiple other employees. - The garment is spelled T-shirt, or t shirt not Tshirt. - Sweater and Camisole are having body clipping issues. - Text such as current research topic and location are spilling out of its box, consider scaling it down a few points. -Long skirt is acting like pants and restricting access to panties. - water bottle event still happening on weekend despite no employees present. -Asking a girl in the mall to follow you does nothing. -Workers are still getting paid on the days off. Bugs and major issues: -Face of the Business Goal does not register user performing marketing sell serum action and is thereby impossible to complete.

Same thing here. If I'm paying them, I expect them to be working. This is more than a little difficult early in the game since the staff available for hire varies so much by randomized stats and you are paying to hire only 1 out of 3 people...what if I want to hire all 3? There has been a few times that would have been a great option. Or at least go back out on the street and find them and offer them a job. That $50 for 1 out of 3 has never made much sense.

ajacksonian

Vren, I noticed that character height seemed off. Way too many tall characters, I feel like. I thought I would just suggest using a Normal distribution for height, but I looked into the code and noticed that renpy has its own rollback-safe implementation of randomness that doesn't include convenient distributions like Normal... anyway I shamelessly plagiarized Wikipedia to create a renpy implementation of the Marsaglia polar method for generating Normal distribution numbers from uniformly distributed numbers. Not sure if it is actually rollback safe still, but it uses the renpy.random as a base. If it sounds useful you're free to use it! def random_normal(mean, stddev): s = 0 while (s >= 1 or s == 0): u = renpy.random.random() * 2 - 1 v = renpy.random.random() * 2 - 1 s = u * u + v * v mul = math.sqrt(-2.0 * math.log(s) / s) return mean + stddev * u * mul # lazily throw away the extra number

Complexity

While workers having the weekend off is certainly fine, it seems like a bug that I am still paying their daily salary, and triggering events as if they were present. Honestly the salary part is the frustrating bit, early game is very tight on cash.

Hm, I feel like pumping 20 skill points into Foreplay shouldn't allow me to trigger multi-orgasmic make-out sessions that cause permanent and relatively rapid personality change without drugs...

Complexity

With the new Weekend Work Policy, Daily Serum Dosage shouldn't be given out on Weekend days then right?

Paul Te

Remind me what are the objectives of the coming versions?

Shas'O Dal'yth Kauyon Kais Taku